Uniform Justice (22 page)

Only one of Brunetti’s close friends had opted for a career in the military, and they had lost touch over the last few years, so he did not want to call him. What he would ask him, anyway, Brunetti had no idea. If the Army were really as corrupt and incompetent as everyone seemed to believe it was? No, hardly the question he could ask, at least not of a serving general.

That left his friends in the press. He called one in Milano but when the machine answered, he chose not to leave either his name or a message. The same happened when he called another friend in Rome. The third time, when he called Beppe Avisani, in Palermo, the phone was answered on the second ring.

‘Avisani.’

‘
Ciao
, Beppe. It’s me, Guido.’

‘Ah, good to hear your voice,’ Avisani said, and for a few minutes they exchanged the sort of information friends give and get when they haven’t spoken for some time, their voices perhaps made formal by a shared awareness that they usually now spoke to
one
another only when one of them needed information.

After everything that had to be said about families had been said, Avisani asked, ‘What can I tell you?’

‘I’m looking into the death of the Moro boy,’ Brunetti answered and waited for the reporter to answer.

‘Not suicide, then?’ he asked, not bothering with polite pieties.

‘That’s what I want to know,’ Brunetti answered.

Without hesitation, Avisani volunteered. ‘If it wasn’t suicide, then the obvious reason is the father, something to do with him.’

‘I’d got
that
far, Beppe,’ Brunetti said with an entire absence of sarcasm.

‘Of course, you would. Sorry.’

‘The report came out too long ago,’ Brunetti said, certain that a man who had spent twenty years as a political reporter would follow his thinking and also dismiss the report as a possible cause. ‘Do you know what he worked on while he was in Parliament?’

There was a long pause as Avisani followed the trail of Brunetti’s question. ‘You’re probably right,’ he said at last, then, ‘Can you hold on a minute?’

‘Of course. Why?’

‘I’ve got that stuff in a file somewhere.’

‘In the computer?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Where else?’ the reporter asked with a laugh. ‘In a drawer?’

Brunetti laughed in return, as though he’d meant the question as a joke.

‘Just a minute,’ Avisani said. Brunetti heard a click as the phone was set down on a hard surface.

He looked out of the window as he waited, making no attempt to impose order upon the information that tumbled around in his mind. He lost track of time, though it was far more than a minute before Avisani was back.

‘Guido?’ he asked, ‘you still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘I haven’t got much on him. He was there for three years, well, a bit less than that, before he resigned, but he was kept pretty well out of sight.’

‘Kept?’

‘The party he ran for chose him because he was famous at the time and they knew they could win with him, but after he was elected and they got an idea of what his real ideas were, they kept him as far out of sight as they could.’

Brunetti had seen it happen before as honest people were elected into a system they hoped to reform, only to find themselves gradually absorbed by it, like insects in a Venus’ fly-trap. Because Avisani had seen far more of it than he, Brunetti drew a pad towards him and said only, ‘I’d like to know what committees he worked on.’

‘Are you looking for what I think you are – someone he might have crossed?’

‘Yes.’

Avisani made a long noise that Brunetti thought was meant to be speculative. ‘Let me give you what I have. There was a pension committee for farmers,’ Avisani began, then dismissed it with a casual, ‘Nothing there. They’re all nonentities.’ And then, ‘The one that oversaw sending all that stuff to Albania.’

‘Was the Army involved in that?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No. I think it was done by private charities. Caritas, organizations like that.’

‘What else?’

‘The Post Office.’

Brunetti snorted.

‘And military procurement,’ Avisani said with undisguised interest.

‘What does that mean?’

There was a pause before he answered, ‘Probably examining the contracts with the companies that supply the military.’

‘Examining or deciding?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Examining, I’d say. It was really only a subcommittee, which means they’d have no more power than to make recommendations to the real committee. You think that’s it?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure there is an “it”,’ Brunetti answered evasively, only now forcing himself to recall that his friend was a member of the press.

With laboured patience, Avisani asked, ‘I’m asking as a curious friend, Guido, not as a reporter.’

