either in the police or the medical system.
Brunetti refused to speculate further about Venturi's motives and
directed his attention to the report. Ernesto Moro had been in
excellent health at the time of his death, entirely free of any sign of
disease, not a single cavity in his teeth, though there was evidence of
previous orthodontic work. His left leg had been broken in the past,
perhaps as long as ten years ago, but had healed completely; tonsils
and appendix were still present.
The cause of death was strangulation. There was no way to judge how
far his body had fallen before the noose had tightened around his
throat, but it had not been sufficient to break his neck, so the boy
had strangled to death. It had not been, Venturi stated, a quick
process: the rope had caused extensive bruising of the front and right
side of his neck. This suggested that his last moments had been spent
in instinctive convulsions against the tightening cord. There followed
the exact dimensions of the shower stall in which his body had been
found and the possible extension of arms as long as his. Brunetti
thought of those sweeping marks on the wall of the shower.
From the evidence of the food in the boy's stomach, it was likely that
he had died some time between midnight and three in the morning. There
was no evidence of drug use, and it seemed that he had consumed only a
moderate amount of wine with his last meal, probably no more than one
glass and certainly not enough to cloud his judgement in any way.
Brunetti put the papers back in the folder and left it lying open on
his desk. The report said everything just as it said nothing. He
tried to subtract the knowledge that Signora Moro had been shot and
view her son's death as a separate event. The obvious possible motives
were thus some disappointment the boy had suffered or the desire to pay
someone back for a perceived injury. Once the mother was
put back into the equation, the possible motives expanded
exponentially. Instead of being viewed as the prime mover in the
action, the boy became a means and some other person the mover.
Following this filament of vague speculation, Brunetti saw ' that the
mother's survival suggested she was not the prime | target, which left
Moro himself. But even that, he realized, led nowhere: until he had an
idea of what Moro might be a target of, or for whom, all speculation
was as flimsy as the jumbled bits and pieces of information upon which
he chose to base it.
The arrival of Signorina Elettra put an end to his fragmentary musings.
'You saw that?' she asked as she came in, nodding towards the autopsy
report.
'Yes. What do you make of it?'
'I can't understand it, why a boy like that would kill himself. It
doesn't make any sense at all.'
'It's not so unusual, I'm afraid, kids killing themselves.'
His remark seemed to cause her pain. She stopped in front of his desk,
another folder in one hand. 'But why?'
'I spoke to one of the cadets over there. He said there was no way to
be sure about the future, or that there even would be one for them.'
'That's nonsense,' she snapped angrily. 'Of course there's always a
future.'
'I'm just repeating what he told me.'
'A cadet?' she asked.
'Yes.'
She was silent for a long time, then finally said, I went out with one
of them for a while.'
Immediately curious, Brunetti asked, 'When you were a student?'
Her mouth moved in a sly smile: 'Not last week, certainly.' Then she
went on, 'Yes, when I was eighteen.' She looked down at the floor in a
moment's reflection and then said, 'No, as a matter of fact, I was only
sixteen. That explains it.'
He knew a set-up line when he heard it. 'Explains what?'
'How I could have put up with him
Brunetti half rose in his chair and gestured towards the other. 'Have
a seat, please.' She swept one hand behind her as she sat,
straightening her skirt, then placed the folder flat on her lap.
'What did you have to put up with?' he asked, puzzled by the idea of
Signorina Elettra as a person capable of enduring anything she didn't
wish to.
'I was going to say that he was a Fascist and that they all were, and
probably still are today, but it might not be true of all of them. So
I'll say only that he was a Fascist, and a bully, and a snob and that
most of his friends were, too.' From long experience of her, Brunetti
could sense when Signorina Elettra was doing no more than practising
verbal solfeggi and when she was preparing to launch into an aria; he
