Through a glass, darkly

reports and scientific papers which presented evidence in support of his various and ever-changing contentions.

The villain responsible for the Tassinis' plight was chameleon-like, changing and changing again as Tassini read more, explored farther with his reading and Internet researches. But the guilty party was always at one remove, was always other, never his own ideas or behaviour. Brunetti didn't know whether to weep for the man or take him by the shoulders and shake him until he admitted what he had done.

The most recent letter was dated more than three weeks before and made mention of new information that Tassini was in the process of acquiring, more evidence he would soon be able to produce to prove that he had been the unknowing victim of the criminal behaviour of two people. He said that he was now in a position to prove his assertions and had but to perform what he called two more 'examinations' in order to confirm his suspicions.

Brunetti read through the letters again and reinforced the sense he had the first time he read them, that the style had deteriorated over time, that they ceased to present their case clearly or cogently and came ever more to resemble the sort of vague accusatory letters the police were all too familiar with. The conjunction Signorina Elettra identified was no doubt that of the growing misery of the child's condition with the mounting confusion of Tassini's letters.

He finished reading the letters for a second time and let them fall onto his desk. Paola had once told him about a medieval Russian epic she had read about while at university, named after its hero: Misery Luckless Plight. Indeed.

The content of the papers had made him forget Signorina Elettra's admonition that they discuss them in his office, not hers; absent-mindedly, he picked them up and started down to her. If she seemed surprised to see him or to see him with the papers, she gave no sign of it and said only, 'Terrible, eh?'

I've seen the little girl,' he said.

Her answering nod could either have been in acknowledgement that she knew he had seen her or that he was telling her now.

'Poor, desperate people,' she said.

He allowed a long silence to pas's before he asked, 'The letters?'

'He's got to blame somebody else, hasn't he?'

'The wife doesn't seem to feel the same need,' Brunetti said with some asperity. 'That is, she realizes they were responsible for what happened.'

'Women have . , .' she started to say and then stopped.

Brunetti waited a moment and at her continued silence, prodded, 'Have what?'

Her glance put him on the scales and weighed him, and then she said, 'Less trouble accepting reality, I think.'

'Possibly,' he answered, hearing in his own voice that tone of half-doubt with which the unwilling greet the expression of good sense. He corrected himself to 'Probably,' and her expression softened.

'What now?' she asked.

'I think I have no choice but to wait until he contacts me and gives me this evidence he keeps talking about.'

'You don't sound very persuaded,' she said.

With a wry look, Brunetti asked, 'Would you be?'

'I didn't talk to him, remember. So I don't have a real sense of him, as a person. Just the letters, and they . . . they don't suggest great reliability. At least not the ones he's writing now. In the beginning, perhaps.' She stopped and then could do nothing more than repeat, after a long pause, 'Poor, desperate people.'

'Which people?' Patta asked from behind Brunetti.

Neither of them had heard the Vice-Questore approach, but it was Signorina Elettra who recovered more quickly. Without missing a beat, she answered, 'The extracomunitari who apply for residence permits and then never hear anything more about them.'

'I beg your pardon’ Patta said, pausing just outside his door. He looked at Signorina Elettra but pointed a finger at Brunetti and then at the door to his office. 'If they apply, then they have to be patient. Just like everyone else who deals with a bureaucracy.'

'Three years?' she inquired.

That stopped him. 'No, not three years.' He made to continue into his office but then stopped on the threshold and turned back to her. 'Who's had to wait three years?'

'The woman who cleans my father's apartment, sir.'

'Three years?'

She nodded.

'Why has it taken so long?'

Brunetti wondered if she would make the obvious response and say that this was exactly what she wanted to know, but she opted for moderation and instead answered, 'I've no idea, sir. She applied three years ago, paid the application fee, and then she heard nothing. She thought that her case would come under the amnesty, but she never heard anything further. So she asked me if I thought she should begin the whole process again and reapply. And pay the fee again.'

'What did you tell her?'

'I don't have an answer to give her, Vice-Questore. It's a lot of money for her—it's a lot of money for anyone—and she doesn't want to go to the expense of applying again if there's any hope that the original application will be successful. That's why I was telling the Commissario that she and her husband were poor, desperate people.'

'I see’ Patta said, turning from her. He waved the waiting Brunetti ahead of him, then turned to Signorina Elettra and said, 'Give me her name and, if you can, her file number and I'll see what I can find out about it.'

'You're very kind, sir,' she said, sounding like she meant it.

Inside, Patta wasted no time: turning to Brunetti, he asked, 'What's all this business of your going out to Murano?'

Deny that he had? Ask how Patta knew? Repeat the question to give himself more time to think of an answer? De Cal? Fasano? Who on Murano had told Patta?

Brunetti opted to tell Patta the truth about what he was doing. 'A woman I know on Murano’ he began— suggesting that she was a woman he had known for some time and thus showing himself how incapable he was of telling Patta the real truth about anything—'told me her father has been threatening her husband, well, making threatening statements about him. Not to him. She wanted me to see if I thought there was any real reason to fear that her father would do something.'

Brunetti watched Patta weigh this, wondering what his superior's response would be to this uncharacteristic frankness. The habit of suspicion, as Brunetti feared, triumphed. 'I suppose this explains why you went out to Murano for some sort of secret meeting in a trattoria, eh?'

Patta asked, unable to disguise his satisfaction at the sight of Brunetti's surprise.

Having begun with the truth, not that it seemed to have helped, Brunetti continued that way. 'He's someone who knows the man who's been making the threats,' Brunetti explained, relieved that Patta appeared to know nothing of Navarro's relationship to Pucetti and even more relieved that his superior had made no mention of Vianello's presence at the meeting. 'I asked him if he thought there was any real basis in them.'

'And? What did he say?'

'He chose not to answer my question.'

'Have you spoken to anyone else?' Patta demanded.

Since telling the truth to Patta had failed as a strategy, Brunetti decided to return to the tried and true path of deceit and said, 'No.'

Patta's information had come from someone who had seen them in the restaurant, so perhaps he knew nothing about Brunetti's visits to Bovo and Tassini.

'So there's no threat?' Patta demanded.

'I'd say no. The man, Giovanni De Cal, is violent, but I think it's language and nothing more.'