against one of the walls of the Arsenate to allow a place where plastic bottles and old boots could wash up and be covered with slimy seaweed.
‘If your friend speaks to Ruffolo again, tell him I’ll be there.’
Satisfied that he had done what he came for, the boy got to his feet, nodded his head awkwardly to both men, and left the office.
‘Probably going to go and look for a phone so he can call Ruffolo and tell him the deal’s on,’ Vianello said.
‘I hope so. I don’t want to spend an hour standing out there waiting for him if he doesn’t show up.
‘Would you like me to come along, sir?’ Vianello volunteered.
‘Yes, I think I would,’ Brunetti said, realizing he was not the stuff of heroes. But then he added, more practically, ‘But It’s probably a bad idea. He’ll have friends planted at either end of the catwalk, and there’s no place at either end where you could be without being seen. Besides, there’s no meanness in Ruffolo. He’s never been violent.’
‘I could go down there and ask if I could stay in one of the houses.’
‘No, I don’t think it’s a good idea. He’d think of that, and his friends will probably be wandering around there, watching out for just that.’ Brunetti tried for a moment to form a mental image of the area around the Celestia stop, but all he could remember were anonymous blocks of public housing, an area almost completely devoid of shops or bars. In fact, if it were not for the presence of the
‘What about the other two?’ Vianello asked, meaning the other two men involved in the robbery.
‘I imagine they want a part of Ruffolo’s deal. Or else he’s a lot smarter now man he was two years ago, and he managed to get tine paintings away from them.’
‘Maybe they got the jewellery,’ Vianello suggested.
‘Possibly. But it’s more likely that Ruffolo’s the spokesman for all three.’
‘Doesn’t make any sense, does it?’ Vianello asked. ‘I mean, they got away with it, they’ve got the paintings and the jewellery. What’s the advantage to them, if they just give up, give it all back?’
‘Maybe the paintings are too hard to sell.’
‘Come on, sir. You know the market as well as I do. You look hard enough, you can find a buyer for anything, no matter how hot it is. I could sell the Pieta if I could get it out of Saint Peter’s.’
Vianello was right. It didn’t make any sense. Ruffolo was hardly the type to reform, and there was always a market for paintings, no matter where they came from. The moon had just turned full, he remembered, and he thought of what a clear target he would be, dark jacket outlined against the pale wall of the Arsenate. He dismissed the idea as ridiculous.
‘Well, I’ll go along and see what Ruffolo has to offer,’ he said, sounding to himself like one of those nitwit heroes in a British film.
‘If you change your mind, sir, let me know tomorrow. I’ll be home tomorrow night. All you have to do is call.’
‘Thanks, Vianello. But! think it will be all right. I appreciate it, really I do.’
Vianello waved his hand and went back to the papers on his desk.
If he had to be a midnight hero, even if it was a day away, Brunetti saw no reason to stay in his office any longer.
When he got home, Paola told him that she had spoken to her parents that afternoon. They were well, enjoying what her mother persisted in believing was Ischia. Her father’s only message to Brunetti was that he had begun to take care of that matter for him and that it ought to be fully resolved by the end of the week. Though Brunetti was convinced it was a matter that would never be fully resolved, he thanked Paola for the information and told her to extend his greetings to her parents the next time they called.
Dinner was a strangely tranquil meal, chiefly because of Raffaele’s behaviour. He seemed, though Brunetti was astonished when he found himself thinking the word, he seemed cleaner, though it had never occurred to Brunetti that he might have been dirty. His hair had been recently cut, and the jeans he wore had a discernible crease down the front of both legs. He listened to what his parents said without objecting and, very strangely, did not fight Chiara for the last helping of pasta. When the meal was over, he protested at being told it was his turn to do the dishes, which reassured Brunetti, but then he did them without sighs and grumbles of dissatisfaction, and that silence caused Brunetti to ask Paola, ‘Is anything wrong with Raffi?’ They were sitting on the sofa in the living room, and the silence that came in from the kitchen filled the entire room.
She smiled. ‘Strange, isn’t it? I felt like it was the calm before the storm.’
‘Do you think we should lock our door at night?’ he asked. They both laughed but neither was sure if it was at the remark or at the possibility that it might be over. For them, as for the parents of all adolescents, ‘it’ needed no clarification: that awful, brooding cloud of resentment and righteous indignation that drifted into their lives with certain hormonal levels and remained there until those levels changed.
‘He asked me if I’d read over an essay he had to write for his English class,’ Paola said. Seeing his surprise, she added, ‘Brace yourself. He also asked if he could have a new jacket for the autumn.’
‘New, like you buy it in a shop?’Brunetti asked, amazed. This from the boy who had, two weeks ago, delivered a ringing condemnation of the capitalist system and its creation of false consumer needs, that had invented the idea of fashion just to create the unending demand for new clothing.
Paola nodded. ‘New. From a shop.’
‘I don’t know if I’m ready for this,’ Brunetti said. ‘Are we going to lose our rough-mannered anarchist?’
‘I think so, Guido. The jacket he said he wanted is in the window of Duca d’Aosta and costs four hundred thousand lire.’
