Wilful Behaviour
Death at La Fenice
Death in a Strange Country
The Anonymous Venetian
A Venetian Reckoning
Acqua Alta
The Death of Faith
A Noble Radiance
Fatal Remedies
Friends in High Places
A Sea of Troubles
Donna Leon
-X
Doubts and suspicions Turn me to ice.
Mozart
The explosion came at breakfast. Brunetti's position as a commissario of police, though it made the possibility of explosion more likely than it would be for the average citizen, did not make the setting any less strange. The location, however, was related to Brunetti's personal situation as the husband of a woman of incandescent, if inconsistent, views and politics, not to his profession.
'Why do we bother to read this disgusting piece of garbage?' Paola exploded, slamming a folded copy of the day's
Brunetti leaned forward, pushed the edge of the paper aside with his forefinger and righted the bowl. He picked up a second brioche and took a bite, knowing that clarification would follow.
'Listen to this,' Paola said, picking up the paper and reading from the headline of the leading article on the front page:' 'Fulvia Prato Recounts her Terrible Ordeal.'' Like all of Italy, Brunetti was familiar with Fulvia Prato, the wife of a wealthy Florentine industrialist, who had been kidnapped thirteen months before and kept in a cellar for that entire time by her kidnappers. Freed by the
'And this’ she said, turning the paper to the bottom of page five.' 'EU Minister Confesses to Sexual Harassment in Her Former Workplace’ Brunetti was familiar with this case, as well: a female commissioner on the European Commission, he couldn't remember what her exact position was - one of those trivial ones they give to women - had yesterday said at a press conference that she had been the victim of sexual aggression twenty years ago when she worked in a firm of civil engineers.
A man who had learned patience in his more than twenty years of married life, Brunetti awaited Paola's explanation. 'Can you believe they'd use that word? Signora Prato did not have to
'It is hard to believe, isn't it?' Brunetti agreed, himself genuinely shocked by the use of the word and more shocked that he had not registered its dissonance until Paola pointed it out to him.
Years ago, he had begun to make gentle fun of what he then dubbed her 'coffee sermons', the fulminations with which she greeted her reading of the morning papers, but over the years he had come to see that there was great sense in seeming madness.
'Have you ever had to deal with this sort of thing?' she asked him. She held the bottom half of the paper towards him, so he knew she was not referring to the kidnapping.
'Once, years ago’
'Where?'
'In Naples. When I was assigned there’ 'What happened?'
'A woman came in to report that she had been raped. She wanted to make an official
Paola's pause was equally long; then she asked, 'And?'
The questioning was done by the commissario I was assigned to at the time’
'And?'
'He told her to think about what she was doing, that it would cause her husband a great deal of trouble.'
This time Paola's silence was enough to spur him on.
'After she listened to him, she said she needed time to think about it, and she left’ He could still remember the set of the woman's shoulders as she left the office where the questioning had taken place. 'She never came back.'
Paola sighed, then asked, 'Have things changed much since then?'
'A bit.'
'Are they any better?'
'Minimally. At least we try to have female officers do the first interview.' Try?'
'If there are any on duty when it happens, when they come in’
'And if there aren't?'
'We call around and see if a woman can come on duty’ 'And if not?'
He wondered how breakfast had somehow become an inquisition. 'If not, then they are interviewed by whoever's available’
