Uniform Justice cgb-12

by Donna Leon

"I don't know. I doubt it's important. What is, is that they knew one

  another well and that both were eventually involved in procurement."

  "And both retired?"

  "Yes, pretty much at the same time."

  "Where's Filippi, do you know?" Brunetti asked.

  "I think he lives in Verona. You want me to find out about him?"

  "Yes."

  "How much?"

  "Whatever you can."

  "And I suppose you'll pay me the same as you always do?" Avisani asked

  with a laugh.

  "You don't want to eat my wife's cooking?" Brunetti asked with fake

  indignation, then, before Avisani could answer,

  Brunetti said, "I don't want you to go to any trouble with this,

  Beppe."

  This time it was the journalist who laughed. "Guido, if I worried

  about going to trouble, or, for that matter, getting into trouble, I

  doubt I could do this job."

  Thanks, Beppe," Brunetti said, and the warmth of the other man's

  parting laugh told him that their friendship remained as strong as

  ever.

  He went downstairs, and though he tried to resist the siren lure of

  Signorina Elettra and her computer, he failed. There was no light on

  in her office, and the darkened screen of the computer suggested she

  had not yet found what he had asked her to get. There was nothing else

  for him to do, short of rifling through her desk, so he went home to

  his family and his dinner.

  The next morning he was at the Questura before eight, and when his

  detour past Signorina Elettra's office showed that she was not yet in,

  he continued to the officers' room, where he found Pucetti at a desk,

  reading a magazine. The young man got to his feet when he saw

  Brunetti. "Good morning, Commissario. I was hoping you'd come in

  early."

  "What have you got?" Brunetti asked. He was vaguely conscious of

  motion behind him, and he saw its reflection on Pucetti's face, from

  which the smile disappeared. "Only these forms, sir he said, reaching

  across his desk to the one beside it and gathering up two stacks of

  papers. "I think they need your signature," he said, his voice

  neutral.

  Imitating his tone, Brunetti said, "I've got to go down to see Bocchese

  for a minute. Could you take them up and put them on my desk for

  me?"

  "Certainly, sir," Pucetti said, setting one stack, and then the second,

  on top of his magazine and tapping them together to straighten the

  edges. When he picked them up, the magazine had disappeared.

  Brunetti turned towards the door and found it blocked by

  Lieutenant Scarpa. "Good morning, Lieutenant/ Brunetti said neutrally.

  "Is there something I can do for you?"

  "No, sir the lieutenant answered. "I wanted to speak to Pucetti/

  Brunetti's face lit up with grateful surprise. "Ah, thank you for

  reminding me, Lieutenant: there's something I need to ask Pucetti

  about." He turned to the young man. "You can wait for me in my

  office, Officer. I won't be a minute with Bocchese." With a friendly

  smile at the lieutenant, Brunetti said, "You know how Bocchese loves to

  get an early start suggesting this was common knowledge at the

  Questura, despite the well-known truth that Bocchese spent the first

  hour of his day reading La Gazzetta del lo Sport and using his email

  address at the Questura to place bets in three countries.

  Silently, the lieutenant moved aside to let his superior pass.

  Brunetti waited just outside the door until Pucetti joined him and then

  closed the door of the office behind them.

  "Oh, I suppose Bocchese can wait a few minutes Brunetti said

  resignedly. When they got to his office, Brunetti closed the door

  behind them and while he took off his overcoat and hung it in the

  closet, said, What did you learn?"

  Pucetti kept the papers tucked under, his arm and said, "I think

  there's something wrong with the Ruffo boy, sir. I went over there

  yesterday and hung around in the bar down the street from the school,

  and when he came in I said hello. I offered him a coffee, but it

  seemed to me he was nervous about talking to me."

  "Or being seen talking to you Brunetti suggested. When Pucetti agreed,

  Brunetti asked, "What makes you think there's something wrong with

  him?"

  "I think he's been in a fight." Not waiting for Brunetti to question

  him, Pucetti went on. "Both of his hands were scraped, and the

  knuckles of his right hand were swollen. When he saw me looking at

  them, he tried to hide them behind his back."

  "What else?"

  "He moved differently, as though he were stiff."

  "What did he tell you?" asked Brunetti as he sat down behind his

  desk.

  "He said he's had time to think about it and he realizes now that maybe

  it was suicide, after all," Pucetti said.

  Brunetti propped his elbows on his desk and rested his chin on his

  folded hands. Silently, he waited to hear not only what Pucetti had

  been told but what he thought of it.

