The Temptation of Forgiveness

by Donna Leon

  ‘His mother’s message?’ Brunetti asked, but there was no real curiosity in his voice; this question had been resolved some time ago.

  ‘You read that, too, Guido. She sent the girl an SMS to wish her a quick recovery and tell her Costantino’s friends were eager to see the videos he’d made.’ Vianello held up a monitory hand and added, ‘Signorina Elettra had no authorization to look into her telephone server. We are in possession of that information illegally.’

  ‘It’s useless, anyway,’ Brunetti conceded, although reluctantly. ‘The old cow didn’t say what kind of videos they were. If we asked her, she’d probably say they were videos of Costantino’s first communion.’ He got to his feet and walked over to the window, looked across the canal to the far side, saw nothing there that helped calm him down, and went back to his chair. ‘Is it because we have daughters?’ he asked Vianello.

  ‘It’s because we’re human,’ the Inspector said.

  Brunetti pulled himself away from speculation and asked, ‘Did the second man who was talking actually use Belli’s name?’

  Vianello nodded again. ‘Yes. They were talking about what happened to him; a few of them laughed and said a good beating was probably what he deserved, and then one said he’d heard that someone at the Questura had said he was the man brought in for questioning about what happened to Lucia Arditi.’

  He paused to let Brunetti comment or ask questions. When he did not, the Inspector went on. ‘He’s looking for me to pay him something before he remembers who told him.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘That’s what I came up to ask you about.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Brunetti asked him.

  Vianello quickly uncrossed his arms. ‘I think it would be better to let it drop, tell him I don’t believe him and that we’re not interested.’

  ‘Before, it sounded as though you were interested,’ Brunetti remarked neutrally.

  ‘Think about it, Guido,’ Vianello said in a mild voice.

  ‘I have been,’ Brunetti said.

  Their eyes met. Brunetti pulled his lips together and took two deep breaths but said nothing. They both knew that Signorina Elettra had read the report of the ambulance crew and what Lucia Arditi had originally told them, a story she had later retracted, just as they both knew that Elettra had been the one to find Belli’s mother’s SMS to Lucia Arditi. No wonder Vianello wanted to tell his informant that they didn’t believe the story about a leak from the Questura.

  ‘Oh my, oh my, oh my,’ Brunetti whispered to himself. He addressed his attention to the wall and thought about what he did – and did not – know about Signorina Elettra. He stared at nothing for a long time and knew he and Vianello were right.

  Breaking what he believed a taboo about a parent’s interest in his child’s sexuality, Brunetti offered a silent prayer to the protector of young people and begged that Chiara’s first lover be a good boy who loved her. He didn’t have to be intelligent or rich or handsome or possessed of princelike qualities: it would be enough for him to be a good boy who loved Chiara.

  Brunetti leaned forward and keyed Belli’s name into his computer, searching for the report from the hospital he had never bothered to read. The young man, who had been found on the street, had been admitted to the Emergency Ward at one-thirty in the morning, more than three months before. His face had been repeatedly struck, his nose broken and the cartilage badly torn. He had apparently been kicked in the groin; one testicle was severely bruised. His left shoulder had been dislocated, though there was no sign of a bruise that would suggest it had resulted from a fall.

  Brunetti glanced away from the computer and recalled the police involvement in the attack. They had not been informed until the morning after, when a call came from the hospital. Belli, who had regained consciousness, said that he had been walking home when suddenly he heard footsteps behind him, and then he remembered nothing until he woke in the hospital. The presence of his wallet in his back pocket argued against a mugging, but it was not until Brunetti saw Belli’s name that he began to suspect that the attack was linked to the rape of Lucia Arditi, more than half a year earlier.

  A discreet check on her family revealed that her parents, who owned a shoe factory outside Treviso, had been in Milan for an industrial fair on the evening that Belli was attacked, while the girl and her brother were visiting an uncle who lived in Spain.

