Suffer the little Children

by Donna Leon

  The little Spartan boy with the fox eating away at his vitals could have kept no straighter a face than did Vianello. ‘It means he can access the central computer and examine the medical files of anyone for whom he has the ULSS number.'

  'His clients?'

  'Exactly.'

  Brunetti put his elbow on his desk and rubbed his hand across his mouth a few times as he considered the implications of this. Access to those files meant access to all information about medication, hospitalization, diseases cured or under treatment. It meant that an unauthorized person would have access to potentially secret parts of another person's life.

  'AIDS,' Brunetti said. After a long pause, he added, 'Drug rehabilitation. Methadone.'

  'Venereal diseases,' contributed Vianello.

  'Abortions,' added Brunetti, then added, 'If they're his clients, he knows whether they're married, about their family lives, where they work, who their friends are.'

  'The friendly family pharmacist; known you since you were a kid,' added Vianello.

  'How many?' Brunetti asked.

  'He's looked into the files of about thirty of his clients,' Vianello said, pausing to allow Brunetti to register the implications of this. 'Her friend says he won't be able to send us the actual files until tomorrow’

  Brunetti let out a low whistle, then drew their attention back to the original reason for their interest in Dottor Franchi. 'And the appointments?'

  'He's made more than a hundred in the last two years’ Before Brunetti could express his surprise at the number, Vianello said, "That's only one a week, remember’

  Brunetti nodded. 'Has this friend of Signorina Elettra... does he have a name, by the way?' he asked.

  'No’ Vianello said in a curiously bland voice.

  'Have you checked to see which of these appointments actually took place?' Brunetti asked.

  'He sent her the final list of the appointments only this morning’ Vianello said. 'And it seems that all of the appointments Franchi made were kept.' When Brunetti said nothing, the Inspector continued, 'She's already run a check on the other pharmacists. One of them has scheduled only seventeen appointments in the last two years, and all of them were kept: we spoke to the people. Andrea doesn't use the system, so he's off the list. In the other case, she checked the record of appointments in the files in the hospitals here and in Mestre, and in almost all cases the people were listed as having shown up for the appointments he scheduled’ Vianello could barely contain his excitement when he said, 'But one of the pharmacists scheduled three appointments for people who didn't need medical help.'

  'Tell me, Lorenzo,' Brunetti said to save time.

  They're dead,' Vianello said.

  ‘You mean, from what happened to them during the appointments?' asked an astonished Brunetti, wondering how something like this could have happened and he not be aware of it.

  'No. They were dead when the appointments were made.' Vianello allowed himself to savour, and Brunetti to grasp, that information, and then he continued, ‘It looks like he got careless, the pharmacist, and just started punching in the patient numbers of customers at the pharmacy: perhaps he thought they had moved away or perhaps...' and here Vianello gave the small pause he always made before he dropped what he considered to be a bomb. 'Perhaps he's starting to lose his memory. At that age.'

  'Gabetti?' asked Brunetti.

  'None other,' responded a grinning Vianello.

  'All right, Lorenzo. You win,' Brunetti said with a smile. Tell me about the appointments he scheduled for these dead people.'

  'In each case, the doctor recorded on his computer that he had seen the patient, made a diagnosis - it was always something innocuous - and then billed the health service for the appointment.'

  'Very careless,' Brunetti agreed. 'Or very bold. What about the doctors?'

  'It's always the same three, and in each case they recorded the appointments and requested payment’ Vianello said. Almost reluctantly, Vianello added, 'Franchi never scheduled an appointment with any of those three doctors.'

  'I wonder what else he was doing, though,' Brunetti said, then asked, 'Why can't her friend send the files until tomorrow?'

  'Computer things,' said Vianello.

  'I'm not a Neanderthal, you know.' Though Brunetti smiled as he said this, he came across as no less defensive.

  'Signorina Elettra told me it has to do with the way Franchi protected the files: each one requires a different code to get into it, and then you have to go back and find the patient number, using a different access code ... do you want me to go on?' Vianello asked.

