Suffer the Little Children cgb-16

by Donna Leon

  Marvilli shook his head but said nothing.

  Brunetti accepted Marvilli's response with apparent resignation, intrigued by the repeated suggestion that Pedrolli's situation was somehow different and in some way separate from the long-planned action. He sensed that Vianello wanted to say something and decided to let him. It would serve as a jgraceful way to move the subject away from the anomalous case of the Pedrollis. He turned to Vianello and, careful to use his first name, asked, 'What is it, Lorenzo?'

  'Captain,' Vianello began, 'if your superiors knew what these people had done, why weren't they simply arrested?'

  'The middle man, the person behind the arrangements. That's who we wanted,' Marvilli explained. He turned to Brunetti and said, 'You realize by now that it's not just the people who were arrested last night that we're interested in, no?'

  Brunetti nodded.

  'These aren't isolated cases,' Marvilli continued. This is going on all over the country. We probably don't have any idea of how common it is.'

  He turned back to Vianello. 'That's why we need the middle man, so we can find out who was providing the documents, the birth certificates, in one case even false medical papers, claiming that a woman had given birth to a child that wasn't hers.' He folded his hands on the table like an obedient schoolboy.

  Brunetti waited a few moments before saying, 'We've had a few cases here, in the Veneto, but as far as I know, this is the first time anyone's been arrested in the city.'

  Marvilli acknowledged this and Brunetti asked, Does anyone have any idea ... well, of the whole picture?'

  ‘I can't answer that, either, Commissario. I was assigned this case only last night, and I was briefed about it then.' It seemed to Brunetti that the Captain had certainly learned a great deal in a very short time.

  Instead of commenting on this, Brunetti asked, 'And do you know if this man you call the middle man was arrested?'

  Marvilli shrugged, leading Brunetti to assume that the answer was no. 'What I do know is that two of the couples who were to be arrested last night had visited the same clinic in Verona,' the Captain finally said.

  The surprise Brunetti felt at the name of a city in the economic heart of the country forced him to accept how automatic was his assumption that crime was somehow the natural heritage of the South. But why should the willingness to go to criminal lengths to have a child be more prevalent there than in the comfortable, rich North?

  He tuned back in to hear Marvilli say, '... Dottor Pedrolli and his wife.'

  'Sorry, Captain, could you say that again? I was thinking about something else.'

  Marvilli pleased Brunetti by showing no irritation that his listener's attention had drifted away. 'As I said, two of the other couples had been to the same clinic in Verona, a clinic that specializes in fertility problems. People are referred there from all over the country’ He watched them register this and added, 'About two years ago, the Pedrollis went to the same clinic for a joint exam.' Brunetti had no idea how many clinics in the Veneto specialized in fertility problems and wondered whether this need be anything more than coincidence.

  'And?' Brunetti asked, curious as to how deeply and for how long the police might have concerned themselves with the clinic and with the lives of the people who went there as patients.

  'And nothing,' Marvilli said angrily. 'Nothing. They had an appointment, and that's all we know.'

  Brunetti forbore to ask whether the Carabinieri had kept both the Pedrollis and the clinic under surveillance and if so, to what extent. He wondered how, in fact, the Carabinieri had learned of their visit, and by what right, but the voice of patience whispered into his ear a list of the secrets open to the not inconsiderable skills of Signorina Elettra Zorzi, his superior's secretary, and so he held close to his bosom his sense of righteous indignation at the thought of the invasion of a citizen's privacy. He asked, 'And did you find any connection to this clinic?'

  Marvilli pushed the plate away. 'We're working on it,' he said evasively.

  Brunetti stretched his legs out under the table, careful not to nudge Marvilli's. He slumped down slightly on the bench and folded his arms across his chest. 'Let me think out loud, Captain, if I may.' The glance Marvilli gave Brunetti was wary. 'Hundreds of people must consult this clinic every year.'

  When Marvilli did not answer, Brunetti asked, 'Am I right, Captain?'

  'Yes.'

  'Good,' Brunetti said and smiled as though

  Marvilli had confirmed in advance whatever theory he was about to propose. 'Then the Pedrollis are among hundreds of people with similar problems.' He smiled again at Marvilli, as though trying to encourage enthusiasm in a favourite pupil. 'So how is it, I wonder, that the Carabinieri decided that Dottor Pedrolli - out of all the people who went for a consultation at this clinic - also adopted a child illegally? That is, if this middle man has not been arrested.'

  Marvilli hesitated too long before answering, 'I wasn't told.'

  After another pause, the Captain added, 'I think that's something you should discuss with Dottor Pedrolli.'

  A more brutal man than Brunetti, or a more unforgiving one, would have reminded Marvilli that Pedrolli was incapable of discussion in his current state. Instead, he surprised Marvilli by saying, ‘I shouldn't have asked you that.' Deciding to change the subject, Brunetti continued, 'And the children? What'll happen to them?'

  The same thing as to all of them’ Marvilli said.

  'Which is?' Brunetti asked. 'They'll be sent to an orphanage.'

  6

  Brunetti gave no sign of the effect Marvilli's words had had on him and resisted the desire to exchange glances with Vianello. He hoped the Inspector would follow his example and say nothing that would lessen, or spoil, the easy communication they seemed to have established with the Captain.

