CB19 A Question of Belief (2010) (6 page)

‘There’s a way we can do it officially,’ Brunetti said.

‘How?’

‘Isn’t Scarpa running the training classes for new officers?’

‘Yes, but I don’t see . . .’

‘And one of the things they’re supposed to learn, if they’re not Venetian, is how to follow someone in the city.’

Flawlessly, Vianello picked it up and ran. ‘And since Scarpa isn’t Venetian, he hasn’t got an idea of how to do it.’

‘Which means,’ Brunetti concluded, ‘that he has to let the Venetians show them how to do it.’

Vianello picked up his glass and raised it to Brunetti. ‘I know it’s wrong to toast with water, but still . . .’ He drank some and set the glass on the table.

‘And so all we’ve got to do,’ Vianello began, heartening Brunetti with his casual use of the plural, ‘is ask Signorina Elettra to see that the right Venetians are assigned to lead the detail. It won’t make any difference to Scarpa: he distrusts and dislikes us all equally.’

Vianello turned towards the counter and waved a hand in Bambola’s direction. ‘Would you bring us two glasses of prosecco, please?’

Not only was it too hot to think about crossing the city to go home for lunch; it was too hot to think about eating. Brunetti went back to the Questura with Vianello, saying he would speak to Signorina Elettra about the schedule for Scarpa’s orientation classes, but when he got to her office, she was gone. He went back to his own and called Paola, who sounded almost relieved to learn he would not be coming home.

‘I can’t think about food until the sun goes down,’ she said.

‘Ramadan?’ Brunetti inquired lightly.

She laughed. ‘No! But the sun comes into the living room in the afternoon, so I have to hide in my study most of the day. It’s too hot to go out, so all I can do is sit and read.’

For most of the academic year, Paola spoke longingly of the summer vacation, when she looked forward to sitting in her study and reading. ‘Ah, poor you,’ Brunetti said, just as if he meant it.

‘Guido,’ she said in her sweetest voice, ‘it takes a liar to recognize another one. But thank you for the sentiment.’

‘I’ll be home after sunset,’ he said, quite as though she had not spoken, and replaced the phone.

Talk of food had made Brunetti feel something akin to hunger but nothing strong enough to cause him to risk leaving the building to go in search of food. He opened his drawers one after another but found only half a bag of pistachios he could not remember having seen before, a packet of corn chips, and a chocolate bar, with hazelnuts, that he had brought to the office last winter.

He prised open one of the pistachios, put it in his mouth and bit down, only to make contact with something the consistency of rubber. He spat it into his palm and tossed it and the rest of the bag into the wastepaper basket. By comparison, the corn chips were excellent, and he enjoyed them. It was good, he told himself, to eat lots of salt in this heat. These would protect him, he was sure, at the Equator.

When he tore open the chocolate bar, he noticed that it was covered with a thin white haze, the chocolate equivalent of verdigris. He took out his handkerchief and rubbed the bar vigorously until it looked like chocolate again: dark chocolate with hazelnuts. His favourite. He whispered ‘Dessert’, and took a bite. It was perfect, as smooth and creamy as it would have been six months before. Brunetti marvelled at this fact as he finished the bar, then lowered his head to look in the back of the drawer in hope that there might be another one, but there was not.

He glanced at his watch and saw that it was still lunchtime. That meant the squad room computer might be free for him to use. As he entered, he saw Riverre at the desk he shared with Officer Alvise, just pulling on his jacket.

‘You on your way to lunch, Riverre?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, trying to salute, but with his arm caught in his sleeve, he made a mess of it.

Brunetti followed the path of habit and ignored what had
just happened. ‘Could you stop at Sergio’s on your way back and bring me some
tramezzini
?’

Riverre smiled. ‘Sure thing, Commissario. Anything special you’d like?’ When Brunetti hesitated, Riverre suggested, ‘Crab? Egg salad?’

In this heat, those were probably the two most likely to go off, but Brunetti said only, ‘No, maybe tomato and prosciutto.’

‘How many, sir? Four? Five?’

