charity or his very existence. Santini went out into the hall, where
two white-coated attendants from the hospital waited, a rolled-up
stretcher leaning against the wall between them. 'You can take him now
he said. He remained outside while they went in, put the boy on the
stretcher, and carried him from the room. When they were abreast of
Santini, he put up a monitory hand. They stopped, and he leaned down
to pick up the end of the dark blue military
cloak that was dragging on the ground behind the stretcher. He tucked
it under the boy's leg and told the attendants to take him out to the
boat.
Recognizing it as the temptation of moral cowardice, Brunetti pushed
aside the desire to join the others on the police boat to the hospital
and from there to the Questura. Perhaps it was the flash of terror
when he first saw the boy's body, or perhaps it was Brunetti's
admiration for the elder Moro's inconvenient honesty, but something
there was that urged Brunetti to get a more complete picture of the
boy's death. The suicides of young boys were ever more frequent:
Brunetti had read somewhere that, with almost mathematical regularity,
they increased in times of economic well-being and decreased when times
were bad. During wars, they virtually disappeared. He assumed his own
son was as subject to the vagaries of adolescence as any other boy:
carried up and down on the waves of his hormones, his popularity, or
his success at school. The idea of Raffi's ever being driven to
suicide was inconceivable, but that must be what every parent
thought.
Until evidence suggested that the boy's death had not been suicide,
Brunetti had no mandate to question anyone about
any other possibility: not his classmates, still less his parents. To
do so would be the worst sort of ghoulish curiosity as well as a
flagrant misuse of his power. Admitting all of this, he went out into
the courtyard of the Academy and, using the telefonino he had
remembered to bring with him, called Signorina Elettra's direct line at
the Questura.
When she answered, he told her where he was and asked that she check
the phone book for Moro's address, which he thought must be in
Dorsoduro, though he couldn't remember why he associated the man with
that sestiere.
She asked no questions, told him to wait a moment, then said the number
was unlisted. There elapsed another minute or two, then she gave him
the Dorsoduro address. She told him to wait, then told him the house
was on the canal running alongside the church of Madonna della Salute.
Tt's got to be the one next to the low brick one that has the terrace
with all the flowers she said.
He thanked her, then made his way back up the stairs to the dormitory
rooms on the top floor and went along the still silent corridor,
checking the names outside of the doors. He found it at the end:
moro/cavani. Not bothering to knock, Brunetti entered the room. Like
that of Ruffo, the room was clean, almost surgical: bunk beds and two
small desks opposite them, nothing left in sight to clutter up their
surfaces. He took a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket and used
it to open the drawer of the desk nearest him. With the pen he flipped
open the notebook that lay inside. Ernesto's name was on the inside of
the cover and the book was filled with mathematical formulae, written
out in a neat, square hand. He shoved the notebook to the back of the
drawer and opened the one beneath it, with much the same result, though
this one contained exercises in English.
He shoved the drawer closed and turned his attention to the closet
between the two desks. One door had Moro's name on it. Brunetti
pulled it open from the bottom with his foot.
Inside, there were two uniforms in dry cleaning bags, a denim jacket,
and a brown tweed coat. The only things he found in the pockets were
some small change and a dirty handkerchief.
A bookcase contained nothing more than textbooks. He lacked the will
to take down and examine each of them. He took one final look around
the room and left, careful to hook his pen in the handle to pull the
door shut.
He met Santini on the steps and told him to check Moro's room then left
the school and went down to the edge of the Canale della Giudecca.
Turning right, he started to walk along the Riva, intending to catch a
vaporetto. As he walked, he kept his attention on the buildings on the
other side of the canal: Nico's Bar and, above it, an apartment he had
spent a lot of time in before he met Paola; the church of the Gesuati,
where once a decent man had been pastor; the former Swiss Consulate,
the flag gone now. Have even the Swiss abandoned us? he wondered.
Ahead was the Bucintoro, the long narrow boats long gone, evicted by
the scent of Guggenheim money, Venetian oarsmen gone to make space for
even more tourist shops. He saw a boat coming from Redentore and
hurried on to the imbarcndero at Palanca to cross back to the Zattere.
When he got off, he looked at his watch and realized that it really did
take less than five minutes to make the trip from the Giudecca. Even
so, the other island still seemed, as it had ever seemed, as far
distant as the Galapagos.
It took less than five minutes to weave his way back to the broad campo
that surrounded La Madonna della Salute, and there he found the house.
Again resisting the impulse to delay, he rang the bell and gave his
title and name.
