Suffer the little Children

by Donna Leon

  'Then who?' Vianello asked.

  After some time, Brunetti said, 'It could have been Scarpa.'

  'But he belongs to Patta,' Vianello said, making no attempt to disguise his distaste for the Lieutenant.

  'He's mishandled a few things recently. He could have taken it straight to the Questore as a way of trying to bolster his position’

  'But when Patta hears about it?' Vianello asked. 'He's not going to like having been hopped over by Scarpa.' . It was not the first time that Brunetti had considered the symbiosis between those two gentlemen from the South, Vice-Questore Patta and his watchdog. Lieutenant Scarpa. He had always assumed that Scarpa's sights were set on the Vice-Questore's patronage. Could it be, however, that the Lieutenant saw his liaison with Patta as nothing more than a flirtation, a stepping stone on the way to the realization of a higher ambition and that his real target was the Questore himself?

  Over the years, Brunetti had learned that he underestimated Scarpa to his cost, so perhaps it was best to admit this possibility and bear it in mind in his future dealings with the Lieutenant. Patta might be a fool and much given to indolence and personal vanity, but Brunetti had seen no evidence that he was corrupt in anything beyond the trivial nor that he was in the hands of the Mafia.

  He glanced away from Vianello to follow this train of thought. Have we arrived, then, he wondered, at the point where the absence of a vice equals the presence of its opposite? Have we all gone mad?

  Vianello, accustomed to Brunetti's habits, waited until his superior's attention returned and asked, 'Shall we ask her to find out?'

  ‘I think she'd enjoy that,' Brunetti answered immediately, though he suspected he should not give even this much encouragement to Signorina Elettra's habit of undermining the system of police security.

  'Do you remember that woman who came in about six months ago, the one who told us about the pregnant girl?' Brunetti asked.

  Vianello nodded and asked, 'Why?'

  Brunetti cast his mind back to the woman he had interviewed. Short, older than sixty, with much-permed blonde hair, and very worried that her husband would somehow become aware that she had been to see the police. But someone had told her to come. A daughter or a daughter-in-law, he remembered, was mixed up in it somehow.

  'I'd like you to check if there was a transcript made of the interview. I don't remember whether I asked for one, and I don't remember her name. It was in the spring some time, wasn't it?'

  ‘I think so’ Vianello answered. 'I'll see if I can track it down’

  It might not have anything to do with this, but I'd Uke to read what she said, maybe talk to her again’

  If there is a transcript, I'll find it,' Vianello said.

  Brunetti looked at his watch. 'I'm going over to the hospital to see what his wife will tell me,' he said to Vianello. 'And do ask Signorina Elettra if she can find out who was informed about the Carabinieri... operation’ He wanted to use a stronger word - attack, raid - but he restrained himself.

  ‘I’ll speak to her when she comes in this afternoon,' said the Inspector.

  'Afternoon?' asked a puzzled Brunetti.

  It's Tuesday,' Vianello said by way of explanation, as if to say, 'Food stores close on

  Wednesday afternoon, fish restaurants don't open on Monday, and Signorina Elettra doesn't work on Tuesday mornings’ 'Ah, yes, of course’

  7

  She was strong. Had Brunetti been asked to explain why this word came to him when he first saw Pedrolli's wife, he would have been hard-pressed to answer, but the word came to his mind when he saw her and remained with him for as long as he dealt with her. She stood at the side of her husband's bed and gave Brunetti a startled look when he came in, even though he had knocked. Perhaps she expected someone else, someone in a white doctor's coat.

  She was beautiful: that was the second thing that struck Brunetti: tall and slender with a mane of dark brown curls. She had high cheekbones and light eyes that might have been green or might have been grey, and a long, thin nose that tipped up at the end. Her mouth was large, disproportionately so below her nose, but the full lips seemed somehow to suit her face perfectly. Though she must have been in her early forties, her face was still unwrinkled, the skin taut. She looked at least a decade younger than the man in the bed, though the circumstances prevented that from being a fair comparison.

