Uniform Justice (21 page)

It occurred to Brunetti that he had just witnessed a series of crimes. The number of people in the boat had exceeded the legal limit. There was probably a law stating that umbrellas had to be furled while they crossed the canal, but he wasn’t sure and so let that one go. The dog had worn no muzzle and wasn’t on a leash. Two people speaking German had been given change only when they asked for it.

On the way up to his office, Brunetti stopped in the officers’ room and asked Pucetti to come upstairs. When they were both seated, Brunetti asked, ‘What else have you learned?’

Obviously surprised by the question, Pucetti said, ‘You mean about the school, sir?’

‘Of course.’

‘You’re still interested?’

‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘But I thought the investigation was finished.’

‘Who told you that?’ Brunetti asked, though he had a good idea.

‘Lieutenant Scarpa, sir.’

‘When?’

Pucetti glanced aside, trying to remember. ‘Yesterday, sir. He came into the office and told me that the Moro case was no longer active and that I had been assigned to Tronchetto.’

‘Tronchetto?’ Brunetti asked, failing to hide
his
astonishment that a police officer should be sent to patrol a parking lot. ‘What for?’

‘We’ve had reports about those guys who stand at the entrance and offer tourists boat rides into the city.’

‘Reports from whom?’ Brunetti asked.

‘There was a complaint from someone at the American Embassy in Rome. He said he paid two hundred Euros for a ride to San Marco.’

‘What was he doing at Tronchetto?’

‘Trying to park, sir. And that’s when one of those guys with the white hats and fake uniforms told him where to park and offered to show him a taxi that would take him into the city, right to his hotel.’

‘And he paid?’

Pucetti shrugged and said, ‘You know what Americans are like, sir. He didn’t understand what was going on. So yes, he paid, but when he told the people at the hotel, they said he’d been cheated. Turns out he’s something important at the Embassy, so he called Rome, and then they called us and complained. And that’s why we’ve been going out there, to keep it from happening again.’

‘How long have you been doing this?’

‘I went out yesterday, sir, and I’m due there in an hour,’ Pucetti said; then, in response to Brunetti’s expression, he added, ‘It was an order.’

Brunetti decided to make no observation on the young officer’s docility. Instead he said, ‘The investigation of the Moro boy’s death is still
open
, so you can forget about Tronchetto. I want you to go back and talk to one of the boys, named Ruffo. I think you spoke to him already.’ Brunetti had seen the boy’s name in Pucetti’s written report and recalled the young officer’s comment that the boy had seemed unduly nervous during the interview. Pucetti nodded at the name and Brunetti added, ‘Not at the school, if that’s possible. And not while you’re in uniform.’

‘Yes, sir. That is, no, sir,’ Pucetti said, then quickly asked, ‘And the lieutenant?’

‘I’ll deal with him,’ Brunetti answered.

Pucetti instantly got to his feet and said, ‘I’ll go over there as soon as I change, sir.’

That left Brunetti with Lieutenant Scarpa. He toyed with the idea of summoning the lieutenant to his office but, thinking it better to appear before him unannounced, went down two flights of stairs to the office Scarpa had insisted he be given. The room had for years functioned as a storeroom, a place where officers could leave umbrellas and boots and coats to be used in the event of a change in the weather or the sudden arrival of
acqua alta
. Some years ago, a sofa had appeared as if by magic, and since then officers on the night shift had been known to steal an hour’s sleep. Legend had it that a female commissario had been introduced to the pleasures of adultery on that very sofa. Three years ago, however, Vice-Questore Patta had ordered the boots, umbrellas and coats removed; the next day the sofa disappeared,
replaced
by a desk made of a plate of mirrored glass supported by thick metal legs. No one lower than commissario had a private office at the Questura, but Vice-Questore Patta had installed his assistant behind that glass desk. There had been no official discussion of his rank, though there had certainly been more than ample comment.

