Suffer the Little Children cgb-16

by Donna Leon

  Though curious about the number of people, Brunetti made no rejoinder, and Marvilli obviously thought no further explanation necessary.

  Ts that what he's being accused of,' Brunetti asked, 'the illegal adoption of a child?' and by so doing became involved in Gustavo Pedrolli's exposure to the might and majesty of the law.

  Marvilli said, ‘I imagine he's also likely to be charged with the corruption of a public official, falsification of state documents, kidnapping of a minor, and illegal transfer of funds.' He watched Brunetti's face, and when he saw how sombre his expression grew, the Captain went on. 'As the case continues, there will no doubt be further charges.' With the toe of one of his elegant boots, he prodded at a bloody piece of gauze that lay at his feet, then looked up at Brunetti. 'And I wouldn't be at all surprised if resisting arrest and violence to a public official in performance of his duties were added.'

  Brunetti chose to stay silent, aware of how very little he knew about what was going on. He opened the door and stood back to let

  Marvilli pass into the corridor. The Captain's accent, though from the Veneto, was not Venetian, so Brunetti doubted he would be familiar with the labyrinth of the hospital. Silently, Brunetti led the other man through the empty corridors, turning left or right with little conscious thought.

  They stopped outside the doors to the neurology department. 'Do you have one of your men with him?' Brunetti asked the Captain.

  'Yes. The one he didn't attack,' he explained, then, when he realized how this sounded, he corrected this to, 'One of the others from Verona.'

  Brunetti pushed, open the doors to the ward. A young nurse with long black hair sat at a counter just inside. She looked up, and Brunetti thought she looked both tired and grumpy.

  'Yes?’ she asked as they came in. 'What do you want?'

  Before she could tell them the ward was closed, Brunetti walked towards her, smiling a placatory smile. 'I'm sorry to disturb you, nurse. I'm from the police and I'm here to see Dottor Pedrolli. I think my Inspector might be here, as well’

  At the reference to Vianello, some of the sternness disappeared from her face and she said, 'He was, but I think he's gone downstairs. They brought Dottor Pedrolli in about an hour ago: Dottor Damasco is examining him now’ She turned her attention from the Veneziano-speaking Brunetti to the uniformed Marvilli. 'He's been beaten by the Carabinieri, it seems’

  Brunetti felt Marvilli stiffen and start to move forward, so he stepped in front of him to prevent him. 'Would it be possible for me to see him?' he asked, then turned and gave Marvilli a glance severe enough to stop him from speaking.

  I suppose so,' she said slowly. 'Come with me, please’ She rose from her chair. As they walked past her desk, Brunetti saw that the screen of the computer showed a scene from a historical film, perhaps Gladiator, perhaps Alexander.

  He followed her down the corridor, aware of Marvilli's footsteps behind them. She stopped at a door on the right, knocked, and in response to a noise Brunetti did not hear, opened the door and put her head inside. 'A policeman's here, Dottore’ she said.

  'One of them's in here already, damn it,' a man's voice said, with no attempt to disguise his anger. "That's enough. Tell him to wait.'

  The nurse drew her head back and closed the door. 'You heard him,' she said, all pleasantness fled from her voice and from her face.

  Marvilli looked at his watch. 'What time does the hospital bar open?' he asked.

  'Five,' she answered. Seeing the face he made in response to this, her tone softened and she said, "There are some coffee machines on the ground floor.' She left them without another word and went back to her film.

  Marvilli asked Brunetti if he wanted anything, but Brunetti declined. Saying he would be back soon, the Captain turned away. Brunetti immediately regretted his decision and was about to call after his retreating back, 'Caffe doppio, con due zuccheri, per piacere,' but something restrained him from breaking the silence. He watched Marvilli pass through the swinging doors at the end of the corridor, then went over to a row of orange plastic chairs. Brunetti took a seat and began to wait for someone to emerge from the room.

  4

  While Brunetti waited, he tried to make some sense of what was going on. If the assistant chief of neurology had been called in at three in the morning, then something serious had been done to this Dottor Pedrolli, despite Marvilli's attempts to downplay the situation. Brunetti could not understand the excessive use of force, though it was possible that a captain who was not part of the men's command unit might not have been able to control the operation as effectively as would someone more familiar with his men. No wonder Marvilli was uneasy.

