Suffer the Little Children cgb-16

by Donna Leon

  Brunetti had just whispered the words, 'A licence to steal', when Vianello came into his office without bothering to knock.

  'They just got a call downstairs,' Vianello said without preamble. 'Someone broke into the pharmacy in Campo Sant'Angelo.'

  'One of your pharmacists?' Brunetti asked with undisguised interest.

  Vianello nodded but before Brunetti could ask another question, said, 'We're still looking into bank records.'

  'Broke in and did what?' Brunetti asked, wondering if this could be an attempt to destroy evidence or throw dust in the eyes of anyone taking an interest in the pharmacy.

  'Whoever called said she opened the door and didn't even bother to go in when she saw what had happened. She called us immediately.'

  'But she didn't say what happened?' asked Brunetti with ill-disguised exasperation.

  'No. I asked Foa to take us over. He's got the launch waiting.' When Brunetti remained at his desk, Vianello said, ‘I think we should go. Before anyone else gets there.'

  'Interesting coincidence, isn't it?' Brunetti asked.

  'I'm not sure what it is, but I doubt either one of us thinks this is a coincidence,' Vianello answered.

  Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost ten. 'Why was she just getting there now? Shouldn't they have opened an hour ago?'

  'She didn't say, or if she did, Riverre didn't tell me. All he said was that she called and said someone had broken into the place.' In response to the growing impatience in Vianello's voice, Brunetti got to his feet and joined him at the door. 'All right. Let's go and have a look.'

  The quickest way was for Foa to turn into Rio San Maurizio and then take them to Campo Sant'Angelo. They crossed the campo and approached the pharmacy. Light filtering in from outside muminated the posters on display in the two shop windows, though no lights appeared to be on inside. Brunetti's eye was drawn to a pair of sleek, tanned female thighs which presented themselves to the beholder, proof of the ease with which cellulite could be banished in a single week. Next to them a white-haired couple stood side by side on a spun-sugar beach, each gazing longingly into the eyes of the other, their hands joined; behind them glistened a tropical sea, on the sand below them a box of arthritis medicine.

  ‘Is this the only entrance?' Brunetti asked, pointing to the intact glass door between the two windows.

  'No, the staff uses a door down the calle around that side,' Viariello answered, displaying a dubious familiarity with the workings of the pharmacy. Following his own directions, the Inspector led Brunetti to the left and then into a calle that led back towards La Fenice.

  As they approached the first door on the right, a woman of about Brunetti's age stepped from the doorway, asking, 'Are you the police?'

  'Si, Signora,' Brunetti answered, introducing himself and then Vianello. She could have been any of hundreds of Venetian women her age. Her hair was cut short and dyed dark red; her weight was concentrated in her torso, but she had the sense to disguise this with a box-cut jacket over a matching tari ‘I-shirt. Good calves showed under a knee-length brown skirt, and she wore brown pumps with low heels. She carried the remnants of a summer tan and wore little makeup beyond pale lipstick and blue eye shadow.

  'I'm Eleonora Invernizzi. I work for Dottor Franchi.' Then, as if to prevent them from taking her for one of the pharmacists, she added, 'I'm the saleswoman.' She did not extend her hand and gazed back and forth at the two men.

  'Could you tell us what happened, Signora?'

  Brunetti asked. She was standing in front of the closed wooden door that presumably led into the pharmacy, but Brunetti made no move towards it.

  She shifted the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder and pointed to the lock. Both of them could see the damage: someone had jimmied open the door, with such force that the wood was splintered and stuck out jaggedly above and below the keyhole, suggesting that a crowbar had slipped a few times before it found sufficient purchase to spring the lock and allow the door to be pushed open.

  Signora Invernizzi said, 'If I've told him once, I've told the dottore a hundred times that this lock is an invitation to thieves. Every time I tell him, he says, yes, he'll change it, get a porta blindata, but then he doesn't, and then I tell him again, and still he doesn't do it.' She pointed to the metal grate that covered a small window in the door. ‘I touched it there when I pushed the door open,' she said. 'Otherwise, I haven't touched anything. I didn't even go inside. I just looked and then called you.'

