Suffer the Little Children

with a police investigation?'

‘I’m not at all sure; that's why I'd like to discuss this in person’ Brunetti said.

'And I'd like to discuss it now’ she said, her voice suddenly hard.

'Perhaps tomorrow morning?' he suggested.

'I'm not free tomorrow morning’ she said, offering no details. When Brunetti said nothing, she went on, 'Look, Guido, I have no idea why the police might want to talk to me, but I'll admit that I'm curious.'

Brunetti knew when a person would not concede. 'All right’ he said. 'It's about your medical records.'

'What about my medical records?' she asked coolly.

'They say that you terminated a pregnancy three months ago.' ‘Yes.'

'Daniela’ he began, feeling himself like a suspect, 'what I want to know is if anyone ...'

'Knows about this?' she completed the question for him, her voice blistering with rage. 'Other than that creepy little pharmacist, that is?'

Brunetti felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He fought to keep control of his voice and said, 'He called?'

'He called Luca's mother. That's who he called’ she shouted down the phone, all restraint gone. 'He called her and asked if she knew what her daughter-in-law had done, if she knew that her daughter-in-law had been in the hospital and had destroyed a baby, that she had been pregnant.'

Brunetti's fingers tightened on the phone. She started to cry, and Brunetti listened to her sobbing for more than a minute.

Finally he said, ‘Daniela, Daniela, can you hear me? Is there anything.. .' The only response was the continued sound of her sobbing. Brunetti thought of calling Paola and asking her to go to Daniela's home, but he did not want to involve Paola in this, did not want her to know he had made this call and done what he had done.

After some time, Daniela stopped crying and Brunetti listened to her sniff, then to the strangely comforting sound of her blowing her nose, then her voice returned. It was .. ‘

'I don't want to know,' Brunetti said, too loudly. 'I don't want to know anything about it, Daniela. If s none of my business and none of the police's business.'

'Then why are you calling me?' she demanded, still angry but at least no longer in tears.

‘I want to know what Dottor Franchi wanted.'

'God knows what he wanted,' she said angrily. 'That everyone should be a quiet little castrato, just like him.'

'Did he call you?'

‘I just told you: he called my mother-in-law. No, he didn't call me. He called her. Can I make that any clearer?'

'Did he ask for money?'

'Money?' she asked and then started to laugh, a strange sound hard to distinguish from her crying. After a time she stopped and said, 'No, he didn't want anything, no money, no sex, no anything. He just wanted the sinner to be punished’

‘I’m sorry, Daniela,' he said, meaning that he was sorry both for her pain and for having asked her about it.

‘I’m sorry too’ she answered. Is that enough?' she asked.

.'Yes, it is’

'You don't want to know anything about it?'

'I told you: it's none of my business’

'Then goodbye, Guido. I'm sorry we had to talk about this’

'I am, too, Daniela’ he said and put down the phone.

24

Her voice broke him. Brunetti set the receiver down softly, as if afraid it would break, too. He got to his feet and, with the stealth of a burglar, went down the stairs and outside. The rain had cleaned the streets a few days previously, but already the grit and dirt had returned; he felt them underfoot, or perhaps that was his imagination and the streets were clean and the only dirt came from the things his work made him privy to. People passed him, looking entirely normal and innocent and untouched; some of them looked quite happy.

It was as he was walking into Campo Santa Marina that he realized his body had contracted into something that felt like a long, tight knot. He stopped at the edicola and stood quietly for a while, looking at the covers of the magazines on display through the glass, all the while rolling his shoulders in an attempt to loosen them. Tits and ass. Paola had again observed, months ago, that he should spend a day counting the times he saw tits and ass: in the newspapers, in magazines, in ads on the vaporetti, on display in every kind of shop window. It might help him understand, she suggested, the attitude of some women towards men. And here he found himself contemplating evidence, though, strangely enough, he was comforted by the sight of all that lovely flesh. How lovely tits were; how his hand longed to touch that well-curved ass. How much better than what he had just heard, the narrow life-denying nastiness of it. So let there be tits and let there be ass and let them lead people to make small children and to love them.

The thought of having children brought Daniela Carlon back into his mind, though he would rather not have thought about what she had told him. Over the years, he had come to believe that he could have only a second- class opinion about abortion and that his gender deprived him of a vote on the subject. This in no way affected his thoughts or his visceral feelings, but the right to a decision belonged to women on this one, and it behove him to accept this and keep his mouth shut. On the other hand, this was only theory and had little relevance to the raw pain he had heard in her voice.

He felt something against his leg and he looked down to see a mid-sized brown dog sniffing at his shoe, rubbing its flanks contentedly against his calf. It looked up at him, seemed to smile, and returned to his shoe. At the other end of its lead was a young boy, only a little bit taller than the dog.

'Milli, stop that’ he heard a woman's voice call, and then she came up to the boy and took ^ the lead from his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Signore, but she's still a puppy.'

'And loves shoes?' Brunetti asked, his good spirits lifted by the appealing absurdity of the situation.

She laughed, and he saw that her teeth were perfect in her well-tanned face. It seems so,' she said. She extended her hand to her son and said, 'Come on, Stefano. Let's take Milli home and give her a treat.'

The boy extended his free hand and, with some reluctance, she gave him back the lead.

The dog must have sensed the tremors of the change of command, for she scampered off, tossing her back legs high in the air in the manner of small dogs, though she ran off slowly enough to allow the boy to be towed after her without danger of his falling.

His heart lifted and remained that way for a moment until his thoughts scampered on and found themselves faced with Dottor Franchi. What was it that Pedrolli had called him, 'exquisitely moral'? To form such a judgement, Pedrolli must have heard talk or, just as likely, listened to the pharmacist as he spoke about his clients or the wider world, or whatever subject would enable a listener to form that opinion of him. Thinking back, Brunetti remembered the startled look Signora Invernizzi had given Franchi when he had remarked on the drug addicts' inability to help themselves.

Was he a chameleon, then, Dottor Franchi, keeping his judgements to himself when he thought they might offend someone whose good opinion he sought, only to reveal them to those he considered his inferiors? In Brunetti's experience, it was not uncommon for people to behave in this fashion. Was this one of the reasons why people married, then, to free themselves to say what they thought and thus spare themselves the terrible exhaustion of leading a double life? Then what of Bianca Marcolini: what life could she lead if any day, any moment, her husband were to discover what her father had done at her urging? It had been so easy to lead Marcolini into boasting about his phone call; surely, she must have known that, sooner or later, her husband would learn what had actually happened. No, not what had happened, but why it had happened. The bolt struck Brunetti then: Pedrolli would never learn what had happened to the child, only why it had.

He became aware that the tension had returned to his shoulders and that he was still standing in front of the edicola, gazing open-mouthed at the naked bodies on the covers of the magazines. In a chill moment of lucidity, he saw what Paola meant they were there, on display, these young women, naked and