A Noble Radiance

by Donna Leon

Brunetti nodded and left, reading as he climbed the stairs to his office. The Christmas of that same year - Christmas Day, in fact - a truck belonging to the Lorenzoni transportation company had been hijacked from State Highway 8, near Salerno. The truck had been carrying a quarter of a billion lire in German-made laboratory equipment; the cargo was never recovered.

  Four months later, a random customs inspection of a Lorenzoni truck discovered that its cargo manifest declared only half the number of Hungarian binoculars actually contained in the truck. A fine was imposed and quickly paid. There was a lull of a year, during which the Lorenzonis were not subject to the attentions of the police, but then Roberto was involved in a fight at a disco. No criminal charges were brought, but a civil suit was settled when the Lorenzonis paid twelve million lire to a boy whose nose was broken in the fight.

  And that was it: nothing more. During the eight months that ensued between the fight in the disco and his kidnapping, neither Roberto, his family, nor any of its wide-flung businesses existed in any way whatsoever for the many police powers which surveilled the country and its citizens. And then, like a bolt from quiet skies, the kidnapping. Two notes, a public appeal to the kidnappers, and then silence. Until the body of the boy was found in a field near Belluno.

  Even as he thought this, Brunetti asked himself why he was thinking of Roberto, and had done so from the very beginning, as a 'boy'. After all, the young man, at the time of the kidnapping and presumably at the time of his death, which seemed to have happened soon thereafter, had been twenty-one. Brunetti tried to recall how various people had spoken of Roberto: his girlfriend had mentioned his practical jokes and selfishness; Count Orazio had been almost condescending; and his mother had mourned her baby.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of Vianello. ‘I’ve decided I want to go up to Belluno with you, Vianello. You think you could see about getting us a car?'

  1 can do better than that,' the sergeant answered with a broad smile. 'In fact, that's what I've come about.'

  Knowing he was supposed to, Brunetti asked, 'What does that mean?' 'Bonsuan’ was the sergeant's cryptic reply. 'Bonsuan?'

  'Yes, sir. He can get us there’

  'I didn't know they'd built a canal’

  His daughter, sir.'

  Brunetti knew that Bonsuan's greatest source of pride was the fact that the three daughters he had sent to the university had become a doctor, an architect, and a lawyer. 'Which one?' he asked.

  'Analisa, the architect,' Vianello answered, and before Brunetti could ask, explained, 'She's also a pilot. A friend of hers keeps a Cesna out at the Lido. If we want, she'll drop us off up there this afternoon and then go on to Udine.'

  'Let's do it,' Brunetti said, catching from Vianello's tone the excitement of a day's outing.

  She turned out to be just as good a pilot as her father. Brunetti and Vianello, still caught up in the enthusiasm and novelty of the idea, kept their noses pressed against the small windows of the plane for most of the twenty-five minute flight. During it - Brunettelearned two things he hadn't known: that Alitalia had refused to hire her as a pilot because she had a degree in architecture and would 'embarrass the other pilots' with her level of culture; and that vast stretches of land around Vittorio Veneto were listed by the military as 'Pio XII', slang for 'Proibito', and hence could not be flown over. So the small plane carried them along the Adriatic coast and then sharply to the northwest, over Pordenone and then to Belluno. Below them, the earth changed from tan to brown to green and back again as they flew over still-fallow fields or vast swathes of new plantings; every so often a stand of fruit trees exploded in pastel blossoms or a sudden gust of wind could be seen to hurl great handfuls of petals up towards the plane.

  Ivo Barzan, the commissario who had seen to the removal of Roberto Lorenzoni's body from the field to the hospital and who had then contacted the Venice police, was waiting for them when the plane landed.

  He took them, first, to Doctor Litfin's house and walked with them to the dark rectangle near the stand of trees. A single beige chicken pecked busily at the freshly turned earth of the shallow pit, not at all disturbed by the snapping of the wind in the strips of red and white tape which surrounded it. No bullet had been found, Barzan told them, though the Carabinieri had twice gone over the field with metal detectors.