  'And then what?' Brunetti asked professionally. 'What happens to the children?'

  Marvilli could not disguise his confusion. 'I told you, Commissario. We see that they're taken to an orphanage, and then it’s the duty of the social services and the Children's Court to see that they're taken care of.'

  Brunetti chose to let this lie and continued, 'I see. So in each case, you ...' Brunetti tried to think what word he was supposed to use here. Repossessed? Confiscated? Stole? -'got the baby and handed it over to social services.'

  'That was our responsibility’ agreed Marvilli simply.

  Brunetti asked, 'And Pedrolli? What will happen to him?'

  Marvilli considered before answering, 'That will depend on the examining magistrate, I suppose. If Pedrolli decides to cooperate, then the charges will be minor.'

  'Cooperate how?' Brunetti asked. From Marvilli's silence, Brunetti realized that he had asked the wrong question, but before he could ask another, Marvilli shot back his cuff and looked at his watch. 'I think I have to get back to headquarters, Signori.' He moved sideways and out of the booth. When he was standing, he asked, 'Will you let me pay for this?'

  Thanks, Captain, but no,' Brunetti answered with a smile. 'I'd like to be able to save two lives in one day.'

  Marvilli laughed. He offered his hand to Brunetti and then, with a polite, 'Goodbye, Inspector’ leaned across the table and shook Vianello's hand as well.

  If Brunetti expected him to make some remark about keeping the local police informed, perhaps to ask them to share with the Carabinieri any information they might obtain, he was disappointed. The Captain thanked Brunetti again for the coffee, turned and left the bar.

  Brunetti looked at the plates and discarded napkins. 'If I have another coffee, I'll be able to fly back to the Questura.'

  'Same here,' muttered Vianello, then asked, 'Where do we start?'

  'With Pedrolli, I think, and then perhaps we should find this clinic in Verona,' Brunetti answered. 'And I'd like very much to know how the Carabinieri found out about Pedrolli.'

  Vianello gestured towards the place where Marvilli had been sitting. 'Yes, he was very coy about that, wasn't he?'

  Ne
ither proposed a solution, and finally, after a contemplative silence, Vianello said, 'The wife's probably at the hospital. You want to go and talk to her?'

  Brunetti nodded. He got to his feet and went over to the bar.

  'Ten Euros, Commissario,' said Sergio.

  Brunetti placed the bill on the counter then half turned to the door, where Vianello was already waiting for him. Over his shoulder, Brunetti asked, 'Bambola?'

  Sergio smiled. ‘I saw his real name on his work permit, and there was no way I was going to be able to pronounce it. So he suggested I call him Bambola, since it's as close as anyone can get to his real name in Italian.'

  'Work permit?' Brunetti asked.

  'At that pasticceria in Barbaria delle Tolle,' Sergio said, pronouncing the name of the calle in Veneziano, something Brunetti had never heard a foreigner succeed in doing. 'He actually has one.'

  Vianello and Brunetti left the bar, heading back to the Questura. It was not yet seven, so they went to the squad room, where there was an ancient black and white television on which they could watch the early morning news. They sat through the interminable political reports, as ministers and politicians were filmed speaking into microphones while a voiceover explained what they had supposedly said. Then a car bomb. Government denials that inflation was rising. Three new saints.

  Gradually, other officers drifted in and joined them. The programme moved on to a badly focused film of a blue Carabinieri sedan pulling up at the Questura in Brescia. A man with his face buried in his handcuffed hands emerged from the car. The voiceover explained that the Carabinieri had effected night-time raids in Brescia, Verona, and Venice to close up a ring of baby-traffickers. Five people had been arrested and three babies consigned to the care of the state.

  ‘Poor things,' Vianello muttered, and it was clear that he was speaking about the children.

  'But what else to do with them?' Brunetti responded.

  Alvise, who had come in unnoticed and now stood near them, interrupted loudly, as though speaking to the television but in reality addressing Brunetti, 'What else? Leave them with their parents, for the love of God’

  'Their parents didn't want them’ Brunetti observed drily. 'That's why all this is happening.'

  Alvise threw his right hand into the air. ‘I don't mean the people they were born to: I mean their parents, the people who raised them, who had them for -' he raised his voice further -'some of them had them for eighteen months. That's a year and a half. They re walking by then, talking. You can't just go in and take them away and put them in an orphanage. Porco Giuda, these are children, not shipments of cocaine we can sequester and put in a closet’ Alvise slammed his hand down on a table and gave his superior a red-faced look. 'What sort of country is this, anyway, where something like this can happen?'

  Brunetti could only agree. Alvise's question was perfectly fair. What sort of country, indeed?

  The screen was filled with soccer players, either on strike or being arrested, Brunetti could not tell and did not care, so he turned away from the television and left the room, followed by Vianello.

  As they climbed the stairs, the Inspector said, 'He's right, you know. Alvise.'

  Brunetti did not answer, so Vianello added, 'It might be the first time in recorded history that he has been right, but he's right.'