  Could it be that Dottor Pedrolli, as well as having illegally adopted a baby himself, was more deeply involved in whatever traffic was going on? As a paediatrician, he would have access to children and, through them, to their parents, perhaps to parents who wanted other children, or even to those who could be persuaded to part with an unwanted child.

  Or he might have access to orphanages: those children must have as much need of a doctor's services - perhaps more - than children living at home with their parents. Vianello, he knew, had been raised with orphans: his mother had taken in the children of a friend, but she had done it to keep them from being sent to an orphanage, that atavistic terror of his parents' generation. Surely things were different now, what with the involvement of the social services, of child psychologists. But Brunetti was forced to admit that he didn't know how many orphanages still existed in the country and, in fact, even where any of them were.

  His mind flashed to the early years of his marriage to Paola, when the university had assigned her to teach a class on Dickens, and he, with the solidarity of a new husband, had read the novels along with her. He remembered, with a shudder, the orphanage where Oliver Twist was sent, but then he recalled the passage in Great Expectations that had most chilled his blood at the time, Mrs Joe's admonition that children should be 'brought up by hand', a phrase neither he nor Paola could ever decipher but which had nevertheless unsettled them both.

  But Dickens had written almost two centuries ago, when families, by today's standards, were enormous: his own parents had each had six siblings. Do we try today to treat children better, now that they are in short supply? he wondered.

  Brunetti suddenly raised the fingers of his right hand to his forehead in an involuntary gesture of surprise. No formal charge had been brought against Dottor Pedrolli, Brunetti had seen no evidence, and here he was, assuming the man's guilt, just on the word of some captain in riding boots.

  His reverie was broken by Vianello, who appeared at the end of the corridor and came to sit beside him. I'm glad you're here,' the Inspector said.

  'What's going on?' Brunetti asked, no less relieved to see the Inspector.

  Speaking softly, Vianello began to explain. ‘I was on night shift with Riverre when the call came in: I couldn't make any sense of it,' he said, then tried and failed to stop himself from yawning.

  He slumped forward with his elbows on his knees and turned his head to Brunetti. 'A woman called, saying that there were men with guns in front of a house in San Marco. Over by La Fenice: Calle Venier. Near the old Carive offices. So we sent a patrol over, but by the time they got there, the men were gone, and someone shouted down from a window that it was the Carabinieri and that a man was hurt and they'd taken him to the hospital.'

  Vianello glanced at Brunetti to see if he was following, then continued. 'It was the guys on the patrol - our guys - who called and told me all of this and that it was a doctor who was hurt, so I came over here to see what was going on, and that's when some jerk of a captain - wearing riding boots, for God's sake - told me it was their case and none of my business.' Brunetti let his Inspector's contempt for an officer go unremarked.

  "That's when I decided to call you,' Vianello said.

  The Inspector paused and Brunetti asked, 'What else?'

  'After I did - call you, that is -I waited he
re for a while. I spoke to the neurologist when he got here and tried to tell him what was going on. But then Little Red Riding Boots came out of the room, and the doctor went in to see his patient. So I went down to the boat and talked to one of the Carabinieri who brought him in. He told me the squad making the arrest were from Verona, but the guy with the boots is stationed here. He's from Pordenone or some place like that, but he's been here for six months or so. Anyway, there was trouble when they went in to arrest this doctor. He'd fallen or something when he attacked one of them, and when they couldn't get him back on his feet, his wife started screaming, so they decided to bring him over here to have the doctors take a look.'

  'Did he say anything about a baby?' Brunetti asked.

  'No. Nothing’ Vianello answered with a confused look. 'The man I spoke to didn't seem to want to say much, and I wasn't sure what to ask. I just wanted to find out what happened to this doctor, how he got hurt’

  Briefly, Brunetti told Vianello what he had learned from Marvilli about the raid, its purpose, and its result. Vianello muttered something; Brunetti thought he heard the word 'attacked'.