  The policeman who interviewed him had asked Belli if there were any people who might have wanted to do him harm, and he replied that he had no enemies. The case rested there, neither forgotten nor pursued. Brunetti remembered thinking that a lot of time had passed since the rape of Lucia Arditi. Vengeance, the adage said, was a dish best served cold, but it didn’t happen that way in the real world. Vengeance lacked patience and was usually quick, impulsive, and stupidly obvious. The person or persons who had attacked Belli – and Brunetti reminded himself that he was assuming vengeance was the cause – would probably have had a more recent reason to attack him. His own experience with people whose business was violence told him that professionals would have done a far better job of it: Belli would have become familiar with pain and with the walls of his hospital room: his legs would have been in casts, and he would not have gone home to Mummy after only two days.

  For some reason, he recalled the way Signorina Elettra had kept her distance from any mention of the possible leaks from the Questura, when she ordinarily would have fallen upon such a rumour with hungry curiosity. He recalled her awkwardness – one might even say nervousness – in front of Lieutenant Scarpa.

  Finally accepting what he had tried to ignore, the expression on Signorina Elettra’s face, and admitting that it had in fact been fear, Brunetti got to his feet and went to do what he did not want to do.

  Signorina Elettra smiled at his arrival. ‘Is there something I can do for you, Commissario?’ she asked, and he heard, for the first time in all these years – or forced himself to hear – timidity hiding in her question.

  He smiled in response and consciously relaxed his shoulders as he approached her desk. Then, realizing he was too close, he turned aside and went over to her window to admire the flowers, the ones with the heads that seemed to be made out of hundreds of narrow petals: he couldn’t remember their name. He moved to the next window and leaned back against the sill.

  ‘And the pharmacist?’ he asked, another delaying tactic.

  She seemed relieved by his question. Her face came alive and she turned to her computer. ‘Yes,’ she said, sounding pleased but not at all relaxed. She reached forward and tapped a few keys, then invited him to take a look.

  ‘It’s the geography that’s confusing,’ she said.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Brunetti asked, all thought of Belli, Scarpa, and Lucia Arditi pushed to the back of his mind. He moved to stand beside her and looked where her finger was pointing to a vertical list of names, arranged in alphabetical order.

  ‘These are Dottor Donato’s clients who are more than seventy years old.’ Before he could count them, she said, ‘There are a hundred and twenty-seven.’

  She hit another key and the same list appeared again with two new columns to the right of the names. ‘This shows the medicines they’re each taking and the disease the medicine is usually prescribed for.’

  Brunetti saw that many of them were taking the same two medicines, and most of these were prescribed for the same two diseases: Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

  Before he could ask what she saw in the lists that he did not, she said, ‘Let me show you the geography.’

  A shorter list appeared: Brunetti estimated fifty names. A second column was headed, ‘Kilometres,’ and a third, ‘Vaporetto Stops’. Brunetti studied the page for some time and noticed that more than half of the names had a rating – or so he construed it to be – of at least four kilometres, and all of those listed at least seven vaporetto stops.

  Signorina Elettra looked up at him and smiled. ‘Let me add this, Si
gnore,’ she said and struck a single key. The same shorter list appeared, but this time a fourth column – ‘Address’ – had been added. Roughly half of the people on the list, one of whom was Signora Gasparini, lived in Dorsoduro, while most of the others lived in Castello.

  Brunetti stared at the list, looked down at Signorina Elettra, and said, ‘Even though Dottor Donato’s pharmacy is in Cannaregio.’

  ‘And all of these people are older than seventy, some of them more than eighty, and most have to travel or send someone halfway across the city to pick up their prescriptions.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense, does it?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Not unless they’re getting something special at Dottor Donato’s pharmacy,’ she said.

  ‘Or he’s getting something special from them,’ Brunetti suggested. In response to her smile, he asked, ‘How did you see this?’

