Pucetti, radiant with a mixture of glee and triumph that took a decade off his face, turned to his superior. ‘Those bastards at the airport,’ he said, punctuating his statement with two quick uppercuts into the air above his head.
‘The baggage handlers?’ Brunetti asked, though it was hardly necessary. He had been investigating them and arresting them for almost a decade.
‘
Alvise and Riverre, intrigued, moved towards them.
‘What did you do?’ Brunetti asked.
With an act of will, Pucetti brought his feet together and lowered his hands. ‘I got into…’ he began and then, glancing at his fellow officers, said, enthusiasm fading from his voice, ‘some information about one of them, sir.’
All excitement disappeared from Pucetti’s manner; Brunetti took the hint and responded with studied indifference. ‘Well, good for you. You must tell me about it some time.’ Then, to Alvise, ‘Could you come up to my office for a moment?’ He had no idea what to say to Alvise, so inadequate was the man’s ability to grasp anything he was told, but Brunetti sensed he had to distract the two officers from paying any attention to what Pucetti had said or attributing to it any importance.
Alvise saluted and gave Riverre a look from which self-importance was not absent. ‘Riverre,’ Brunetti said, ‘could you go down to the man on the door and ask him if the package has arrived for me?’ To prepare for the inevitable, he added, ‘If it hasn’t come, don’t bother to tell me. It’ll come tomorrow.’
Riverre loved tasks, and to the degree that they were simple and explained clearly, he could usually perform them. He too saluted and turned towards the door, leaving Brunetti to regret he had not thought of some request that would have got them both out of the room. ‘Come along, Alvise,’ he said.
As Brunetti began to shepherd Alvise towards the door, Pucetti took his place at the computer and hit a few keys; Brunetti watched the screen grow dark.
3
BRUNETTI FOUND IT perversely fitting to be going upstairs with Alvise, since making conversation with him was so often an uphill climb. He tried to stay on the same step as the slower-moving officer so as not to make even more evident the difference in their height. ‘I wanted to ask you,’ Brunetti invented as they reached the top, ‘how you think the mood of the men is.’
‘Mood, sir?’ Alvise asked with eager curiosity. To show his willingness to cooperate, he gave a nervous smile to suggest he would do so as soon as he understood.
‘Whether they feel positive about the work and about being here,’ Brunetti said, as uncertain as Alvise apparently was about what he might mean by ‘mood’. Alvise fought to preserve his smile.
‘Since you’ve known many of them for so long, I thought they might have spoken to you.’
‘About what, sir?’
Brunetti asked himself if anyone in possession of all his faculties would confide in Alvise or ask his opinion about anything. ‘Or you might have heard something.’ No sooner had Brunetti said that than it occurred to him that Alvise might take this as an invitation to spy and be offended by the offer, though for Alvise to take offence was as unlikely as his ability to see a hidden meaning in anything.
Alvise stopped at Brunetti’s door and asked, ‘You mean, do they like it here, sir?’
Brunetti put on an easy smile and said, ‘Yes, good way to put it, Alvise.’
‘I think some of us do and some of us don’t, sir,’ he said sagely, then hastened to add, ‘I’m one of the ones who do, sir. You can count on that.’
Prolonging the smile, Brunetti said, ‘Oh, that was never in doubt: but I was curious about the others and hoped you’d know.’
Alvise blushed. Then he said, voice hesitant, ‘I suppose you don’t want me to tell any of the boys you asked, eh?’
‘No, perhaps better not to,’ Brunetti answered; Alvise must have expected this answer, for no disappointment showed in his face. Conscious of how easily the kindness came into his voice, Brunetti asked, ‘Something else, Alvise?’
The officer put his hands in the pockets of his trousers, looked at his shoes, as if to find the question he wanted to ask written there, looked at Brunetti, and said, ‘Could I tell my wife, sir? That you asked me?’ He placed unconscious emphasis on the final word.
Only by force of will did Brunetti stop himself from putting his arm around Alvise’s shoulder to give him a hug. ‘Of course, Alvise. I’m sure I can trust her as much as I do you.’
‘Oh, much more, sir,’ Alvise said with accidental truth. Then, briskly, ‘Is that package big, sir?’
Momentarily at a loss, Brunetti merely repeated, ‘Package?’
‘The one that’s coming, sir. If it is, I could help Riverre bring it up.’
‘Ah, of course,’ Brunetti said, feeling like the captain of the school soccer team asked by a first-year student if he wanted him to hold his ankles while he did sit-ups. Then, quickly, ‘No, thanks, Alvise. It’s very generous of you to offer, but it’s only an envelope with some files in it.’
‘All right, sir. But I thought I’d ask. In case it was. Heavy, that is.’
‘Thanks again,’ Brunetti said and opened the door to his office.
The sight of a computer on his desk drove all lingering concern with Alvise and his sensibilities from Brunetti’s mind. He approached it with something between trepidation and curiosity. He had been told nothing: his request to have his own computer was so old that Brunetti had quite forgotten both about the request and the possibility that one of his own might someday materialize.
He saw that the screen carried the command: ‘Please choose a password and confirm it. Then press “Enter”. If you want me to have the password, press “Enter” twice.’ Brunetti sat and studied the instructions, read them again, and considered their significance. Signorina Elettra – it could have been no one else – had organized this, had no doubt loaded the computer with those things he would need, and had set up a system that would make intrusion impossible. He began to consider the options: sooner or later, he would need advice, would work himself into a corner from which he would need to extricate himself. And she, being the mind behind the design, would be the one to help him. He did not know if she would need his password in order to untangle whatever mess he had made.
And he didn’t care. He hit ‘Enter’ once, and then once again.
The screen flickered. If he expected some acknowledgement from her to flash across the screen, he was disappointed: all that appeared was the usual list of icons for the programs available to him. He opened his email accounts, both the official one at the Questura and his personal account. The first held nothing of interest; the second was empty. He typed in Signorina Elettra’s work address, then the single word ‘
Brunetti, proud of himself for having hit that second ‘Enter’ without having given it much thought, was struck by how technology had colonized human emotions: to tell someone your password was now the equivalent of giving them the key to your heart. Or at least to your correspondence. Or your bank account. He knew Paola’s, always forgot it, and so had written it in his address book under James: ‘madamemerle’, no caps, all one word, an unsettling choice.
He connected to the internet and was astonished by the speed of the connection. Soon no doubt he’d find it normal, and then he’d find it slow.
He typed in the correct name of the disease, Madelung, and was instantly confronted with a series of articles in Italian and in English. He chose the first and, for the next twenty minutes, doggedly read through the symptoms and proposed treatments, learning little more than Rizzardi had told him. Almost always men, almost always drinkers, almost always without a cure, with quite a high concentration of the disease in Italy.
He clicked the program closed and decided to take care of unfinished business: he called down to the officers’