Good Lord, what did Riverre think he was? ‘No, thanks, Riverre. Two ought to be enough.’ He reached into his pocket for his wallet, but the officer held up both hands, like a Christian catching sight of the devil. ‘No, sir. Don’t even think of it. You’ll insult me.’ He started towards the door, calling back over his shoulder, ‘I’ll get you some mineral water, too, sir. Got to drink a lot in this heat.’

Brunetti called his thanks after Riverre’s retreating back, then said under his breath, in English, though he was never entirely certain of the context in which this phrase was meant to be used: ‘From the mouths of babes.’

Someone had left the computer with its Internet connection open, so Brunetti, using four fingers, typed in ‘
Oroscopo
’.

When Riverre returned more than an hour later, Brunetti was still at the computer, though it was a wiser man who sat there. One site had led to another, one reference had spurred him to think of something else, and so he had, in that brief time, taken a tour through a world of belief and faith and the sort of deception so obvious as to leave him marvelling. ‘Horoscope’ had led to ‘Prediction’, which had led to ‘Card Reader’, and that in its turn had led to ‘Psychic Consultant’, ‘Palm Reader,’ and an endless list of consultants who answered specific needs. He found, as well, a long list of interactive sites which, for a price, opened the portals to real-time contact with ‘Astral consultants’.

Some dedicated themselves to the solving of problems of business or finance; many others to questions of love and affection; others handled difficulties at work or with colleagues; while yet others promised help in consulting departed relatives and friends. Or pets. There were those who offered astral help in losing weight, stopping smoking, or avoiding falling in love with the wrong person. Strangely enough, and though he searched, Brunetti found no one offering astral help in stopping drug addiction, though he did find one site that promised to tell parents which of their children were most at risk of drug dependence: it was all foretold in their stars.

Brunetti’s degree was in law, and though he had never taken the state exam nor practised law, he had spent decades paying close attention to language, its use and misuse. His work had presented him with countless examples of deliberately misleading statements and contracts; thus over the years he had developed the skill to spot a lie, no matter how elaborately it was disguised and no matter how successfully the language in which it was presented removed it from all liability for false claims or promises.

The information in these sites had been written by experts: they created hope without making any pledge that punctilious minds might view as legally binding; they fostered certainty with never a binding promise; they pledged calm and tranquillity in exchange for an act of faith.

And payment? Crass lucre? Ask people to pay for their services? The very question was absurd. Probably insulting as well to the people who offered their services for the good of troubled mankind. What was ninety cents a minute to a person who needed help and who could find that help at the other end of a phone line? The chance to speak directly to a professional who was trained to understand the problems and suffering of a person who was fat/thin/divorced/unmarried/in love/out of love/lonely/trapped in
an unhappy relationship – was that not worth ninety cents a minute? Besides, in some cases, there was the chance that your call would be among those taken live during the television show, and thus your name and problem would be known to a broader public, and that could lead only to greater sympathy and understanding for you and your suffering.

Brunetti could but admire such ingenuity. He quickly did the maths. At ninety cents a minute, a ten-minute conversation would cost nine Euros, and an hour would cost fifty-four. Assume that there were ten people answering the calls, or twenty, or a hundred; and assume that these lines were open twenty-four hours a day. A ten-minute call? Was he mad? This was an opportunity to speak to a compassionate listener, to reveal the painful details of the injured, unappreciated self. Besides, the ads said that the people who took the calls were ‘trained professionals’. Surely they had been trained to listen, though Brunetti was of a mind that the goal of their listening might be something other than the provision of aid and assistance to the low of spirit and weak of heart. Who could resist the lure to speak of the endlessly fascinating self? Who was immune to the question asked with sympathy and expressive of the desire to know the caller more deeply?

Brunetti had a reputation at the Questura as a skilled interrogator, for he often managed to enter into conversation with even the most hardened old lag. He kept to himself the truth that his goal was not conversation, but monologue. Sit, look interested, ask the occasional question but say as little as possible, be sympathetic to what is said and to the person saying it; and few detainees or suspects can resist the instinct to fill the silence with their own words. A few of his colleagues had the same skill, Vianello chief among them.

