Uniform Justice (2 page)

‘Seven twenty-six, sir,’ came Alvise’s efficient, crisp reply.

A glance at his watch told Brunetti that it was now more than a half-hour after that, but as Alvise was not the brightest star in the firmament of his daily routine, he chose to make no comment and, instead, said merely, ‘Order a boat. I’ll be down.’

When Alvise hung up, Brunetti took a look at the week’s duty roster and, seeing that Ispettore Lorenzo Vianello’s name was not listed for that day nor for the next, he called Vianello at home and briefly explained what had happened. Before Brunetti could ask him, Vianello said, ‘I’ll meet you there.’

Alvise had proven capable of informing the pilot of Commissario Brunetti’s request, no doubt in part because the pilot sat at the desk opposite him, and so, when Brunetti emerged from the Questura a few minutes later, he found both Alvise and the pilot on deck, the boat’s motor idling. Brunetti paused before stepping on to the launch and told Alvise, ‘Go back upstairs and send Pucetti down.’

‘But don’t you want me to come with you, sir?’ Alvise asked, sounding as disappointed as a bride left waiting on the steps of the church.

‘No, it’s not that,’ Brunetti said carefully, ‘but if this person calls back again, I want you to be there so that there’s continuity in the way he’s dealt with. We’ll learn more that way.’

Though this made no sense at all, Alvise appeared to accept it; Brunetti reflected, not for the first time, that it was perhaps the absence of sense that made it so easy for Alvise to accept. He went docilely back inside the Questura. A few minutes later Pucetti emerged and stepped on to the launch. The pilot pulled them away from the
Riva
and towards the
Bacino
. The night’s rain had washed the pollution from the air, and the city was presented with a gloriously limpid morning, though the sharpness of late autumn was in the air.

Brunetti had had no reason to go to the Academy for more than a decade, not since the graduation of the son of a second cousin. After being inducted into the Army as a lieutenant, a courtesy usually extended to graduates of San Martino, most of them the sons of soldiers, the boy had progressed through the ranks, a source of great pride to his father and equal confusion to the rest of the family. There was no military tradition among the Brunettis nor among his mother’s family, which is not to say that the family had never had anything to do with the military. To their cost, they had, for it was the generation of Brunetti’s parents that had not
only
fought the last war but had had large parts of it fought around them, on their own soil.

Hence it was that Brunetti, from the time he was a child, had heard the military and all its works and pomps spoken of with the dismissive contempt his parents and their friends usually reserved for the government and the Church. The low esteem with which he regarded the military had been intensified over the years of his marriage to Paola Falier, a woman of leftish, if chaotic, politics. It was Paola’s position that the greatest glory of the Italian Army was its history of cowardice and retreat, and its greatest failure the fact that, during both world wars, its leaders, military and political, had flown in the face of this truth and caused the senseless deaths of hundreds of thousands of young men by relentlessly pursuing both their own delusory ideas of glory and the political goals of other nations.

Little that Brunetti had observed during his own undistinguished term of military service or in the decades since then had persuaded him that Paola was wrong. Brunetti realized that not much he had seen could persuade him that the military, either Italian or foreign, was much different from the Mafia: dominated by men and unfriendly to women; incapable of honour or even simple honesty beyond its own ranks; dedicated to the acquisition of power; contemptuous of civil society; violent and cowardly at the same time. No, there was little to distinguish one organization from the other, save that
some
wore easily recognized uniforms while the other leaned towards Armani and Brioni.

The popular beliefs about the history of the Academy were known to Brunetti. Established on the Giudecca in 1852 by Alessandro Loredan, one of Garibaldi’s earliest supporters in the Veneto and, by the time of Independence, one of his generals, the school was originally located in a large building on the island. Dying childless and without male heirs, Loredan had left the building as well as his family
palazzo
and fortune in trust, on the condition that the income be used to support the military Academy to which he had given the name of his father’s patron saint.

