Suffer the Little Children cgb-16

by Donna Leon

  Pedrolli's eyes widened, and Brunetti saw the tears gather. He looked away, pretending

  Damasco had said something, and when he looked back, Pedrolli's eyes were closed.

  Damasco stepped forward, saying. ‘I’ll call you if anything happens, Commissario.'

  Brunetti nodded his thanks, retrieved the clipboard, and left the room. The Carabiniere guard was still seated outside the door, but he barely glanced at Brunetti. At the nurses' desk, Brunetti saw no one, nor was there anyone in the corridor. He undipped the papers and tossed them back into the waste basket, then set the clipboard on the desk. He removed the stethoscope, put it back in the drawer, and left the ward.

  13

  Brunetti took his time returning to the Questura, his mind occupied by the things he had failed to ask and the lingering unknowns of the Pedrolli... he didn't even know what to call it: Case? Situation? Dilemma? Mess?

  Without information about the other adoptions, and in the face of Pedrolli's continuing silence, Brunetti knew as little about the details of the acquisition of the doctor's baby as he did of the others. He had no idea if the mothers were Italian or where they had given birth to their babies, how or where they took physical possession of the babies, what the going rate was. This last phrase appalled him. There was also the bureaucratic issue: just how much paperwork was needed to give evidence of paternity? In an orange metal box that had once contained Christmas biscuits, he and Paola kept the children's birth certificates, inoculation and health records, certificates of baptism and first communion, and some school records. The box stood, if memory served, on the top shelf of the wardrobe in their room, while their passports were in a drawer in Paola's study. He had no memory of how they had managed to get passports for the children: surely they must have been asked to provide birth certificates, and those certificates must also have been necessary to enrol the kids in school.

  All official information about Venetian births and deaths, as well as changes in official place of residence, is kept at the Ufficio Anagrafe. As Brunetti left the hospital he decided to pass by the office: no time better than the present to speak to someone there about the bureaucratic process that led to the creation of legal identity.

  He followed a slow-moving snake of tourists across Ponte del Lovo, down past the theatre and around the corner, but when Brunetti arrived at the Ufficio Anagrafe, tucked into the warren of city offices on Calle Loredan, his plan was to be frustrated by the most banal of reasons: city employees were on strike that day to protest about delays in the signing of their contract, which had expired seventeen months before. Brunetti wondered if the police - city employees, after all - were allowed to strike, and deciding that they were, he went into Rosa Salva for a coffee and then over to Tarantola to see what new books had come in. Nothing caught his fancy: biographies of Mao, Stalin, and Lenin would surely lead him to despair. He had read an unpleasant review of a new translation of Pausanias and so left it unbought. Because he made it a rule never to leave a bookstore without buying something, he setded for a long out-of-print translation of the Marquis de Custine's 1839 travels in Russia, printed in Torino in 1977: Lettere dalla Russia. The period was closer to the present than ordinarily would have interested him, but it was the only book that appealed, and he was in a hurry, strike or not.

  Brunetti was conscious of how very virtuous he felt in proceeding to the Questura to go back to work, now that he knew about the strike and the possibility it offered him of going home to start on the book. Instead, buoyed by pride in his self-restraint, he set the book on his desk and picked up the papers that had accumulated there. Try as he might to concentrate on lists and recommendations, Brunetti felt his attention drawn towards the unanswered questions surrounding Pedrolli. Why had Marvilli refused to divulge more information? Who had authorized the Carabinieri raid on the home of a Venetian citizen? What power had summoned the Vice-Questore to Pedrolli's hospital room not half a day after he arrived there? And how was it, anyway, that the Carabinieri had learned about Pedrolli's baby?

  His reflections were interrupted by the ringing of his phone.

  'Brunetti’

  'Come down here now’ And then Patta's voice was gone.

