Uniform Justice (5 page)

‘One of my men. I told him to,’ Brunetti answered and bent down to draw the edge of the cape back across the boy’s face. He rose up again and looked at Venturi, saying nothing.

‘Why did you do that?’

Appalled at the question, Brunetti ignored it, irritated that he had to speak to a man capable of asking it. He asked, ‘Does it look like suicide?’

Venturi’s long pause made it obvious that he wanted to exchange discourtesies with Brunetti, but when Santini turned to him and said, ‘Well?’, the doctor answered, ‘I won’t have any
idea
until I can take a look at his insides.’ Then, directly to Santini, ‘Was there a chair, something he could stand on?’

One of the other technicians called over, ‘A chair. It was in the shower.’

‘You didn’t move it, did you?’ Venturi demanded of him.

‘I photographed it,’ the man answered, speaking with glacial clearness. ‘Eight times, I think. And then Pedone dusted it for prints. And then I moved it so it wouldn’t get in his way when he dusted the shower stall.’ Pointing with his chin to a wooden chair that stood in front of one of the sinks, he added, ‘That’s it, over there.’

The doctor ignored the chair. ‘I’ll have my report sent to you when I’m finished,’ he said to Brunetti, then picked up his bag and left.

When Venturi’s footsteps had died away, Brunetti asked Santini, ‘What does it look like to you?’

‘He
could
have done it himself,’ the technician answered. He pointed to some marks that stood out from the darker grey of the coating on the walls of the shower. ‘There are two long swipes across the wall here, at about shoulder height. He could have done that.’

‘Would that have happened?’

‘Probably. It’s instinct: no matter how much they want to die, the body doesn’t. ‘

Pedone, who had been openly listening to this, added, ‘It’s clean, sir. No one had a fight in there, if that’s what you’re wondering about.’

When it seemed that his partner wasn’t going
to
add anything, Santini continued: ‘It’s what they do, sir, when they hang themselves. Believe me. If there’s a wall near them, they try to grab it; can’t help themselves.’

‘It’s the way boys do it, isn’t it, hanging?’ Brunetti asked, not looking down at Moro.

‘More than girls, yes,’ Santini agreed. His voice took on an edge of anger and he asked, ‘What was he – seventeen? eighteen? How could he do something like that?’

‘God knows,’ Brunetti said.

‘God didn’t have anything to do with this,’ Santini said angrily, though it was unclear whether his remark called into question the deity’s charity or his very existence. Santini went out into the hall, where two white-coated attendants from the hospital waited, a rolled-up stretcher leaning against the wall between them. ‘You can take him now,’ he said. He remained outside while they went in, put the boy on the stretcher, and carried him from the room. When they were abreast of Santini, he put up a monitory hand. They stopped, and he leaned down to pick up the end of the dark-blue military cloak that was dragging on the ground behind the stretcher. He tucked it under the boy’s leg and told the attendants to take him out to the boat.

5

RECOGNIZING IT AS
the temptation of moral cowardice, Brunetti pushed aside the desire to join the others on the police boat to the hospital and from there to the Questura. Perhaps it was the flash of terror when he first saw the boy’s body, or perhaps it was Brunetti’s admiration for the elder Moro’s inconvenient honesty, but something there was that urged Brunetti to get a more complete picture of the boy’s death. The suicides of young boys were ever more frequent: Brunetti had read somewhere that, with almost mathematical regularity, they increased in times of economic well-being and decreased when times were bad. During wars, they virtually disappeared. He assumed his own son was as subject to the vagaries of adolescence as any
other
boy: carried up and down on the waves of his hormones, his popularity, or his success at school. The idea of Raffi’s ever being driven to suicide was inconceivable, but that must be what every parent thought.

Until evidence suggested that the boy’s death had not been suicide, Brunetti had no mandate to question anyone about any other possibility: not his classmates, still less his parents. To do so would be the worst sort of ghoulish curiosity as well as a flagrant misuse of his power. Admitting all of this, he went out into the courtyard of the Academy and, using the
telefonino
he had remembered to bring with him, called Signorina Elettra’s direct line at the Questura.

