'Violent?'
'No, not really, but very easily led. He had all of the core beliefs.
You know the sort of things they say: honour and discipline and the
need for order. I suppose he got it from his family. His father had
been a general or something, so it's all he'd ever been exposed to.'
'Like you, only different?' Brunetti asked, smiling. He knew her
sister, and so he knew what the politics of the Zorzis were.
'Exactly, only no one in my family has ever had a good
word to say about discipline or the need for order.' The pride with
which she said this was unmistakable.
He started to ask another question, but she got to her feet, as though
suddenly conscious of how much she had revealed, and leaned forward to
place the file on his desk. That's what's come in, sir,' she said with
a briskness that was strangely dissonant with the easy familiarity of
their conversation up to that point.
Thank you,' he said.
'It should all be clear, but if you need any explanation, call.'
He noticed that she didn't tell him to come down to her office or to
ask her to come up to explain. The geographical limits of their
formality had been reestablished. |
'Certainly,' he said, and then repeated, as she turned i toward the
door, Thank you.'
The folder contained photocopies of newspaper articles about Fernando
Moro's careers as doctor and politician. The first seemed to have led
to the second: he had first caught the public eye about six years ago,
when, as one of the inspectors commissioned to examine the quality of
hospital care in the Veneto, he had submitted a report calling into
question the statistics issued by the provincial government, statistics
which boasted one of the lowest patient to doctor ratios on the
continent. It was the Moro Report which indicated that the low figure
resulted from the inclusion in the statistics of three new hospitals,
facilities which were planned to provide medical care at the highest
level. Money had been allocated for their construction, and that money
had been spent, and thus the statistics included these hospitals and
factored in all of the services they were planned to provide. The
resulting figures were a three-day marvel, for the Veneto was thus
shown to have the best health care in Europe.
It was Fernando Moro's report that pointed out the
inconvenient fact that those three hospitals, however grandiose their
plans, however extensive their staffs, and however varied the services
they were meant to provide, had never actually been built. Once their
services were subtracted from the tabulations, the health care provided
to the citizens of the Veneto fell to where its patients were
accustomed to judging it to be: somewhat below that of Cuba, though
certainly above that of Chad.
In the aftermath of the report, Moro had been lauded as a hero by the
press and had become one in the popular mind, but he found that the
administration of the hospital where he worked had decided that his
many talents would be better utilized if he were to take over the
administration of the old people's home attached to the hospital. His
protest that, as an oncologist, he would be better employed in the
hospital's oncology ward was brushed aside as false humility, and his
lateral transfer was confirmed.
This in its turn led to his decision to attempt to achieve public
office before his name dropped from public memory; perhaps a tactical
decision, but a no less successful one for that.
Moro had once remarked that his long familiarity with terminal illness
was perhaps the best preparation he could have had for a career in
Parliament. Late at night and only when among old and trusted friends,
he was rumoured to expand upon that metaphor, a fact which was not long
in filtering back to his fellow parliamentarians. This might well have
affected the nature of the committees to which he was appointed.
As he read the newspaper articles, all purporting to be neutral
presentation of fact but all tinted by the political affiliation of the
particular paper or journalist, Brunetti realized that he was colouring
the articles with the hues of his own memory. He had known, or at
least heard, about Moro for years, and as he tended to share the man's
political
leanings, he knew he was prejudiced in the man's favour and that he
presupposed his honesty. He knew just how dangerous this sort of
thinking was, especially for a policeman, yet Moro was hardly a
suspect: the totality of his grief excluded him from any suspicion of
involvement in his son's death. 'Or else I've never had a son; or else
I've never had a soul Brunetti caught himself whispering out loud.
He looked up at the door, embarrassed to have been so distracted by his
thoughts, but no one was there. He continued reading: the other
articles merely repeated the essential information contained in the
first few. Regardless of how insinuating the tone of some of the
journalists, no matter how carefully they constructed their specious