  As he stood, Brunetti's eye was caught by the copy on the back cover of the book he had just bought, '... the arbitrary imposition of power which characterized .. ‘

  'Ah, M. le Marquis’ he said out loud, 'if you knew the half of it’

  Downstairs, he found no sign of Signorina Elettra. He knocked and entered Patta's office without waiting to be told to do so. Patta was at his desk, the papers of the overworked public official spread before him; even his summer tan had begun to fade, contributing to the total effect of tireless dedication to the many obligations of office.

  Before Brunetti moved towards Patta's desk, the Vice-Questore asked, 'What are you working on, Brunetti?'

  'The baggage handlers at the airport, sir, and the Casino’ he answered, much as he might inform a dermatologist about the foot fungus he kept picking up at work.

  'All that can wait’ Patta said, a sentiment in which Brunetti most heartily joined. Then, when Brunetti stood in front of him, Patta asked, 'You've heard about this mix-up with the Carabinieri, I assume?'

  Mix-up, was it? 'Yes, sir’

  'Good, then. Sit down, Brunetti. You make me nervous standing there.'

  Brunetti did as he was told.

  The Carabinieri over-reacted, and they'll be lucky if the man in the hospital doesn't bring charges against them.' Patta's remark raised Brunetti's estimation of the man who had stood with the Vice-Questore outside Pedrolli's door. After a moment's reflection, Patta tempered his opinion and said, 'But I doubt that he will. No one wants that sort of legal trouble’ Indeed. Brunetti was tempted to ask if the white-haired man at the hospital would be involved in whatever legal mess were to ensue, but good sense suggested that he keep his knowledge of Patta's meeting to himself and so he asked, 'What would you like me to do, sir?'

  There seems to be some uncertainty about the nature of the communications that took place between the Carabinieri and us,' Patta began. He peered across at Brunetti, as if to enquire whether he were receiving the coded message and knew what to do with it.

  'I see, sir’ Brunetti said. So the Carabinieri N could produce evidence that they had informed the police of the projected raid, but the police could find no evidence that they had received it. Brunetti's mind cast back to the rules of logic he had studied with such interest, decades ago now, at university. There had been something about the difficulty - or was it the impossibility? - of proving a negative. This meant that Patta was thrashing about, trying to decide which would be less risky: to blame the Carabinieri for their excessive use of force or to find someone at the Questura to take the rap for the failure to transmit the Carabinieri's message?

  'In fight of what's happened to this doctor, I'd like you to keep an eye on things and see that he's treated decently. So that nothing more happens.'

  Brunetti prevented himself from completing the Vice-Questore's sentence by adding,'... that would lead to trouble for me'.

  'Of course, Vice-Questore. Would it be all right if I spoke to him, perhaps to his wife?'

  'Yes,' Patta said. 'Do whatever you want. Just see that this doesn't get out of control and cause trouble’

  'Of course, Vice-Questore,' Brunetti said.

  Patta, with responsibility effectively transferred to someone else, directed his attention to the papers on his desk.

  'I'll keep you informed, sir,' Brunetti said and got to his feet.

  Clearly too busy with the cares of office to respond, Patta waved a hand at him, and Brunetti left.

  Because Paola had agreed to help him by asking around about Bianca Marcolini, Brunetti steeled himself and went down to the computer in the officers' room, where he managed to surprise his colleagues by the ease with which he connected to the Internet and then typed in the letters for 'infertilita', having to go back to correct only t
wo typing errors.

  For the next hour, Brunetti was the centre of what became a team effort on the part of the uniformed branch to help the research along. Though none of the younger men actually pushed him aside, the occasional hand did slip in below his to type in a word or two; Brunetti, however, never quite relinquished possession of the keyboard or mouse. The fact that he insisted on printing out everything that was of interest to him gave him the sense, however spurious, that he was engaged in the same sort of research he used to conduct in the university library.