  In the face of his superior's silence, Pucetti ventured, "He doesn't

  believe that, sir, at least I don't think he does."

  "Why?"

  "He sounded frightened, and he sounded as if he were repeating

  something he'd had to memorize. I asked him why he thought it might

  have been suicide, and he said it was because Moro had been acting

  strangely in the last few weeks." Pucetti paused, then added, "Just

  the opposite of what he told me the first time. It was as if he needed

  some sign from me that I believed him."

  "And did you give it to him?" Brunetti asked.

  "Of course, sir. If that's what he needs to feel safe, and I think it

  is, then it's better he have it."

  "Why's that, Pucetti?"

  "Because it will cause him to relax, and when he relaxes he'll be even

  more frightened when we talk to him again."

  "Here, do you mean?"

  "Downstairs, yes. And with someone big in the room with us."

  Brunetti looked up at the young man and smiled.

  The obvious choice to serve the role of enforcer was Vianello, a man

  who had perfected the art of disguising his essential good nature

  behind expressions that could vary from displeased to savage. He was

  not, however, to be given the chance to employ his repertory on Cadet

  Ruffo, for when the

  Inspector and Pucetti arrived at the San Martino Academy an hour later,

  the cadet was not in his room, nor did the boys on his floor know where

  to find him. It was the Comandante who brought illumination by telling

  them, when their inquiries finally led them to his office, that Cadet

  Ruffo had been granted leave to visit his family and was not expected

  to return to the Academy for at least two weeks.

  When asked, the Comandante remained vague as to the precise reason for

  Cadet Ruffo's leave, saying something about 'family matters', as if

  that should satisfy any curiosity on their part.

  Vianello knew that the student list was in Signorina Elettra's

  possession, a list that would surely provide the address of Ruffo's

  parents, and so it was nothing more than interest in the Comandante's

  response
that prompted Vianello to ask him to provide it. He refused,

  insisting that the addresses of the students constituted privileged

  information. Then he announced that he had a meeting to attend and

  asked them to leave.

  After the two men returned to the Questura and reported this encounter

  to Brunetti, he asked Pucetti, "What was your general impression of the

  cadets?"

  I'd like to say they were frightened, the way Ruffo was when I talked

  to him the last time, but they weren't. In fact, they seemed angry

  that I'd ask them anything, almost as if I didn't have a right to talk

  to them." The young officer shrugged in confusion about how to make

  all of this clear. "I mean, they're all seven or eight years younger

  than I am, but they acted like they were speaking to a kid or someone

  who was supposed to obey them." He looked perplexed.

  "An enlisted man, for example?" Brunetti asked.

  Not following, Pucetti asked, "Excuse me, sir?"

  "As if they were speaking to an enlisted person? Is that how they

  spoke to you?"

  Pucetti nodded. "Yes, I think so, as if I was supposed to obey them

  and not ask questions."

  "But that doesn't tell us why they didn't want to talk Vianello

  interrupted.

  "There's usually only one reason for that Brunetti said.

  Before Vianello could ask what he meant, Pucetti blurted out, "Because

  they all know whatever Ruffo does, and they don't want us to talk to

  him."

  Once again, Brunetti graced the young man with an approving smile.

  By three that afternoon, they were seated in an unmarked police car

  parked a hundred metres from the entrance to the home listed for Cadet

  Ruffo, a dairy farm on the outskirts of Dolo, a small town halfway

  between Venice and Padova. The stone house, long and low and attached

  at one end to a large barn, sat back from a poplar-lined road. A

  gravel driveway led up to it from the road, but the recent rains had

  reduced it to a narrow band of mud running between patches of dead

  grass interspersed with mud-rimmed puddles. There were no trees within

  sight, though stumps stood here and there in the fields, indicating

  where they had been cut. It was difficult for Brunetti, stiff and cold

  in the car, to think of a season different from this one, but he

  wondered what the cattle would do without shade from the summer sun.

  Then he remembered how seldom cows went to pasture on the farms of the

  new Veneto: they generally stood in their stalls, reduced to motionless

  cogs in the wheel of milk production.

  It was cold; a raw wind was coming from the north. Every so often,

  Vianello turned on the motor and put the heat on high, until it grew so

  hot in the car that one or another of them was forced to open a

  window.

  After half an hour, Vianello said, The don't think it makes much sense

  to sit here, waiting for him to show up. Why don't we just go and ask

  if he's there or not?"

  Pucetti, as befitted his inferior position, both in terms of rank and,

  because he was in the back seat, geography, said nothing, leaving it to

  Brunetti to respond.