  As he looked down into the pit and heard the chicken scraping and pecking, Brunetti wondered what this place had been like when the boy died, if indeed he had died here. In winter, it would have been grim and bleak; in the autumn, at least there would still have been living things. And, at the stupidity of that thought, he reviled himself. If death waits at the end of the field, it hardly matters if the earth is strewn with mud or flowers. Hands in his pockets, he turned away from the pit.

  Barzan told them that none of the neighbours had anything helpful to tell the police. One old woman insisted that the dead man was her husband, poisoned by the mayor, a Communist No one remembered anything unusual, though Barzan did have the grace to add he thought it unlikely anyone could be very helpful when the police were no more specific than to ask if anyone had seen something strange about two years ago.

  Brunetti spoke to the people across the road, an old couple well into their eighties, who tried to make up for their inability to remember seeing anything by offering coffee and, when all three policemen accepted, lacing it generously with sugar and grappa.

  Doctor Bortot, who was waiting for them in his office at the hospital, said there was little he could add to the report he had already sent to Venice. It was all there: the deadly hole at the base of the skull, the lack of a clearly defined exit hole, the extensive damage to and deterioration of the internal organs.

  'Damage?' Brunetti asked.

  'The lungs, from what I could see. He must have smoked like a Turk, this boy, and been smoking for years,' Bortot said and paused to light a cigarette. 'And the spleen,' he started and then paused. 'The damage might have been from natural exposure, but it doesn't explain why it's so small. But it's hard to tell when he's been in the ground so long.'

  'More than a year?' Brunetti asked. 'That's what I'd guess, yes. Is it the Lorenzoni boy?' he asked. 'Yes.'

  'Well, the time's about right, then. If they killed him soon after they took him, it would be a bit less that two years, and that's about what I would guess.' He crushed out his cigarette. You have children?' he asked, making the question general.

  All three policemen nodded.

  'Well, then,' Bortot said inconclusively and excused himself, explaining that he had three more autopsies to perform that afternoon.

  Barzan, with remarkable generosity, offered to have his driver take them back to Venice, and, tired by the site of death, Brunetti agreed. Neither he nor Vianello had much to say as they sped south, though Brunetti was struck by how much less interesting the scenery was, seen from the window of a car. From the ground, as well, no warning was given about what places were 'Zona Proibita'.

  15

  The morning papers, as Brunetti had anticipated, fell upon the Lorenzoni story with vulpine avidity. Because of their assumption that the reading public was incapable of recalling even the most important details of a story that had appeared eighteen months before - in which assumption Brunetti believed them to be correct - each story began by retelling the story of the original kidnapping. In them, Roberto was variously described as 'the oldest son', 'the nephew', and 'the only son' of the Lorenzoni family, and the kidnapping was reported to have taken place in Mestre, Belluno, and Vittorio Veneto. Not only the readers seemed to have forgotten the details.

  Doubtless due to their failure to obtain a copy of the autopsy report, the ghoulish delight the press usually took in cases of exhumation was strangely absent from the accounts, the writers contenting themselves with the lacklustre 'advanced stage of decomposition' and 'human remains'. Reading the stories, Brunetti found himself uncomfortable with his own disappointment at the tepid language, worried that his palate had
become accustomed to richer fare.

  On his desk when he reached his office was a video cassette in a padded brown envelope which carried his name. He called down to Signorina Elettra. 'Is this the tape from RAI?' he asked.

  'Yes, Dottore. It got here yesterday afternoon.'

  He looked down at the envelope, but it seemed to be unopened. 'Did you watch it at home?' he asked.

  'No. I don't have a cassette player.'

  'Or you would have?'

  'Of course.'

  'Shall we go down to the lab and have a look at it?' he suggested.

  'I'd like that, sir’ she said and hung up.

  She was waiting for him at the door of the ground-floor laboratory, today dressed in a pair of jeans that had been ironed to within an inch of their life. The casual note was reinforced by a pair of what he thought must be cowboy boots with dangerous toes and slanted heels. A silk crepe blouse re-established a professional tone, as did the severe chignon into which her hair was pulled today.