  When he was finished and went to the printer to pick up the stack of papers that had accumulated, he was struck by two thoughts: it was all so fast, virtually instant, but he had no idea how true any of it was. What made one website more reliable than another, and what, in heaven's name, was 'II Centro per le Ricerche sull’Uomo'? Or 'Istituto della Demografia'? For all Brunetti knew, either the Catholic Church or the Hemlock Society could be behind all of the sources he had consulted.

  He had long accepted that most of what he read in books and newspapers and magazines was only an approximation of the truth, always slanted to Left or Right. But at least he was aware of the prejudices of most journalists and had thus, over the decades, learned to read aggressively, and so he could almost always find some kernel of fact - he entertained no illusions of finding the truth - in what he read. But with the Internet, he was so ignorant of context that all of the sources carried equal weight with him. Brunetti was adrift in what could well be a sea of Internet lies and distortions and utterly without the compass he had learned to use in the more familiar sea of journalistic lies.

  When he finally returned to his office and began to read what he had printed out, he was surprised at the consistency across the various websites. Though the numbers and percentages differed noinimally, there was no doubt as to the steep decline in birth rates in most Western countries, at least among the native populations. Immigrants had more children. He knew there was some politically correct manner in which this essential statistical truth was meant to be phrased: 'cultural variation', 'differing cultural expectations'. Phrase it as you chose: poor people had more children than rich people, just as poor people had always had more children than rich people. In the past, more of them had died, carried off by disease and poverty. But now, at home in the West, far more of them survived.

  At the same time that the number of children born to immigrants was increasing all over Europe, their hosts were having difficulty even in reproducing themselves. European women were older now when they had their first child than they had been a generation ago. Fewer people bothered to get married. The cost of housing had risen dramatically, limiting the chance that young working people could easily set up a household of their own. And who today could afford to have a baby on only one salary?

  All of those things, Brunetti knew, merely created options which people could choose to exercise, not physical impediments which could not be overcome. The steady decline in the number of viable sperm, however, was not a matter of choice. Pollution? Some genetic change? An undetected disease? Repeatedly, the websites made mention of a group of substances called phthalates, present in all manner of common products, including deodorants and food packaging: it would seem that there existed an inverse proportion between their presence in a man's blood and a lowered sperm count. Though the clear implication that these substances were responsible for a half-century of decreasing sperm counts was common, none of the articles dared to name them as a direct cause. Brunetti had always been of a mind that rising economic expectations must have exerted as strong an influence on the birth rate as falling sperm counts. After all, if there had been millions of sperm in the past, there were still half that number, and that should surely suffice.

  One report stated that the sperm counts of immigrant men began to decline after they had lived in Europe for a few years, which would certainly lend credence to the theory that pollution or environmental contamination was the cause. Wasn't it the lead water pipes that were said to have contributed to the decline in health and fertility among the population of Imperial Rome? Not that it made any difference now, but at least the Romans had had no idea of that possible connection: it fell to later ages to discover the probable cause, and then do nothing to moderate their behaviour.

  Historical reflection was cut short by the arrival of Vianello. As he came in, smiling broadly and holding up a few sheets of paper, the Inspector said, I used to hate white collar crime. But the more I learn, the more I like it’ He placed the papers on Brunetti's desk and took a seat.

  Brunetti wondered if Vianello were planning a career move; not for a moment did he doubt the involvement of Signorina Elettra in whatever change had taken place in Vianello's assessment.

  '"Like it"?' Brunetti asked, indicating the papers, as though they were the instruments of Vianello's conversion.

  'Well,' Vianello tempered, aware of Brunetti's amusement, 'in the sense that you don't have to go chasing after them or lurk in the rain outside their doors for hours, waiting for them to come out, so that you can follow them’

  At Brunetti's continued silence, the Inspector went on. 'I used to think it was boring, sitting around, reading through tax and financial declarations, checking credit card statements and bank records’

  Brunetti stopped himself from observing that, since most of these activities were illegal unless performed with an order from a judge, it was perhaps better that a policeman, at the very least, find them boring.

