The Girl of his Dreams

by Donna Leon

  Brunetti glanced across at Vianello and held the phone away from his ear as Patta presented his reluctance to the listening air. Suddenly Vianello leaned forward and pointed towards the entrance to the canal and the approaching boat. Brunetti nodded and pulled the phone back to his ear.

  'I understand that, Vice-Questore, but I'm not sure it's convenient... Of course I understand the importance of maintaining good relations with the Carabinieri, but surely they'd prefer that an officer of higher ...'

  Brunetti caught Vianello's eye and made a rolling motion with his outstretched finger, suggesting that this conversation might go on for some time. It did, until Vianello started towards the door, when Brunetti interrupted to say, 'If you insist, sir. I'll give you a full report when I get back.'

  He replaced the phone, grabbed the envelope with the photos of the dead child, and hurried after Vianello, who was already halfway down the stairs.

  Outside, Vianello jumped on to the waiting launch and shook hands with Steiner, then held out a hand to steady Brunetti as he jumped aboard. Vianello addressed the Maresciallo as 'Walter', and left it to Brunetti to decide which form of address to use with the other man. He opted to follow in the wake of Vianello's friendship and used the more familiar tu, giving his first name, after which Steiner touched him on the upper arm and told Brunetti to call him Walter.

  Still standing on deck, Brunetti explained that Patta had asked him to take the news to the child's parents, thinking it best to provide no explanation of how this had come to pass. Steiner's face remained impassive; he permitted himself to say only, 'The most successful superiors understand how important it is to know how to delegate.'

  'Indeed,' Brunetti replied, and the familiarity begun by the use of tu grew even stronger.

  The men moved down into the cabin as the boat made its slow way up towards Piazzale Roma, where a woman from the social services would meet them. Brunetti used the time to tell Steiner about finding the body and the complete results of the autopsy.

  Steiner nodded and said, ‘I’ve heard that they hide things that way, though we've never encountered it’ He shook his head a few times, as if attempting to expand his understanding of the limits of human behaviour, then said, "The kid's eleven years old, and she's hiding jewellery in her vagina.' He was silent for a while, then muttered, 'Dio buono’

  The boat passed under the Rialto, but none of the men in the cabin noticed. 'The woman who'll meet us, Cristina Pitteri, has worked with the Gypsies for about ten years,' Steiner said in a voice so neutral it forced Vianello and Brunetti to exchange a quick glance.

  'What's she do?' Vianello asked.

  'She's a psychiatric social worker by training,' Steiner explained. 'Used to work at Palazzo Boldu. But she asked for a transfer: she ended up in the office that deals with the different nomad groups.'

  "There's others?' Vianello asked.

  'Yes. The Sinti. Not as criminal as the Gypsies, but they come from the same places and live much the same way’

  'What does she do?' Brunetti asked.

  Steiner considered this until the boat was passing under the Ponte degli Scalzi and then in front of the train station. 'She's in charge of something called "inter-ethnic liaison"‘ he answered, using the foreign words.

  'Which means?' asked Vianello.

  Steiner's face softened into a grin, but only momentarily, and then he said, 'As far as I can see, I think it means she tries to make them make sense to us and us to them’

  ‘Is that possible?' Vianello asked.

  Steiner got to his feet and pushed open the door that led to the steps. He turned and said over his shoulder, 'Better ask her', and went up on deck.

  The pilot brought the boat to a halt in one of the taxi docks to the right of the imbarcadero of the 82. The three men stepped on to the dock; Brunetti and Vianello followed Steiner up to the road, where a dark Carabinieri estate car waited, motor running. A robust woman with short dark hair who looked to be in her late thirties stood on the pavement next to the car, smoking a cigarette. She wore a skirt and sweater under a box-cut jacket, and dark brown walking shoes that had the glow of expensive leather. She had a round face in which the features all seemed to have been squeezed too close together. Her eyes were close set, and her upper lip much thicker than the lower, giving the impression that, in a kind of continental shift, her features were slowly migrating towards her nose.