Brunetti knocked at the door and entered in response to Scarpa’s shouted ‘
Avanti!
’ There ensued a precarious moment during which Brunetti observed Scarpa deal with the arrival of one of his superiors. Instinct asserted itself, and Scarpa braced his hands on the edge of his desk as if to push himself back and get to his feet. But then Brunetti saw him react, not only to the realization of just which superior it was, but also to the territorial imperative, and the lieutenant transformed the motion into one that did no more than propel himself higher in his chair. ‘Good morning, Commissario,’ he said. ‘May I help you?’

Ignoring what Scarpa tried to make a gracious wave towards the chair in front of his desk, Brunetti remained standing near the door and said, ‘I’m putting Pucetti on a special assignment.’

Scarpa’s face moved in something that was perhaps meant to be a smile. ‘Pucetti is already on special assignment, Commissario.’

‘Tronchetto, you mean?’

‘Yes. What’s going on there is very harmful to the image of the city.’

Telling his better self to ignore the dissonance between the sentiments and the Palermitano accent in which they were voiced, Brunetti answered, ‘I’m not sure I share your concern for the image of the city, Lieutenant, so I’m reassigning him.’

Again, that motion of the lips. ‘And you have the approval of the Vice-Questore, of course?’

‘I hardly think a detail as insignificant as where a police officer is assigned is of much interest to the Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti answered.

‘On the contrary, Commissario, I think the Vice-Questore is deeply interested in anything that concerns the police in this city.’

Tired of this, Brunetti asked, ‘What does that mean?’

‘Just what I said, sir. That the Vice-Questore will be interested to learn about this.’ Like a tenor with register problems, Scarpa could not control his voice as it wobbled between civility and menace.

‘Meaning you intend to tell him about it?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Should the occasion arise,’ Scarpa answered blandly.

‘Of course,’ Brunetti answered with equal blandness.

‘Is that all I can do for you, Commissario?’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said and left the office before giving in to the temptation to say something else. Brunetti knew almost nothing about Lieutenant Scarpa or what motivated him:
money
was probably a safe guess. This thought called to mind a remark Anna Comnena had made about Robert Guiscard: ‘Once a man has seized power, his love of money displays exactly the same characteristics as gangrene, for gangrene, once established in a body, never rests until it has invaded and corrupted the whole of it.’

An old woman lay injured in the hospital in Mestre, and he had to concern himself with turf battles with Patta’s creature and with the attempt to understand the lieutenant’s motives. He walked up the stairs, inwardly fuming about Scarpa, but by the time he got back to his office he had accepted the fact that his real anger was directed at his own failure to foresee the attack on Moro’s mother. It mattered little to Brunetti that this was entirely unrealistic; somehow, he should have realized the danger and done something to protect her.

He called the hospital and, adopting the harsh, authoritarian voice he had learned to use when dealing with mindless bureaucracies, announced his rank and demanded to be connected to the ward where Signora Moro was being treated. There was some delay in transferring the call, and when the nurse on duty spoke to him, she was helpful and cooperative and told him that the doctor had advised that Signora Moro be kept until the next day, when she could go home. No, there was no serious injury: she was being kept an extra day in consideration of her age rather than her condition.

Braced by this comforting sign of humanity, Brunetti thanked her, ended the call, and immediately called the police in Mogliano. The officer in charge of the investigation told him that a woman had come into the Questura that morning and admitted she had been driving the car that struck Signora Moro. Panicking, she had driven away, but after a sleepless night in which she had been the victim of both fear and remorse, she had come to the police to confess.

When Brunetti asked the other officer if he believed the woman, he received an astonished, ‘Of course’, before the man said he had to get back to work and hung up.

So Moro was right when he insisted that ‘they’ had had nothing to do with the attack on his mother. Even that word, ‘attack’, Brunetti realized, was entirely his own invention. Why, then, Moro’s rage at Brunetti for having suggested it? More importantly, why his state of anguished despair last night, far out of proportion for a man who had been told that his mother was not seriously injured?