  "That was very wise, Signora,' Vianello said.

  Brunetti stepped up to the door and placed his palm on the point where the woman said she had put hers. He gave a gentle push, and the door swung easily inward until it stopped with a bang against the wall.

  Ahead of them Brunetti saw a narrow corridor and an open door, above which glowed a dim red security light. It was when he lowered his eyes to the floor that he saw why Signora Invernizzi had called the police. For about a metre in front of the far doorway, the floor was strewn with a tapestry of boxes, bottles, and phials, all of which had been stomped on, shattered, and flattened. Brunetti took a few steps until he stood just at the edge of the mess. He extended his right foot and with his toe kicked things aside to clear a place to set his foot, then stepped forward and repeated the process until he reached the second doorway, where the corridor turned right, towards the front of the pharmacy.

  Brunetti crossed the corridor and went through the door on the other side into what appeared to be the pharmacists' work space, where mess became catastrophe. Dangerous looking pieces of dark brown glass patterned the floor, among them shattered fragments of what had once been majolica apothecary jars. On one piece, tiny rosebuds wound themselves in a garland among three letters: 'IUM'. Liquids and powders had bled together into a thick soup that smelled faintly of rotten eggs and something astringent that might be rubbing alcohol. Some liquid had burned its way down the front of a cabinet, leaving a wave of corroded plastic behind. A cancerous circle in the linoleum tiles in front of the cabinet exposed patches of cement floor. Two jars still stood on the shelves, but the rest had been swept to the ground, where all but one had broken. Brunetti raised his head instinctively to back away from the fiery smell and found himself looking at the crucified Christ, who had also turned his head away from the stench.

  From behind him, Brunetti heard Vianello call his name; he followed the Inspector's voice to the main room of the pharmacy. Perhaps to avoid being observed from outside, whoever had broken in had confined most of his attentions to the area behind the counter and thus farthest from the windows. Here too the counters had been swept clean. All of the drawers had been pulled from the cabinets and tossed to the floor; packages and bottles had been strewn about, then apparently stamped on. Cash register and computer screen were thrown on top .of them. Like a tongue lolling from a dog's mouth, the cash drawer lay halfway out of the register and bent to one side: coins and small-denomination bills had vomited from it.

  'Mamma mia’ exclaimed Vianello. ‘I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. Even that guy who went into his ex-wife's new house didn't do this much damage.'

  'Her new husband stopped him, remember?' Brunetti said.

  'Ah, yes. I'd forgotten. But even so, it was nothing like this.' In emphasis, Vianello pointed at the jumble of bottles and boxes that filled the space behind the counter to the height of their shins.

  They heard a noise behind them and spun around to see Signora Invernizzi standing in the doorway, her bag clasped to her chest. 'Maria

  Vergine’ she whispered. 'Do you think it was drug addicts again?'

  Given the extent of the damage, Brunetti had already excluded that possibility. Addicts knew where the drugs were kept and knew what they wanted. They usually took the drugs, checked the cash register for anything that had been left there overnight, and let themselves out quietly. This had none of the signs of theft: quite the contrary, the money had not been touched. The destruction they gazed on spoke of r
age, not greed.

  'No, I don't think so, Signora,' Brunetti answered. He glanced at his watch and asked, 'Why is it that no one's come in this morning, Signora? Aside from you, that is?'

  'We had the turno last week; open day and night. We don't have to open until three-thirty today, but I came in to restock the shelves before we do. It's not much, but Dottor Franchi said it's good if the other doctors get a half-day off after working like that.' She grew suddenly thoughtful at the reference to her employer and added, ‘I hope he gets here soon.'

  'You called him?' Vianello asked.

  ‘Yes, as soon as I called you. He was in Mestre.'

  'And what did you tell him, Signora?'

  She seemed puzzled by the question. The same thing I told you: that someone had broken in.'

  'Did you tell him about all of this?' Brunetti asked, gesturing in a wide circle at the devastation that surrounded them.

