The Temptation of Forgiveness

by Donna Leon

  15

  Brunetti looked at his watch and asked Vianello, ‘You doing anything now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. You want to come over to the Albertini with me?’

  Vianello got to his feet.

  ‘I’d like to see what happens when the kids get out of school,’ Brunetti said. ‘Chiara gets out at five, so maybe they do, too.’

  ‘All right. Let me get my coat. I’ll meet you downstairs,’ the Inspector said and started towards the door.

  Minutes later, they left the Questura and turned automatically in the direction of the school, in Barbaria delle Tole, not far from the hospital. Brunetti remembered playing soccer – badly – in the campo as a student but could no longer remember the friends with whom he had played.

  They crossed the bridge in front of Palazzo Cappello and kept on straight until they turned to head up to the school. ‘What are we looking for?’ Vianello asked. ‘I’m not sure what someone selling drugs would look like.’

  Brunetti shrugged. ‘Neither am I. There’s been no mention of Fornari since he was released from jail a year and a half ago, yet he’s supposed to be in charge of drugs at the school.’ He slowed and turned to look at his friend. ‘What do you think that means?’

  Vianello stopped in front of a shop on the right and looked at a squat brown vase in the window. ‘The older I get, the more I like Japanese objects,’ he said, to Brunetti’s considerable surprise.

  ‘Why?’

  Vianello rubbed at his bottom lip as he thought about this. ‘They’re so uncomplicated, so simple.’

  ‘Perhaps not to the Japanese,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘But to Venetian policemen, I think they are,’ Vianello said. ‘Look at that,’ he added, pointing down at the vase. ‘It looks like it’s glowing, doesn’t it? As if there were something burning inside.’ When Brunetti did not answer, Vianello stuffed his hands in the pockets of his trousers and turned away from the window to resume walking.

  ‘It could mean he’s franchised the work to someone else,’ Vianello continued, as if he had not stopped to look into the window. ‘It could be he’s tired of being in jail.’

  ‘He should be,’ Brunetti agreed, ‘after all those years.’ In the information Signorina Elettra had provided on Fornari, there had not been much to his life when he had not been in prison.

  They passed the gates of the school, open to the calle. No students were to be seen in the large courtyard; the only sign of life was a border collie sitting alert in the far left corner, as though it had parked its flock and was waiting for the time on the meter to run out.

  There were benches in the campo. They’d be less conspicuous if they were sitting there, reading the papers, so Brunetti stopped at the kiosk and saw that there were no newspapers left. He bought a second copy of the Espresso they already had at home and a two-month-old Giornale dell’Arte, which he passed to Vianello. They sat on a bench that faced down the calle that led to the school and began to read. Minutes passed; they flipped through the pages, occasionally glancing towards the school to see if any students had appeared. After another ten minutes, Brunetti found himself involved in an article about the former Director of the MOSE project, now living in Central America and claiming to be too infirm to return to Italy for trial.

  Over the years, Brunetti had read reports of the total spent on the project that varied from five to seven billion Euros, and now this one suggested quite calmly the possibility that the ‘progetto faraonico’ would never function. Just like that: millennium-old tidal patterns destroyed, vast areas of land and sea covered with cement, an unknown quantity spent, and now they blithely announce it might never work. He turned the page.

  A low noise, reminiscent of the sound of surf, made them look up at the same time, and they saw, and heard, Exodus: the Chosen Ones of an expensive private school were heading towards the campo in a wide wave of Montcler and North Face. Grey, dark grey, black, dark blue, and almost all of them wearing jeans so dilapidated and shredded that they would have outraged their families’ cleaning women, for surely the families of these boys and girls would have cleaning women.

  The boys were tall and lanky, most of them, the girls apparently easy in their company. Some walked side by side, either as friends or as couples. Brunetti knew the difference but didn’t know why he knew it: perhaps it was what the boy touched when he put his arm around the girl. A general murmur, interspersed with the sharp crash of laughter, preceded them.