  Steiner approached her and extended his hand. She paused long enough for everyone to register that she had done so, then gave her hand to the Maresciallo.

  'Dottoressa’ he said with neutral deference, 'this is Dottor Brunetti and Ispettore Vianello, his assistant. They're the ones who found the girl.'

  She flicked the cigarette aside and briefly studied Brunetti's face, and then Vianello's, before she extended her hand to Brunetti. Her grip was as fleeting as it was limp; they exchanged titles as a form of greeting. She nodded at Vianello, turned, and got into the back seat of the car. A silent Steiner got into the front seat beside the driver, leaving the other two, in the absence of any motion on the part of Dottoressa Pitteri to slide across the seat, to walk around the back of the car to the door on the other side. Brunetti opened it a few centimetres then waited for a break in the traffic before climbing in. Taking his place on the uncomfortable middle of the seat, he was careful to angle his knees and thighs to the left to keep from touching those of the woman beside him. Vianello clambered in and slammed the door, pressing himself close against it.

  The driver, a uniformed officer, said something softly to Steiner, who answered 'SI’ after which the car pulled away from the kerb. 'Dottoressa Pitteri has worked with the Rom for some time now, Commissario’ Steiner said. 'She knows the girl's parents, and so I'm sure her presence will be a great help to us when we tell them.'

  'And to the girl's family, as well, I should hope,' Dottoressa Pitteri interrupted, speaking with muffled indignation. ‘I think that's rather more important.'

  ‘I hardly thought it needed saying, Dottoressa,' Steiner said blandly. As he spoke, his eyes remained on the road before them, as though he considered it his duty to keep the driver constantly warned of approaching danger.

  They started across the causeway, and Brunetti's eyes were pulled to the left and to the smokestacks and holding tanks of Marghera. The newspapers had told him that morning that cars with even-numbered licence plates were permitted on the street today; the odd-numbered ones could drive tomorrow. There had been no substantial rain for a month: it had done nothing but sprinkle, and so only God knew what was swirling around in the air they breathed. 'Microdust', it was called, and Brunetti could never read the name without conjuring up tiny particles of chemicals, all those poisons Marghera had been hurling up into the atmosphere for three generations, digging their way ever deeper into his lungs and into his tissues.

  Vianello, whose ecological sympathies used to be, but were no longer, a source of fun at the Questura, looked in the same direction. Try to close it’ Vianello said with no introduction, nodding towards the representative smokestacks of the industrial area, 'and they're out in protest the next day. "Save our jobs.'" The Inspector gestured to the left, then let his hand fall to his lap in what Brunetti thought a melodramatic gesture of frustration and despair.

  No one in the car spoke for a while, but then Dottoressa Pitteri asked, 'Would you rather they starved, Ispettore? And their children?' Her voice held a combination of irony and condescension and she spoke with great clarity, as if she feared a man as simple-minded as a police inspector might not be able to understand a more complex question.

  'No, Dottoressa’ Vianello said, 'I'd like them to stop pumping Cloruro vinile monomero into the air our children breathe.'

  'Certainly they've stopped that in the last years’ she said.

  'So they say’ Vianello replied, then added, 'If you choose to believe them.'

  In the ensuing silence, the noise of a passing truck sounded uncommonly loud.

  Brunetti ha
d followed the play of emotion on the woman's face in the rearview mirror, and he saw her purse her lips as she turned away from the offending smokestacks.

  Though Brunetti was curious to learn whatever the woman could tell him about the Gypsies, the obvious antipathy between her and Steiner made him reluctant to raise the subject while the other man was present. 'Have you been out there before, Maresciallo?' he asked, using the formal Lei to address the other man.

  'Twice.'

  'For these same people, the Rocich?'

  'Once. The other time it was to bring back a woman who tried to pick a tourist's pocket on the vaporetto.' Steiner's voice was a study in neutrality.

  'What did you do?'

