Uniform Justice

by Donna Leon

  most immediate of his desires.

  "He can't see anyone she said shortly.

  "I saw him before Brunetti said, then added, in the hope that it would

  give force to his request, 'at the school." He waited to see if this

  would have any effect on the woman, but then went on, "It's necessary

  that I speak to him."

  She made a noise, but it was cut off by the electrical buzz of the door

  release, leaving Brunetti to guess at its nature. He pushed open the

  door, passed quickly through a hallway, and stopped at the bottom of a

  staircase. At the top, a door opened and a tall woman came out on to

  the landing. "Up here she said.

  When he reached the top of the stairs, she turned and led him into the

  apartment, closed the door behind him, then turned back to face him. He

  was struck at first by the fact that, though surely not as old as he,

  she had white hair, cut short just above her shoulders. It contrasted

  sharply with her skin, dark as an Arab's, and with her eyes, as close

  to black as he had ever seen eyes be.

  She put out her hand. "I'm Luisa, Fernando's cousin."

  Brunetti took her hand and gave his name and position. "I realize this

  is a terrible time he began, planning how best to speak to her. Her

  posture was rigid, her back as straight as if she had been told to

  stand against a wall. She kept her eyes on his as they spoke.

  When Brunetti added nothing to this self-evident truth, she asked,

  "What do you want to know?"

  "I'd like to ask him about his son's state of mind

  "Why?" she demanded. Brunetti thought the answer to that should have

  been obvious, and was taken aback by the vehemence with which she asked

  the question.

  "In a case such as this he began evasively, 'it's necessary to know as

  much as possible about how the person was feeling and behaving, whether

  there were perhaps any signs..."

  "Of what?" She cut him off, making no attempt to disguise her anger or

  her contempt. That he was going to kill

  himself?" Before Brunetti could answer, she went on, "If that's what

  you mean, for God's sake, then say so." Again she didn't wait for an

  answer. The idea's ridiculous. It's disgusting. Ernesto would no

  sooner kill himself than I would. He was a healthy boy. It's

  insulting to suggest that he would." She closed her eyes and pressed

  her lips together, fighting to regain control of herself.

  Before Brunetti could say that he had made no insinuation of any kind,

  Dottor Moro appeared in a doorway. That's enough, Luisa/ he said in a

  soft voice. "You shouldn't say any more."

  Though the man had spoken, it was the face of the woman Brunetti

  studied. The stiffness of her posture lessened, and her body inclined

  in her cousin's direction. She raised one hand towards him but made no

  move to touch him. Instead, she nodded once, ignored Brunetti

  completely, and turned away. Brunetti watched as she walked down the

  corridor and through a door at the end.

  When she was gone, Brunetti turned his attention to the doctor. Though

  he knew this was impossible, Moro had aged a decade during the brief

  time that had elapsed since Brunetti had last seen him. His skin was

  pasty his eyes dull and reddened with tears, but it was in his posture

  that Brunetti perceived most change, for it had taken on the forward

  leaning curvature of an old man.

  "I'm sorry to intrude on your grief, Dottore/ Brunetti began, 'but I

  hope that by speaking to you now, I won't have to trouble you again."

  Even to Brunetti, schooled as he was in the ways of professional

  mendacity, this sounded so forced and artificial as to distance him

  from the other man and his sorrow.

  Moro waved his right hand in the air, a gesture that might just as

  easily have been dismissal as acknowledgement. He wrapped his arms

  around his stomach and bowed his head.

  "Dottore," he went on, 'in the last few days or weeks, had

  your son done anything that would lead you to suspect that he might

  have been considering anything like this?" Moro's head was still bowed

  so Brunetti could not see his eyes, nor had he any idea if the doctor

  was paying attention.

  He continued, "Dottore, I know how difficult this must be for you, but

  it's important that I have this information."

  Without looking up, Moro said, "I don't think you do."

  The beg your pardon," Brunetti said.

  "I don't think you have any idea of how difficult this is."

  The truth of this made Brunetti blush. When his face had grown cool

  again, Moro had still not bothered to look at him. After what seemed

  to Brunetti a long time, the doctor raised his head. No tears stood in

  his eyes, and his voice was as calm as it had been when he spoke to his

  cousin. "I'd be very grateful if you'd leave now, Commissario."

  Brunetti began to protest, but the doctor cut him off by raising his

  voice, but only in volume: his tone remained calm and impersonal.