The more sympathetic the interrogator seemed, the more important it became for the person being questioned to win
their goodwill, and that could be achieved most easily, many suspects believed, by making the interrogator understand their motives, and that, naturally, required a good deal of explanation. During most interrogations, Brunetti’s prime interest was in discovering what the other person had done and having them admit to it, while that other person too often became fixed on earning Brunetti’s comprehension and sympathy.

Just as the people who spoke to him seldom considered the legal consequences of their talk, those who spoke to the trained professionals in their various call centres would hardly consider the economic consequences of their own garrulity.

‘Here are the
tramezzini
, sir,’ he heard Riverre say. Brunetti turned to thank him, but before he could speak, Riverre, seeing the screen, said, ‘Oh, you use them, too, Commissario?’

Not trusting himself to speak, Brunetti took the paper bag holding the sandwiches and two half-litre bottles of mineral water and set it beside the computer. ‘Oh, I’m not sure I use them,’ he then said casually, quite as though he did, ‘but I like to check them every so often to see if there’s anything new.’ Deciding that instant to dine in the squad room, Brunetti opened the bag and took out one of the sandwiches. Tomato and prosciutto. He peeled back the napkin wrapping it and took a bite.

Chewing, he pointed with the
tramezzini
towards the screen and asked, ‘You have any favourites, Riverre?’

Riverre removed his jacket and stepped aside to drape it over the chair at his desk, then came back to Brunetti. ‘Well, I can’t say it’s my favourite, sir, but there’s one woman – I think she’s in Torino – who talks about children and the sort of problems they can have. Or that parents can have with them.’

‘The way kids are today,’ Brunetti agreed soberly, ‘that’s got to be a good thing.’

‘That’s what I think, sir. My wife has called her a few times to ask what we should do about Gianpaolo.’

‘He must be twelve by now, isn’t he?’ Brunetti asked, taking a stab at the age.

‘Fourteen, sir. But just turned. And he’s not a little boy any more, so we can’t treat him like he is.’

‘Is this what she’s said, the woman from Torino?’ Brunetti asked, finishing the first
tramezzino
and pulling out one of the bottles of mineral water. With gas. Good. He opened it and offered it to Riverre, but the policeman shook his head. ‘No, sir. It’s what my mother says.’

‘And the woman in Torino? What does she say?’

‘She’s got a course we can take. Ten lessons that we can do, my wife and me together.’

‘In Torino?’ asked Brunetti, unable to hide his surprise.

‘Oh, no, sir,’ Riverre said with a gentle laugh. ‘We’re in the modern age now, me and my wife. We’re on line, so all we have to do is sign up, and the class comes to our computer, and then we watch the lessons and take the tests. They send you everything – quizzes and tests and study aids – at your email, and you send them back, and then they send you grades and comments.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said, and took a sip of water. ‘It’s ingenious, isn’t it?’

Riverre couldn’t stop himself from smiling at Brunetti’s comment. ‘Only thing is, sir, I don’t think we can do it right now, what with the vacation to pay for: we’re going to Elba next week. Camping, but it’s still expensive, for the three of us.’

‘Oh,’ Brunetti said with mild interest, ‘how much does the class cost?’

‘Three hundred Euros,’ Riverre answered and looked at Brunetti to see how he responded to the price. When his superior raised his eyebrows by way of answer, Riverre explained, ‘That’s with the tests and all the grading, you see.’

‘Humm,’ Brunetti said and nodded; he reached into the bag for the other sandwich. ‘It’s not cheap, is it?’

‘No,’ Riverre said with a resigned shake of his head. ‘But he’s our only child, and we want the best for him. I guess that’s sort of natural, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Yes, I think it is,’ Brunetti said and took a bite. ‘He’s a good boy, isn’t he?’

Riverre smiled, frowned in thoughtful consideration, then smiled again. ‘I think he is, sir. And he does well in school. No trouble.’

‘Then maybe you could wait a while on that class.’ He finished the second sandwich, regretted that he had asked Riverre to bring him only two, and drank the rest of the water.

Looking around, Brunetti said, ‘Where does the bottle go?’

‘Over there by the door, sir. The blue bin.’

Brunetti walked over to the plastic bins, put the bottle in the blue one and the paper bag and napkins in the yellow. ‘I see the hand of Signorina Elettra at work here,’ he said.