by Donna Leon
pastel paper. As he knew she had a
standing order for flowers to be delivered on Monday from Biancat, he
wondered if he'd got things wrong in thinking today was Tuesday or if
he'd somehow invented the events of the previous day.
"Are those from Biancat?" he asked.
She ripped two of the packages open and began to place dwarf sunflowers
in a green vase. "No, they're from Rialto." She stepped back from the
desk, studied the arrangement, then added three more sunflowers.
"Then it's really Tuesday?"
She gave him a strange look and answered, "Of course."
"Don't the flowers usually arrive on Monday?"
She smiled, lifted the vase, and placed it on the other side of her
computer. "Yes, they usually do. But the Vice-Questore has begun to
cause quite a fuss about office expenses, so, because they're so much
cheaper there, I thought I'd get them from Rialto for a while, until
something diverts him."
"Did you bring them all yourself?" he asked, trying to calculate
whether they'd fit in her arms.
"No, I called for a launch when I realized how many of them I'd
bought."
"A police launch?"
"Of course. It would be difficult to justify taking a taxi," she said,
snapping off the stem of a carnation.
"What with the economy drive and all," Brunetti suggested.
"Exactly."
Three of the other bouquets ended up together in an enormous ceramic
vase, and the last, asters, went into a narrow crystal vase Brunetti
could not remember ever having seen. When all three vases were placed
to her satisfaction and the papers neatly folded and placed in the
basket she kept for paper to be recycled, she said, "Yes,
Commissario?"
"Have you managed to find out anything about the daughter?"
Signorina Elettra pulled a notebook from the side of her
/
desk and flipped it open. Reading from it, she began, "She was taken
out of school two years ago, and there's been no j trace of her, at
least no bureaucratic trace, since."
Taken out by whom?" 5
"Her father, apparently." |
"How did that happen?"
The school records show that her last day of school was the sixteenth
of November."
She looked at him, neither of them having to remind the other that
Signora Moro had been shot one week before.
"And?" he asked.
"And that's all. The forms on file say that the parents had decided to
place her in a private school."
"Where?" Brunetti asked.
"It's not necessary to mention that, I was told."
"And didn't they ask?" he demanded, his irritation clear. "Don't they
need to know where a child's going?"
The woman I spoke to said that all that's required is that the parents
complete and sign the proper forms, in duplicate Signorina Elettra
recited in what Brunetti assumed was the mechanical voice of whoever
she had spoken to.
"And a child's allowed to disappear and no questions asked?"
"I was told that the school's responsibility ends once the parents have
filled in the forms and the child's been taken from the school by one
of them."
"Just like that?" he asked.
Signorina Elettra opened her hands in a gesture meant to show her own
lack of responsibility. This woman said she wasn't working there when
the girl was withdrawn, so the best she could do was try to explain the
regulations to me." ,
"So where is she? A little girl can't just disappear," Brunetti *
insisted.
"She could be anywhere, I suppose," Signorina Elettra said, then added,
"But she's not in Siena."
Brunetti shot her an inquiring glance.
"I called the police there, and then I had a look through the records
of the school system. There's no record for her, nor for any child of
the Ferros."
"The mother's missing now, too Brunetti said and then went on to tell
her of his visit to her apartment and the inferences he had drawn from
the presence of the shirt.
Signorina Elettra's face paled and just as suddenly flushed. "His
shirt?" she asked then, before he could answer, repeated the question,
"His shirt?"
"Yes/ Brunetti answered. He started to ask her what she thought of
this, but when he took a closer look at her face, he realized there was
only one man this could cause her to think of, and he spoke to fill the
painful silence that the memory of his loss brought into the room. "Can
you think of a way to trace the child?" he finally said. When she
seemed not to hear him, he said, "There's got to be a way to find her.
Some central register of children enrolled in schools, perhaps?"
As if returning from a long distance, Signorina Elettra said in a very
soft voice, "Perhaps her medical records, or if she's in the Girl
Scouts."
Before she could suggest anything else, Brunetti cut her off by saying,
There are her grandparents. They've got to have some idea of where she
is."
"Do you know where they are?" Signorina Elettra asked with returning
interest.