  Brunetti's smile became rueful. 'Tomorrow?'

  'Yes.'

  ‘Until then?'

  'Until then, we'll keep calling the patients Gabetti made appointments for and asking them if they were satisfied with the treatment they received. And then we can think about asking the doctors to come in and have a word with us.'

  Brunetti said, 'No, I'd like to wait until we know what Franchi is up to. Are you sure he wasn't suspicious that you held on to his computer for a day?'

  It looked as though Vianello had to stop himself from clapping his hands in delight when he heard the question. ‘I had Alvise take it back’ he said.

  Brunetti laughed out loud.

  He left the Questura at five, his conscience at peace at the thought that his wife, who had said she would bring him more information about Pedrolli, was unlikely to do so by coming to his office. Whatever she had learned, Brunetti was forced to admit that it had probably become irrelevant by now. Whatever charges might be brought against Pedrolli, they were likely to be of the kind that would evaporate at the wave of a chequebook or at some other manifestation of Bianca Marcolini's father's power.

  He let his feet and his whim take him where they pleased, and after a time he found himself standing at the foot of the bridge that led to the entrance to Palazzo Querini Stampalia. The man at the desk knew Brunetti and waved aside his attempt to pay for a ticket.

  He went upstairs to the gallery, where he had not been for some time. How he loved to look at these portraits, not so much because of their beauty as paintings but for the resemblance of so many of them to people he saw every day. Indeed, the portrait of Gerolomo Querini, painted almost five hundred years ago, bore an almost photographic likeness to Vianello - well, to what Vianello had looked like as a younger man. He savoured these faces and looked forward to encountering them again in the order he had become accustomed to over the years.

  His favourite was the Bellini Presentation in the Temple, and, as always, he allowed himself to come to it last. And saw that child, the swaddled Jesus, being passed back to his mother by the high priest Simeon. The baby's body was bound tight by the encircling strips of cloth, his arms trapped to his sides with only the tips of his fingers wriggling free. At the sight of him, Brunetti's thoughts returned to Pedrolli's child, similarly bound, if by the decisions of the state. The mother of the child in the painting held him protectively in both hands; the look she passed to the high priest across the infant's bound body was cool and sceptical. Brunetti noticed for the first time how her scepticism was echoed in the faces of everyone else in the painting, especially in the eyes of a young man on the far right, who gazed out at the viewer as if to ask how he could expect anything good to come of what was going on here.

  Abruptly Brunetti turned from the painting and walked back to the portraits in the other rooms, hoping that the more tranquil faces on the portraits by Bombelli and Tiepolo would erase the uneasy feeling that had come over him at the sight of that trapped child.

  Brunetti was unusually inattentive during dinner, nodding when Paola or the children spoke with one another and contributing little to the conversation. Afterwards, he returned to the living room and to St Petersburg, where he encountered his Marquis in a reflective mood, observing of Russia that it was a place where the taste for the superfluous holds sway over a people who are still unacquainted with the necessary'. Brunetti closed hi
s eyes to consider the contemporary truth of this.

  He heard Paola's footsteps and, without opening his eyes, said, 'Nothing changes, nothing at all.'

  She recognized the book and said, 'I knew nothing good could come of your reading that book.'

  I know it's not politically correct, especially when the leaders of our two great countries are such good buddies, but it sounds like a dreadful place then, and it sounds like a dreadful place now.' He heard the clink of glasses and, opening one eye, saw her place two on the table in front of him.

  'Read Tolstoy,' she advised him. 'Hell make you like it more.'

  'The country or the book?' Brunetti asked, eyes still closed.

  "lime for gossip,' she announced, ignoring his question. She tapped his feet and he pulled them back to create room enough for her to sit.

  He opened his eyes then and took the glass she handed him. He sipped, took a deep breath and inhaled the essence of grappa, and sipped again. Is that the Gaia?' he asked.