When she answered, he told her where he was and asked that she check the phone book for Moro’s address, which he thought must be in Dorsoduro, though he couldn’t remember why he associated the man with that
sestiere
.

She asked no questions, told him to wait a moment, then said the number was unlisted. There elapsed another minute or two, then she gave him the Dorsoduro address. She told him to wait, then told him the house was on the canal running alongside the church of Madonna della Salute. ‘It’s got to be the one next to the low brick one that has the terrace with all the flowers,’ she said.

He thanked her, then made his way back up the stairs to the dormitory rooms on the top floor and went along the still-silent corridor, checking the names outside of the doors. He found it at
the
end:
MORO/CAVANI
. Not bothering to knock, Brunetti entered the room. Like that of Ruffo, the room was clean, almost surgical: bunk beds and two small desks opposite them, nothing left in sight to clutter up their surfaces. He took a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket and used it to open the drawer of the desk nearest him. With the pen he flipped open the notebook that lay inside. Ernesto’s name was on the inside of the cover and the book was filled with mathematical formulae, written out in a neat, square hand. He shoved the notebook to the back of the drawer and opened the one beneath it, with much the same result, though this one contained exercises in English.

He shoved the drawer closed and turned his attention to the closet between the two desks. One door had Moro’s name on it. Brunetti pulled it open from the bottom with his foot. Inside, there were two uniforms in dry-cleaning bags, a denim jacket, and a brown tweed coat. The only things he found in the pockets were some small change and a dirty handkerchief.

A bookcase contained nothing more than textbooks. He lacked the will to take down and examine each of them. He took one final look around the room and left, careful to hook his pen in the handle to pull the door shut.

He met Santini on the steps and told him to check Moro’s room then left the school and went down to the edge of the Canale della Giudecca. Turning right, he started to walk along the
riva
, intending to catch a
vaporetto
. As he walked, he
kept
his attention on the buildings on the other side of the canal: Nico’s Bar and, above it, an apartment he had spent a lot of time in before he met Paola; the church of the Gesuati, where once a decent man had been pastor; the former Swiss Consulate, the flag gone now. Have even the Swiss abandoned us? he wondered. Ahead was the
Bucintoro
, the long narrow boats long gone, evicted by the scent of Guggenheim money, Venetian oarsmen gone to make space for even more tourist shops. He saw a boat coming from Redentore and hurried on to the
imbarcadero
at Palanca to cross back to the Zattere. When he got off, he looked at his watch and realized that it really did take less than five minutes to make the trip from the Giudecca. Even so, the other island still seemed, as it had ever seemed, as far distant as the Galapagos.

It took less than five minutes to weave his way back to the broad
campo
that surrounded La Madonna della Salute, and there he found the house. Again resisting the impulse to delay, he rang the bell and gave his title and name.

‘What do you want?’ a woman’s voice asked.

‘I’d like to speak to Dottor Moro,’ he said, announcing at least the most immediate of his desires.

‘He can’t see anyone,’ she said shortly.

‘I saw him before,’ Brunetti said, then added, in the hope that it would give force to his request, ‘at the school.’ He waited to see if this would have any effect on the woman, but then went on, ‘It’s necessary that I speak to him.’

She made a noise, but it was cut off by the electrical buzz of the door release, leaving Brunetti to guess at its nature. He pushed open the door, passed quickly through a hallway, and stopped at the bottom of a staircase. At the top, a door opened and a tall woman came out on to the landing. ‘Up here,’ she said.

When he reached the top of the stairs, she turned and led him into the apartment, closed the door behind him, then turned back to face him. He was struck at first by the fact that, though surely not as old as he, she had white hair, cut short just above her shoulders. It contrasted sharply with her skin, dark as an Arab’s, and with her eyes, as close to black as he had ever seen eyes be.

She put out her hand. ‘I’m Luisa, Fernando’s cousin.’

Brunetti took her hand and gave his name and position. ‘I realize this is a terrible time,’ he began, planning how best to speak to her. Her posture was rigid, her back as straight as if she had been told to stand against a wall. She kept her eyes on his as they spoke.

When Brunetti added nothing to this self-evident truth, she asked, ‘What do you want to know?’

‘I’d like to ask him about his son’s state of mind.’