Brunetti laughed in relief. ‘It’s a better guess
than
the postmen. They’re not particularly violent.’

‘No, that’s only in America,’ Avisani said.

A moment’s awkwardness fell between them, both of them aware of the conflict between their professions and their friendship. Finally Avisani said, ‘You want me to follow up on this?’

At a loss as to how to phrase it, Brunetti said, ‘If you can do it delicately.’

‘I’m still alive because I do things delicately, Guido,’ he said without any attempt at humour, gave a farewell not distinguished by its friendliness, and hung up.

Brunetti called down to Signorina Elettra, and when she answered, said, ‘I’d like you to add one more thing to your …’ he began, but was at a loss for a name for what Signorina Elettra did. ‘To your research,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir?’ she asked.

‘Military procurement.’

‘Could you be a bit more precise?’

‘Getting and spending,’ he began, and a line Paola was forever quoting rushed towards him. He ignored it and continued, ‘For the military. It was one of the committees Moro was on.’

‘Oh, my,’ she exclaimed. ‘However did that happen?’

Hearing her unfeigned astonishment, Brunetti wondered how long it would take him to explain her reaction to a foreigner. Her response presumed Moro’s honesty, and her astonishment that an honest man had been placed on any committee that would make
decisions
that might somehow affect the allocation of significant amounts of government funds.

‘I’ve no idea,’ he answered. ‘Perhaps you could see who else served on the committee with him.’

‘Certainly, sir. Government records are very easy to access,’ she said, leaving him to speculate about the precise level of criminality lurking in that verb.

He looked at his watch and asked, ‘Should I go and have lunch or should I wait?’

‘Lunch, sir, I think,’ she advised and was gone.

He walked down to Testiere, where the owner would always find him a place, and had a fish antipasto and then a piece of grilled tuna Bruno swore was fresh. For all the attention Brunetti paid to it, the fish could have been frozen or freeze-dried. At any other time, ignoring a meal this fine would have shamed Brunetti: today he could not drag himself away from his attempt to discover the connection between Moro’s professional life and the suffering inflicted upon his family, and so the meal remained eaten but untasted.

He stopped at the door to Signorina Elettra’s office and found her standing at her window, looking off down the canal that led towards the
Bacino
. Her attention was so absorbed in whatever she was watching that she didn’t hear him come in, and he stopped, reluctant to startle her. Her arms were crossed on her breast, and she
stood
with her shoulder leaning against the window frame, one leg crossed in front of the other. He saw her in profile and as he watched, she lowered her head and closed her eyes for a heartbeat longer than necessary. She opened them, took a breath so deep he saw her breasts rise, and turned away from the window. And saw him watching her.

Three seconds passed. Paola had once told him that the Irish often said, in moments when consolation was necessary, ‘I’m sorry for your trouble’, and it was on his lips to say this when she took a step towards her desk, tried to smile, and said, ‘I’ve got everything,’ but said it in the voice of someone who had nothing.

Three more seconds passed and then he joined her at her desk, in unspoken agreement that they would ignore what had just happened.

He saw two piles of papers. Standing, she pointed to the first, saying as she did, ‘That’s a list of students who have fathers in the military or the government – that’s the only thing I checked about the students. And under it is a list of the faculty, which branch of the military they served in, and the final rank they held. And beneath that a list of the men who served on the committee for military procurement with Dottor Moro.’

Curiosity overcame good sense and he asked, ‘All right. Please tell me where you got all of this.’ When she didn’t answer, he held up his right hand and said, ‘I promise, on the head of anyone in my family you choose to name, that I
will
never repeat what you tell me, will forget it the instant you tell me, will not allow Lieutenant Scarpa, no matter what means he employs, ever, to wrest it from me.’

She considered this. ‘What if he makes horrible threats?’

‘Like what, invites me for a drink?’

‘Worse. Dinner.’

‘I shall be strong.’

