Suffer the Little Children

mentioned this middle man in connection with the Pedrollis.

Signorina Elettra put her elbows on her desk and lowered her head into her outspread palms, effectively hiding her face. 'I've heard people tell Carabinieri jokes all my life, but it would never occur to me that they could be this stupid,' she said.

They're not stupid’ Brunetti asserted quickly but with little conviction.

She opened her hands and looked at him. Then they're heartless, and that's worse.' She took a deep breath and Brunetti thought that she was summoning up a more professional manner. After a moment, she asked, 'So what do we do?'

'Pedrolli and his wife apparently went to a clinic -I assume it's a private clinic - in Verona. A fertility clinic, or at least one that works with problems of fertility. I'd like you to see if you can find one in Verona that specializes in fertility problems. Two of the other couples who adopted illegally were patients there.'

She said, calmer now that she had a task to focus on, 'I suppose it shouldn't be difficult to find. After all, how many fertility clinics can there be in Verona?' He left her to it and went upstairs.

It was more than an hour later when she came to his office. He saw that she wore a green skirt that fell to mid-calf. Below it were a pair of boots that put Marvilli's to shame.

'Yes, Signorina?' he asked when he had finished examining the boots.

'Who would have believed it, sir?' she asked, apparently having forgiven him for his attempt to defend the Carabinieri.

'Believed what?'

That there are three fertility clinics, or private clinics with specialist departments for fertility problems, in or near Verona?'

'And the public hospital?'

‘I checked. They handle them through the obstetrical unit’

'So that makes four’ Brunetti observed. 'In Verona.'

'Extraordinary, isn't it?'

He nodded. A broad reader, Brunetti had been aware for years of the sharp decline in sperm counts among European men, and he had also followed with distress the publicity campaign that had helped defeat a referendum that would have aided fertility research. The positions many politicians had taken - former Fascists in favour of artificial msemination; former Communists following the lead of the Church - had left Brunetti battered both in spirit and in mind.

If you're sure they went to a clinic there, then all I'll have to do is find their medical service numbers: they'd have to give them, even for a private clinic’

When Signorina Elettra had first arrived at the Questura, such a statement would have impelled Brunetti into an impromptu lecture on a citizen's right to privacy, in this case the sacred privacy that must exist between a doctor and his patient, followed by a few words about the inviolability of access to a person's medical history. 'Yes,' he answered simply.

He saw that she wanted to add something and raised his chin questioningly.

'It would probably be easier to check their phone records and see what numbers they called in Verona,' she suggested. Brunetti no longer enquired as to how she would go about obtaining those.

He watched as she wrote down Pedrolli's name, then she looked at him and asked, 'Does his wife use his name or her own?'

'Her own. It’s Marcolini: first name Bianca.'

She glanced at him and made a small noise of either affirmation or surprise. 'Marcolini’ she repeated softly and then, 'I'll see what I can find out’ and left.

After she was gone, Brunetti thought about who might be able to provide him with the names of the other people the Carabinieri had arrested. Quicker, perhaps, to try the existing bureaucratic channels and simply ask the Carabinieri themselves.

He started by calling the central command at Riva degli Schiavoni and asking for Marvilli, only to learn that the Captain was out on duty and not available by telephone. Forty minutes later, Brunetti had spoken to Marvilli's commander as well as to those in Verona and Brescia, but each of them said he was not at liberty to divulge the names of the people who had been arrested. Even when Brunetti claimed that he was calling at the order of his superior, the Questore of Venice, no information was forthcoming. When he requested that the guard be removed from in front of Dottor Pedrolli's room, Brunetti was told that his request had been recorded.

Changing tactics, Brunetti dialled the office number of Elio Pelusso, a friend who worked as a journalist for Il Gazzettino. Within a few minutes, he had the names, professions, ages, and addresses of the people who had been arrested, as well as the name of the clinic in Verona where many of those arrested had sought treatment.

He took this information down to Signorina Elettra and repeated what Signora Marcolini had told him about their attempts to have a child. She nodded as she wrote this down, then said, 'There's a book about this, you know.'

'Excuse me?'

'A novel, by an English writer, I forget who. About when there are no more babies and what people will do to get them.'

'A rather anti-Malthusian idea, isn't it?' Brunetti asked.

'Yes. It's almost as if we're living in two worlds,' she said. 'There's the world where people have too many children, and they get sick and starve and die, and our world, where people want to have them and can't'

'And will do anything to get them?' he asked.

She tapped a finger on the papers in front of her and said, 'So it seems.'

Back in his office, Brunetti called his home number. When Paola answered with the laconic si that suggested he had taken her away from a particularly riveting passage of whatever it was she was reading, Brunetti said, 'Can I hire you as an Internet researcher?'

'That depends on the subject'

Treatments for infertility.'

There was a long pause, after which she said, 'Because of this case?' ‘Yes’

'Why me?'

'Because you know how to do research’

After an overly loud sigh, Paola said, ‘I could easily teach you how, you know’

'You've been telling me that for years,' Brunetti replied.

'As have Signorina Elettra and Vianello, and your own children.'

'Yes’

'Does it make any difference?' 'No, not really’

There unfolded yet another long silence, after which Paola said, 'AH right. I'll give you two hours of my time and print out whatever seems interesting’

'Thank you, Paola’

'What do I get in return?'

‘Undying devotion’

‘I thought I had that already.'

'Undying devotion and ‘I’LL bring you coffee in bed for a week’

'You were called out of bed at two this morning,' she reminded him.

‘I’ll think of something,' he said, conscious of how lame that sounded.

'You better,' she said. 'All right, two hours, but I can't begin until tomorrow’

'Why?'

‘I have to finish this book.' 'What book?'

'The Ambassadors’ she answered. Haven't you read it already?' ‘Yes. Four times.'

A man less familiar with the ways of scholars, the ways of marriage, and the ways of wisdom might have raised some objection here. Brunetti caved in, said, 'All right,' and hung up.

As he put the phone down, Brunetti realized he could have asked Vianello, or Pucetti, or, for all he knew, any one of the other officers downstairs. He had grown up reading printed pages, at school had learned from printed