  'And now?' Brunetti enquired mildly.

  Vianello shrugged and smiled at the same time. 'And now I seem to be developing a taste for it’ He needed no prompting from Brunetti to explain: 'I suppose it's the thrill of the chase. You get a scent of what they might be up to: figures that don't add up or that are too big or too small, and then you begin to hunt through other records or you find their names in some other place where you didn't expect to find them or where they shouldn't be. And then the numbers keep coming in and they get stranger and stranger, and then you see what it is they're up to arid how to keep an eye on them or trace them into other places’

  Without his realizing it, Vianello's voice had grown louder, more impassioned. 'And you just sit there, at your desk, and soon you know everything they're doing because you've learned how to trace them, and so everything they do comes back to you.' Vianello paused and smiled. 'I suppose this is how a spider must feel. The flies don't know the web is there, can't see it or sense it, so they just buzz around and do whatever it is flies dp, and you just sit there, waiting for them to land.'

  'And then you snap them up?' Brunetti asked.

  ‘You could put it that way, I suppose,' Vianello answered, looking equally pleased both with himself and with his extended metaphor.

  'More specifically?' Brunetti asked, looking in the general direction of the papers. 'Your doctors and their accommodating pharmacists?'

  Vianello nodded. 'I've had a look at the bank records of the doctors my, er, my contact mentioned. Going back six years’ Even in the face of the patent illegality of Vianello's offhand, 'had a look', Brunetti remained a Sphinx.

  'They live very well, of course: they're specialists’ They would, then, earn a great deal of their income in cash: did there exist the specialist who would provide a receipt for a private visit? 'One of them opened a bank account in Liechtenstein four years ago.'

  'Is that when the appointments started?' Brunetti asked. .

  'I'm not sure, but my contact told me it's been going on a number of years’.

  'And the pharmacists?'

  'That's the strange thing,' Vianello said. 'There are Only five pharmacies in the city that are authorized to make the appointments: I think it has to do with their computer capacity. I've started to look into their records’ Again, Brunetti left that alone.

  'None of the ones I've checked has increased his average bank savings or credit card spending during this time,' said a disappointed Vianello. Then, as if to encourage himself, he
added, 'But that doesn't necessarily exclude them’

  'How many of them have you checked?' Brunetti asked.

  'Two’

  'Hmm,' Brunetti said. 'How long will it take you to check the others?' 'A couple of days’

  'There's no doubt about the existence of these fake appointments?'

  'None. I just don't know yet which pharmacists are involved.'

  Brunetti ran quickly over the possibilities. 'Sex, drugs, and gambling. Those are usually the reasons people are willing to take illegal risks to make money.'

  'Well, if those were the only reasons, then the ones I've already checked would be excluded’ Vianello said, sounding unconvinced.

  'Why?'

  'Because one of them is seventy-six, and the other lives at home with his mother’

  Brunetti, who was of the opinion that neither of these things necessarily excluded a man from interest in sex, drugs, or gambling, asked, 'Who are they?'

  'The old one's Gabetti. Heart condition, goes into the pharmacy only twice a week, no children, only a nephew in Torino he's going to leave it all to.'

  'So you exclude him?' Brunetti asked.

  'Some people might, but I certainly don't,' Vianello said with sudden heat. 'He's one of those classic misers. Took over the pharmacy from his father about forty years ago. Hasn't done a thing to it since then: I'm told that if you look in the back rooms, you'd think you were in Albania or some place like that. And I'm told you don't want to see the toilet he has there. Never married, never lived with anyone: all he does is make money and invest it and watch it grow. It's his only joy in life: money’

  'And you think he'd do something like this?' Brunetti asked, not attempting to disguise his scepticism.

  'Most of the appointments made for the three doctors by a pharmacy come from Gabetti's’

  'I see,' Brunetti said, letting the information filter into his mind. 'What about the other one?'