She capitulated. ‘There’s a way to access military personnel files. All you need is the code and then the service number of any member.’ Because she was volunteering this, Brunetti did not ask how she got the code or the numbers. ‘Parliament is too easy,’ she said with contempt. ‘A child could get in.’ He assumed she was talking about the computer files, not the building.

‘And the lists from the schools?’ he asked.

She gave him a long, speculative look, and he nodded, renewing his vow of silence. She said, ‘Pucetti stole them when he was there and gave them to me in case they might be useful.’

‘Have you had time to study them?’

‘A little. Some names occur on more than one list.’

‘For example?’

She pulled a sheet of paper from the first pile and pointed to two names that she had already highlighted in yellow. ‘Maggiore Marcello Filippi and Colonello Giovanni Toscano.’

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘It’s faster.’

‘The Maggiore was in the Army for twenty-seven years and retired three years ago. For the
six
years immediately before his retirement, he was in charge of the procurement office for the Paratroopers. His son is a third-year student at the Academy.’ She pointed to the second name. ‘The Colonello served as military adviser to the parliamentary committee on which Moro served. He now teaches at the Academy. He was in Paris, attending a seminar, during the week the boy died.’

‘Isn’t that something of a fall from grace, to go from a job in Parliament to teaching at a military academy in the provinces?’

‘The Colonello retired after twenty-two years of military service under something of a cloud,’ Signorina Elettra said. ‘Or at least,’ she immediately corrected herself, ‘that’s the sense I get from reading the internal files.’

Internal files, Brunetti repeated to himself. Where would she stop? ‘What do they say?’

‘That certain members of the committee registered less than total satisfaction with the Colonello’s performance. One of them even went so far as to suggest that the Colonello was not at all impartial in the advice he provided the committee.’

‘Moro?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Less than impartial in what way?’ Brunetti asked.

‘It didn’t say, though there’s not far to look, is there?’

‘No, I suppose not.’ If the Colonello were partial in a way which the committee did not like, it would have to be in favour of the firms which supplied the military, and the men who owned them. Brunetti’s atavistic cynicism suggested here that it might just as easily mean that Toscano was in the pay of companies different from those making payments to the parliamentarians on the committee. The marvel here was not that he was partial – why else seek a position like this – but that he should have been … Brunetti stopped himself from saying the word ‘caught’, even in his mind. It was remarkable that he should have been forced to retire, for Brunetti could not imagine that a man in this position would go quietly. How obvious or excessive must his partiality have been if it had led to his retirement?

‘Is he Venetian, the Colonello?’ he asked.

‘No, but his wife is.’

‘When did they come here?’

‘Two years ago. Upon his retirement.’

‘Do you have any idea of how much he earns as a teacher at the Academy?’

Signorina Elettra pointed to the paper again. ‘All of their salaries are listed to the right of their names.’

‘Presumably, he’s also receiving his military pension,’ Brunetti said.

‘That’s listed, as well,’ she answered.

Brunetti looked at the paper and saw that the sum of the Colonello’s pension plus his salary at the Academy was well in excess of
his
own salary as a commissario. ‘Not bad, I’d say.’

‘They struggle though, I suppose,’ she observed.

‘The wife?’

‘Rich.’

‘What does he teach?’

‘History and Military Theory.’

‘And does he have a particular political stance that he brings to the teaching of history?’

She smiled at the delicacy of his phrasing and answered, ‘I can’t answer that yet, sir. I’ve got a friend whose uncle teaches Mathematics there, and he’s promised to ask him.’

‘It’s probably a safe guess what his ideas would be,’ she went on, ‘but it’s always best to check.’

He nodded. Neither of them had any illusions about the view of politics and, for that fact, history likely to be held by a man who had spent twenty-two years in the military. But, like Signorina Elettra, Brunetti thought it would be best to be certain.

‘And the two men?’ he asked. ‘Did they ever serve together?’

She smiled again, as if this time pleased with his perspicacity, and pulled towards her the second pile of papers. ‘It would seem that, at the same time as the Colonello was giving his advice to the parliamentary committee, the newly retired Maggiore was on the board of directors of Edilan-Forma.’