  ‘My family lived in Canareggio when I was growing up, near San Leonardo, and I remember we lived at number 1400, so when I saw his address, I knew it had to be up there, almost at Ponte delle Guglie and nowhere near Rialto. People from Dorsoduro wouldn’t go there, much less people from Castello. Not to go to a pharmacy, at any rate.’

  ‘Now look at this, Signore.’ She raised her right hand, fingers suspended above the keyboard, and held it there for a second, like a pianist pausing until all noise in the audience stopped. She lowered it slowly and tapped out three notes – click click click – then sat back to allow Brunetti to see the screen.

  This time, only two lists: the patients, again in alphabetical order, and the name of their doctor. This list, however, had no need of alphabetical order, for there was only one name: Dottore Carla Ruberti, with two offices, one in Dorsoduro and one in Castello.

  She allowed Brunetti time to absorb the significance of what he had just seen. ‘Don’t worry, Commissario: I’ve printed it all out for you.’ When she saw that his expression didn’t change, Signorina Elettra said, ‘What is it, Signore?’

  He took a step away from her and, pointing in the direction of the computer, said, ‘I didn’t come to talk to you about this, Signorina.’

  She froze. It lasted only a second, and she was instantly back to normal, but he had seen it.

  He shifted his weight to the other foot, uncertain how to handle this. Trust in her prompted him to say – blurt out, actually – ‘What happened?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ she asked.

  ‘With Belli? How did his name get out?’ He’d used the passive voice, suggesting that the name might well have flown from the Questura on angel wings, thus allowing her the chance to lie to him if she chose.

  She looked at him, away, back at him, then touched the keyboard. He could see only a sliver of the screen, but it sufficed for him to see it grow black. She straightened herself in her chair and folded her hands in her lap.

  ‘Friends of mine have a daughter,’ she said, then stopped to give a small cough and looked down at her hands. ‘She’s nineteen, and I’ve known her since she was a baby. She’s a sweet girl, very clever, has always called me Zia Elettra.’ She might as well have been speaking to her folded hands.

  ‘I went to dinner with her parents a few months ago. They both seemed different, tense, so I asked them what was wrong, and they said they were worried about Livia, that she had a new boyfriend, and what she said about him made them nervous.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘That she was completely under his control, waited around for him to call, didn’t see her other friends any more because he didn’t want her to.’ She shot a glance towards him, adding, ‘First love. It happens.’

  Brunetti nodded but said nothing.

  ‘She’d talked to me about boyfriends in the past, but that was the first I’d heard about him.

  ‘Then Lino referred to him as “Costantino”, and I told myself to stay calm: there had to be a lot of them in the city.’ She opened her hands and stretched her fingers, then joined them together again.

  ‘But?’ Brunetti ventured.

  ‘I asked, and they told me his name.’ He watched her press her lips together, as though she were back in that restaurant with her friends and wished she had done that then.

  ‘They saw my reaction and asked me what was wrong.’ She looked at Brunetti then, and he saw defiance writ large on her face.

  Brunetti took the familiar two steps backwards and leaned against the windowsill. He folded his arms across his chest and waited.

  ‘I’ve known her since she was a baby.’ He noticed that her fingers were interlocked and tightly held.

  Brunetti thought – and half hoped – she’d said this to prepare a defence, to explain her obligation to the girl, to say it just slipped out before she thought about it, that she was so surprised that she had no idea what she was saying, didn’t think at all about her professional responsibility.

  ‘So I told them. About Lucia Arditi and what he did to her, and what his mother did to help him, and that this was the kind of people they were.’

  Brunetti thought about this for a while and then asked, ‘And when he was attacked?’

  ‘It was three weeks later,’ she said. ‘I was shocked.’ Then, as if Truth had reminded her to whom she was speaking, she added, ‘But I wasn’t surprised.’

  ‘Have you seen her parents since you had dinner with them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you think her family had it done?’

  She looked up and, seeing Brunetti’s expression, asked, ‘Would you have expected them to call me and tell me?’

  Ignoring her question, he asked, ‘And the girl?’

