'It gets them away from their mothers.'
She laughed. That's perhaps the only certain good thing it does.
Unfortunately, after they have their eighteen months, they all come
back home to roost.'
'Is that what you think Raffi will do?' he asked.
'If I have any say,' she began, causing Brunetti to wonder when she had
not, 'he won't do military service. It would be better for him to go
to Australia and spend eighteen months hitchhiking around the country
and working as a dishwasher. He'd certainly learn more by doing that,
or by opting to do his service as a volunteer in a hospital,
instead.'
'You'd actually let him go off to Australia by himself? For eighteen
months? To wash dishes?'
Paola looked at him and, at the expression of real astonishment she
read on his face, she smiled. 'What do you think I am, Guido, the
mother of the Gracchi, that I must forever hold my children to my bosom
as though they were
my only jewels? Tt wouldn't be easy to see him go, no, not at all, but
I think it would do him a world of good to go off and be independent.'
When Brunetti remained silent, she said, 'At least it would teach him
how to make his own bed.'
'He does that already a literal-minded Brunetti answered.
'I mean in the larger sense,' Paola explained. 'It would give him some
idea that life is not only this tiny city with its tiny prejudices, and
it might give him some idea that work is what you do if you want
something.'
'As opposed to asking your parents?'
'Exactly. Or your grandparents.'
It was rare for Brunetti to hear Paola make a criticism, however
veiled, of her parents, and so he was curious to follow this up. 'Was
it too easy for you? Growing up, I mean.'
'No more than it was too hard for you, my dear.'
Not at all sure what she meant by that, Brunetti was about to ask, when
the door to the apartment flew open and Chiara and Raffi catapulted
into the corridor. He and Paola exchanged a glance, and then a smile,
and then it was time to eat.
no
As often happened, Brunetti was immeasurably cheered by having lunch at
home in the company of his family. He was never certain if his
response was different from that of an animal returned to its den:
safe, warmed by the heat of the bodies of its young, slavering over the
fresh kill it had dragged home. Whatever the cause, the experience
gave him fresh heart and sent him back to work feeling restored and
eager to resume the hunt.
The imagery of violence dropped away from him when he entered Signorina
Elettra's office and found her at her desk, head bowed over some papers
on her desk, chin propped in one hand, utterly relaxed and comfortable.
'I'm not interrupting you, am I?' he asked, seeing the seal of the
Ministry of the Interior on the documents and below it the red stripe
indicating that the material it contained was classified.
'No, not at all, Commissario/ she said, casually slipping the papers
inside a file and thus arousing Brunetti's interest.
'Could you do something for me?' he asked, his eyes on
hers; he was careful to avoid lowering them to the label on the front
of the file.
'Of course, sir she said, slipping the file into her top drawer and
pulling a notepad over in front of her. 'What is it?' she asked, pen
in hand, smile bright.
'In the files for the Academy, is there anything about a girl who had
been raped?'
Her pen clattered to the desk, and the smile disappeared from her lips.
Her entire body pulled back from him in surprise, but she said
nothing.
'Are you all right, Signorina?' he asked, with concern.
She looked down at the pen, picked it up, made quite a business of
replacing the cap and removing it again, then looked up at him and
smiled. 'Of course, sir.' She looked at the pad, pulled it closer to
her, and poised her pen over it. 'What was her name, sir? And when
did it happen?'
'I don't know,' Brunetti began. 'That is, I'm not even sure it
happened. It must have been about eight years ago; I think it was when
I was at a police seminar in London. It happened at the San Martino.
The original report was that the girl had been raped, I think by more