  When she registered that Brunetti was not whoever she was expecting, she turned back to her husband, who appeared to be asleep. Brunetti could see Pedrolli's forehead and nose and chin, and the long shape of his body under the blanket.

  She kept her eyes on her husband, and Brunetti kept his on her. She was wearing a dark green woollen skirt and a beige sweater. Brown shoes, expensive shoes, made for standing, and not for walking.

  'Signora?' said Brunetti, remaining by the door.

  'Yes?' she said, glancing at him quickly but then turning back to her husband.

  'I'm from the police,' he said.

  Her rage was instantaneous and caught him off guard. Her voice took on a threatening sibilance that sounded one remove from physical violence. 'You do this to us, and you dare to come into this room? You beat him unconscious and leave him lying there, speechless, and you come in here and you dare to talk to me?'

  Fists clenched, she took two steps towards Brunetti, who could not stop himself from raising his hands, palms outward, in a gesture more suited to warding off evil spirits than the threat of physical violence. I had nothing to do with what happened last night, Signora. I'm here to investigate the attack on your husband’

  'liar’ she spat, but she came no nearer.

  'Signora’ Brunetti said, intentionally keeping his voice low, I was called at home at two o'clock this morning and came down here because the Questura had received a report that a man had been attacked and taken to the hospital’ It was an elaboration - one might even have called it a lie - but the essence was true. 'If you wish, you can ask the doctors or the nurses if this is so’

  He paused and watched her consider. 'What's your name?' she demanded.

  'Guido Brunetti, Commissario of Police. The operation in which your husband was injured .. ‘ He watched her begin to object, but he continued '... was a Carabinieri operation, not ours. To the best of my knowledge, we were not informed of it in advance’ Perhaps he should not have told her this, but he did so in an attempt to deflect her wrath and induce her to speak to him.

  The attempt failed, for she immediately returned to the attack, though no matter how forceful her words, her voice never grew louder than a whisper. 'You mean these gorillas are free to come into the city whenever they want and break into our homes and kidnap our children and leave a man lying there like that?' She turned and pointed to her husband, and the gesture, as well as the words, struck Brunetti as intentionally dramatic. However sympathetic he might be towards Pedrolli and his wife, Brunetti did not allow himself to forget, as she seemed capable of doing, that they were accused of illegally adopting a child and that her husband was under arrest

  'Signora, I don't want to disturb your husband.' She seemed to soften, so he continued. 'If I can find a nurse who will stay in the room with him, will you come into the corridor and talk to me?'

  'If you can find a nurse in this place, you're better than I. I haven't seen anyone since they brought me in here’ she said, still angry, but less so now. "They're quite happy just to leave him lying there.'

  Good sense told Brunetti not to respond. He held up his hand in a calming gesture. The uniformed Carabiniere still sat in the corridor though he didn't so much as glance up when Brunetti left the room. At the end of the corridor, the day shift was just coming on duty, two women of middle years dressed in today's nursing uniform: jeans and sweaters worn under long white jackets. The taller of the two wore red shoes; the other had white hair.

  He took his warrant card from his wallet and showed it to them. ‘I’m here for Dottor Pedrolli’ he said.

  'What for?' the tall one deman
ded. 'Don't you think you've done enough?'

  The older one put a restraining hand on her colleague's arm, as if she feared she and Brunetti were about to get into a fist-fight. She tugged at her colleague's arm, not gently, and said, 'Be careful, Gina,' then, to Brunetti, 'What is it you want?' Her tone, though milder, still seemed to accuse Brunetti of complicity in the blow that had put Dottor Pedrolli in the room halfway down the corridor.

  Unwilling to relent, the one called Gina snorted, but at least she was listening to him, so Brunetti continued. I was here at three this morning to visit someone I thought was the victim of an attack. My men were not involved in it.'

  The older one at least seemed willing to believe him, and that appeared to lessen the tension. 'Do you know him?' he asked, directing the question only at her.