  ‘Is Bocchese here?' he asked.

  'No, he's giving evidence today’

  'Which case?'

  'The Brandolini robbery’

  Neither of them bothered to shake their heads at the fact that this four-year-old robbery, which had been followed two days later by an arrest, was getting to trial only now. 'But I asked him yesterday if we could use the lab to watch it, and he said it was all right’ she explained.

  Brunetti opened the door and held it for her. Signorina Elettra went over to the VCR and switched it on as though she were entirely at home in the lab. He slipped in the tape. They waited for a few moments until the screen lit up with the RAI logo and test pattern, quickly followed by the date and a few lines of what Brunetti assumed was technical information.

  'Do we have to send this back?' he asked, moving away from the screen and seating himself on one of the wooden folding chairs that faced it.

  She came and sat in the chair next to him. 'No. Cesare said it's a copy. But he'd prefer that no one else finds out he sent it.'

  Brunetti's reply was cut off by the voice of the announcer, giving the then-new facts of the Lorenzoni kidnapping and telling his viewers that RAI was bringing them an exclusive message from Count Ludovico Lorenzoni, the father of the victim. He explained, while the screen showed footage of the predictable tourist sites in Venice, that the Count had made the appeal that afternoon and that it would be shown exclusively on RAI in hopes that the kidnappers would heed the appeal of a bereaved parent. Then, with the screen lingering on a low-angle shot of the facade of San Marco, the announcer handed over to the RAI crew in Venice.

  A man in a dark suit and serious expression stood in the broad hallway of what Brunetti recognized to be the Lorenzoni palace. Behind him could be seen the double doors to the study in which Brunetti had spoken to the family. He summarized what the other man had said, then turned and opened one of the doors to the study. It swung open to allow the camera to focus on, then draw near, Count Ludovico, who sat behind a desk Brunetti did not remember being in the room.

  At first, the Count looked down at his hands, but as the camera drew closer, he raised his eyes and looked directly at it. A few seconds passed, the camera found the right distance and stopped moving, and the Count began to speak.

  'I address my words to the persons who are responsible for the disappearance of my son, Roberto, and I ask that they listen to me with attention and charity. I am willing to pay any sum at all for the return of my son, but the agencies of the state have prevented that: I no longer have access to any of my assets, and there is no way I can hope to raise the sum demanded, either here in Italy or abroad. If I could do this, I swear upon my honour that I would, and I further swear that I would gladly give that sum, any sum, to assure the safe return of my son’

  Here the Count paused and looked down at his hands. After a moment, he returned his eyes to the camera.

  'I ask these people to have compassion on me and on my wife, who joins me in my entreaty. I appeal to their feelings of humanity and I ask them to free my son. If they wish, I will gladly exchange places with him: they have but to tell me what they want me to do, and it will be done. They have said that they will contact me through a friend of mine whom they have not named. All they need to do is contact this person and leave instructions. Whatever they ask, I will do, and do gladly, if it will assure me the return of my beloved son’

  The Count paused here, but briefly.

  ‘I appeal to their sense of compassion and ask that they have mercy on my wife and on me’

  The Count stopped, but the camera remained on his face until he glanced to the left of the camera for a second, then back into its lens.

  The screen gradually darkened, to be replaced in a moment by the studio announcer. He reminded the viewers that this had been a RAI exclusive and added that anyone having information about Roberto Lorenzoni should call the number listed at the bottom of the screen. Apparently because this was a file copy and not one that was shown on the RAI stations, no number appeared.

  The screen went dark.

  Brunetti got up and turned down the sound, leaving the television on. He pushed the 'rewind' button and waited until the tape stopped humming. When he heard it dick to a stop, he turned to Signorina Elettra. 'What do you think?'

  ‘I was right about the make-up,' she said.

  'Yes,' Brunetti agreed. 'Anything else?'

  'The language?' she suggested.