  ‘I put her in the car and brought her back out here.' For a moment, Brunetti thought Steiner had stopped, but after a pause the Maresciallo resumed. 'It was the usual story: she said she was pregnant. We were short-staffed that day, and I didn't want to waste time on it: take her to the hospital to verify the pregnancy, take witness statements from the man and from the two witnesses who saw what happened, then call the social services ...' He let his voice trail off for a moment. 'So I decided to take her to the place where she said she was living and let the matter drop.'

  'And so you never bothered to get witness statements about what really happened?' Dottoressa Pitteri suddenly asked. 'You just assumed she was guilty?'

  'It wasn't necessary to get them.'

  'But I'm asking you why, Maresciallo. Because you simply assumed that, if she was a Rom, she had to be guilty of anything she was accused of doing? Especially by a tourist?' She pronounced the last word with heavy emphasis, dragging out each syllable.

  'No, not for that,' Steiner said, eyes still forward.

  'Then why?' she demanded. 'Why was it so convenient simply to assume she was guilty?'

  'Because one of the witnesses put her hand on the woman's arm as she was taking the man's wallet out of his pocket and because both witnesses were nuns.' Steiner gave that information enough time to settle and then added, 'I assumed they wouldn't lie.'

  She paused, but only for a moment, before she asked, 'And you honestly think this woman would have risked doing something like that in front of two nuns?'

  'They weren't wearing habits,' Steiner said.

  Brunetti had kept himself from looking at her while all of this was going on, but now the urge to do so proved irresistible. She glared at the back of Steiner's head with such intensity that, had his hat and hair begun to smoulder and then burst into flames, Brunetti would not have been at all surprised.

  They all lapsed into silence. Occasionally, the dispatcher's voice spoke from the radio, but it was too low for anyone in the back seat to understand, and neither Steiner nor the driver seemed concerned with anything that was said. The driver took the ramp leading to the road to the airport. It had been some time since Brunetti had been to the airport in anything except a boat or taxi, so he was surprised at the sudden appearance of roundabouts in place of crossroads. He drove so infrequently, and so badly, that he had no way of telling whether they were an improvement or not, and he did not want to break the silence by asking.

  They passed the airport on the right and soon pulled up at traffic lights. All at once, from the driver's side, a long-skirted woman holding something that might have been a baby or might have been a swaddled football approached the window. With one hand she pressed the side of her kerchief over her nose and mouth as if to protect herself from the fumes of the idling motors. She held the other out in a pleading gesture, hand cupped.

  The five people in the car looked stonily ahead. Seeing the two men in uniform in the front seat, she swerved away from the car and went to the one behind it. The light changed and they moved off.

  The silence in the car grew more leaden as time passed. From the autostrada they saw fields and trees, occasionally a single house or small group of farmhouses. Some trees were in blossom. Brunetti turned his attention from side to side, and he found that, regardless of the tension in the car, he could still enjoy the rare sight of vast swaths of burgeoning nature. They should go somewhere green this summer, spend their holidays amidst fields and forests: no beaches, no sand or rocks, no matter how much the children complained. Long walks, mountain air, streams, happy clouds beyond the glistening glaciers. Alto Adige, perhaps. Didn't Pucetti have an uncle who ran some sort of agrituristno near Bolzano?

  He felt the car slowing. He looked up as they sailed through the exit of the autostrada, came to the end of the exit ramp, turned right, and found themselves on a highway that passed between low buildings on both sides: factories, used cars, petrol stations, a bar, a parking lot, another. At the second traffic light they turned right and drove by rows of single houses set back on both sides of the road, each in its patch of land. The houses disappeared, replaced by green fields.

  More traffic lights, more houses, but now they were surrounded by wire fences. He saw dogs in many of the gardens, large dogs. They drove another kilometre and then the driver signalled, slowed, and turned to the right.

  Brunetti saw that they had stopped in front of a metal gate. The driver sounded the horn once, twice, and when nothing happened, he got out of the car, leaving the door open, walked to the gate and opened it himself. Once he had driven through the gate, at a word from Steiner he stopped the car and went back and closed it.