  The wave approached. In the midst of it, one centimetre from the heels of a tall dark-haired girl and looking like a bit of flotsam, quick-stepped the border collie. Tongue lolling in adoration, the dog occasionally glanced up at her before shifting minimally in response to some signal from the flock.

  As they entered the campo, a few of the students broke free and went into the tobacco shop to emerge with small packs of cigarettes, which they opened to offer their classmates. Others drifted towards the kiosk where Brunetti had bought the magazines. They paid, and took the magazines the Asian man inside the kiosk gave them. When was it, Brunetti wondered, that kiosks had ceased to sell primarily newspapers and magazines, and now sold compact discs, trinkets, key chains, and T-shirts? And when had the men inside ceased to be Italian?

  The wave washed past them and splashed out into the campo: some went into the bars for a coffee or a Coke; others continued across to climb the bridge and disappear down the other side.

  As he studied them, Brunetti watched to see if an adult approached any of them or if, in fact, any of the adults in the campo paid attention to them. It seemed not.

  A boy with gleaming black hair that came down to his shirt collar pushed open the door of Rosa Salva and moved towards the bridge. He’d taken only a few steps when a girl shoved open the door and started after him, shouting, ‘Gianpaolo, wait for me.’ He turned, but did not smile, and she began to run in his direction. Brunetti looked away.

  ‘She’ll learn,’ Vianello said. Then, after a moment, he added, ‘Or else she won’t.’

  Brunetti set the magazine on the bench beside him, folded his arms over his chest, and turned his attention to the last building in the row that started with Rosa Salva. From the windows of the fourth floor, a person could easily see the mountains as well as the façades of the hospital and the basilica that lay there as visual gifts: for decades, he had envied the people who lived in the apartment. He studied the windows and thought about what the kids had done when they entered the campo.

  Turning his head to Vianello, Brunetti asked, ‘You ever know boys to read scandal magazines?’

  ‘Read what?’

  ‘Those magazines that have pictures of actors and actresses and six-page spreads of George Clooney’s wedding.’

  ‘Oh, sweet Jesus; don’t remind me of that,’ Vianello, who had worked double shifts for four days during the festivities some years before, implored him. He gave a little shake of horror to dismiss the memory. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because four boys just bought magazines like that. And they paid twenty Euros for each of them.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I watched. They each paid with a twenty-Euro note, took the magazines, and didn’t bother to wait for change.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ Vianello said.

  Brunetti, whose feet had grown cold while they sat, stamped them on the ground a few times. ‘All they’d have to do is agree on names and amounts. A certain magazine means a particular drug, and a certain number of copies means the amount of the drug the buyer wants. At the end of the day, the man in the kiosk sends an order in an SMS, and the requested magazines get delivered the next day.’ After a moment’s reflection, Brunetti added, ‘It’s safer than keeping stock there permanently.’ And finally, he said, ‘It’s like DHL: delivery within 24 hours.’

  Vianello considered this and then asked, ‘How is it that you sit here for five minutes and you see a system that might work, while people who’ve worked here or lived
here for years haven’t noticed anything?’

  Brunetti thought about this, before answering, ‘They probably do know, Lorenzo, but they’re not going to come and tell us. We’re lepers. Well, sort of lepers: no one wants to be seen with us or talking to us because they’ll end up having trouble. They live around here, remember.’

  ‘That’s a bit exaggerated, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Of course it’s exaggerated, but it’s still what they think. After all, why should they bother? They know the same people will be doing the same thing in a few days, or a week, or a month. If they come in to report a crime, we’ll take their name, and then someone might find out they talked to us.’ Before Vianello could object, Brunetti said, ‘I know that doesn’t happen, but I’m talking about what people believe.

  ‘And if they call, then we have their phone number and we can find out who they are and come to ask them questions.’ He turned and looked directly at Vianello. ‘If you were an ordinary person – not a policeman – would you report a crime?’

  Vianello ignored the question and asked, ‘How’s Fornari involved in this?’