  Brunetti nodded. ‘You mean that he referred to them as "they" and not as "you"?' he asked.

  'Yes,' she answered. 'That seems strange. But maybe it was too difficult for him to address them directly, given what they'd done to his son’

  ‘Possible,' Brunetti agreed, trying to imagine how a father would react to this, the greatest of horrors.

  He reached out and hit the 'play7 button again. The tape began once more, but this time there was no sound.

  He glanced at Signorina Elettra, who raised her eyebrows. ‘I never take the headphones on planes’ he explained. If s remarkable, what you see in films if there's no sound to distract you’

  She nodded, and together they watched the tape play through again. This time, they could see the eyes of the announcer flit across the script that was playing somewhere just to the left of the camera. The other one, outside the door to the Count's study, seemed to know his lines by heart, though the seriousness of his face seemed forced and unnatural.

  If Brunetti had expected the Count's nervousness or anger to come through more clearly this way, he was mistaken. Viewed in silence, he seemed to be without emotion. When he looked down at his hands, any viewer would doubt that the Count could ever find the will to look up again, and when his eyes flashed for that fleeting moment to the side of the camera, it was a gesture utterly devoid of curiosity or impatience.

  When the screen again darkened, Signorina Elettra said, ‘Poor man, and he had to sit there while they put make-up on his face’ She shook her head, eyes closed, as though she'd walked in on an indecent act.

  Again, Brunetti pressed the 'rewind' button, and again the tape reversed itself and wound to a stop. He pressed the 'reject button, and the tape sprang out. Brunetti slipped it into its box and the box into the pocket of his jacket.

  'Something horrible should happen to them’ she said with sudden ferocity.

  'Execution?’ Brunetti asked, bending forward to turn off both the VCR and the television.

  She shook her head. 'No. No matter how horrible these people are, no matter what people do, we can't allow any government to have that power.'

  'Because they can't be trusted?' Brunetti asked.

  'Would you trust this government?' she asked.

  Brunetti shook his head.

  'Can you name a government that you would trust?' she continued.

  'To decide about the life and death of a citizen?' He shook his head, and asked, 'But then how punish people who do things like this?'

  'I don't know. I want th
em to be destroyed, want them to die. I'd be a liar to deny that. But it's too dangerous a power to be given to... to anyone.'

  He remembered something Paola had once said; he no longer recalled the context. Whenever people want to argue dishonestly, she'd said, they pull out a specific example so ovewhelming as to render disagreement impossible. But no matter how compelling specific cases were, she always insisted, law was about principle and about universals. Individual cases proved themselves and nothing else. Since he had so often seen the individual horror of the aftermath of crime, Brunetti well understood the impulse to call for new laws, more punitive laws. As a policeman, he knew that the rigour of the law was most often exercised on the weak and the poor, and he further knew that the law's severity was no impediment to crime. He knew all of this as a policeman, but as a man and as a father, he still longed to see the people who had snuffed out the life of this young man brought to justice and brought to suffering.

  He walked over and opened the door to the lab, and they left, returning to their jobs and to the world where crime was something to be stopped, not the subject of philosophical speculation.

  16

  Good sense told Brunetti it was foolish to expect the Lorenzoni family to talk to him before the boy was buried, but it was charity which prevented his asking. The newspaper accounts had given Monday as the day for the funeral, the church of San Salvador its place. Before then, however, there was still a good deal of information Brunetti wanted to obtain about Roberto.

  Back at his desk, he called the office of Doctor Urbani and asked the dentist's secretary if the name of Roberto's family doctor was on record. It took her a few minutes to check, but it turned out the name was listed, given on the original file that was opened for Roberto when he first went to Doctor Urbani's office ten years ago.

  The doctor's name, Luciano DeCal, was vaguely familiar to Brunetti; he had gone to school with a De Cal, but his name was Franco, and he was a jeweller. The doctor, when Brunetti called him in his office and explained the reason of his call, said that, yes, Roberto had been his patient for most of his life, ever since the original family doctor of the Lorenzonis had retired.