  'You don't think he fell?' Brunetti asked, remembering what Dottoressa Cardinale had said.

  Vianello let out his breath in a sudden noise of disbelief. 'Not unless he tripped over the Captain's spurs when they got him out of bed. He was naked when they brought him in. Or at least that’s what one of the nurses downstairs told me. Wrapped in a blanket, but naked.'

  'And so?' Brunetti asked.

  'Take a man's clothes off him, and he's only half a man,' Vianello said. 'A naked man doesn't attack a man with a gun,' he concluded, incorrectly in this case.

  'Two, I think,' Brunetti observed.

  'Exactly,' Vianello answered, refusing to abandon his conviction. .

  'Yes’ Brunetti agreed, and then looked up at the sound of footsteps in the corridor. Marvilli was approaching them.

  The Captain noticed Vianello and said, ‘I see your sergeant's filling you in on what happened’

  Vianello started to speak, but Brunetti forestalled him by getting to his feet and taking a step towards Marvilli. 'The Inspector's telling me what he's been told, Captain,' Brunetti said with an easy smile, then added, 'That's not necessarily the same thing.'

  Seamlessly, Marvilli replied, 'That would depend on whom he's spoken to, I suppose.'

  'I'm sure someone will tell us the truth, in the end’ Brunetti countered, wondering if Marvilli was in some sort of caffeine-induced state of agitation.

  Marvilli's response was cut off by the opening of the door to Pedrolli's room. A man in middle years, vaguely familiar to Brunetti, stepped into the corridor, looking back at something inside. He wore what seemed to be a Harris tweed jacket over a pale yellow sweater, and jeans.

  He raised a hand and pointed into the corridor. 'Out’ he said in a dangerous voice, his eyes still on something or, it now seemed, someone.

  A much younger man, dressed in camouflage fatigues and carrying a machine-gun, appeared just in the doorway. He stopped, his face rigid with confusion, and looked down the corridor. He opened his mouth as if to speak.

  The Captain waved him to silence and then jerked his head to one side, commanding him from the room. The man with the gun walked out into the corridor and down to Marvilli, but the Captain repeated the gesture, this time angrily, and the young man continued past him. All of them could hear the sound of his disappearing boots.

  When silence returned, the doctor closed the door and approached them. He nodded in recognition of Vianello, then asked Marvilli, 'Are you the person in charge?' His voice was openly aggressive.

  ‘Yes, I am’ Marvilli answered, and Brunetti could hear him struggle to keep his voice calm. 'May I ask who you are?' the Captain asked, then added, 'and why you ask?'

  'Because I'm a doctor and I've got a patient in there who's been the victim of an assault, and since you're a Carabiniere officer and presumably know what's going on, I'd like to report it and report it as a crime’

  'Assault?' Marvilli asked with feigned curiosity. 'Your patient attacked two of my men and broke the nose of one of them. So if there's any talk of assault, he's the one who is more likely to be charged with it’

  The doctor looked at Marvilli with contempt, and made no effort to keep it out of his voice. I have no idea what your rank is, officer, but unless your men decided to take his clothes off him after fracturing his skull, then your men -and I assume they were armed - were assaulted by a naked man’ After a brief pause, he added, I don't know where you come from, but in Venice we don't allow the police to beat people up’ He turned away from Marvilli, making it clear that he had said all he wanted to say to him. Addressing Vianello, he said, 'Inspector, could I have a word with you?' Then, as Vianello started to speak, he added, 'Inside’

  'Of course, Dottore,' Vianello said. Indicating Brunetti with his right hand, he said, 'This is my superior, Commissario Brunetti. He's very concerned about what's gone on here.'

  'Ah, that's who you are,' the doctor said, extending a hand to Brunetti and giving him an easy smile, as though it were perfectly natural to be introduced at four o'clock in the morning. 'I'd like to speak to you, as well,' he said, as though Marvilli were not standing less than a metre from them.

  The doctor stood aside until Brunetti and Vianello had gone in; then he closed the door behind them. 'My name's Damasco’ he said, moving towards the bed. 'Bartolomeo.'