  Brunetti, suddenly aware of the cold sinking into him, got to his feet. ‘I wish I knew.’ He looked at his watch and saw that it was a bit before six, one of those awkward times when it was too early to go home but too late to bother to go back to the Questura.

  ‘There’s nothing else for us to do here,’ Brunetti said. ‘We might as well go home.’

  ‘Are you calculating double-time for the time we sat in the cold?’ Vianello asked.

  Brunetti laughed and clapped his friend on the shoulder.

  16

  Brunetti’s good spirits stayed with him all the way home and came up the stairs with him. Raffi was in the kitchen, eating a prosciutto sandwich the same size as the Greek-Italian dictionary he held in his other hand. When he saw his father, he said, mouth full, ‘This is to sustain life until dinner.’

  A silent Brunetti passed in front of him and pulled out the bottle of Ribolla Gialla they had not finished the evening before. ‘So is this,’ he said as he plunked it down on the counter and found a glass. Then, with the cunning of the snake, Brunetti took another glass and tipped it towards Raffi. ‘Want some?’

  Mouth full with another bite, Raffi could only shake his head. He swallowed and said, holding up the sandwich, ‘Not with this. I’d rather have water.’

  Aha! Brunetti’s mental detective exclaimed. No interest in alcohol, so perhaps none in drugs. He opened the refrigerator and, while Raffi continued eating, took a bottle of mineral water and poured his son a glass.

  Raffi stuffed the last piece of sandwich into his mouth and spoke around it. ‘Thanks, Papà.’

  ‘Escaping text analysis?’ Brunetti asked, nodding at the dictionary.

  Raffi put his head back and rolled his eyes. Then he raised one finger in the air in a very professorial gesture and said,

  That said, he drank the water and set the empty glass in the sink with the sort of decisive click his mother made when turning a gesture into a statement, and went back towards his room.

  I would have recognized that, years ago, Brunetti told himself, digging away at the Greek but failing to uncover the meaning.

  Dinner was spent trying to decide whether to accept an invitation from Paola’s parents to go to their house near Dobbiaco for the week between Christmas and New Year.

  Brunetti sat quietly, trying to enjoy his cod with spinach, while amusing himself by anticipating the three responses. Paola said she hated Dobbiaco, hated the cold, and no longer enjoyed skiing. Raffi said he’d love to go but would have to check with Sara. Chiara, never one to disappoint, lamented the fact that the family had so many houses that they kept empty for much of the year, dismissing her mother’s assertion that keeping staff year-round both ensured that the houses would be kept safe and saw that people had work, an argument Paola had perfected, years ago, to stifle Raffi’s socialistic pronouncements about the ownership of property.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Chiara went on, shifting gears in the high dudgeon she employed to move from reason to reason. ‘It’s an act of environmental vandalism to keep these places open and use up all the resources it takes to maintain them.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly, Chiara,’ her mother said. ‘You know your grandfather covered the roof with solar panels.’

  Raffi chimed in, sounding pleased. ‘He sells the extra energy to the electric company.’ Brunetti remembered once having a son who was a declared enemy of capitalism, who longed to see the entire wicked system destroyed. How could he, the boy’s father – and a policeman, to boot – have failed to notice when the kidnappers from the European Central Bank came in and replaced his own son with a replicant?

  ‘Does that mean you don’t want to go, angel?’ Brunetti asked Chiara.

  His question brought down the temperature of her fervour. ‘I didn’t say that, Papà,’ Chiara insisted. ‘I’d like to go. To get away from the pollution here.’ There is an ecological justification for everything, Brunetti thought but did not say.

  ‘What about you, Papà?’ Raffi asked, perhaps mindful of his father’s kindness in giving him a glass of water.

  ‘I’d enjoy going, too.’

  ‘But you hate skiing,’ Chiara said instantly.

  ‘But I love the mountains,’ Brunetti answered with a smile.