  ‘I told you: I haven’t seen any of them or heard from them since we had dinner.’ She untied her fingers and waved a hand in the air. ‘Maybe I never will.’

  ‘Don’t be melodramatic, Elettra,’ Brunetti said before he thought.

  She grimaced, embarrassed. ‘I am, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  Brunetti shrugged. He turned to the window, set at the opposite end of the building from his own. It looked across the same canal but from a different floor and a different angle. The view changed: he saw the same thing, but, standing here, it looked entirely different. Creon had told Antigone that orders were orders and had to be obeyed, whether they were large or small, right or wrong.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he told her, and then, ‘Send those charts up to me, would you?’ He left her office and went back to his own.

  24

  By the time he reached his office, he and his conscience had come to an agreement. Signorina Elettra had acted instinctively to save someone she loved from harm. It was different from pushing someone out of the way of a speeding car, more like pushing the loved one clear and in so doing causing the car to crash. Although he saw the difference, he told himself it was over. He had made his choice: the one she had made would remain between the two of them and, over time, would gradually disappear from the common memory of the Questura.

  Almost persuaded, he decided to return to the matter at hand: he needed to talk to Griffoni about the coupons, just as he needed to get a better sense of the pharmacy and the pharmacist.

  As he climbed the stairs to Griffoni’s office, Brunetti reflected on the fact that few of his colleagues were as sly as Claudia, fewer still as inventive. Her ability to mould herself into the person who would be most able to understand a witness or suspect was remarkable, as was the ease with which she adapted her speech – pronunciation, intonation, range of reference – to resemble theirs in almost undetectable ways. That once established, she went on to approving of their ideas and prejudices by almost imperceptible nods and smiles. Brunetti could never recognize the exact moment she became their second selves, although he had often seen the moment the second skin dropped from her and she returned to her caustic, relentless self.

  He found her in her office, leaning back in her chair, listening to someone talk to her on her phone. She was sitting sidewa
ys at her desk, so she saw Brunetti arrive. She smiled and held up two fingers, and within seconds the rhythm of her responses began to signal impatience. The other speaker did not resist for long, and the conversation ended. She stood and stretched her arms above her head. ‘Does the outside world still exist?’ she inquired.

  Brunetti nodded and stepped back, holding up his arms in the manner of the men who direct aeroplanes to their parking places on an airfield. Repeatedly taking small steps backwards through the doorway, he waved her towards him and out of the office. She followed him gladly.

  ‘Let’s visit the pharmacy,’ he suggested, handing her the coupons that had been in Tullio Gasparini’s drawer.

  ‘Oh, good,’ she said with feigned delight. ‘I’ve been wanting some new lipsticks for weeks; maybe I can buy them with Aunt Matilde’s coupons.’

  The day was friendly, so they decided to walk to Vallaresso and take the Number Two to San Marcuola and walk from there. Riva degli Schiavoni was crowded, even this late in November, reminding Brunetti of how empty it had been only a few years ago. Having vowed to himself not to grumble about the awful changes to the city, he contented himself with telling Claudia about some of the places they passed. There was the vaporetto that had been tipped upside down, years ago, during a storm. He could no longer remember how many people had died, trapped inside. As they progressed towards San Marco, he told her about the Sette Martiri, men shot by the Germans during the war in reprisal for a missing German soldier who, it turned out, had fallen into the water drunk, and drowned.

  She gave a shrug that could be made only by someone whose grandparents had lived through the war. ‘That happened to a great-uncle of mine. He was eleven,’ she said. ‘Nothing was named after him, though.’

  They came down the bridge and decided to pass through the Piazza before getting the vaporetto. They walked out into the middle of the open glory, and Griffoni turned back to look at the façade of the Basilica. When Brunetti stopped beside her, she said. ‘The first time I came to Venice, I must have been seventeen, eighteen – it was a school trip – I spent an hour standing here and turning around in a circle to see it all. Again and again: the library, the pillars, the Basilica, the bell tower. And now some days I walk across it without paying much attention.’