Though the oligarchs of Venice might not have been wholehearted supporters of the Risorgimento, they had nothing but enthusiasm for an institution which so effectively assured that the Loredan fortune remained in the city. Within hours of his death, the exact value of his legacy was known, and within days the trustees named in the will had selected a retired officer, who happened to be the brother-in-law of one of them, to administer the Academy. And so it had continued to this day: a school run on strictly military lines, where the sons of officers and gentlemen of wealth could acquire the training and bearing which might prepare them to become officers in their turn.

Brunetti’s reflections were cut off as the boat pulled into a canal just after the church of Sant’ Eufemia and then drew up at a landing spot. Pucetti took the mooring rope, jumped on to the
land
, and slipped the rope through an iron circle in the pavement. He extended a hand to Brunetti and steadied him as he stepped from the boat.

‘It’s up here, isn’t it?’ Brunetti asked, pointing towards the back of the island and the lagoon, just visible in the distance.

‘I don’t know, sir,’ Pucetti confessed. ‘I have to admit I come over here only for the Redentore. I don’t think I even know where the place is.’ Ordinarily, no confession of the provincialism of his fellow Venetians could surprise Brunetti, but Pucetti seemed so very bright and open-minded.

As if sensing his commander’s disappointment, Pucetti added, ‘It’s always seemed like a foreign country to me, sir. Must be my mother: she always talks about it like it’s not part of Venice. If they gave her the key to a house on the Giudecca, I’m sure she’d give it back.’

Thinking it wiser not to mention that his own mother had often expressed the same sentiment and that he agreed with it completely, Brunetti said only, ‘It’s back along this canal, near the end,’ and set off in that direction.

Even at this distance, he could see that the large
portone
that led into the courtyard of the Academy stood open: anyone could walk in or out. He turned back to Pucetti. ‘Find out when the doors were opened this morning and if there’s any record of people entering or leaving the building.’ Before Pucetti could speak, Brunetti added, ‘Yes, and last night, too, even before we know how long he’s been dead. And
who
has keys to the door and when they’re closed at night.’ Pucetti didn’t have to be told what questions to ask, a welcome relief on a force where the ability of the average officer resembled that of Alvise.

Vianello was already standing just outside the
portone
. He acknowledged his superior’s arrival with a slight raising of his chin and nodded to Pucetti. Deciding to use whatever advantage was to be gained by appearing unannounced and in civilian clothes, Brunetti told Pucetti to go back down to the boat and wait ten minutes before joining them.

Inside, it was evident that word of the death had already spread, though Brunetti could not have explained how he knew this. It might have been the sight of small groups of boys and young men standing in the courtyard, talking in lowered voices, or it might have been the fact that one of them wore white socks with his uniform shoes, sure sign that he had dressed so quickly he didn’t know what he was doing. Then he realized that not one of them was carrying books. Military or not, this was a school, and students carried books, unless, that is, something of greater urgency had intervened between them and their studies.

One of the boys near the
portone
broke away from the group he was talking to and approached Brunetti and Vianello. ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked, though, from the tone, he might as well have been demanding what they were doing there. Strong-featured and darkly
handsome
, he was almost as tall as Vianello, though he couldn’t have been out of his teens. The others followed him with their eyes.

Provoked by the boy’s tone, Brunetti said, ‘I want to speak to the person in charge.’

‘And who are you?’ the boy demanded.

Brunetti didn’t respond but gave the boy a long, steady glance. The young man’s eyes didn’t waver, nor did he move back when Brunetti took a small step towards him. He was dressed in the regulation uniform – dark blue trousers and jacket, white shirt, tie – and had two gold stripes on the cuffs of his jacket. In the face of Brunetti’s silence, the boy shifted his weight then put his hands on his hips. He stared at Brunetti, refusing to repeat his question.

‘What’s he called, the man in charge here?’ Brunetti asked, as if the other had not spoken. He added, ‘I don’t mean his name, I mean his title.’

‘Comandante,’ the boy was surprised into saying.

‘Ah, how grand,’ Brunetti said. He wasn’t sure whether the boy’s behaviour offended his general belief that youth should display deference to age or whether he felt particular irritation at the boy’s preening belligerence. Turning to Vianello, he said, ‘Inspector, get this boy’s name,’ and moved towards the staircase that led to the
palazzo
.