  Brunetti had been musing on the same question for some time, and

  Vianello's outburst was enough to convince him. "You're right," he

  said. "Let's go and see if he's there."

  Vianello turned on the engine and put the car into gear. Slowly, the

  wheels occasionally spinning in search of purchase, they drove through

  the mud and gravel and towards the house. As they drew nearer, signs

  of rustic life became more and more evident. An abandoned tyre, so

  large it could have come only from a tractor, lay against the front of

  a barn. To the left of the door of the house a row of rubber boots

  stood in odd pairings of black and brown, tall and short. Two large

  dogs emerged from around the side of the house and ran towards them,

  low and silent and, because of that, frightening. They stopped two

  metres short of the car, both on the passenger side, and stared, their

  lips pulled back in suspicion, but still silent.

  Brunetti could recognize only a few well-known breeds, and he thought

  he saw some German Shepherd in these dogs, but there was little else he

  could identify. "Well?" he asked Vianello.

  Neither of the others said anything, so Brunetti pushed open his door

  and put one foot on the ground, careful to choose a patch of dried

  grass. The dogs did nothing. He put his other foot on the ground and

  pushed himself out of the car. Still the dogs remained motionless. His

  nostrils were assailed by the acidic smell of cow urine, and he noticed

  that the puddles in front of what he thought to be the doors of the

  barn were a dark, foaming brown.

  He heard one car door open, then the other, and then Pucetti was

  standing beside him. At the sight of two men standing side by side,

  the dogs backed away a bit. Vianello came around the front of the car,

  and the dogs backed away

  even farther, until they stood just at the corner of the building.

  Vianello suddenly stamped his right foot and took a long step towards

  them, and they disappeared around the corner of the building, still

  without having made a sound.

  The men walked to the door, where an enormous iron ring served as a

  knocker. Brunetti picked it up and let it drop against the metal

  plaque nailed into the door, enjoying the weight of it in his hand as

  well as the solid clang it created. When there was no response, he did

  it again. After a moment, they heard a voice from inside call

  something they could not distinguish.

  The door was opened by a short, dark-haired woman in a shapeless grey

  woollen dress over which she wore a thick green cardigan that had

  obviously been knitted by hand, a clumsy hand. Shorter than they, she

  stepped back from the door and put her head back to squint at them.

  Brunetti noticed that there was a lopsided quality about her face: the

  left eye angled up towards her temple, while the same side of her mouth

  drooped. Her skin seemed baby soft and was without wrinkles, though

  she must have been well into her forties.

  "Si?" she finally inquired.

  "Is this the home of Giuliano Ruffo?" Brunetti asked.

  She might have been a speaker of some other language, so long did it

  take her to translate his words into meaning. As Brunetti watched, he

  thought he saw her mouth the word, "Giuliano', as if that would help

  her answer the question.

  "Momenta," the woman said, and the consonants caused her great

  difficulty. She turned away, leaving it to them to close the door. Or

  just as easily, Brunetti said to himself, walk off with everything in

  the house or, if they preferred, kill everyone inside and drive away

  undisturbed, even by the dogs.

  The three men crowded into the hall and stood there, waiting for the

  woman to return or for someone to arrive

  better able to answer their questions. After a few minutes they heard

  footsteps come towards them from the back of the house. The woman in

  the green cardigan returned, and behind her was another woman, younger,

>   and wearing a sweater made from the same wool but by more skilful

  hands. This woman's features and bearing, too, spoke of greater

  refinement: dark eyes that instantly sought his, a sculpted mouth

  poised to speak, and an air of concentrated attention left Brunetti

  with a general impression of brightness and light.

  "Si?" she said. Both her tone and her expression made the question

  one that required not only an answer, but an explanation.

  "I'm Commissario Guido Brunetti, Signora. I'd like to speak to

  Giuliano Ruffo. Our records show that this is his home."

  "What do you want to talk to him about?" the second woman asked.

  "About the death of one of his fellow cadets."

  During this exchange, the first woman stood to one side of Brunetti,

  open mouthed, her face moving back and forth from one to the other as

  he spoke to the younger woman, seeming to register only sound. Brunetti

  saw her in profile, and noticed that the undamaged side of her face was

  similar to that of the other woman's. Sisters, then, or perhaps

  cousins.

  "He's not here the younger woman said.

  Brunetti had no patience for this. "Then he's in violation of his

  leave from the Academy," he said, thinking this might perhaps be

  true.

  To hell with the Academy," she answered fiercely.

  "All the more reason for him to talk to us, then," he countered.