by Donna Leon
Uniform Justice
( Comisario Guido Brunetti - 12 )
Donna Leon
For more than a decade Donna Leon has been a bestseller in Europe with a series of mysteries featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti. Always ready to bend the rules to solve a crime, Brunetti manages to maintain his integrity while maneuvering through a city rife with politics, corruption, and intrigue. In *Uniform Justice*, a young cadet has been found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice’s elite military academy. Brunetti’s sorrow for the boy, so close in age to his own son, is rivaled only by his contempt for a community that is more concerned with protecting the reputation of the school, and its privileged students, than with finding the truth. The young man’s father is a doctor and former politician. He is a man of an impeccable integrity who inexplicably avoids talking to the police. As Brunetti pursues his inquiry, he is faced with a wall of silence. Is the military protecting its own? Or has Brunetti uncovered a conspiracy far more sinister than that of a single death?
Uniform Justice
by
Donna Leon
Donna Leon has lived in Venice for many years and previously lived in
Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, where she worked as a
teacher. Her previous novels featuring Commissario Brunetti have all
been highly acclaimed, most recently Friends in High Places, which won
the CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, A Sea of Troubles and
Wilful Behaviour.
Uniform Justice
Also by Donna Leon
Death at La Fenice
Death in a Strange Country
The Anonymous Venetian
A Venetian Reckoning
Acqua Alta
The Death of Faith
A Noble Radiance
Fatal Remedies
Friends in High Places
A Sea of Troubles
Wilful Behaviour
Kent for Hedi and Agusti Janes
In uomini, in sol dati spe rare fe delta
You expect fidelity in men, in soldiers?
Cost fan tutte --Mozart
Thirst woke him. It was not the healthy thirst that follows three sets
of tennis or a day spent skiing, thirst that comes slowly: it was the
grinding, relentless thirst that comes of the body's desperate attempt
to replenish liquids that have been displaced by alcohol. He lay in
his bed, suddenly awake, covered with a thin film of sweat, his
underwear damp and clinging.
At first he thought he could outwit it, ignore it and fall back into
the sodden sleep from which his thirst had prodded him. He turned on
his side, mouth open on the pillow, and pulled the covers up over his
shoulder. But much as his body craved more rest, he could not force it
to ignore his thirst nor the faint nervousness of his stomach. He lay
there, inert and utterly deprived of will, and told himself to go back
to sleep.
For some minutes he succeeded, but then a church bell somewhere towards
the city poked him back to consciousness. The idea of liquid seeped
into his mind: a glass of sparkling mineral water, its sides running
with condensation; the drinking fountain in the corridor of his
elementary school; a paper cup filled with Coca-Cola. He needed liquid
more than anything life had ever presented to him as desirable or
good.
Again, he tried to force himself to sleep, but he knew he had lost and
now had no choice but to get out of bed. He started to think about
which side of bed to get out of and whether the floor of the corridor
would be cold, but then he pushed all of these considerations aside as
violently as he did his blankets and got to his feet. His head
throbbed and his stomach registered resentment of its new position
relative to the floor, but his thirst ignored them both.
He opened the door to his room and started down the corridor, its
length illuminated by the light that filtered in from outside. As he
had feared, the linoleum tiles were harsh on his naked feet, but the
thought of the water that lay ahead gave him the will to ignore the
cold.
He entered the bathroom and, driven by absolute need, headed to the
first of the white sinks that lined the wall. He turned on the cold
tap and let it run for a minute: even in his fuddled state he
remembered the rusty warm taste of the first water that emerged from
those pipes. When the water that ran over his hand was cold, he cupped
both hands and bent down towards them. Noisy as a dog, he slurped the
water and felt it moving inside him, cooling and saving him as it went.
Experience had taught him to stop after the first few mouthfuls, stop
and wait to see how his troubled stomach would respond to the surprise
of liquid without alcohol. At first, it didn't like it, but youth and
good health made up for that, and then his stomach accepted the water
quietly, even asked for more.
Happy to comply, he leaned down again and took eight or nine large
mouthfuls, each one bringing more relief to his tortured body. The
sudden flood of water triggered something in his stomach, and that in
turn triggered something in his brain, and he grew dizzy and had to
lean forward, hands propped on the front of the sink, until the world
grew quiet again.