  'We've had the bottle since Christmas. With any luck we'll get another one this year, so I see no reason we shouldn't drink it.'

  'Do you think there's grappa in heaven?' Brunetti asked.

  'Since there's no heaven, no, there's no grappa in heaven’ she answered,-then added, 'which is even more reason to drink it while we can.'

  'I'm helpless in the face of your logic’ Brunetti said, emptied his glass, and handed it to her.

  'I'll be back in a moment.'

  'Good’ Brunetti said and closed his eyes again.

  Brunetti felt, rather than saw, Paola get up from the sofa. He listened as she went into the kitchen, heard her moving around and then come back into the living room. Glass clinked against glass, liquid poured, and then she said, 'Here.'

  Suddenly curious about how long he could keep his eyes closed, Brunetti stuck his hand in the air, fingers waving. She gave him the glass, he heard another clink, another glug, and then he felt the sofa shake as she sat back down.

  'Salute’ she said, and he took a sip from the glass he couldn't see. Again he had a foretaste of heaven.

  'Tell me’ he asked.

  'You're welcome’ she answered and then segued seamlessly into, 'At the beginning, people thought Pedrolli was nervous or embarrassed that they would make jokes about him, but as soon as it became obvious how crazy he was about his son, there was no chance that anyone would make fun of him. The only talk was nice talk, or so I was told.'

  'And the Rhett and Scarlett reunion you said didn't work?'

  'I didn't say it: I was told it’ she corrected him. 'According to a number of people, he was always the loving partner, and she was the one who was loved, right from the beginning. But after the son arrived, the equilibrium changed.'

  How?' he asked, sensing from her voice that the answer to this would not be the obvious one that the wife neglected the husband for the new child.

  'He transferred his affection to the son ... or so I was told’ she said, reminding Brunetti of how careful Paola always was to provide citations for her gossip.

  'And where did the wife transfer hers?' he asked.

  'Not to the child, apparently,' she said. 'But that would be understandable, I suppose, if the baby wasn't hers to begin with and if her husband began to pay more attention to the baby than to her.'

  'Even if she didn't much want these attentions any longer?' Brunetti asked.

  Paola leaned against him and rested her elbow on his knees. 'That doesn't make any difference, Guido. You know that.'

  'What doesn't?'

  'Whether she wanted his affections or not. She still wanted to be the object of them.'

  'That doesn't make any sense,' he said.

  She was silent for so long that Brunetti finally opened his eyes and looked at her. She had her face buried in her hands and was shaking her head from side to side.

  'All right, what have I said?' he asked.

  She gave him a level look. 'Even if a woman isn't happy to have them, she still doesn't want them to go to anyone else,' she said.

  'But it's their son, for heaven's sake.'

  'His son,' Paola corrected him, then added for emphasis, 'Not theirs, but his.'

  'Perhaps not,' Brunetti said, then told her the contents of the Carabinieri report.

  'Who the biological father was really doesn't make any difference,' Paola insisted. 'To Pedrolli, the boy is his son. And from what I heard today, my guess is that she never really thought of the child as hers.'

  How much had Pedrolli actually told his wife? She claimed that he had told her the truth, but what was the truth? Brunetti imagined that the Albanian woman, threatened with extradition, would have told the authorities whatever it was she thought they wanted to hear and whatever would make them view her with greatest sympathy. If they asked her if Dottor Pedrolli had promised to raise the boy as his son, this was at least something she could take credit for, if only because it demonstrated a desire to ensure that her son would have a better life. Far better to admit to this, even if money had changed hands, than to admit she had sold her son to someone without much caring where the child would end up.

  And what of Pedrolli? Was he to endure his life like the parents of children who are the victims of actual kidnappings? To wonder - for ever - if the child was alive or dead? To spend the rest of his life searching for that remembered face in the face of every child, teenaged boy, man of about the right age?

  "'Oh, to lose all father now,'" Brunetti said.