  'No, sir, I didn't see it,' she reminded him. She lowered her bag and looked around for a place to put it. Finding no clean surface, she hooked it over her arm and said, 'I suppose I didn't want to be the one to tell him, even about what I saw from the door.' Then, as if she'd suddenly remembered something, she set her bag on the littered counter and quickly left the room without explanation.

  Brunetti signalled Vianello to remain and followed Signora Invernizzi. She headed back down the corridor and paused outside a door that Brunetti and Vianello had passed without opening. She opened it and reached in to switch on the light. Whatever she saw in there caused her to raise her hands to her face and shake her head. Brunetti thought he heard her mutter something, and instantly he feared that the violence had found a human target.

  Stepping up beside her, he took her arm and led her gently away from the doorway and from whatever it was that had so shocked her. Once she had started back towards the main room, he returned to the door and went inside. It was small, each side no more than three metres long, and must once have served as a storeroom or closet. Two walls held bookshelves, but all of the books were now on the floor. The solid wooden desk had once held a computer, but both computer and desk had been tipped on to the floor. The desk, probably because of the solidity of its construction, had suffered nothing more than a pair of parallel scratches on its surface, but the computer had not escaped harm. Pieces of the screen crunched under Brunetti's feet, and wires protruded from its eviscerated case. The keyboard appeared to have been snapped in half, though the plastic case continued to hold the two sides together. The rectangular metal case that contained the hard drive had been hit repeatedly with what he assumed was the crowbar that had been used to force entry. The metal had been deeply dented, and sharp-edged wounds gaped here and there. One corner had been smashed in, as if an attempt had been made to prise the box open. But the best the assailant had achieved was to force loose part of the back panel; inside, Brunetti could make out a flat metal board with tiny coloured dots soldered to its surface. If the other destruction had been vandalism, this was attempted murder.

  Brunetti heard footsteps behind him and assumed it was Vianello. He noticed a smear of red on a piece of metal prised up from the back panel and crouched down to take a closer look. Yes, it was blood that appeared to have been wiped away hurriedly, leaving a small trace and a darker stain where the blood had flowed into the seam between the back panel and the frame. Nearby, on the white cover of a book, there was what appeared to be a single red drop, surrounded by tiny red splashlets.

  'Who are you? What are you doing here?' a man's voice demanded angrily behind him.

  Brunetti pushed himself quickly to his feet and turned to face the man. He was shorter than Brunetti, but thicker, especially in the arms and chest, as though he worked at a heavy physical job or had spent a lot of time swimming. He had hair the colour of apricots, thinning in front and exposing a great deal of forehead. His eyes were light, pale green perhaps, his nose thin, his mouth tight with irritation at Brunetti's continued silence.

  'I'm Commissario Guido Brunetti,' Brunetti said.

  The man could not hide his surprise. With evident effort, he removed the aggression from his face and replaced it with something softer.

  'Are you the owner?' Brunetti asked mildly.

  'Yes,' the other man answered, and, his manner warming further, extended his hand. 'Mauro Franchi.'

  Brunetti shook the man's hand with conscious briskness. 'Signora Invernizzi called the Questura to report the break-in, and because my colleague and I were already in the area, they called us’ Brunetti said, speaking with the faintest hint of irritation, as if a commissario had better things to do with his time than rush off to the scene of something so ordinary as a break-in. Brunetti had no idea what made him downplay the presence of someone of the rank of commissario at the scene, but he preferred that Dottor Franchi not begin to speculate.

  'How long have you been here?' Franchi asked, and again it seemed to Brunetti the sort of question he should really be asking.

  'A few minutes’ Brunetti answered. 'But time enough to see the damage.'

  'It's the third time’ Franchi surprised him by saying. 'We're no longer safe to conduct business in this city'

  'Third time what?' Brunetti asked, ignoring Franchi's other comment. Before the other man could answer, they heard footsteps approaching from the front of the pharmacy.