‘Why?’ she demanded. Brunetti thought the answer to that should have been obvious, and was taken aback by the vehemence with which she asked the question.

‘In a case such as this,’ he began evasively, ‘it’s necessary to know as much as possible about how the person was feeling and behaving, whether there were perhaps any signs …’

‘Of what?’ She cut him off, making no attempt to disguise her anger or her contempt. ‘That he was going to kill himself?’ Before Brunetti could answer, she went on, ‘If that’s what you mean, for God’s sake, then say so.’ Again she didn’t wait for an answer. ‘The idea’s ridiculous. It’s disgusting. Ernesto would no sooner kill himself than I would. He was a healthy boy. It’s insulting to suggest that he would.’ She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together, fighting to regain control of herself.

Before Brunetti could say that he had made no insinuation of any kind, Dottor Moro appeared in a doorway. ‘That’s enough, Luisa,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘You shouldn’t say any more.’

Though the man had spoken, it was the face of the woman Brunetti studied. The stiffness of her posture lessened, and her body inclined in her cousin’s direction. She raised one hand towards him but made no move to touch him. Instead, she nodded once, ignored Brunetti completely, and turned away. Brunetti watched as she walked down the corridor and through a door at the end.

When she was gone, Brunetti turned his attention to the doctor. Though he knew this was impossible, Moro had aged a decade during the brief time that had elapsed since Brunetti had last seen him. His skin was pasty, his eyes
dull
and reddened with tears, but it was in his posture that Brunetti perceived most change, for it had taken on the forward-leaning curvature of an old man.

‘I’m sorry to intrude on your grief, Dottore,’ Brunetti began, ‘but I hope that by speaking to you now, I won’t have to trouble you again.’ Even to Brunetti, schooled as he was in the ways of professional mendacity, this sounded so forced and artificial as to distance him from the other man and his sorrow.

Moro waved his right hand in the air, a gesture that might just as easily have been dismissal as acknowledgement. He wrapped his arms around his stomach and bowed his head.

‘Dottore,’ he went on, ‘in the last few days or weeks, had your son done anything that would lead you to suspect that he might have been considering anything like this?’ Moro’s head was still bowed so Brunetti could not see his eyes, nor had he any idea if the doctor was paying attention.

He continued, ‘Dottore, I know how difficult this must be for you, but it’s important that I have this information.’

Without looking up, Moro said, ‘I don’t think you do.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Brunetti said.

‘I don’t think you have any idea of how difficult this is.’

The truth of this made Brunetti blush. When his face had grown cool again, Moro had still not bothered to look at him. After what seemed to
Brunetti
a long time, the doctor raised his head. No tears stood in his eyes, and his voice was as calm as it had been when he spoke to his cousin. ‘I’d be very grateful if you’d leave now, Commissario.’ Brunetti began to protest, but the doctor cut him off by raising his voice, but only in volume: his tone remained calm and impersonal. ‘Please don’t argue with me. There is nothing at all that I have to say to you. Not now, and not in the future.’ He took his arms from their protective position around his middle and let them fall to his sides. ‘I have nothing further to say.’

Brunetti was certain that it was futile to pursue the matter now, equally certain that he would return and ask the same question again after the doctor had had time to overcome his immediate agony. Since he had learned of the boy’s death, Brunetti had been assailed by the desire to know if the man had other children, but couldn’t bring himself to ask. He had some sort of theoretical belief that their existence would serve as consolation, however limited. He tried to put himself in Moro’s place and understand what solace he would find in the survival of one of his own children, but his imagination shied away from that horror. At the very thought, some force stronger than taboo seized him, numbing his mind. Not daring to offer his hand or to say anything further, Brunetti left the apartment.

From the Salute stop, he took the Number One to San Zaccaria and started back towards
the
Questura. As he approached it, a group of teenagers, three boys and two girls, cascaded down the Ponte dei Greci and came towards him, arms linked, laughter radiating out from them. Brunetti stopped walking and stood in the middle of the pavement, waiting for this exuberant wave of youth to wash over him. Like the Red Sea, they parted and swept around him: Brunetti was sure they hadn’t even noticed him in any real sense; he was merely a stationary obstacle to be got round.