The Girl of his Dreams - Brunetti 17 (32 page)

A silence fell between the men as each considered the possibilities of action open to them. After some time, Brunetti said, making it sound the sort of natural everyday thing a father would do,
‘I
can ask my kids.'

'Ask them what?' Vianello said, unable to disguise his astonishment.

'If they know either of their children. And what they might have heard about them.' Vianello's look was so long and serious that it made Brunetti uncomfortable.

'They're of an age,' Brunetti said, then added, 'well, close to it.'

'Thank God mine are still too young,' Vianello said with suspicious blandness.

'For what?' Brunetti asked, though he knew what was coming.

'To work for us,' the Inspector said.

Brunetti resisted the impulse to defend himself. He looked at his watch and
saw that it was almost three. ‘I’
m going home
’
he said, getting to his feet.

Vianello too had apparently said as much as he chose to say.

If anyone wants me, tell them I had to go out, all right?' he asked Vianello. 'Of course.'

Even the Chief Augur would not have been able to find a hidden message in Vianello's voice, though Brunetti knew there was one. Brunetti walked around his desk, and patted Vianello on the shoulder. Then he left the Questura and went home.

He broached the subject at dinner, between the risotto with spinach and the pork with mushrooms. Chiara -who appeared to have abandoned vegetarianism - looked somehow different that evening, said that she didn't know Ludovica Fornari but knew of her.

'Of?' Brunetti asked, placing another piece of pork on his plate.

'Even I've heard about her
’
Raffi
offered, then returned his attention to the bowl of carrots with ginger.

'What have you heard?' Brunetti enquired mildly.

Paola shot him a glance as sharp as it was suspicious and interrupted to ask, 'Chiara, is that my Passion Flower you're wearing?' Brunetti had no idea to what the name referred. Because Chiara was wearing a white cotton sweater, it was not likely to be an article of clothing: that left lipstick or whatever else might be applied to a face. Or perfume, though he had not been aware of any, and Paola usually never wore scent.

'Yes
’
Chiara said with a certain hesitation.

‘I
thought so
’
Paola said with a wide smile. 'It looks very good on you.' She tilted her head to one side and studied her daughter's face. 'Probably better on you than it does on me, so maybe you'd better keep it.'

'You don't mind, do you,
Mamma?'
Chiara asked.

'No, no, not at all.' Looking brightly around the table, Paola said, 'There's only fruit for dessert, but I think tonight might be a good time to open the
gelato
season. Anyone w
illing to go over to Giacomo dell
'Orio to get it?'

Raffi
speared the remaining wheels of carrot and put them into his mouth, set his fork down, and raised his hand. 'I'll go.'

'But what about flavours?' Paola, who had never in her life shown any interest at all in the flavours of icecream she ate - so long as she got a lot of it - asked with transparently false brightness. 'Chiara, why don't you go with your brother and help him decide?'

Chiara pushed her chair back and got to her feet. 'How much?'

'Get the biggest container they have: we should begin the year with
a bang, I think.' Then, to Raffi
, 'Take the money from my purse. It's near the door.'

Before Brunetti could finish his dinner and in open defiance of family tradition, the children were out the door and pounding down the stairs.

Brunetti set his fork down, conscious in the silence of the sound it made as it tapped the wood of the table. 'And what was that all about, if I might ask?' he said.

'It's about not turning my children into spies
’
Paola said heatedly. Then, before he could begin to defend himself, she added, 'And don't say you were just asking idle questions, making conversation over dinner. I know you too well to believe that, Guido. And I won't have it
’

Brunetti looked at his plate, suddenly wondering how he had managed to eat so much, for why else would he suddenly feel so uncomfortably full? He sipped the last of his wine and set the glass back on the table.

She was right. He knew that, but it angered him to have it pointed out to him so sharply. He looked at his plate again, picked up his fork and set it across the plate, then placed the knife in a neat parallel next to it.

'And, Guido, you wouldn't have it, either, not really
’
she said in a far softer voice. 'I said I knew you too well.' There was a pause, and then she said, 'You wouldn't like it if you had done it.'

He pushed his chair back and got to his feet. He picked up his plate to carry it into the kitchen. Behind her chair he stopped and put his hand on her shoulder; hers covered his immediately.

‘I
hope they bring some chocolate
’
he said, his appetite suddenly restored.

29

The next morning, Brunetti lay in bed long after Paola had got up and left to go to her early class. He considered his options, looking at the case of the Gypsy girl from a different perspective or what he thought was a different perspective. He had nothing, not really. The only tangible proof he had that the girl had not fallen to her death while leaving the scene of a robbery was the testimony of a child who claimed that his sister had been killed by the tiger man. As evidence of that, Brunetti had in his possession a single cuff link and a ring set with a piece of cheap red glass.

There were no signs of violence on the child's body other than that which would result from sliding down a terracotta roof, and the cause of death was drowning.

His judgement that the Fornaris had come into possession of some sort of guilty knowledge was entirely subjective. His original assessment - and Vianello's - had been

that Fornari's wife had been genuinely surprised by the news of the robbery.

Fornari had seemed worried when Brunetti spoke to him, but he was a businessman working in Russia: well might he look worried. His wife had seemed nervous that time, as well. So what? Their daughter had seemed entirely untroubled to meet Brunetti. But then he remembered her coughing. It had begun when he had said he was about to leave and would get Vianello. 'Inspector
’
Vianello, he had said.

Even that was meaningless: people coughed all the time.