  "Please don't argue with me. There is nothing at all that I have to

  say to you. Not now, and not in the future." He took his arms from

  their protective position around his middle and let them fall to his

  sides. The have nothing further to say."

  Brunetti was certain that it was futile to pursue the matter now,

  equally certain that he would return and ask the same question again

  after the doctor had had time to overcome his immediate agony. Since

  he had learned of the boy's death, Brunetti had been assailed by the

  desire to know if the man had other children, but couldn't bring

  himself to ask. He had some sort of theoretical belief that their

  existence would serve as consolation, however limited. He tried to put

  himself in Moro's place and understand what solace he would find in the

  survival of one of his own children, but his imagination shied away

  from that horror. At the very thought, some force stronger than taboo

  seized him, numbing his mind. Not daring to offer his hand or to say

  anything further, Brunetti left the apartment.

  From the Salute stop, he took the Number One to San Zaccaria and

  started back toward the Questura. As he approached it, a group of

  teenagers, three boys and two girls, cascaded down the Ponte dei Greci

  and came towards him, arms linked, laughter radiating out from them.

  Brunetti stopped walking and stood in the middle of the pavement,

  waiting for this exuberant wave of youth to wash over him. Like the

  Red Sea, they parted and swept around him: Brunetti was sure they

  hadn't even noticed him in any real sense; he was merely a stationary

  obstacle to be got round.

  Both of the girls had cigarettes in their hands, something that usually

  filled Brunetti with the desire to tell them, if they valued their

  health and well-being, to stop. Instead, he turned and looked after

  them, filled with a sense of almost religious awe at the sight of their

  youth and joy.

  By the time he reached his office, the feeling had passed. On his desk

  he found the first of the many forms that were generated by any case of

  suicide; he didn't bother to fill it out. It was only
after he heard

  from Venturi that he would know how to proceed.

  He called down to the officers' room, but neither Vianello nor Pucetti

  was there. He dialled Signorina Elettra's extension and asked her to

  begin a complete search through all the sources available to her,

  official and unofficial, for information on Fernando Moro's careers as

  both a doctor and a Member of Parliament. Saying that she had already

  begun, she promised to have something for him later in the day.

  The thought of lunch displeased him: food seemed an irrelevant

  extravagance. He felt a gnawing desire to see his family, though he

  knew his current mood would render him so solicitous as to make them

  uncomfortable. He called Paola and told her he couldn't make it home

  for lunch, saying that something had come up at the Questura that would

  keep him there and, yes, yes, he'd eat something and be home at the

  regular time.

  "I hope it's not too bad," Paola said, letting him know that she had

  registered his tone, however neutral he had tried to make his words.

  I'll see you later," he said, still unwilling to tell her what had

  happened. "Hug the kids for me," he said before he hung up.

  He sat at his desk for a few minutes, then drew some papers towards him

  and looked at them, reading through the words, understanding each one

  but not certain he understood what they intended to say. He set them

  aside, then pulled them back and read them again; this time the

  sentences made sense to him, though he could see no reason why anyone

  should find their messages important.

  He went to the window and studied the crane that stood constant guard

  over the church and the restoration that had yet to begin. He had read

  or been told once how much the equally motionless cranes that loomed

  over the empty shell of the opera house cost the city to maintain each

  day. Where did all the money go? he wondered. Who was it that reaped

  such enormous profits from so much inactivity? Idly, keeping his mind

  occupied with matters other than the death of young men, he began rough

  calculations. If the cranes cost five thousand Euros a day, it would

  cost the city almost two million Euros to keep them there a year,

  whether they worked or not. He stood for a long time, numbers moving

  around in his head in far greater activity than had been shown by any

  of those cranes for some time.

  Abruptly he turned away and went back to his desk. There was no one to

  call, so he left his office, went downstairs and out of the Questura.

  He walked to the bar at the foot of the bridge, where he had a panino

  and a glass of red wine and let the words of the day's newspaper pass

  under his eyes.

  4i

  Though he prevaricated as much as he could, Brunetti still had no

  choice but eventually to return to the Questura. He stopped in the

  officers' room to look for Vianello and found him there with Pucetti.

  The younger officer started to get to his feet, but Brunetti waved him

  back. There was only one other policeman in the room, sitting at a

  desk off to one side, talking on the phone.

  "Anything?" he asked the two seated policemen.

  Pucetti glanced at Vianello, acknowledging his right to speak first.

  "I took him back," the Inspector began, 1jut he wouldn't let me go in

  with him." He shrugged this away and asked, "You, sir?"