He put his hands under the still flowing stream and drank again. At a
certain point, experience and sense told him any more would be risky,
so he stood up straight, eyes closed, and dragged his wet palms across
his face and down the front of his T-shirt. He lifted the hem and
wiped at his lips; then, refreshed and feeling as if he might again
begin to contemplate life, he turned to go back to his room.
And saw the bat, or what his muddled senses first perceived as a bat,
just there, off in the distance. It couldn't be a bat, for it was
easily two metres long and as wide as a man. But it had the shape of a
bat. It appeared to suspend itself against the wall, its head perched
above black wings that hung limp at its sides, clawed feet projecting
from beneath.
He ran his hands roughly over his face, as if to wipe away the sight,
but when he opened his eyes again the dark shape was still there. He
backed away from it and, driven by the fear of what might happen to him
if he took his eyes from the bat, he moved slowly in the direction of
the door of the bathroom, towards where he knew he would find the
switch for the long bars of neon lighting. Befuddled by a mixture of
terror and incredulity, he kept his hands behind him, one palm flat and
sliding ahead of him on the tile wall, certain that contact with the
wall was his only contact with reality.
Like a blind man, he followed his seeing hand along the wall until he
found the switch and the long double row of neon lights passed
illumination along one by one until a day like brightness filled the
room.
Fear drove him to close his eyes while the lights came flickering on,
fear of what horrid motion the bat-like shape would be driven to make
when di
sturbed from the safety of the near darkness. When the lights
grew silent, the young man opened his eyes and forced himself to
look.
Although the stark lighting transformed and revealed the shape, it did
not entirely remove its resemblance to a bat, nor did it minimize the
menace of those trailing wings. The wings, however, were revealed as
the engulfing folds of the dark cloak that served as the central
element of their winter uniform, and the head of the bat, now
illuminated, was the head of Ernesto Moro, a Venetian and, like the boy
now bent over the nearest sink, racked by violent vomiting, a student
at San Martino Military Academy.
It took a long time for the authorities to respond to the death of
Cadet Moro, though little of the delay had to do with the behaviour of
his classmate, Pietro Pellegrini. When the waves of sickness abated,
the boy returned to his room and, using the telefonino which seemed
almost a natural appendage, so often did he use and consult it, he
called his father, on a business trip in Milano, to explain what had
happened, or what he had just seen. His father, a lawyer, at first
said he would call the authorities, but then better sense intervened
and he told his son to do so himself and to do it instantly.
Not for a moment did it occur to Pellegrini's father that his son was
in any way involved in the death of the other boy, but he was a
criminal lawyer and familiar with the workings of the official mind. He
knew that suspicion was bound to fall upon the person who hesitated in
bringing a crime to the attention of the police, and he also knew how
eager they were to seize upon the obvious solution. So he told the boy
indeed, he could be said to have commanded him to call the authorities
instantly. The boy, trained in obedience by his father and by two
years at San Martino, assumed that the authorities were those in charge
of the school and thus went downstairs to report to his commander the
presence of a dead boy in the third floor bathroom.
The police officer at the Questura who took the call when it came from
the school asked the name of the caller, wrote it down, then asked him
how he came to know about this dead person and wrote down that answer,
as well. After hanging up, the policeman asked the colleague who was
working the switchboard with him if they should perhaps pass the report
on to the Carabinieri, for the Academy, as a military institution,
might be under the jurisdiction of the Carabinieri rather than the city
police. They debated this for a time, the second one calling down to
the officers' room to see if anyone there could solve the procedural
problem. The officer who answered their call maintained that the
Academy was a private institution with no official ties to the Army he
knew, because his dentist's son was a student there and so they were
the ones who should respond to the call. The men on the switchboard
discussed this for some time, finally agreeing with their colleague.
The one who had taken the call noticed that it was after eight and
dialled the interior number of his superior, Commissario Guido
Brunetti, sure that he would already be in his office.
Brunetti agreed that the case was theirs to investigate and then asked,
"When did the call come in?"
"Seven twenty-six, sir came Alvise's efficient, crisp reply.
A glance at his watch told Brunetti that it was now more than a
half-hour after that, but as Alvise was not the brightest star in the
firmament of his daily routine, he chose to make no comment and,
instead, said merely, "Order a boat. I'll be down."