"No, but both of the Moros are Venetian, so they should be here in the
city."
Till see what I can find out was the only remark she permitted herself.
Then: "By the way, sir, I found out about the girl who was supposedly
raped at the Academy."
"Yes? How?"
"Friends from the past was the only explanation she provided. When she
saw that she had Brunetti's attention, Signorina Elettra went on. "The
girl was thefidanzata of one of
the students, and he brought her back to his room one night. Somehow,
the captain of his class found out about it and went to the room. She
started screaming when he came in, and then someone called the police.
But there were never any charges and, from what I make of reading the
original report, probably no need for any."
"I see," he said, not bothering to ask her how she had found that
report so quickly. "Tantofumo, poco arrosto." As soon as he spoke he
was aware how his dismissal of the story would seem to her, and so
hastened to add, "But thank God for the girl."
Sounding not at all convinced by his piety, Signorina Elettra said
merely, "Indeed," and turned back to her computer.
Brunetti called down to the officers' room and asked where Pucetti was,
only to be told that he was out on patrol and wouldn't be back until
the following morning. After he hung up, he sat and wondered how long
it would take before his appreciation of Pucetti's intelligence would
begin to work to the young man's disadvantage. Most of the others,
even those arch-fools, Alvise and Riverre, were unlikely to turn
against him: the uniformed officers were pretty much devoid of
jealousy, as least so far as Brunetti could discern. Perhaps Vianello,
closer to them in rank and age, would have a better sense of this.
Someone like Scarpa, however, was bound to regard Pucetti with the same
suspicion with which he viewed Vianello. Even though Vianello had for
years kept his own counsel, it had been obviou
s to Brunetti that the
antipathy between the two men had been instant and fierce, on both
sides. Possible motives abounded: dislike between a southerner and a
northerner, between a single man and one so happily married, between
one who delighted in the
imposition of his will upon those around him and another |
who cared only to live peacefully. Brunetti had never been able to
make more sense of it than that the men felt a visceral antipathy for
one another.
He felt a flash of resentment that his professional life should be so
hampered by the complications of personal ,
animosity: why couldn't those who enforced the law be 4
above such things? He shook his head at his own crazy |
utopianism: next he would be longing for a philosopher-king. f
He had only to think of the current leader of government, >
however, for all hopes of the philosopher-king's arrival to wither and
die.
Further reflection was made impossible by the arrival of Alvise with
the latest tabulations of crime statistics, which he placed on
Brunetti's desk, saying that the Vice-Questore needed the finished
report by the end of the day and that he wanted figures he could
present to the press without embarrassment.
"What do you think that means, Alvise?" Brunetti allowed himself to
ask.
"That he solved them all, I'd guess, sir," Alvise answered
straight-faced. He saluted and left, leaving Brunetti with the
lingering suspicion that Lear was not the only man who had a wise fool
in his following.
He worked through lunch and well into the late afternoon juggling
figures and inventing new categories until he had something that would
both supply the truth and satisfy Patta. When he finally glanced at
his watch, he saw that it was after seven, surely time for him to
abandon these concerns and go home. On an impulse, he called Paola and
asked her if she felt like going out to dinner. She hesitated not an
instant, said only that she'd have to prepare something for the kids
and would meet him wherever he chose.
"Sommariva?" he asked.
"Oh my," she answered. "What brings this on?"
"I need a treat he said.
"Maria's cooking?" she asked.
"Your company he answered. Till meet you there at eight."
Almost three hours later, a lobster-filled Brunetti and his
champagne-filled consort climbed the stairs to their apartment, his
steps slowed by satisfying fullness, hers by the grappa she'd drunk
after dinner. Their arms linked, they were looking forward to bed, and
then to sleep.
The phone was ringing as he opened the door, and Brunetti for an
instant thought of not answering it, of leaving whatever it was until
the next morning. Had there been time to see that the children were in
their rooms and thus the call unrelated to their safety, he would have
let it ring on unanswered, but paternity asserted itself, and he
answered it on the fourth ring.
"It's me, sir Vianello said.
"What's wrong?" came Brunetti's instinctive response to Vianello's
voice.
"Moro's mother's been hurt."
"What?"