  She nodded. ‘I used to work in paediatrics, until about two years ago, and there was no one better. Believe me, he's the best. Sometimes I'd think he was the only one who really cared about the kids: he was certainly the only one who ever acted like it was important to listen to them and talk to them. He spent most of his time here; he'd come in for almost anything. We all knew he was the one to call if anything happened during the night. He never made you feel you shouldn't have called him.'

  Brunetti smiled at this description and turned to her colleague. 'Do you know him, too, nurse?'

  She shook her head. The older woman gave her arm a squeeze and said, 'Come on, Gina. You know you do,' and released her hold.

  Gina spoke to her friend. 'I never worked with him, Sandra. But, yes,' she said, and now she turned her attention to Brunetti. 'I've seen him around sometimes, in the bar or in the corridors, but I don't think we've ever spoken - well, not more than to say good morning or something like that.' At Brunetti's nod, she continued. 'But I've heard about him: I suppose everyone does, sooner or later. He's a good man.'

  'And a good doctor,' Sandra added. Neither Brunetti nor Gina seemed willing to speak, and so she changed the subject. 'I read the chart. They don't know what it is. Damasco wants to take more X-rays and do a CAT scan later this morning: that's what he wrote before he went home.'

  Brunetti knew he would be able to get the medical information later, so he turned to Gina. 'Do you know his wife?'

  The question surprised her, and she grew suddenly formal. 'No. That is, I never met her. But I've spoken to her on the phone a few times.' She glanced at the door to Pedrolli's room. 'She's in there with him, isn't she?'

  'Yes,' Brunetti answered. 'And I'd like one of you to stay with him while I talk to her out here, if that's possible.'

  The two women exchanged a glance and Sandra said, ‘I’ll do it.'

  'All right,' said Gina, leaving Brunetti with her colleague.

  He led the way to the door, knocked, and entered. Pedrolli's wife was where he had left her, by the bed, looking at her husband.

  She glanced in their direction and, seeing the nurse's white jacket, asked her, 'Do you know when a doctor will come to see him?' Though the words were neutral enough, her tone suggested that she feared there might be days to wait, or longer.

  'Rounds begin at ten, Signora,' the nurse answered dispassionately.

  Pedrolli's wife looked at her watch, drew her lips together, and addressed Brunetti. 'There's plenty of time for us to talk, then.' She touched the back of her husband's right hand and turned away from the bed.

  Brunetti stepped back to allow her to precede him, then pulled the door shut. She glanced at the Carabiniere and back at Brunetti with a look that suggested he was responsible for the other man's presence, but said nothing. The corridor ended at a large window that looked down on a courtyard and a scrawny pine tree leaning so sharply to one side that it appeared to grow horizontally, some branches touching the ground.

  Reaching the window, he said, 'My name is Guido Brunetti, Signora.' He did not offer his hand.

  'Bianca Marcolini,' she said, half turned away from him and gazing through the window at the tree.

  As if he had not recognized the surname.

  Brunetti said, I'd like to speak to you about last night, Signora, if I may’

  ‘I’m not sure there's much to say, Commissario. Two masked men broke into our home along with another man. They were armed. They beat my husband insensible and left him like that,' she said, pointing angrily back towards his room. Then she added, her voice rough, 'And they took our child’

  Brunetti had no idea whether she was trying to provoke him by continuing to act as though he had been responsible, but he simply asked, 'Would you tell me what you remember of what happened, Signora?'

  'I just told you what happened,' she said. 'Weren't you listening, Commissario?'

  'Yes,' he agreed. 'You did tell me. But I need a clearer picture, Signora. I need to know what was said, and whether the men who came into your house announced themselves as Carabinieri and whether they attacked your husband without provocation.' Brunetti wondered why the Carabinieri had worn masks: usually they did that only when there was some danger that they would be photographed and thus identified. In the case of the arrest of a paediatrician, that hardly seemed the case.

  'Of course they didn't tell us who they were,' she said, raising her voice. 'Do you think my husband would have tried to fight them if they had?' He watched as she cast her thoughts back to the scene in her bedroom. 'He told me to call the police, for God's sake’

  Making no attempt to correct her for confusing the Carabinieri with the police, Brunetti asked, 'Did he, or you, have any reason to expect them to come, Signora?'

