but did not comment.
‘Where did the first price come from?’
‘An on-line company in Germany. The computers come fully programmed in Italian, with an Italian keyboard.’
‘And the others?’ he asked.
‘The others have been ordered and paid for already,’ she said. ‘What I showed you is the purchase order.’
‘But that’s crazy,’ Brunetti said, unconsciously using the word and tone his mother habitually used to comment on the price of fish.
Saying nothing, Signorina Elettra scrolled back to the top of the list, where she arrived at the letterhead: ‘Ministro del Interno’.
‘They’re paying eight hundred Euros more?’ he asked, not sure whether to be astonished or outraged, or both.
She nodded.
‘How many did they buy?’
‘Four hundred.’
It took him only seconds. ‘That’s three hundred and twenty thousand Euros more,’ he said. She said nothing. ‘Haven’t these people ever heard about buying in quantity? Isn’t the price supposed to come down when you do?’
‘If the government is doing the buying, I think the rules are different, sir,’ she answered.
Brunetti took a step back from the computer and walked around to the front of her desk. ‘In a case like this, who’s doing the buying? Who specifically, that is?’
‘Some bureaucrat in Rome, I’d assume, sir.’
‘Does anyone check what he does? Compare prices or offers?’
‘Oh,’ she said with audible negligence, ‘I’m sure someone does.’
Time passed, during which Brunetti considered the possibilities. The fact that one person could order an item that cost eight hundred Euros more than an identical item did not mean that another person would object to the higher price, especially when it was government money that was being spent, and especially when only those two people were privy to the bidding process.
‘Isn’t anyone concerned about this?’ Brunetti heard himself asking.
‘Someone must be, Commissario,’ she answered. Then, with almost militant brightness, she asked, ‘What was it you wanted to see me about?’
He explained quickly about Vianello’s aunt and the withdrawals she had been making, then gave her the name and address of Stefano Gorini, asking her if she had time to find out something about him.
Signorina Elettra made a note of the name and address and asked, ‘Is this the aunt who’s married to the electrician?’
‘Ex-electrician,’ Brunetti corrected, then, ‘Yes.’
She gave him a sober glance and shook her head. ‘I think it’s like being a priest or a doctor,’ she said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Being an electrician, sir. I think once you do it, you have a sort of moral obligation to keep on doing it.’ She gave him time to consider this, and when he made no comment, she said, ‘Nothing’s worse than darkness.’
From long experience as a resident of a city where many houses still had wires that had been installed fifty or sixty years ago, Brunetti grasped what she meant and had no choice but to say, ‘Yes. Nothing worse.’
His ready agreement seemed to cheer her, and she asked, ‘Is it urgent, sir?’
Given the fact that it probably wasn’t legal, either, Brunetti said, ‘No, not really.’
‘Then I’ll have a look tomorrow, sir.’
Before he left, he said, indicating her computer, ‘While you’re in there, could you see what you can find out about an usher at the Courthouse, Araldo Fontana?’ Brunetti did not give her the name of Judge Coltellini, not from compunction at sharing police information with a civilian employee — he had long since set aside the things of a child — but because he did not want to burden her with a third name, and Brusca’s apparent defence of the man had made Brunetti more curious about him.
But he could not stop himself from asking, ‘Where did you get that information about the computers, Signorina?’
‘Oh, it’s all in the public record, sir. You just have to know where to look.’
‘And so you sort of go trolling through the files by yourself to see what you can see?’
‘Yes,’ she said with a smile, ‘I suppose you could phrase it that way. “Trolling.” I quite like that.’
‘And you never know what you’re going to fish up, I suppose.’
‘Never,’ she said. Then, pointing to the paper where she had written the names he wanted her to check, she said, ‘Besides, it keeps me in training for interesting things like this.’
‘Isn’t the rest of your work interesting, Signorina?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m afraid much of it isn’t, Dottore.’ She propped her chin in her cupped palm and tightened her lips in a resigned grimace. ‘It’s hard when so many of the people I work for are so very dull.’
‘It’s a common enough plight, Signorina,’ Brunetti said and left the office.
9
By the time he reached his office the next day, Brunetti was resigned to the fact that he was not soon going to have his own computer, though he found it more difficult to resign himself to the temperature of his office when he arrived. The family had, the night before, discussed where they were to go for their yearly vacation, Brunetti apologizing that the uncertainty of work had kept him this long without knowing when he would be free. He had quickly squashed all discussion of going to the seaside: not in August with millions of people in the water and on the roads and in the restaurants. ‘I will not go to Puglia, where it is forty degrees in the shade, and where the olive oil is all fake,’ he remembered saying at one point.
In retrospect, he accepted the possibility that he might have been too firm. In his defence of his own desires, he had been emboldened by the fact that Paola never much cared where they went: her only concern was what books she should take and whether wherever they went had a quiet place for her to lie in the shade and read.
Other men had wives who begged them to go out dancing, travel the world, stay up late and do irresponsible things. Brunetti had managed to marry a woman who looked forward to going to bed at ten o’clock with Henry James. Or, when driven by wild passions she was ashamed to reveal to her husband, with Henry James and his brother.
Like the president of a banana republic, Brunetti had offered democratic choice and then rammed his own proposal past all difference of opinion or opposition. A cousin of his had inherited a farmhouse in Alto Adige, above Glorenza, and had offered it to Brunetti while he and his family went to Puglia. ‘In the heat, eating fake olive oil,’ Brunetti muttered, though no less grateful to his cousin for the offer. And so the Brunettis were to go to the mountains for two weeks; thinking of it, Brunetti’s spirit flooded with relief at the mere thought of sleeping under a quilt and having to wear a sweater in the evening.
Vianello and his family had rented a house on the beach in Croatia, where he planned to do nothing but swim and fish until the end of the month. While they were both away, their unofficial investigation into Stefano Gorini would go on vacation, as well.
Brunetti spent the first part of the morning using the computer in the officer’s squad room to check the trains to Bolzano and to consult the various tourist sites in Alto Adige. Then he went back to his own office and called a few colleagues to see if they had ever come into contact with Stefano Gorini. He had more success with the train schedule.
A bit after twelve-thirty, he dialled his home number. Paola answered on the third ring, saying, ‘If you can get here in fifteen minutes, there’s prosciutto and figs and then pasta with fresh peppers and shrimp.’
‘Twenty,’ he said and hung up.
To walk it that quickly on a hot day, he feared, would kill him, so he went out to the
