Suffer the Little Children

and break into our homes and kidnap our children and leave a man lying there like that?' She turned and pointed to her husband, and the gesture, as well as the words, struck Brunetti as intentionally dramatic. However sympathetic he might be towards Pedrolli and his wife, Brunetti did not allow himself to forget, as she seemed capable of doing, that they were accused of illegally adopting a child and that her husband was under arrest

'Signora, I don't want to disturb your husband.' She seemed to soften, so he continued. 'If I can find a nurse who will stay in the room with him, will you come into the corridor and talk to me?'

'If you can find a nurse in this place, you're better than I. I haven't seen anyone since they brought me in here’ she said, still angry, but less so now. 'They're quite happy just to leave him lying there.'

Good sense told Brunetti not to respond. He held up his hand in a calming gesture. The uniformed Carabiniere still sat in the corridor though he didn't so much as glance up when Brunetti left the room. At the end of the corridor, the day shift was just coming on duty, two women of middle years dressed in today's nursing uniform: jeans and sweaters worn under long white jackets. The taller of the two wore red shoes; the other had white hair.

He took his warrant card from his wallet and showed it to them. ‘I’m here for Dottor Pedrolli’ he said.

'What for?' the tall one demanded. 'Don't you think you've done enough?'

The older one put a restraining hand on her colleague's arm, as if she feared she and Brunetti were about to get into a fist-fight. She tugged at her colleague's arm, not gently, and said, 'Be careful, Gina,' then, to Brunetti, 'What is it you want?' Her tone, though milder, still seemed to accuse Brunetti of complicity in the blow that had put Dottor Pedrolli in the room halfway down the corridor.

Unwilling to relent, the one called Gina snorted, but at least she was listening to him, so Brunetti continued. I was here at three this morning to visit someone I thought was the victim of an attack. My men were not involved in it.'

The older one at least seemed willing to believe him, and that appeared to lessen the tension. 'Do you know him?' he asked, directing the question only at her.

She nodded. ‘I used to work in paediatrics, until about two years ago, and there was no one better. Believe me, he's the best. Sometimes I'd think he was the only one who really cared about the kids: he was certainly the only one who ever acted like it was important to listen to them and talk to them. He spent most of his time here; he'd come in for almost anything. We all knew he was the one to call if anything happened during the night. He never made you feel you shouldn't have called him.'

Brunetti smiled at this description and turned to her colleague. 'Do you know him, too, nurse?'

She shook her head. The older woman gave her arm a squeeze and said, 'Come on, Gina. You know you do,' and released her hold.

Gina spoke to her friend. 'I never worked with him, Sandra. But, yes,' she said, and now she turned her attention to Brunetti. 'I've seen him around sometimes, in the bar or in the corridors, but I don't think we've ever spoken - well, not more than to say good morning or something like that.' At Brunetti's nod, she continued. 'But I've heard about him: I suppose everyone does, sooner or later. He's a good man.'

'And a good doctor,' Sandra added. Neither Brunetti nor Gina seemed willing to speak, and so she changed the subject. 'I read the chart. They don't know what it is. Damasco wants to take more X-rays and do a CAT scan later this morning: that's what he wrote before he went home.'

Brunetti knew he would be able to get the medical information later, so he turned to Gina. 'Do you know his wife?'

The question surprised her, and she grew suddenly formal. 'No. That is, I never met her. But I've spoken to her on the phone a few times.' She glanced at the door to Pedrolli's room. 'She's in there with him, isn't she?'

'Yes,' Brunetti answered. 'And I'd like one of you to stay with him while I talk to her out here, if that's possible.'

The two women exchanged a glance and Sandra said, ‘I’ll do it.'

'All right,' said Gina, leaving Brunetti with her colleague.

He led the way to the door, knocked, and entered. Pedrolli's wife was where he had left her, by the bed, looking at her husband.

She glanced in their direction and, seeing the nurse's white jacket, asked her, 'Do you know when a doctor will come to see him?' Though the words were neutral enough, her tone suggested that she feared there might be days to wait, or longer.

'Rounds begin at ten, Signora,' the nurse answered dispassionately.

Pedrolli's wife looked at her watch, drew her lips together, and addressed Brunetti. 'There's plenty of time for us to talk, then.' She touched the back of her husband's right hand and turned away from the bed.

Brunetti stepped back to allow her to precede him, then pulled the door shut. She glanced at the Carabiniere and back at Brunetti with a look that suggested he was responsible for the other man's presence, but said nothing. The corridor ended at a large window that looked down on a courtyard and a scrawny pine tree leaning so sharply to one side that it appeared to grow horizontally, some branches touching the ground.

Reaching the window, he said, 'My name is Guido Brunetti, Signora.' He did not offer his hand.

'Bianca Marcolini,' she said, half turned away from him and gazing through the window at the tree.

As if he had not recognized the surname.

Brunetti said, I'd like to speak to you about last night, Signora, if I may’

‘I’m not sure there's much to say, Commissario. Two masked men broke into our home along with another man. They were armed. They beat my husband insensible and left him like that,' she said, pointing angrily back towards his room. Then she added, her voice rough, 'And they took our child’

Brunetti had no idea whether she was trying to provoke him by continuing to act as though he had been responsible, but he simply asked, 'Would you tell me what you remember of what happened, Signora?'

'I just told you what happened,' she said. 'Weren't you listening, Commissario?'

'Yes,' he agreed. 'You did tell me. But I need a clearer picture, Signora. I need to know what was said, and whether the men who came into your house announced themselves as Carabinieri and whether they attacked your husband without provocation.' Brunetti wondered why the Carabinieri had worn masks: usually they did that only when there was some danger that they would be photographed and thus identified. In the case of the arrest of a paediatrician, that hardly seemed the case.

'Of course they didn't tell us who they were,' she said, raising her voice. 'Do you think my husband would have tried to fight them if they had?' He watched as she cast her thoughts back to the scene in her bedroom. 'He told me to call the police, for God's sake’

Making no attempt to correct her for confusing the Carabinieri with the police, Brunetti asked, 'Did he, or you, have any reason to expect them to come, Signora?'

‘I don't know what you mean,' she said angrily, perhaps trying to deflect the question with her tone.

'Let me try to make my question clearer, then, if I might. Is there any reason why you, or your husband, thought the police or the Carabinieri might be interested in you or might approach you?' Even as he said it, Brunetti knew he had chosen the wrong word, one that was sure to inflame her.

He was not wrong. ''Approach' us,' she gasped, driven beyond her powers of restraint. She took a step away from the window and raised her hand. She shot a finger out at him and said, her voice tight with rage she could no longer contain, 'Might approach us. That was no approach, Signore: it was an attack, an assault, a raid.' She stopped, and Brunetti saw that the flesh around her mouth stood out white in the sudden redness of her face. She took a step towards him but then faltered. She braced a hand against the windowsill, locking her elbow to keep herself from falling.

Brunetti, was immediately beside her, supporting her until she half leaned, half sat on the windowsill. He kept his hold on her arm. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, hands propped on her knees, head hanging limply.

Halfway down the corridor, Sandra put her head out of the door to Pedrolli's room, but Brunetti raised a calming hand and she moved back inside. The woman beside him took a number of deep, rasping breaths, her head still lowered.

A man in a white lab coat came into view at the end of the corridor, but his attention was on a sheet of paper in his hand: he ignored, or didn't see, Brunetti and the woman. He disappeared into one of the rooms without knocking.

Time passed, until finally Signora Marcolini pushed herself up and stood, but did not open her eyes. Brunetti