by Donna Leon
She smiled and raised her hands in a gesture acknowledging human weakness. I know, I know, but the Vice-Questore called me at home
and said he was in the hospital. I offered to come in because he didn't know how long he'd be.'
Then, in a voice in which Brunetti detected real concern, she asked, 'There's nothing wrong with him, is" there?'
Brunetti smiled. 'Ah, Signorina, you ask me a question that my sense of good taste and fair play prevent me from answering.'
'Of course,' she said, smiling herself. ‘I fear I must use that lovely expression that American politicians use when they're caught lying: "I misspoke.'" Though her pronunciation was excellent, the word sounded dreadful to Brunetti. ‘I meant to ask why he was in the hospital when he phoned me.'
‘I saw him there about an hour ago,' Brunetti supplied. 'He was outside the room of a man -a paediatrician named Pedrolli - who was hurt during a Carabinieri raid on his home.'
'Why would the Carabinieri want to arrest a paediatrician?' she asked, and he watched as various possibilities played across her face.
It would seem that he and his wife adopted a baby boy illegally. About a year and a half ago,' Brunetti explained and went on, 'The Carabinieri raided homes in a number of cities last night: one of them was his. They must have been informed about the baby.' As he said this, Brunetti realized that it was an inference drawn from what Marvilli
who had been singularly evasive on the subject
had said rather than a piece of information the Captain had given him.
'What happened to the baby?' she demanded.
I'm afraid they took him’
'What? Who took him?'
'The Carabinieri’ Brunetti answered. 'At least that's what the one I spoke to told me’
'Why would they do that?' Her voice had risen, demanding a response from Brunetti, as if he were responsible for the fate of the child. When Brunetti failed to answer, she insisted, 'Took him where?'
'To an orphanage,' was the only answer Brunetti could give. 'I suppose it's where they place a child until the real parents are found or the court decides what will happen to him’
'No, I'm not talking about that. How could they take away a child after more than a year?'
Brunetti again found himself attempting to justify what he thought unjustifiable. 'The doctor and his wife came by the child illegally, it seems. She as much as admitted that to me when I spoke to her. The Carabinieri are interested in finding the person who organized it - the sale, whatever it was. The captain I spoke to said they're looking for a middle man who's involved in some of the cases.' He did not tell her that Marvilli had not in fact mentioned this middle man in connection with the Pedrollis.
Signorina Elettra put her elbows on her desk and lowered her head into her outspread palms, effectively hiding her face. 'I've heard people tell Carabinieri jokes all my life, but it would never occur to me that they could be this stupid,' she said.
They're not stupid’ Brunetti asserted quickly but with little conviction.
She opened her hands and looked at him. Then they're heartless, and that's worse.' She took a deep breath and Brunetti thought that she was summoning up a more professional manner. After a moment, she asked, 'So what do we do?'
'Pedrolli and his wife apparently went to a clinic -I assume it's a private clinic - in Verona. A fertility clinic, or at least one that works with problems of fertility. I'd like you to see if you can find one in Verona that specializes in fertility problems. Two of the other couples who adopted illegally were patients there.'
She said, calmer now that she had a task to focus on, 'I suppose it shouldn't be difficult to find. After all, how many fertility clinics can there be in Verona?' He left her to it and went upstairs.
It was more than an hour later when she came to his office. He saw that she wore a green skirt that fell to mid-calf. Below it were a pair of boots that put Marvilli's to shame.
'Yes, Signorina?' he asked when he had finished examining the boots.
'Who would have believed it, sir?' she asked, apparently having forgiven him for his attempt to defend the Carabinieri.
'Believed what?'
That there are three fertility clinics, or private clinics with specialist departments for fertility problems, in or near Verona?'
'And the public hospital?'
‘I checked. They handle them through the obstetrical unit’
'So that makes four’ Brunetti observed. 'In Verona.'
'Extraordinary, isn't it?'
He nodded. A broad reader, Brunetti had been aware for years of the sharp decline in sperm counts among European men, and he had also followed with distress the publicity campaign that had helped defeat a referendum that would have aided fertility research. The positions many politicians had taken - former Fascists in favour of artificial msemination; former Communists following the lead of the Church - had left Brunetti battered both in spirit and in mind.
If you're sure they went to a clinic there, then all I'll have to do is find their medical service numbers: they'd have to give them, even for a private clinic’
When Signorina Elettra had first arrived at the Questura, such a statement would have impelled Brunetti into an impromptu lecture on a citizen's right to privacy, in this case the sacred privacy that must exist between a doctor and his patient, followed by a few words about the inviolability of access to a person's medical history. 'Yes,' he answered simply.
He saw that she wanted to add something and raised his chin questioningly.
'It would probably be easier to check their phone records and see what numbers they called in Verona,' she suggested. Brunetti no longer enquired as to how she would go about obtaining those.
He watched as she wrote down Pedrolli's name, then she looked at him and asked, 'Does his wife use his name or her own?'
'Her own. It’s Marcolini: first name Bianca.'
She glanced at him and made a small noise of either affirmation or surprise. 'Marcolini’ she repeated softly and then, 'I'll see what I can find out’ and left.