21

AWARENESS THAT HE
had done something else to merit Lieutenant Scarpa’s enmity should have troubled Brunetti, but he could not bring himself to care: there were no degrees to implacable antipathy. He regretted only that Pucetti might have to bear the brunt of Scarpa’s anger, for the lieutenant was not a man likely to aim a blow, at least not an open one, at people above him. He wondered whether other people behaved like this, deaf and blind to the real demands of their professions in their heedless pursuit of success and personal power, though Paola had long assured him that the various struggles that absorbed the Department of English Literature at the university were far more savage than anything described
in
Beowulf
or the bloodier Shakespearean tragedies.

He knew that ambition was accepted as a natural human trait, had for decades observed others striving to achieve what they determined to be success. Much as he knew these desires were judged to be perfectly normal, he remained puzzled by the passion and energy of their endeavours. Paola had once observed that he had been born with some essential piece missing, for he seemed incapable of desiring anything other than happiness. Her remark had troubled him until she explained that it was one of the reasons she had married him.

Musing on this, he entered Signorina Elettra’s office. When she looked up, he said without introduction, ‘I’d like to learn about the people at the Academy.’

‘What, precisely, would you like to know?’

He considered this, then finally said, ‘I think what I’d really like to know is whether any of them is capable of killing that boy and, if so, for what reason.’

‘There could be many reasons,’ she answered, then added, ‘If, that is, you want to believe that he was murdered.’

‘No, I don’t want to believe that. But if he was, then I want to know why.’

‘Are you curious about the boys or the teachers?’

‘Either. Both.’

‘I doubt it could have been both.’

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Because they’d probably have different motives.’

‘Such as?’

‘I haven’t explained myself well,’ she began, shaking her head. ‘I think the teachers would do it for serious reasons, adult reasons.’

‘For instance?’

‘Danger to their careers. Or to the school.’

‘And the boys?’

‘Because he was a pain in the ass.’

‘Seems a pretty trivial reason to kill someone.’

‘Viewed from a different perspective, most reasons for killing people are pretty trivial.’

He was forced to agree. After a while he asked, ‘In what way could he have been a pain in the ass?’

‘God knows. I don’t have any idea what bothers boys that age. Someone who is too aggressive, or not aggressive enough. Someone who is too smart and makes the others embarrassed. Or shows off, or …’

Brunetti cut her off. ‘Those still seem like trivial reasons. Even for teenagers.’

Not the least offended, she said, ‘That’s the best I can come up with.’ Nodding at the keyboard, she said, ‘Let me take a look and see what I can find.’

‘Where will you look?’

‘Class lists and then members of their families. Faculty lists and then the same. Then cross-check them with, well, with other things.’

‘Where did you get those lists?’

Her intake of breath was stylishly long. ‘It’s
not
that I have them, sir, but that I can get them.’ She looked at him and waited for his comment; outflanked, Brunetti thanked her and asked her to bring him whatever information she could find as soon as she had it.

In his office, he set himself to attempting to recall anything he’d heard or read, over the years, about the Academy. When nothing came, he turned his reflections to the military at large, recalling that most of the faculty were former officers of one branch or other.

A memory slipped in from somewhere, tantalizing him and refusing to come into focus. Like a sharpshooter straining to see at night, he addressed his attention, not to the target that wouldn’t appear, but to whatever stood beside or beyond it. Something about the military, about young men in the military.

The memory materialized: an incident from some years before, when two soldiers – paratroopers, he thought – had been directed to jump from a helicopter somewhere in, he thought, former Yugoslavia. Not knowing that the helicopter was hovering a hundred metres above the ground, they had jumped to their death. Not knowing, and not having been told by the other men in the helicopter, who had known but were members of a military corps different from their own. And with that memory came another one, of a young man found dead at the bottom of a parachute jump, perhaps the victim of a night-time hazing prank gone wrong. To the best of his knowledge, neither case had
ever
been resolved, no satisfactory explanation provided for the completely unnecessary deaths of these three young men.

He recalled, as well, a morning at breakfast some years ago when Paola looked up from the newspaper which contained an account of the country’s then-leader offering to send Italian troops to aid an ally in some bellicose endeavour. ‘He’s going to send troops,’ she said. ‘Is that an offer or a threat, do you think?’