He climbed the five steps and pushed open the door. The foyer had a floor patterned with enormous diamonds made from boards of
different
woods. Booted feet had worn a path to a door in the far wall. Brunetti crossed the room, which was unexpectedly empty, and opened the door. A hallway led towards the back of the building, its walls covered with what he assumed to be regimental flags. Some of them bore the lion of San Marco; others carried different animals, all equally aggressive: teeth bared, claws unsheathed, hackles raised.

The first door on the right had only a number above it, as did the second and third. As he walked by the last of them, a young boy, certainly not more than fifteen, came out into the hall. He was surprised to see Brunetti, who nodded calmly and asked, ‘Where’s the office of the Comandante?’

His tone or his manner sparked a Pavlovian response in the boy, who jumped to attention and snapped out a salute. ‘Up one flight, sir. Third door on the left.’

Brunetti resisted the temptation to say, ‘At ease.’ With a neutral, ‘Thank you’, he went back towards the staircase.

At the top, he followed the boy’s instructions and stopped at the third door on the left.
COMANDANTE GIULIO BEMBO
, read a sign next to the door.

Brunetti knocked, paused and waited for an answer, and knocked again. He thought he’d take advantage of the absence of the Comandante to have a look at his office, and so he turned the handle and entered. It is difficult to say who was more startled, Brunetti or the
man
who stood in front of one of the windows, a sheaf of papers in his hand.

‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ Brunetti said. ‘One of the students told me to come up and wait for you in your office. I had no idea you were here.’ He turned towards the door and then back again, as if confused as to whether he should remain or leave.

The man in front of the window was facing Brunetti, and the light that shone in from behind him made it almost impossible for Brunetti to distinguish anything about him. He could see, however, that he wore a uniform different from that of the boys, lighter and with no stripe down the side of the trousers. The rows of medals on his chest were more than a hand span wide.

The man set the papers on his desk, making no attempt to approach Brunetti. ‘And you are?’ he asked, managing to sound bored with the question.

‘Commissario Guido Brunetti, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve been sent to investigate the report of a death here.’ This was not strictly true, for Brunetti had sent himself to investigate, but he saw no reason why the Comandante should be told this. He stepped forward and extended his hand quite naturally, as though he were too dull to have registered the coolness emanating from the other man.

After a pause long enough to indicate who was in charge, Bembo stepped forward and extended his hand. His grip was firm and gave every indication that the Comandante was
restraining
himself from exerting his full force out of consideration for what it would do to Brunetti’s hand.

‘Ah, yes,’ Bembo said, ‘a commissario.’ He allowed a pause to extend the statement and then went on, ‘I’m surprised my friend Vice-Questore Patta didn’t think to call me to tell me you were coming.’

Brunetti wondered if the reference to his superior, who was unlikely to appear in his office for at least another hour, was meant to make him tug humbly at his forelock while telling Bembo he would do everything in his power to see that he was not disturbed by the investigation. ‘I’m sure he will as soon as I give him my preliminary report, Comandante,’ Brunetti said.

‘Of course,’ Bembo said and moved around his desk to take his chair. He waved what was no doubt a gracious hand to Brunetti, who seated himself. Brunetti wanted to see how eager Bembo was to have the investigation begin. From the way the Comandante moved small objects around on the top of his desk, pulled together a stack of papers and tapped them into line, it seemed that he felt no unseemly haste. Brunetti remained silent.

‘It’s all very unfortunate, this,’ Bembo finally said.

Brunetti thought it best to nod.

‘It’s the first time we’ve had a suicide at the Academy,’ Bembo went on.

‘Yes, it must be shocking. How old was the
boy?’
Brunetti asked. He pulled a notebook from the pocket of his jacket and bent the covers back when he found an empty page. He patted his pockets then, with an embarrassed smile, leaned forward and reached for a pencil that lay on the Comandante’s desk. ‘If I may, sir,’ he said.