After she was gone, Brunetti thought about who might be able to provide him with the names of the other people the Carabinieri had arrested. Quicker, perhaps, to try the existing bureaucratic channels and simply ask the Carabinieri themselves.
He started by calling the central command at Riva degli Schiavoni and asking for Marvilli, only to learn that the Captain was out on duty and not available by telephone. Forty minutes later, Brunetti had spoken to Marvilli's commander as well as to those in Verona and Brescia, but each of them said he was not at liberty to divulge the names of the people who had been arrested. Even when Brunetti claimed that he was calling at the order of his superior, the Questore of Venice, no information was forthcoming. When he requested that the guard be removed from in front of Dottor Pedrolli's room, Brunetti was told that his request had been recorded.
Changing tactics, Brunetti dialled the office number of Elio Pelusso, a friend who worked as a journalist for Il Gazzettino. Within a few minutes, he had the names, professions, ages, and addresses of the people who had been arrested, as well as the name of the clinic in Verona where many of those arrested had sought treatment.
He took this information down to Signorina Elettra and repeated what Signora Marcolini had told him about their attempts to have a child. She nodded as she wrote this down, then said, 'There's a book about this, you know.'
'Excuse me?'
'A novel, by an English writer, I forget who. About when there are no more babies and what people will do to get them.'
'A rather anti-Malthusian idea, isn't it?' Brunetti asked.
'Yes. It's almost as if we're living in two worlds,' she said. 'There's the world where people have too many children, and they get sick and starve and die, and our world, where people want to have them and can't'
'And will do anything to get them?' he asked.
She tapped a finger on the papers in front of her and said, 'So it seems.'
'That depends on the subject'
Treatments for infertility.'
There was a long pause, after which she said, 'Because of this case?' ‘Yes’
'Why me?'
'Because you know how to do research’
After an overly loud sigh, Paola said, ‘I could easily teach you how, you know’
'You've been telling me that for years,' Brunetti replied.
'As have Signorina Elettra and Vianello, and your own children.'
'Yes’
'Does it make any difference?' 'No, not really’
There unfolded yet another long silence, after which Paola said, 'AH right. I'll give you two hours of my time and print out whatever seems interesting’
'Thank you, Paola’
'What do I get in return?'
‘Undying devotion’
‘I thought I had that already.'
'Undying devotion and ‘I’ll bring you coffee in bed for a week’
'You were called out of bed at two this morning,' she reminded him.
‘I’ll think of something,' he said, conscious of how lame that sounded.
'You better,' she said. 'All right, two hours, but I can't begin until tomorrow’
'Why?'
‘I have to finish this book.' 'What book?'
'The Ambassadors’ she answered. Haven't you read it already?' ‘Yes. Four times.'
A man less familiar with the ways of scholars, the ways of marriage, and the ways of wisdom might have raised some objection here. Brunetti caved in, said, 'All right,' and hung up.
As he put the phone down, Brunetti realized he could have asked Vianello, or Pucetti, or, for all he knew, any one of the other officers downstairs. He had grown up reading printed pages, at school had learned from printed pages, and he still had the habit of belief in the printed page. The few times he had allowed someone to try to teach him how to use the Internet to search for information, he had found himself flooded with ads for all manner of rubbish and had even stumbled onto a pornographic website. Since then, on the few occasions when he had placed his trembling feelers on the web, he had quickly drawn them back in confusion and defeat. He felt incapable of understanding the links by which things were connected.
That thought reverberated in his mind. Links. Specifically, what was the link between the Questura of Venice and the Carabinieri command in Verona, and how had permission been obtained to raid Dottor PedrolH's home?
Had any of the other commissari given permission for such a thing, surely he would have heard, but there had been no mention of such an order, either before or after the raid. Brunetti considered for a moment the possibility that the Carabinieri had mounted the raid without informing the Venice police and that the magistrate who had authorized the raid had told them it was acceptable not to do so. But he considered this only to dismiss it instantly: there had been too many well-publicized shoot-outs between different police powers operating in ignorance of each other's plans, and few judges would now risk another such incident.
He was left, then, with an obvious possibility: incompetence. How easily it could have happened: an email sent to the wrong address; a fax read and then lost or misfiled; a phone message not written down and passed on. The explanation which most easily accounts for all the facts is usually the correct one. Though he would be among the last to deny that deceit and double-dealing played their part in the normal business of the Questura, he knew that simple incompetence was far more common. He marvelled at himself for finding this explanation so comforting.
11
Brunetti waited until almost two for Signorina Elettra to bring him whatever she had discovered about the people arrested the previous . night: when she did not appear, he went to her. From behind the door to Patta's office, he heard the VIce-Questore's voice: the long pauses meant he was talking on the phone. There was no sign of Signorina Elettra, so Brunetti assumed she had decided to make up for her lost morning's freedom and would return to the office when she chose to.