  Brunetti waited at the top of the stairs, and when Vianello reached him, said, 'The law is a heartless beast, Lorenzo.'

  'What's that supposed to mean?'

  'It means,' Brunetti said, stopping just inside the door to his office, 'that if these people are allowed to keep the babies, it establishes a precedent: people can buy babies or get them any way they want and from anywhere they want, and for any purpose they want, and it's completely legal for them to do so.'

  'What other purpose could there be than to raise them and love them?' asked an outraged Vianello.

  From the first time he had heard them, Brunetti had decided to treat all rumours of the buying of babies and children for use as involuntary organ donors as an urban myth. But, over the years, the rumours had grown in frequency and moved geographically from the Third World to the First, and now, though he still refused to believe them, hearing them unsettled him. Logic suggested that an operation as complicated as a transplant required a number of people and a controlled and well-staffed medical environment where at least one of the patients could recover. The chances that this could happen and that all of those involved would keep quiet were odds Brunetti was not willing to give. This, at least, surely held true in Italy. Beyond its borders, Brunetti no longer dared to speculate.

  He still remembered reading - it must have been more than a decade ago - the agonized, and agonizing, letter in La Repubblica, from a woman who admitted that she had broken what she knew to be the law and taken her twelve-year-old daughter to India for a kidney transplant. The letter recounted the diagnosis, the assigning of her daughter's name to a ranking so low on the health service waiting list for transplants as to amount to a sentence of death.

  The woman wrote that she was fully aware that some person, some other child, perhaps, would be constrained by poverty to sell a piece of their living flesh. She knew, further, that the donor's health would afterwards be permanently compromised, regardless of what they were paid and regardless of what they did with the money. But when she measured her daughter's life against the increased risk for some stranger, she had opted to accept that guilt. So she had taken her daughter to India with one badly functioning kidney and had brought her back to Italy with a healthy one.

  One of the things Brunetti had always secretly admired about some of the ancients - and he had to admit that it was one of the reasons he read them so relentlessly - was the apparent ease with which they made ethical decisions. Right and wrong; white and black. Ah, what easy times they seemed.

  But along came science to stick a rod between the spinning wheels of ethical decision while the rules tried to catch up with science and technology. Conception could be achieved any which way, the dead were no longer entirely dead, the living not necessarily fully alive, and maybe there did exist a place where hearts and livers were for sale.

  He wanted to express this in his answer to Vianello, but could find no way to compress or phrase it so that it made any sense. Instead, he turned to Vianello and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I don't have any big answers, only small ideas’

  'What does that mean?'

  'It means,' he said, though the idea came to him only as he spoke, 'that because we didn't arrest him, maybe we can try to protect him’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand,' said Vianello.

  'I'm not sure I do, either, Lorenzo, but I think he's a man who might need protection.'

  ‘From Marvilli?'

  'No, not from him. But from the sort of men Marvilli works for.'

  Vianello sat down in one of the chairs in Brunetti's office. 'Have you dealt with them before?' he asked.

  Brunetti, still feeling the buzz of the caffeine and sugar and too restless to sit, leaned against his desk. 'No, not with the men in Verona. I suppose I meant the type’

  'Men who'd give the babies to an orphanage?' Vianello asked, unable to evade the hold that thought had taken on him.

  'Yes,' Brunetti agreed, 'I suppose you could refer to them that way.'

  Vianello acknowledged this concept with a shake of his head. 'How can we protect him?'

  'The first way would be to find out if he has a lawyer and, if so, who that is’ Brunetti answered.

  With a wry smile, Vianello said, 'Sounds like you want to stack the deck against us.'

  'If they're going to charge him with the list Marvilli gave us, then he needs a good one.'

  'Donatini?' Vianello suggested, pronouncing the name as though it were a dirty word.

  Brunetti raised his hands in feigned horror. 'No, I'd draw the line short of that. He'll need someone as good as Donatini, but honest.'

  More because it was expected of him than because he fu
lly meant it, Vianello repeated, 'Honest? A lawyer?'

  'There are some, you know’ Brunetti said. 'There's Rosato, though I don't know how much criminal work she does. And Barasciutti, and Leonardi...' His voice wound down and stopped.

  Without feeling it necessary to mention that they had been working among criminal lawyers for close to half a century between them and had come up with the names of only three honest ones, Vianello said, 'Instead of honest, we could settle for effective.' They chose to overlook the fact that this would place Donatini's name back at the top of the list.

  Brunetti glanced at his watch. 'When I see his wife, I'll ask her if she knows one.' He pushed himself away from his desk, walked around behind it and sat down.

  He noticed some papers that had not been there when he left the previous day but barely glanced at them. "There's one thing we have to find out’ he said.

  'Who authorized it?' Vianello asked.

  'Exactly. There's no way a squad of Carabinieri would come into the city and break into a home without having permission from a judge and without having informed us.'

  'Patta?' Vianello asked. 'Could he have known?'

  The Vice-Questore's name had been the first to come to Brunetti's mind, but the more he considered this, the less likely it seemed. 'Possibly. But then we would have heard.' He did not mention that the inevitable source of that information would not have been the Vice-Questore himself but his secretary, Signorina Elettra.

  '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?