'There are some, you know’ Brunetti said. 'There's Rosato, though I don't know how much criminal work she does. And Barasciutti, and Leonardi...' His voice wound down and stopped.
Without feeling it necessary to mention that they had been working among criminal lawyers for close to half a century between them and had come up with the names of only three honest ones, Vianello said, 'Instead of honest, we could settle for effective.' They chose to overlook the fact that this would place Donatini's name back at the top of the list.
Brunetti glanced at his watch. 'When I see his wife, I'll ask her if she knows one.' He pushed himself away from his desk, walked around behind it and sat down.
He noticed some papers that had not been there when he left the previous day but barely glanced at them. 'There's one thing we have to find out’ he said.
'Who authorized it?' Vianello asked.
'Exactly. There's no way a squad of Carabinieri would come into the city and break into a home without having permission from a judge and without having informed us.'
'Patta?' Vianello asked. 'Could he have known?'
The Vice-Questore's name had been the first to come to Brunetti's mind, but the more he considered this, the less likely it seemed. 'Possibly. But then we would have heard.' He did not mention that the inevitable source of that information would not have been the Vice-Questore himself but his secretary, Signorina Elettra.
'Then who?' Vianello asked.
After some time, Brunetti said, 'It could have been Scarpa.'
'But he belongs to Patta,' Vianello said, making no attempt to disguise his distaste for the Lieutenant.
'He's mishandled a few things recently. He could have taken it straight to the Questore as a way of trying to bolster his position’
'But when Patta hears about it?' Vianello asked. 'He's not going to like having been hopped over by Scarpa.' . It was not the first time that Brunetti had considered the symbiosis between those two gentlemen from the South, Vice-Questore Patta and his watchdog. Lieutenant Scarpa. He had always assumed that Scarpa's sights were set on the Vice-Questore's patronage. Could it be, however, that the Lieutenant saw his liaison with Patta as nothing more than a flirtation, a stepping stone on the way to the realization of a higher ambition and that his real target was the Questore himself?
Over the years, Brunetti had learned that he underestimated Scarpa to his cost, so perhaps it was best to admit this possibility and bear it in mind in his future dealings with the Lieutenant. Patta might be a fool and much given to indolence and personal vanity, but Brunetti had seen no evidence that he was corrupt in anything beyond the trivial nor that he was in the hands of the Mafia.
He glanced away from Vianello to follow this train of thought. Have we arrived, then, he wondered, at the point where the absence of a vice equals the presence of its opposite? Have we all gone mad?
Vianello, accustomed to Brunetti's habits, waited until his superior's attention returned and asked, 'Shall we ask her to find out?'
‘I think she'd enjoy that,' Brunetti answered immediately, though he suspected he should not give even this much encouragement to Signorina Elettra's habit of undermining the system of police security.
'Do you remember that woman who came in about six months ago, the one who told us about the pregnant girl?' Brunetti asked.
Vianello nodded and asked, 'Why?'
Brunetti cast his mind back to the woman he had interviewed. Short, older than sixty, with much-permed blonde hair, and very worried that her husband would somehow become aware that she had been to see the police. But someone had told her to come. A daughter or a daughter-in-law, he remembered, was mixed up in it somehow.
'I'd like you to check if there was a transcript made of the interview. I don't remember whether I asked for one, and I don't remember her name. It was in the spring some time, wasn't it?'
‘I think so’ Vianello answered. 'I'll see if I can track it down’
It might not have anything to do with this, but I'd Uke to read what she said, maybe talk to her again’
If there is a transcript, I'll find it,' Vianello said.
Brunetti looked at his watch. 'I'm going over to the hospital to see what his wife will tell me,' he said to Vianello. 'And do ask Signorina Elettra if she can find out who was informed about the Carabinieri... operation’ He wanted to use a stronger word - attack, raid - but he restrained himself.
‘I’ll speak to her when she comes in this afternoon,' said the Inspector.
'Afternoon?' asked a puzzled Brunetti.
It's Tuesday,' Vianello said by way of explanation, as if to say, 'Food stores close on
Wednesday afternoon, fish restaurants don't open on Monday, and Signorina Elettra doesn't work on Tuesday mornings’ 'Ah, yes, of course’
7
She was strong. Had Brunetti been asked to explain why this word came to him when he first saw Pedrolli's wife, he would have been hard-pressed to answer, but the word came to his mind when he saw her and remained with him for as long as he dealt with her. She stood at the side of her husband's bed and gave Brunetti a startled look when he came in, even though he had knocked. Perhaps she expected someone else, someone in a white doctor's coat.
She was beautiful: that was the second thing that struck Brunetti: tall and slender with a mane of dark brown curls. She had high cheekbones and light eyes that might have been green or might have been grey, and a long, thin nose that tipped up at the end. Her mouth was large, disproportionately so below her nose, but the full lips seemed somehow to suit her face perfectly. Though she must have been in her early forties, her face was still unwrinkled, the skin taut. She looked at least a decade younger than the man in the bed, though the circumstances prevented that from being a fair comparison.
When she registered that Brunetti was not whoever she was expecting, she turned back to her husband, who appeared to be asleep. Brunetti could see Pedrolli's forehead and nose and chin, and the long shape of his body under the blanket.
She kept her eyes on her husband, and Brunetti kept his on her. She was wearing a dark green woollen skirt and a beige sweater. Brown shoes, expensive shoes, made for standing, and not for walking.
'Signora?' said Brunetti, remaining by the door.
'Yes?' she said, glancing at him quickly but then turning back to her husband.
'I'm from the police,' he said.
Her rage was instantaneous and caught him off guard. Her voice took on a threatening sibilance that sounded one remove from physical violence. 'You do this to us, and you dare to come into this room? You beat him unconscious and leave him lying there, speechless, and you come in here and you dare to talk to me?'
Fists clenched, she took two steps towards Brunetti, who could not stop himself from raising his hands, palms outward, in a gesture more suited to warding off evil spirits than the threat of physical violence. I had nothing to do with what happened last night, Signora. I'm here to investigate the attack on your husband’
'liar’ she spat, but she came no nearer.
'Signora’ Brunetti said, intentionally keeping his voice low, I was called at home at two o'clock this morning and came down here because the Questura had received a report that a man had been attacked and taken to the hospital’ It was an elaboration - one might even have called it a lie - but the essence was true. 'If you wish, you can ask the doctors or the nurses if this is so’
He paused and watched her consider. 'What's your name?' she demanded.
'Guido Brunetti, Commissario of Police. The operation in which your husband was injured .. ‘ He watched her begin to object, but he continued '... was a Carabinieri operation, not ours. To the best of my knowledge, we were not informed of it in advance’ Perhaps he should not have told her this, but he did so in an attempt to deflect her wrath and induce her to speak to him.
The attempt failed, for she immediately returned to the attack, though no matter how forceful her words, her voice never grew louder than a whisper. 'You mean these gorillas are free to come into the city whenever they want