It was by then too late to go home for lunch, and most of the restaurants in the area would no longer be serving, so Brunetti went down to the officers' squad room, looking for Vianello, to see if he wanted to goto the bar at the bridge and have a panino. Neither the Inspector nor Pucetti was there, only Alvise, who gave Brunetti his usual affable smile.
'You seen Vianello, Alvise?' Brunetti asked.
Brunetti observed the officer process the question: with Alvise, the process of thinking always had a visible component. First he considered the question, then he considered the person who had asked it and the consequences of the answer he might give. His eyes shot around the room, perhaps to check if it were still as empty as when Brunetti had come in, perhaps to see if he had somehow overlooked Vianello lying under one of the desks. Seeing that no one was there to help him answer, Alvise finally said, 'No, sir.' His nervousness provided Brunetti with the key: Vianello was out of the Questura for his own purposes but had told Alvise where he was going.
The bait was too strong for Brunetti to resist. 'I'm going down to the corner for a panino. Would you like to join me?'
Alvise grabbed a stack of papers from his desk and showed them to Brunetti. 'No, sir, I've got to read through these. But thank you. If s as if I had accepted.' He turned his attention to the first page and Brunetti left the room, amused but at tike same time feeling obscurely cheapened by his teasing.
Vianello was in the bar, reading the paper at the counter, when Brunetti arrived. A half-full glass of white wine stood in front of him.
Food first, then talk. Brunetti pointed to a few of the tramezzini and asked Sergio for a glass of Pinot Grigio, then went over to stand beside Vianello. 'Anything?' he asked, gesturing towards the paper.
His eyes on the headlines, which blared news of the latest infighting among the various political parties as they attempted to butt one another aside in their frenzy to keep their trotters in the trough, Vianello said, 'You know, I always used to think it was all right to buy this, so long as I didn't read it. As though buying it was a venial sin and reading it a mortal.' He looked at Brunetti, then again at the headlines. 'But now I think I might have got it the wrong way round and it's a mortal sin to buy because it encourages them to keep on printing it. And reading it's only a venial sin because it really doesn't make any impression on you.' Vianello raised his glass and drank the rest of his wine.
'You'll have to talk to Sergio about that,' Brunetti said, nodding his thanks to the approaching barman for his plate of tramezzini and glass of wine, more interested in quelling his hunger than in listening to Vianello's vilification of the press.
'Talk to me about what?' Sergio asked.
'About how good the wine is’ Vianello said. 'So good I better have another.'
Vianello set the paper aside. Brunetti took one of the tramezzini and bit into it. 'Too much mayonnaise’ he said, then finished the sandwich and drank half a glass of wine.
'The wife tell you anything?' Vianello asked after Sergio brought his wine.
Usual stuff. She left everything about the adoption to her husband and didn't want to know that it was illegal.' Brunetti's words were neutral, his tone sceptical. "The other people who were arrested were couples. So I guess they didn't get this middle man.'
'Any chance the Carabinieri will tell us what comes out of their questioning?' Vianello asked.
'They wouldn't even tell me the names of the people they arrested,' Brunetti answered. I had to go to Pelusso for that.'
'They're usually more cooperative.'
Brunetti was not convinced of this. He had often encountered individual Carabinieri who were, but the overall organization had never struck him as willing to share its information, or its successes, with ot
her police agencies.
'What did you make of Zorro?' Vianello asked.
'Zorro?' asked Brunetti absently, his attention focused on his second tramezzino.
'The guy with the cowboy boots.'
'Ah,' Brunetti said and finished his wine. He signalled to Sergio for another, and as he waited he weighed his opinion of the young officer. 'He's young to have reached captain, so it's unlikely he has much experience in leading this sort of raid. His men got out of control, so there's going to be trouble: that means he's worried about his career. The victim was a doctor, after all.'
'Yes, And his wife's a Marcolini,' added Vianello.
'Yes. His wife's a Marcolini.' In the Veneto that could count for considerably more than her husband's profession.
'But what about the Captain?' Vianello asked.
'He's young, as I said, so he could go either way’
'Meaning?'
'Meaning he could turn out to be a good officer: he was a bit high-handed with his own man, but he was there with him in the hospital and he made sure he got a few days off,' Brunetti said. 'Eventually he might stop wearing the boots’
'Or?'
'Or he could turn into a complete bastard and cause everyone a lot of trouble’ Sergio set down the second glass of wine; Brunetti thanked him and began his third tramezzino: tuna with egg. 'What about you?' Brunetti asked.
Without a moment's hesitation, Vianello answered, 'I think he might be all right’
'Why?'
'Because he helped Sergio lift up the grating and because he said please to the black guy’
Brunetti sipped at his wine and considered this. 'Yes, he did, didn't he?' To Brunetti, it seemed as good an indication of character as any he could come up with. 'Let's hope you're right-‘
It was well past three when they returned to the Questura; the rest of the day brought nothing new. Signorina Elettra neither returned nor called to explain her absence, at least not to Brunetti; none of the Carabinieri commands he had contacted called to volunteer information. He tried the station at Riva degli Schiavoni and asked for Marvilli, but he was still not there: Brunetti did not leave his name, nor did he bother to renew his request that the guard in the hospital be removed.