  Ahead of them Brunetti saw a ragged half-moon of cars and behind them a row of trailers parked any which way. Some were metal, some wooden, some quite modern and sleek. One had a short metal chimney in the middle of the peaked roof that made Brunetti think of the drawings in children's books. Objects piled up against the sides of the trailers spilled out into the spaces between them: plastic boxes, cardboard cartons, collapsible tables, metal barbecues, countless shredded and tattered plastic bags. Beyond them, a few footpaths appeared to have been beaten down into the field of high grass and nettles behind the camp, though none appeared to extend far before petering out. Brunetti saw the odd piece of rusted metal jutting up amidst the weeds: a refrigerator, an old-fashioned washing machine with a hand wringer, at least two metal bedsprings, and an abandoned car.

  The cars in front of the trailers were in far better shape, most of them apparently new, or at least they seemed that way to Brunetti, who was no judge of these things.

  If such a disorderly arrangement of cars could be said to have a centre, the driver pulled the car into it, then turned off the engine. Brunetti heard the soft ticks and pings as it cooled, then the sound of Steiner's door being pushed back and yanking at the springs. Then birdsong, coming perhaps from the trees on the other side of the wire fence that surrounded the camp.

  As he watched, first one, then another, then two more of the doors of the campers were pushed open and men stepped out and started down the steps. The men did not speak, and they seemed to have no communication with one another, but they came and stood in an uneven row in front of the car.

  Vianello and then the driver pushed open their doors and got out of the police car. When Brunetti looked back at the men standing in front of them, three more had joined them. And the birdsong had stopped.

  21

  The men stood there, and slowly the sound of birdsong returned. The air was soft, as the gentle rays of the afternoon sun embraced them all. Beyond the fence Brunetti saw the field roiling up and away from them, gently green, to a stand of chestnut trees: surely, some of the birdsong came from there. How sweet life is, Brunetti thought.

  He lowered his eyes from the trees and considered the men, now nine of them, who stood facing them. He was struck by the fact that all of them wore hats, dirty fedoras that might once have been different colours but now looked a dull, dusty brown. None of them was close shaven. With many Italian men of all ages, this look was considered a fashion statement - Brunetti had never been quite sure what the statement was, but he knew it was meant to be one. These men, however, looked as if they could not be bothered to shave or somehow considered it a sig
n of weakness. Some of the beards were patchy, some were longer than others; none of them looked particularly clean.

  All of the men were dark-skinned and dark-eyed, and all of them wore woollen trousers, sweaters, and dark jackets. Some had shirts underneath. Their shoes were thick-soled and scuffed.

  Steiner and his driver were in Carabiniere uniform, so the men of the camp kept their eyes on them, though an occasional curious glance was cast towards Brunetti and Vianello. A dull thud from his right made Brunetti flinch. He looked at Steiner and noticed that the Maresciallo, as he turned toward the noise, had put his hand on the butt of his revolver.

  When Brunetti followed Steiner's eyes, he saw Dottoressa Pitteri standing at the side of the car, her hand still on the handle of the door she had slammed, a small smile on her lips. ‘I didn't mean to startle you, Maresciallo,' she said, her smile turning acid. 'Do please forgive me.'

  Steiner returned his attention to the men in front of them. His hand fell to his side, but his instinctive reaction had not passed unobserved. Two of them, indeed, could not stop themselves from smiling, though not at Steiner.

  Dottoressa Pitteri moved away from the car and approached the men. They gave no hint of recognition, let alone pleasure, as she walked over. She stopped and said something Brunetti could not hear. When none of the men responded, she spoke a bit louder. Though this time Brunetti could hear her words, he could not understand what she said. She stood with her feet apart, and from the back he saw how thick her calves were. Her feet seemed anchored to the ground.

  As he watched, one of the men, who was standing to the right, spoke to her. She turned to him and said a few words; the man responded in a louder voice, loud enough for the police to hear, 'Speak Italian. It's easier to understand you.' Though he was not the oldest man in the group, he spoke with the air of command. His accent was marked, but they could hear that he spoke Italian with ease.