as if doctors were afraid no one would believe them unless tangible proof of their training were plastered up on the wall for all to see. ‘Emory University.’ That meant nothing to him.
A magazine lay closed on the desk.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, hiding neither surprise nor anger.
He stood. ‘I apologize for touching your things, Doctor. I came here to talk to you, if you have time. I saw the magazine there and looked through it while I was waiting. I hope you don’t mind.’
Clearly, she realized that her reaction had been too strong. He watched while she tried to gain control of herself. Finally, she sat in the chair in front of her desk and said, trying to smile, ‘Well, better that than my mail.’ That said, her smile seemed to become genuine. She pointed to the now closed magazine. ‘It happens in old people. They get too stiff to bend down and cut their toenails, but they continue to grow, and, as you saw, the feet become horribly distorted.’
‘Better paediatrics,’ he said.
She smiled again. ‘Yes, far better. I think it’s better to invest your time in children.’ She placed her stethoscope on top of the magazine and said, ‘I don’t think you came here to discuss my career choices, Commissario. What is it you’d like to know?’
‘I’d like to know why you lied about your trip to Cairo with Sergeant Foster.’
He saw that she wasn’t surprised, had perhaps been expecting it. She crossed her legs, her knees just visible under the hem of the uniform skirt she wore beneath the white jacket. ‘So you do read my mail?’ she asked. When he didn’t say anything, she continued, ‘I didn’t want anyone here to know what happened.’
‘Doctor, you sent the postcard here, with both your names, well, initials, on it. It would hardly be a secret to anyone here that you went to Cairo together.’
‘Please, you know what I mean. I didn’t want anyone here to know what happened,’ she repeated. ‘You were there when I saw his body. So you know.’
‘Why don’t you want anyone here to know? Are you married to someone else?’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head tiredly at his failure to understand. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if it were only that. But I’m an officer, and Mike was an enlisted man.’ She saw his confusion. ‘That’s fraternization, and it’s one of the things we are forbidden to do.’ She paused for a long time. ‘One of many things.’
‘What would happen to you if they found out?’ he asked, not thinking it necessary to define ‘they’.
She shrugged. ‘I have no idea. One of us would have been spoken to, perhaps disciplined. Maybe even transferred to some other place. But that’s hardly a concern now, is it?’ she asked, looking at him directly.
‘No, I’m afraid it isn’t. Could it still hurt your career?’ he asked.
‘I’ll be out of the Army in six months, Mr Brunetti. They wouldn’t bother with it now, and if they did, I don’t mink I’d much care. I don’t want a career, not with the Army, but I still don’t want them to know. I just want to get out and go back to my life,’ She paused for a moment, gave him a diagnostic glance, then continued. ‘The Army sent me to medical school. I could never have afforded it myself and neither could my family. So they gave me six years of school, and now I’ve given them four years of work. That’s ten years, Mr Brunetti, ten years. So I guess I shouldn’t even say I want to go back to my life. I want to start to have one.’
‘What are you going to do? With that life, I mean.’
She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t know. I’ve applied to some hospitals. There’s always private practice. Or I could go back to school. I don’t think about that much.’
‘Is that because of Sergeant Foster’s death?’
She prodded the stethoscope with one finger, looked at him, then back down at her hand.
‘Doctor Peters,’ he began, feeling awkward about how speech-like this was going to sound in English. ‘I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I know that Sergeant Foster wasn’t killed by a mugger or in some bungled robbery attempt He was murdered, and whoever murdered him has something to do with the American military, or with the Italian police. And I believe that you know something about whatever it was that caused him to be killed. I’d like you to tell me what it is you know, or what it is you suspect. Or what you’re afraid of.’ The words sounded leaden and artificial in his ears.
She looked over at him when he said that, and he saw a phantom of what he had seen in her eyes that night on the island of San Michele. She started to speak, stopped, and looked back down at the stethoscope. After a long time, she shook her head and said, ‘I think you’re exaggerating my reaction, Mr Brunetti. I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say I’m afraid of something.’ And then, to convince them both, ‘I don’t know anything about why Mike would have been killed or who might have wanted to kill him.’
He glanced at her hand and saw that she had bent the black rubber tube that led down to the flat disc at the end of the instrument until the rubber was grey with tension. She caught the direction of his eyes, looked down at her own hand, and slowly released it, until the tube was again straight, the rubber black. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another patient to see.’
‘Certainly, Doctor,’ he said, knowing that he had lost. ‘If you think of anything you want to tell me or if you want to talk to me, you can reach me at the Questura in Venice.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, stood and went to the door. ‘Do you want to finish the article?’
‘No,’ he said, scrambling to his feet and going to the door. He put out his hand. ‘If you think of anything, Doctor.’
She took his hand, smiled, but said nothing. He watched as she went down the corridor to the left and into the next room, from which he could hear the voice of a woman talking in a low, crooning voice, probably to a sick child.
Outside, the driver was waiting, busy with a magazine. He looked up when Brunetti opened the back door of