Sudden static filled the line, drowning out Vianello. When it came to
an end, Brunetti heard only, '.. . no idea who."
"Who what?" Brunetti demanded.
"Did it."
"Did what? I didn't hear you."
"She was hit by a car, sir. I'm in Mestre, at the hospital."
"What happened?"
"She was going to the train station in Mogliano, where she lives. At
least she was walking in that direction. A car hit her, knocked her
down and didn't stop."
"Did anyone see it?"
Two people. The police there talked to them, but neither was sure
about anything other than that it was light-coloured and the driver
might have been a woman."
Glancing at his watch, Brunetti asked, "When did this happen?"
"At about seven, sir. When the police saw that she was Fernando Moro's
mother, one of them remembered the boy's death and called the Questura.
They tried to get you, and then they called me."
Brunetti's glance fell on the answering machine. A tiny pulsating
light illuminated the one message that awaited him. "Has he been
told?"
They called him first, sir. She's a widow, and his name and address
were in her purse."
"And?"
"He came out." Both men thought of what that must have been for Moro,
but neither said anything.
"Where is he now?" Brunetti asked.
"In the hospital here."
"What do the doctors say?" Brunetti asked.
"Some cuts and bruises, but nothing broken. The car must just have
brushed her. But she's seventy-two, so the doctors decided to keep her
overnight." After a pause, Vianello added, "He just left."
There was a lengthy silence. Finally, Vianello said, in response to
Brunetti's unspoken question, "Yes, it might be a good idea. He was
very shaken."
Part of Brunetti's mind was aware that his instinctive desire to profit
from Moro's weakness was no less reptilian than Vianello's
encouragement that he do so. Neither idea stopped him. "How long
ago?" Brunetti asked.
"About five minutes. In a taxi."
Familiar sounds came from the back of the apartment: Paola moving about
in the bathroom, then going down the corridor to their bedroom.
Brunetti's imagination soared above the city and the mainland and
watched a taxi make its way through the empty streets of Mestre and
across the long causeway that led to Piazzale Roma. A single man
emerged,
reached back inside, shoving money at the driver, then turned away and
began to walk towards the iinbarcudero of the Number One. I'll go,"
Brunetti said and hung up.
Paola was already asleep when he looked into the bedroom, a stream of
light falling across her legs. He wrote a note then couldn't decide
where to leave it. Finally he propped the sheet of paper on the
answering machine, where the flickering light still called for
attention.
As Brunetti walked through the quiet city, his imagination took flight
again, but this time it observed a man in a dark suit and a grey
overcoat walking from San Polo toward the Accademia Bridge. As he
watched, the man crossed in front of the museum and made his way into
the narrow calling of Dorsoduro. At the end of the underpass that ran
beside the church of San Gregorio, he crossed the bridge to the broad
Riva in front of the Salute. Moro's house, off to his right, was dark,
though all the shutters were open. Brunetti moved along the canal and
stopped at the foot of the bridge leading back over the small canal and
to the door of Moro's house. From there, he would see Moro returning,
whether he walked, came by taxi or took the Number One. He turned and
looked across the still waters at the disorderly domes of San Marco and
the piebald walls of Palazzo Ducale, and thought of the peace their
beauty brought him. How strange it was: nothing more than the
ar
rangement of lines and colours, and he felt better than he had before
he looked at them.
He heard the throb of the motor of the vaporetto arriving; then saw the
prow emerge from behind the wall of a building. The noise moved into a
different key, and the boat glided up to the imbarcadero. The crewman
tossed out the rope with effortless accuracy and whipped it around the
metal stanchion in the centuries-old knot. A few people got off the
boat, none of them Moro. The metal scraped as the gate was pulled
shut; a careless flip and the rope came free, and the boat continued.
Another boat arrived twenty minutes later, but Moro wasn't on this one,
either. Brunetti was beginning to think the doctor might have decided
to go back to his mother's home in Mogliano when, off to the left, he
heard footsteps approaching. Moro emerged from the narrow calle
between the houses at the end of the tiny campo. Brunetti crossed the
bridge and stood at the bottom, just short of the door to Moro's
house.
The doctor came toward him, hands stuffed into the pockets of his