Brunetti shifted around under the covers, turned over on to his back and studied the ceiling until the growing light told him he could linger no more. The only thing for it was to talk to Patta and see if, just this once, the Vice-Questore would see the pattern that could be made from these events.

'Once again, you're letting yourself be carried away, Brunetti,' Patta said some hours later, just as Brunetti knew he would. Brunetti had not wasted time trying to predict his superior's exact words, but he had accurately predicted his superior's response. 'It's obvious that they had no idea what happened,' the Vice-Questore explained. 'She and her son probably came home and found the door to the terrace open: people forget about these things all the time. Unfortunately, the child had been in there while they were out.'

Patta, who had been pacing his office as he spelled out his judgement, turned suddenly and, much in the manner of the clever prosecution lawyer in American films, said, 'You said she was wearing a plastic shoe?'

'Yes
’

'Well, there you are,' Patta said, opening his hands in a gesture that suggested he had just revealed the final piece of evidence and there really was no need to waste more time in discussion.

'Where am I?' Brunetti risked saying.

Patta's expression made it clear that Brunetti was sailing too close to the wind. In a voice rich with sweet reason itself, the Vice-Questore went on. 'Plastic. On a slanted roof. A roof made from terracotta tiles.' He paused, then asked, 'I don't have to draw you a picture, do I, Commissario?' Patta's use of Brunetti's title was often an advance warning sign.

'No, Vice-Questore. I understand.'

'So this Signora Vivarini and her son, as I suggested, came home; she found the door to the terrace open and didn't give it a thought.' Patta paused long enough to smile in Brunetti's direction, now transformed into the charming defence attorney. 'There's no way they could be troubled by that, is there, Commissario?'

'No, sir.'

'You said you thought Signora Vivarini was surprised to learn of the robbery, didn't you?' 'Yes, sir.'

'Well, then, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about.'

1 told you about the daughter, coughing like that when I used Vianello's title.' As he heard himself saying it, Brunetti realized how limp, almost pathetic, it sounded. 'Before that, everything was entirely normal: she came in, introduced herself as Ludovica Fornari, shook my hand, but when I said -'

'What?' Patta interrupted, face suddenly alert.

'Excuse me?'

'What did you say the girl's name was?' 'Ludovica Fornari. Why?' And then he thought to add, 'sir.'

'You always talked about Signora Vivarini,' Patta said.

'It's in the report, sir. The husband's name.'

Patta waved that aside with a violent gesture, as if he were long past the point where he had to pay attention to written reports. 'Why didn't you tell me this before?' he demanded.

‘I
didn't think it important, sir.'

'Of course it's important,' Patta said, speaking as he would to a particularly dull pupil.

'May I ask why, sir?'

'You're Venetian, aren't you?' Patta asked, just short of sarcasm.

Surprised, the best Brunetti could do was say, 'Yes.' 'And you don't know who she is?' Brunetti knew who her parents were, but from the way Patta spoke, Brunetti knew he knew nothing. 'No, sir, I don't.'

'She's the
fidanzata
of the son of the Minister of the Interior. That's who she is.'

Had this really been a cheap courtroom drama and Brunetti the lawyer whose only purpose in the scene was to be defeated utterly by the brilliant
coup de theatre
of his opposite, then this was the point where he should have slapped his palm to his forehead and said out loud,
‘I
should have known,' or 'I had no idea.'

Instead, Brunetti remained silent, ostensibly to permit Patta to reveal more but actually to give himself time to fit it all together.

'I'm surprised at you, Brunetti, really I am,' Patta began. 'My son knows both children - he's in the same rowing club with the son - but I had no idea who you were talking about all this time. The Fornari girl. Of course
’
Brunetti sat with a look of bright attention plastered across his face, as if still trapped in the conventions of this cheap film.

The Minister of the Interior. Among whose duties was the direction of the various forces of order, including the police. The scandal magazines loved his family: his wife one of the heiresses of a huge industrial fortune; the eldest son an anthropologist missing and believed dead in New Caledonia; a daughter famous for commuting between Rome and Los Angeles in pursuit of a film career that never quite managed to take off; another daughter married to a Spanish doctor and living quietly in Madrid; and the now-heir, a boy of unpredictable temper who had already been involved in more than one
discoteca
fracas and about whom rumours of more serio
us offences - always left unpro
secuted - circulated widely among the police. The mother was Venetian, Brunetti knew, the Minister himself Roman.

'...
idea is entirely untenable
’
Patta said, approaching the end of his peroration. Thus the idea of even his most remote involvement with such a thing - which I hardly have to tell you is absolutely unthinkable - is not an idea we are going to consider.' The Vice-Questore waited for Brunetti to respond, but Brunetti was busy wondering how, and what, he could find out about the boy.

Brunetti nodded, as though he had been following every word his superior had said. He was curious about, among other things, who the 'his' and the 'we' in Patta's discourse were. T
he first could as easily be the
Minister as his son; the 'we' most likely referred to the police, but could just as easily refer to the entire political establishment.

'Have I made myself sufficiently clear, Commissario?' Patta asked, this time infusing his voice with the heavy menace usually reserved for the villain of melodrama.

'Yes, sir,' Brunetti answered. He rose to his feet and said, I'm sure your analysis of the situation is correct, and we should be very careful about involving someone as important as this in our investigations without serious justification.'

'There is
no
justification,' Patta shot back, not attempting to hide his anger, 'serious or otherwise.'