When Alvise hung up, Brunetti took a look at the week's duty roster
and, seeing that Ispettore Lorenzo Vianello's name was not listed for
that day nor for the next, he called
Vianello at home and briefly explained what had happened. Before
Brunetti could ask him, Vianello said, Till meet you there."
Alvise had proven capable of informing the pilot of Commissario
Brunetti's request, no doubt in part because the pilot sat at the desk
opposite him, and so, when Brunetti emerged from the Questura a few
minutes later, he found both Alvise and the pilot on deck, the boat's
motor idling. Brunetti paused before stepping on to the launch and
told Alvise, "Go back upstairs and send Pucetti down."
"But don't you want me to come with you, sir?" Alvise asked, sounding
as disappointed as a bride left waiting on the steps of the church.
"No, it's not that," Brunetti said carefully, 'but if this person calls
back again, I want you to be there so that there's continuity in the
way he's dealt with. We'll learn more that way."
Though this made no sense at all, Alvise appeared to accept it;
Brunetti reflected, not for the first time, that it was perhaps the
absence of sense that made it so easy for Alvise to accept. He went
docilely back inside the Questura. A few minutes later Pucetti emerged
and stepped on to the launch. The pilot pulled them away from the Riva
and toward the Bacino. The night's rain had washed the pollution from
the air, and the city was presented with a gloriously limpid morning,
though the sharpness of late autumn was in the air.
Brunetti had had no reason to go to the Academy for more than a decade,
not since the graduation of the son of a second cousin. After being
inducted into the Army as a lieutenant, a courtesy usually extended to
graduates of San Martino, most of them the sons of soldiers, the boy
had progressed through the ranks, a source of great pride to his father
and equal confusion to the rest of the family. There was no military
tradition among the Brunettis nor among his mother's family, which is
not to say that the family had never had anything to do with the
military. To their cost, they had, for it was the generation of
Brunetti's parents that had not only fought the last war but had had
large parts of it fought around them, on their own soil.
Hence it was that Brunetti, from the time he was a child, had heard the
military and all its works and pomps spoken of with the dismissive
contempt his parents and their friends usually reserved for the
government and the Church. The low esteem with which he regarded the
military had been intensified over the years of his marriage to Paola
Falier, a woman of leftish, if chaotic, politics. It was Paola's
position that the greatest glory of the Italian Army was its history of
cowardice and retreat, and its greatest failure the fact that, during
both world wars, its leaders, military and political, had flown in the
face of this truth and caused the senseless deaths of hundreds of
thousands of young men by relentlessly pursuing both their own delusory
ideas of glory and the political goals of other nations.
Little that Brunetti had observed during his own undistinguished term
of military service or in the decades since then had persuaded him that
Paola was wrong. Brunetti realized that not much he had seen could
persuade him that the military, either Italian or foreign, was much
different from th
e Mafia: dominated by men and unfriendly to women;
incapable of honour or even simple honesty beyond its own ranks;
dedicated to the acquisition of power; contemptuous of civil society;
violent and cowardly at the same time. No, there was little to
distinguish one organization from the other, save that some wore easily
recognized uniforms while the other leaned toward Armani and Brioni.
The popular beliefs about the history of the Academy were known to
Brunetti. Established on the Giudecca in 1852 by Alessandro Loredan,
one of Garibaldi's earliest supporters in the Veneto and, by the time
of Independence, one of his generals, the school was originally located
in a large building
on the island. Dying childless and without male heirs, Lurcdan had
left the building as well as his family palnzzo and fortune in trust,
on the condition that the income be used to support the military
Academy to which he had given the name of his father's patron saint.
Though the oligarchs of Venice might not have been wholehearted
supporters of the Risorgimento, they had nothing but enthusiasm for an
institution which so effectively assured that the Loredan fortune
remained in the city. Within hours of his death, the exact value of
his legacy was known, and within days the trustees named in the will
had selected a retired officer, who happened to be the brother-in-law
of one of them, to administer the Academy. And so it had continued to
this day: a school run on strictly military lines, where the sons of
officers and gentlemen of wealth could acquire the training and bearing
which might prepare them to become officers in their turn.
