Suffer the Little Children

'By keeping it from us, that is?' Brunetti asked.

'Exactly’ Vianello answered.

'What do you think's on his computer?'

Vianello shrugged. 'Something he doesn't want us to see: that's for certain. It could be the fake appointments’ Vianello considered the question a little longer and added, 'Or he's looking at websites or chatting in places where he ought not to be’

'Is there a way you can find out?' Brunetti asked.

Did Vianello smile? 'I couldn't’ he said, and before Brunetti could ask, added, 'nor could Signorina Elettra’ He saw Brunetti's surprise and went on. 'It's physical damage to the hard drive, and neither one of us is able to work with that, recovering information when the disc's been damaged. You need a real technician for that.'

'But you know someone?' Brunetti prompted.

'She does.' A strange expression flitted across Vianello's face: Brunetti had seen something like it on the faces of men who had killed out of jealousy. 'She won't tell me who he is.' He sighed. ‘I imagine she'll want to pass it on to him.'

'Then I'll have Bocchese take it back with him’ Brunetti said, his mind busy with speculation about the hard disc and what it might contain. With a certain chagrin, he realized how limited his imagination was. 'If she takes it to this person, do you think he'll be able to find what's on there?' he finally asked Vianello.

'It depends on how bad the damage is’ the Inspector answered. Then he added, speaking very slowly, 'But Signorina Elettra did say he's very good and that she's learned a great deal from him.'

'But nothing else about him?'

'He could be the former governor of Banca d'ltalia, for all I know’ Vianello answered, then smiled and added, lie's got a lot of free time now, hasn't he?'

Brunetti pretended not to have heard.

Bocchese and the scene of crime team showed up after about twenty minutes, and Vianello and Brunetti stood around for an hour or so while the door, the counters, and the computers were photographed and dusted for fingerprints. Brunetti explained about the bloodstains and the hard disc and asked Bocchese's men to take eveiything back to the Questura.

Signora Invernizzi returned a little after noon and stood on the customer side of the counter while one of the technicians took her fingerprints. Dottor Franchi came in while she was still there and, with far less grace, also had his taken. He asked when they would be finished because he wanted to get his pharmacy ready to open the next day, if possible. Bocchese's assistant told him that they would be gone in an hour, and Franchi said he would go and find a fabbro to change the lock on the side door. Brunetti waited to see if Signora Invernizzi would bring up the subject of una porta blindata, but she did not.

When both of them were gone, Brunetti went back to the small room, where Bocchese was busy scraping a drop of blood from a point low on the wall. On the floor beside him lay a sealed plastic evidence bag, the book with the other drop of blood already inside it.

Toil get a look at the whole place?' Brunetti asked when Bocchese glanced up at him. ‘Yes.' 'And?'

'And somebody doesn't like him’ came Bocchese's reply. Then, after a moment, 'Or doesn't like pharmacists, or computers, or boxes of medicine or, for all I know, cash registers.'

'Always trying to interpret things, aren't you, Bocchese, and make them fit into some master plan?' Brunetti asked with a laugh. To the technician, a cigar was always a cigar, and a series of events was a series of events and not cause for speculation.

'What about the blood?' Brunetti asked.

'There's something that looks like a piece of skin and a bit of leather caught under this flange that got pulled up from the back’ Bocchese said, pointing with the tips of a pair of tweezers to where Brunetti had seen the streak of blood on the casing of the hard drive.

'And that means?' Before Bocchese could answer, Brunetti said, 'If you tell me it means there's a piece of skin and a piece of leather there, I'll never let you sharpen Paola's kitchen knives again’

'And tell her I refused, I imagine?' Bocchese asked.

'Yes’

'Then I'd say,' the technician began, 'that he had trouble prising at it with the crowbar, or whatever it was, tried to move the tip of it to a more effective place, and tore his glove and cut his hand in the process’ 'Cut it badly?'

Bocchese took some time to answer this. I'd say no. It was probably only a small cut’ He anticipated Brunetti's thought and said, 'So, no, I wouldn't bother to call the hospital and ask if anyone's come in to have a hand sewn up today.' After a moment, with audible reluctance, Bocchese added, 'And I'd also say that this is a very impatient as well as a very angry person’

'Thanks,' Brunetti said. 'After you take a sample of the blood on that,' he added, pointing at the hard disc, 'could you see that it goes to Signorina Elettra?'

As if he found this the most normal thing in the world, Bocchese nodded and returned his attention to the bloodstain.

At the front of the shop, Brunetti found Vianello talking with one of the photographers. ‘You ready to go?' he asked.

Brunetti explained to the technician that the owner would be back soon with a locksmith. As he and Vianello walked past the door to the side room, Brunetti called goodbye to Bocchese, who was still on his knees, leaning over to study the electric socket.

Outside, Vianello asked, 'Want to walk?' and it seemed like the best of ideas to Brunetti.

The day, which had started foggy and damp and in a very bad mood, had decided to treat itself to some sun. Without discussion, Brunetti and Vianello turned right and crossed the bridge towards Campo San Fantin. They passed the theatre without really seeing it, bom eager to reach Via XXII Marzo and then the Piazza, where the promise of warmth would surely be fulfilled.

As they approached the Piazza, Brunetti watched the people they passed, at the same time half listening to Vianello's lesson on how information was preserved on the hard disc of a computer and how it was possible to retrieve it, even long after the user thought it had been erased.

He saw a group of tourists approach and judged them to be Eastern Europeans, even before he gave the decision any conscious thought. He studied them as they walked past him: sallow complexions; blond hair, either natural or assisted in that direction; cheap shoes, one remove from cardboard; plastic jackets that had been dyed and treated in an unsuccessful attempt to make them resemble leather. Brunetti had always felt a regard for these tourists because they looked at things. Probably too poor to buy most of what they saw, they still gazed about them with respect and awe and unbridled delight. With their cheap clothes and their bad haircuts and their packed lunches, who knew what it cost them to come here? Many, he knew, slept for nights on buses in order to spend a single day walking and looking and not shopping. They were so unlike the jaded Americans, who had of course seen bigger and better, or the world-weary Western Europeans, who also believed they had but were too sophisticated to say so.

As they entered the Piazza, the Inspector, who appeared not to have registered the tourists, said, 'The whole world's gone mad with fear of avian flu, and we have more pigeons than people.'

‘I beg your pardon,' Brunetti said, his attention still on the tourists.

‘I read it in the paper two days ago,' Vianello said. 'There's about sixty thousand of us, and the current population of pigeons - well, the one given in the paper, which is not the same thing - is more than a hundred thousand.'

'That can't be possible’ Brunetti said, suddenly disgusted by the thought. Then, more soberly, 'Who'd count them, anyway, and how'd they do it?'

Vianello shrugged. 'Who knows how any official number is detennined?' Suddenly his mood brightened, either at the growing warmth of the Piazza or the absurdity of the subject, and he asked, 'You think there are people working for the Comune who are paid to go around and count pigeons?'

Brunetti considered this for a moment and answered, 'It's not as if pigeons stay in the same place all day long, is it? So some of them might have been counted twice.'

'Or not at all,' Vianello suggested and then added, suddenly venomous, 'God, I hate them.'

'Me, too,' Brunetti agreed. 'I think most people do. Loathsome things’