  Franchi wheeled around, and when Vianello appeared at the door, Signora Invernizzi a step behind, Brunetti said, 'This is my colleague, Inspector Vianello.' Franchi nodded to Vianello but did not extend his hand. He stepped out into the corridor and approached Signora Invernizzi. At a gesture from Brunetti, Vianello joined him in the smaller room. Brunetti pointed to the smear of blood on the back of the metal case and to the spots on the book.

  Vianello went down on one knee. Brunetti watched his head turn slowly from left to right, and suddenly Vianello's hand shot out and he said, 'There's another one.' When Vianello pointed to it, Brunetti saw the spot on the dark tile. 'Well, if we ever get someone for it, we can do a DNA match, I suppose’ Vianello said, sounding sceptical at the thought that the test would be used for a case this minor. Or perhaps that they would ever arrest anyone for the crime.

  A moment later, they heard the other two, talking softiy, move off towards the front room. Franchi's voice floated back, and Brunetti thought he heard the phrase, 'My mother won't...'

  'Invernizzi say anything?' Brunetti asked.

  'Only what a job it will be to clean up and put it all back together’ Vianello answered. 'And then she mentioned the insurance and said how impossible it is to get them to pay for anything. She started telling me about the daughter of a friend of hers who was knocked off a bicycle ten years ago, and the case still isn't settled.'

  'Is that why you came back here?' Brunetti asked with a smile.

  Vianello shrugged. 'She kept asking me if she should call the other people who work here and ask them to come in to help clean up.'

  'How many of them are there?'

  'Two other pharmacists and the cleaning woman. Aside from the owner, that is.'

  Let’s go see what he's decided’ Brunetti said and started out of the room. He paused at the door and added, 'Call Bocchese and have him send a scene of crime crew over, will you?'

  'The computer?' Vianello asked.

  'If that's how the appointments were made, then I think we should take it along with us’ Brunetti answered.

  In the larger room, Franchi and the woman stood on the far side of the counter, in the area used by customers. The pharmacist's hand was raised, pointing to the wall behind the counter, from which all of the drawers had been ripped.

  'Should I call Donatella? Or Gianmaria, Dottore?' Brunetti heard her ask.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. We have to decide what to do with the boxes.'

  'Should we try to save some of them?,

  'Yes, if we can. Anything they haven't torn open or stepped on. And, with the rest, start a list for the insurance.' He said it tiredly, Sisyphus lo
oking at the rock.

  'You think it was the same ones?' she asked.

  Franchi glanced at Brunetti and Vianello and said, ‘I hope the police can find that out, Eleanora.' As if hearing how close to sarcasm his tonewas, he added, The ways of the Lord are many.'

  ‘You said three times, Dottore,' Brunetti said, ignoring the piety. 'Do you mean this has happened twice before?'

  'No’ Franchi answered, waving his hand at what lay all around them. 'But we've been robbed twice. Once it was a break-in, when they took what they wanted. The second time they came in during the day. Drug addicts. One of them had his hand in a plastic bag and said he had a gun. So we gave him the money.'

  'Best thing to do’ volunteered Vianello.

  'We had no intention of causing them trouble’ Franchi said. 'Let them take the money, so long as no one's hurt. Poor devils; I suppose they can't help themselves.' Did Signora Invernizzi turn and give him a strange look when he said this?

  'So you think this was another robbery?' Brunetti asked.

  'What else could it be?' Franchi asked impatiently.

  'Indeed,' Brunetti agreed. No need, certainly, to raise that question just now.

  The pharmacist raised his hands in a gesture rich with resignation and said, 'Va bene.' He turned to Signora Invernizzi. I think the others should come in; you might as well start here’ He held up his thumb and began to count on his fingers as he said, ‘I’ll call ULSS and report this, and the insurance company, then when we have a list, we can order replacement stock, and then I'll see about getting a new computer by tomorrow morning’ The resignation in his voice could not cover the anger.

  The pharmacist walked to the counter and leaned over to pick up the phone, but the receiver had been ripped away. Franchi pushed himself off from the counter, walked around it, and headed into the corridor. ‘I’ll phone from my office’ he called back over his shoulder.