  20

  Brunetti's sleep was disturbed, not by excess of grappa, but by thoughts of the Pedrolli child. How much would he remember of those first months of his life? What was the future psychological cost of being taken from a loving home and placed in a public institution?

  Between sleeping and waking, Brunetti told himself repeatedly to let it all go, to forget Pedrolli, to forget the sight of the man as he lay in the hospital bed, and most of all to forget about his son. Brunetti was uninterested in either the legal or the biological realities: it sufficed for him that Pedrolli had claimed the child as his own and that the child's natural mother had been willing to let him go. And that the doctor loved the child.

  What he could not fathom were the feelings of Bianca Marcolini, but he did not feel able, during that long night, to wake Paola, sleeping quietly beside him, and ask her what a woman would feel. Why should Paola understand it any better than he? Were he to ask, she would probably assail him for the most blatant sort of sexist thinking: surely a man could understand a woman's feelings? But that was precisely what troubled Brunetti, the absence in Bianca Marcolini of what Paola would, again, assail him for thinking of as a woman's feelings. If the reports given to Paola were accurate, then Bianca Marcolini had shown little evidence of maternal feelings to the people Paola had talked to or to Brunetti himself.

  Some time before six, an idea came to Brunetti of how to learn more about Bianca Marcolini and her feelings towards the child. Soon after he thought of it, he drifted off to sleep, and when he woke again, the idea was still with him. He lay there, looking at the ceiling. Three bells rang: soon it would be seven and he would get up and make coffee, bring some back to Paola. She had a class that morning and had asked him to wake her before he went to work.

  Well, this was before he went to work, wasn't it? 'Paola,' he said. He waited, repeated her name, and waited a longer time.

  The bells began to ring the hour: Brunetti took this as a sign that he could wake her now. He turned, put his hand on her shoulder and shook it gently. 'Paola,' he said again.

  There was the faintest tremor of movement.

  ‘Paola’ he repeated. 'Could your father arrange for me to meet Giuliano Marcolini?' The last bell chimed, and the world returned to silence.

  ‘Paola, could your father arrange for me to see Giuliano Marcolini?'

  The bundle beside him turned away. He put his hand on her shoulder again, and the bundle moved even further.

  ‘Paola, could

 
'If you say that again, I'll drown the children’ "They're too big.'

  There was some thrashing about, and then he saw the side of her face. One eye opened.

  ‘I’ll bring you coffee,' he said amiably and got out of bed. 'And then we'll talk.'

  Though the promise was not easily won from her, Paola agreed to phone her father and ask him if he would arrange a meeting. Brunetti knew that he could, as a police officer, have arranged one himself, but he knew it would be more easily done, and he would be more gracefully received, were the request to come through the agency of Conte Orazio Falier.

  Paola told him she would phone the Count that afternoon: her father was in South America, and she had to find out where exactly he was to be able to figure out the time difference before she called him.

  Thus it was that Brunetti, thinking of his father-in-law, was momentarily confused when Vianello came into his office in mid-morning, saying, 'Pedrolli's on the list’

  Brunetti looked across at the Inspector and asked,'What list?'

  'The list on the computer. Dottor Franchi's. He's been a customer there for the last four years.'

  'Of the pharmacy?'

  ‘Yes’

  ‘Pedrolli?'

  'Yes.'

  'And Franchi has seen his medical records?' It was only then that Brunetti noticed the file in Vianello's hand.

  It's all in here,' Vianello said. He came and stood next to Brunetti and put the file on the desk. He opened it and shuffled through the stack of papers, pulling out four or five. Brunetti saw short paragraphs of very small print, numbers, dates. Glancing down the first page, he saw Latin terms, more dates, brief comments that made little sense to him.

  Vianello spread the papers out on the desk so that they could look at all of them at the same time. 'This goes back only seven years,' Vianello said. 'That’s as far back as they could be traced.'

  ‘Why?'

  Vianello raised a hand. 'Who knows? The original files were lost? They haven't got that far back in computerizing the records? You name it'