  The spoke to Moro and to his cousin, who was there with him. She said

  the boy couldn't have killed himself, seemed pretty insistent on it."

  Something kept Brunetti from telling the others how easy it had been

  for Moro to dismiss him.

  "His cousin, you said?" Vianello interrupted, echoing his

  neutrality.

  "That's what she told me." The habit of doubt, Brunetti reflected, the

  habit of seeking the lowest possible common moral denominator, had been

  bred into all of them. He wondered if there were some sort of

  psychological equation which correlated years of service with the

  police and an inability to believe in human goodness. And whether it

  was possible, or for how long it would be possible, to go back and

  forth between his professional world and his private world without

  introducing the contamination of the first to the second.

  His attention was recalled by Vianello, who had just finished saying

  something.

  "Excuse me?" Brunetti said.

  "I asked if his wife was there Vianello repeated.

  Brunetti shook his head. "I don't know. No one else came in while I

  was there, but there's no reason she would want to talk to me."

  "Is there a wife?" Pucetti asked, emphasizing the first word.

  Rather than admit that he didn't know, Brunetti said, "I asked

  Signorina Elettra to see what she can find out about the family."

  There was something in the papers about them, I think," Vianello said.

  "Years ago." Brunetti and Pucetti waited for him to continue, but all

  the Inspector finally said was, "I don't remember, but I think it was

  something about the wife."

  "Whatever it is, she'll find it Pucetti declared.

  Years ago, Brunetti would have responded with condescension to

  Pucetti's childlike faith in Signorina Elettra's powers, as one would

  to the excesses of the peasant believers in the liquefaction of the

  blood of San Gennaro. Himself presently numbered among that unwashed

  throng, he made no demurral.

  "Why don't you tell the Commissario what you've told me?" Vianello

  asked Pucetti, drawing him back from his devotions and Brunetti back

  from his reflections.

  The portiere told me that the gate is kept locked after ten at night

  the young officer began, tut most faculty members have keys, and

  students who stay out later than that have to ring him to let them

  in."

  "And?" Brunetti asked, sensing Pucetti's reservations.

  "I'm not sure," Pucetti answered, then explained. Two of the boys I

  spoke to, separately, that is, seemed to make fun of the idea. I asked

  why, and one of them smiled and went like this," Pucetti concluded,

  raising the thumb of his right hand towards his mouth.

  Brunetti registered this but left it to Pucetti to continue. I'd say

  the boys are right and he's a drunk, the portiere. It was what eleven

  in the morning when I spoke to him, and he was already halfway

  there."

  "Did any of the other boys mention this?"

  "I didn't want to push them on it, sir. I didn't want any of them to

  know just what I had learned from the others. It's always better if

  they think I already know everything there is to know: that way, they

  think I'll know when they lie. But I got the feeling that they can get

  in and out when they please."

  Brunetti nodded for him to continue.

  "I'm not sure I learned much more than that, sir. Most of them were so

  shocked that all they could do was ask more questions," Pucetti

  answered.

  "What exactly did you ask them?" Brunetti inquired.

  "What you told me to, sir: how well they knew Moro and if they had

  spoken to him in the last few days. None of them could think of

  anything special the boy had said or
done, nor that he had been

  behaving strangely, and none of them said that Moro had been a

  particular friend." "And the faculty?" Brunetti asked.

  "Same thing. None of the ones I spoke to could remember anything

  strange about Moro's behaviour in the last few days, and all of them

  said he was a fine, fine boy but were quick to insist that they really

  didn't know him very well."

  All three of them recognized the phenomenon: most people refused to

  know anything. It was rare for any person who was subject to

  questioning or interrogation to admit to familiarity with the subject

  of police inquiries. One of the texts Paola had dealt with in her

  doctoral thesis was a medieval one entitled The Cloud of Unknowing. For

  an instant Brunetti pictured it as a warm, dry place to which all

  witnesses and potential witnesses fled in lemming-like terror and where

  they huddled until no single question remained to be asked.

  Pucetti went on. "I wanted to speak to his roommate, but he wasn't

  there last night, nor the night before." Seeing interest in their

  faces, he explained, Twenty-three boys, including Moro's roommate, were

  on a weekend trip to the Naval Academy in Livorno. Soccer. The game

  was Sunday afternoon, and then they spent yesterday and this morning

  going to classes there. They don't get home until this evening."

  Vianello shook his head in tired resignation. "I'm afraid this is all

  we're going to get from any of them." Pucetti shrugged in silent

  agreement.