  ‘I don't know what you mean,' she said angrily, perhaps trying to deflect the question with her tone.

  'Let me try to make my question clearer, then, if I might. Is there any reason why you, or your husband, thought the police or the Carabinieri might be interested in you or might approach you?' Even as he said it, Brunetti knew he had chosen the wrong word, one that was sure to inflame her.

  He was not wrong. '"Approach" us,' she gasped, driven beyond her powers of restraint. She took a step away from the window and raised her hand. She shot a finger out at him and said, her voice tight with rage she could no longer contain, 'Might approach us. That was no approach, Signore: it was an attack, an assault, a raid.' She stopped, and Brunetti saw that the flesh around her mouth stood out white in the sudden redness of her face. She took a step towards him but then faltered. She braced a hand against the windowsill, locking her elbow to keep herself from falling.

  Brunetti, was immediately beside her, supporting her until she half leaned, half sat on the windowsill. He kept his hold on her arm. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, hands propped on her knees, head hanging limply.

  Halfway down the corridor, Sandra put her head out of the door to Pedrolli's room, but Brunetti raised a calming hand and she moved back inside. The woman beside him took a number of deep, rasping breaths, her head still lowered.

  A man in a white lab coat came into view at the end of the corridor, but his attention was on a sheet of paper in his hand: he ignored, or didn't see, Brunetti and the woman. He disappeared into one of the rooms without knocking.

  Time passed, until finally Signora Marcolini pushed herself up and stood, but did not open her eyes. Brunetti released her arm.

  'Thank you,' she said, still breathing heavily. Eyes still closed, she said, 'It was terrible. The noise woke me up. Men shouting, and when I looked, I saw a man hit Gustavo with something, and then he was on the ground, and then Alfredo started to scream, and I thought they were there to hurt us.'

  She opened her eyes and looked at Brunetti. 'I think we must have been a little crazy. From the fear.'

  ‘Fear of what, Signora?' Brunetti asked softly, hoping his question would not propel her into rage again.

  That they'd arrest us,' she said.

  'Because of the baby?'

  She lowered her head, but he heard her answer, 'Yes.'

  8

  'Would you like to tell me about it, Signora?' Brunetti a
sked. He glanced along the corridor and saw the man in the white lab coat leave the room on the left and head back towards the double glass doors at the end of the corridor. The man went through the doors, turned, and disappeared.

  Experience told Brunetti to remain as still as he could until his presence became an almost imperceptible part of the woman's surroundings. A minute passed, and then another. Intensely aware of the woman beside him, he continued to gaze off down the corridor.

  Finally she said, in a softer voice, 'We couldn't have children. And we couldn't adopt.' Another pause, and then she added, 'Or, if we

  could have, by the time our papers were processed and we were approved, the only children we could have would be ... well, would be older. But we wanted’ she said, and Brunetti prepared himself to hear what she would say,

  .. a baby’ She spoke calmly, as though entirely unconscious of the pathos of what she had said, and Brunetti found an even greater pathos in that.

  He still did not look at her; he permitted himself to nod in acknowledgement, but still he said nothing.

  'My sister isn't married, but Gustavo's sister has three children,' she said. 'And his brother has two.' She glanced at him as if to register his response to this evidence of their failure, and went on. 'Then someone here at the hospital -I think it was one of his colleagues, or one of his patients - well, someone told Gustavo about a private clinic’ He waited for her to continue, and she added. 'We went and we had tests, and there were ... there were problems.' The fact that Brunetti knew about the nature of the visit embarrassed him as much as if he had been caught reading someone else's mail.

  Idly, she rubbed the toe of her shoe against a long scratch in the floor tiles that had been left by a cart or some heavy object. Still looking down, she added, 'We both had problems. If it had been just one of us, it might have been possible. But with both of us.. ‘ Brunetti let the pause stretch out until she added, 'He saw the results. He didn't want to tell me, but I made him.'