Flavia began to object but cut herself off short. She gave Brunetti a smile that began as a professional one but surprised both of them by becoming entirely natural. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said, surprising both of them again with the sincerity of her voice.
‘Until tomorrow, then,’ he said, giving Brett’s hand a squeeze. Flavia remained at the bedside while he let himself out of the room. He took the steps she had used and turned left at the bottom, into the covered portico that ran alongside the open courtyard. An old woman wrapped in an army overcoat sat in a wheelchair at the side of the corridor, knitting. At her feet three cats fought over the body of a mouse.
* * * *
Chapter Four
As he walked back towards the Questura, Brunetti found himself troubled by what he had seen and heard. She would heal, he realized; her body would become well and return to what it had been before. Signora Petrelli believed she would be all right, but his experience told him that the effects of violence such as this would linger, perhaps for years, if only as a real and sudden fear that would come on her unexpectedly. Well, perhaps he was wrong and Americans were tougher than Italians, and perhaps she would emerge the same person, but he couldn’t stifle his concern for her.
When he entered the Questura, one of the uniformed officers approached him. ‘Dottor Patta is looking for you, sir,’ he said, keeping his voice low and neutral. It seemed that everyone in the place kept their voices low and neutral when they spoke of the Vice-Questore.
Brunetti thanked him and proceeded towards the steps at the back of the building, the quickest way to his office. The intercom was ringing as he entered. He set his briefcase down on top of the desk and picked up the receiver.
‘Brunetti?’ Patta asked, quite unnecessarily, even before Brunetti could say his name. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ he answered, flicking through the papers that had accumulated on his desk in the hours he had been gone.
‘I’ve been trying to get you on the phone all morning, Brunetti. We’ve got to make a decision about the Stresa conference. Come down to my office right now,’ he ordered, then tempered it with a very grudging, ‘would you?’
‘Yes, sir. Immediately’ Brunetti hung up, leafed through the rest of the papers, opening one letter and reading it through twice. He walked over to stand by the window and again read through the report of the attack at Brett’s house, then left and went down to Patta’s office.
Signorina Elettra was not at her desk, but a low bowl overflowing with yellow freesias filled the room with a scent almost as sweet as her presence.
He knocked and waited to be told to enter. A muffled sound told him to do so. Patta was posed in the frame created by one of the large windows in his office, gazing across at the eternally scaffolded fa c ade of the church of San Lorenzo. What little light came in managed to glimmer from the radiant points on Patta’s body: the tips of his shoes, the gold chain that ran across the front of his vest, and the tiny ruby that flickered dully in his tie-pin. He glanced at Brunetti and crossed the room to his desk. As he did, Brunetti was struck by how much his progress across the room strove to imitate Flavia Petrelli’s through the hospital. The contrast lay in her complete indifference to the effect she might be making; to Patta, that was the purpose of his every motion. The Vice-Questore took his place behind die desk and gestured to Brunetti to take a chair in front of him.
‘Where have you been all morning?’ Patta asked without preamble.
‘I went to speak to the victim of an attempted robbery,’ Brunetti explained. He kept his remarks as vague and, he hoped, as meaningless as possible.
‘That’s why we have men in uniform.’
Brunetti made no response.
Turning his attention to the business at hand, Patta asked, ‘What about the Stresa conference? Which of us is going to attend?’
Two weeks before, Brunetti had received an invitation to a conference being organized by Interpol, to be held at the resort town of Stresa on Lago Maggiore. Because it would allow him to renew friendships and contacts with police officers from the various members of the Interpol network and because the programme offered training in the latest computer techniques for the storage and retrieval of information, Brunetti wanted to attend. Patta, who knew Stresa to be one of the most fashionable resorts in Italy, possessed of a climate that invited escape from the damp chill of a late Venetian winter, had suggested that it might be better were he to go instead. But as the invitation was specifically directed to Brunetti and bore a handwritten note to him from the organizer of the conference, Patta had found it hard to convince Brunetti to renounce his right to go. With great reluctance, Patta drew the line just short of ordering him not to attend.
Brunetti crossed his legs and pulled his notebook from his pocket. As always, the pages were blank of anything that pertained to police business, but Patta, as always, failed to realize this. ‘Let me check the dates,’ Brunetti said, flicking through the pages. ‘The sixteenth, isn’t it? Until the twentieth?’ His pause was dramatic, orchestrated to Patta’s mounting impatience. ‘I’m not sure any longer that I’m free that week.’
‘What dates did you say?’ Patta asked, flipping his desk calendar forward a few weeks. ‘Sixteenth to the twentieth?’ His pause was even more dramatic than Brunetti’s had been. ‘Well, if you can’t do it, I might be able to go. I’d have to reschedule a meeting with the Minister of the Interior, but I think I might be able to do so.’
‘That might be better, sir. Are you sure you can allow the time?’
Patta’s glance was illegible. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’s settled, then,’ Brunetti said with false heartiness.
It must have been something in his tone, or perhaps in his alacrity, that triggered alarm bells in Patta. ‘Where were you this morning?’
‘I told you, sir, speaking to the victim of a reported robbery attempt.’
‘What victim?’ Patta asked, voice heavy with suspicion.
‘A foreigner who lives here.’