  The subject drifted away after that, to be postponed until another time. Paola restored harmony, or rather, her fresh chestnut and hazelnut cake restored harmony.

  It wasn’t until later, as he lay in bed with Antigone in his hands and his wife at his side, that Brunetti recognized Raffi’s quotation. ‘Aristotle,’ he said aloud. ‘“It is impossible for the man who does nothing to be happy.”‘

  *

  The next morning, he girded his loins when he got to his office and called down to his superior to ask if the Vice-Questore had time to see him. Sighing heavily, Patta told him he could come now, if he hurried.

  When Brunetti entered, having lingered in Dottor Patta’s anteroom only long enough to ask Signorina Elettra if she could have a look at Fornari’s private life, he found the Dottore deeply engrossed in an open file. Hearing Brunetti come in, the Vice-Questore, in the manner of Saint Augustine in his study, when interrupted in his labours by the spirit voice of Saint Jerome at the window, glanced first at the light coming from his left and then at Brunetti, and then at the floor, as though in search of the little white dog who had so recently been sitting at his feet. After a moment he allowed his gaze to clear and return to the things of this world. ‘What is it, Brunetti?’ he inquired.

  ‘It’s about Signor Gasparini, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said in a voice he kept low.

  ‘Gasparini?’ asked Patta. ‘You’ll have to refresh my memory, Brunetti.’

  ‘Of course, Signore,’ Brunetti answered.

  ‘Take a seat,’ Patta said with easy command.

  Brunetti crossed to the chair he usually sat in when speaking to the Vice-Questore. ‘The man who was found at the bottom of the bridge two nights ago.’

  ‘Mugging, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It seemed that way, Signore,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘What do you mean, Brunetti?’ demanded an instantly suspicious Patta.

  ‘The attack might have been planned, Dottore.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘His wife came to see me a week ago; she told me she was worried that their son was using drugs.’

  ‘Are you saying you think the son did it?’

  ‘No, Signore,’ Brunetti said with no sign of the exasperation he felt. ‘Signor Gasparini might somehow have learned the name of the man who’s selling drugs to the students in his son’s school.’ Brunetti was reluctant to explain that he had received the information from one of his informers. He paused to await Patta’s comment or query.

  ‘And you think this led to the attack?’

  ‘It’s a possibility, Dottore,’ Brunetti answered mildly.
He made no comment on the lack of street crime in Venice, not wanting the Vice-Questore to see it as a hidden criticism of his native city, Palermo.

  Patta sat back in his chair and folded his hands, fingers intertwined, across his stomach. Even the weight of his hands seemed unable to wrinkle the smoothness of his shirt.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. I wanted to alert you to the possible connection: I’d like to find the man said to be selling drugs to the students.’

  ‘You have children,’ Patta said. ‘Are you worried for them?’

  ‘Less here than I would be in another city,’ Brunetti said and then hastened to add, ‘Milano, for example.’

  Patta nodded, leaned forward and said, ‘I understand. All right. See what you can find out.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Brunetti said and got to his feet. If he managed to tiptoe to the door and let himself out without another word, he might well be able to add this conversation to the short list of peaceful interchanges he’d had with Patta.

  Just as Brunetti reached the threshold, Patta said from behind, ‘Good luck, Brunetti,’ shocking him so that his hand almost slipped from the handle.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Brunetti said again and left.

  Outside, he leaned back against the door and closed his eyes. He took two deep breaths, unable to believe what had just happened.

  ‘What is it, Signore?’ Signorina Elettra asked in a nervous voice.

  Brunetti opened his eyes and saw her at her desk, one hand on the edge, as if she were about to push herself to her feet and come to his aid. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said in a whisper, holding up his hand. ‘The Vice-Questore just wished me good luck in finding a suspect.’

  She sat down, and Brunetti added, making his way towards her, ‘During the entire time I was there, he was pleasant and attentive to me.’

  ‘There must be something wrong with him,’ Signorina Elettra offered.

  ‘Or he wants something from me,’ Brunetti reasoned out loud.