  On the bed lay a man, who looked up at them with confused eyes. The overhead light was not on, and the only illumination came from a small lamp on the other side of the bed. Brunetti could make out a shock of light brown hair that fell across the man's forehead and a beard in which there seemed to be a great deal of grey. The skin above the beard was rough and pitted, and the top of his left ear swollen and red.

  Pedrolli opened his mouth, but the other doctor bent over him and said, 'Don't worry, Gustavo. These men are here to help. And don't worry about your voice. It'll come back. You just need to rest and give the drugs a chance to work.' He patted the other man on his naked shoulder, then pulled the blanket up to his neck.

  The man on the bed stared up at him intently, as if willing him to understand what it was he wanted to say. ‘Don't worry, Gustavo. Bianca's fine. Alfredo's fine.'

  At the last name, Brunetti noticed the man's face twist in pain. He squeezed his eyes shut to avoid showing whatever emotion it was he felt, then turned his head away, eyes still closed.

  'What happened to him?' Brunetti asked.

  Damasco shook his head as if wanting to shake away both the question and the reason for it. 'It's your business to find that out, Commissario. My concern is treating the physical consequences.'

  Damasco saw how surprised the other two were by his abruptness and led them away from the bed. At the door, he said, 'Dottoressa Cardinale called me at about two this morning. She said that there was a man in the emergency room - she told me who it was, Gustavo Pedrolli, one of our colleagues - who had been brought in by the Carabinieri. He had been hit behind the left ear, by something hard enough to have caused a fracture of the skull. Luckily, the skull is thick there, so it's only a hairline fracture, but still it's a serious injury. Or can be.

  'Whenl got here about twenty minutes later, there were two Carabinieri guarding the door. They told me the injured man had to be kept under guard because he had assaulted one of their colleagues when they tried to arrest him.' Damasco closed his eyes and pressed his lips together in an indication of how credible he found this explanation.

  'Soon after that, my colleague in Pronto Soccorso called to tell me that this man, this "assaulted" man, had nothing more than a displaced cartilage in his nose, so I'm not willing to believe he was the victim of a serious assault’ Curious, Brunetti asked, 'Is Dottor Pedrolli the sort of man who would react like this? So violently?'

  Damasco started to speak but appeared to reconsider, then said, 'No. A naked man doesn't attack a man with a machine-gun, does he
?' He paused and then added, 'Not unless he's defending his family, he doesn't.' When he saw that he had their attention, he went on, 'They tried to stop me from coming in here to see my patient. Perhaps they thought I'd try to help him escape through a window or something: I have no idea. Or help him concoct some sort of story. I told them I'm a doctor, and when I demanded the name of their commanding officer, they let me in, though the one in charge insisted that the other stay in here with me while I examined Gustavo.' He added, not without pride, 'But then I threw him out. They can't do that here.'

  The way Damasco spoke the last word struck a responsive chord in Brunetti. No, not here, and certainly not without asking permission of the local police. Brunetti saw no sense, however, in mentioning this to Damasco and so limited himself to saying, 'The way you spoke to him, Dottore,' Brunetti began, 'made it sound like your patient's unable to speak. Could you tell me more about that?'

  Damasco glanced away, as if looking for the answer to this question on the wall. Finally he said, ‘He seems to want to speak, but no words come out’

  'The blow?' Brunetti asked.

  Damasco shrugged. It could be.' He looked at the two men one by one, as if judging how much he should tell them. 'The brain's a strange thing, and the mind's even stranger. I've been working with the one for thirty years, and I've learned something about the way it works, but the other is still a mystery to me’

  'Is that the case here, Dottore?' Brunetti asked, sensing that the doctor wanted to be asked.

  Again, the shrug, and then Damasco said. Tor all I know, the blow isn't the cause of the silence. It could be shock, or it could be that he's decided not to speak until he has a clearer idea of what’s going on’ Damasco reached up and rubbed at his face with open palms.

  When he lowered his hands, he said, ‘I don't know. As I say, I work with the physical brain, the neurons and synapses, and the things that can be tested and measured. All the rest - the non-physical stuff, the mind, if you will -I leave that to other people’