She opened her mouth to speak but stopped herself.
‘Go ahead,’ Brunetti said. ‘Say it.’
He saw the moment when she decided to do so. ‘Your wife’s family will see that they’re protected, or your father-in-law’s friends will see that they’re offered jobs.’
Brunetti realized she never would have said something like this a few years ago and probably would never have said it now had he not provoked her with his reference to Griffoni. ‘The same as with the children of any well- connected family?’ he asked.
She nodded.
Suddenly mindful of her politics, he asked, ‘You don’t object to this?’
She shrugged, then said, ‘Whether I do or I don’t won’t change it.’
‘Did it help you get your job at the bank?’ he asked, referring to the job she had left, more than a decade ago, to come and work at the Questura, a choice no one who worked with her had ever understood.
She lifted her chin from her hand, saying, ‘No, my father didn’t help. In fact, he didn’t want me to work in a bank at all. He tried to convince me not to do it.’
‘Even though he was in charge of one?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Exactly. He said it had shown him how soul-rotting it was to work with money and to think about money all the time.’
‘But you did it anyway?’ Brunetti was still surprised to be engaged in this sort of conversation with her: their exchanges of personal information were usually cushioned by irony or masked by indirection.
‘For a number of years, yes.’
‘Until?’ he asked, wondering if he was about to unravel the secret that had rumbled through the Questura for years and aware that, should she tell him, he could never repeat it.
Her smile changed and began to remind him of a famous one, last seen disappearing amidst the branches of a tree. ‘Until it began to rot my soul.’
‘Ah,’ Brunetti said, deciding that was all the answer he was going to get and probably all he wanted.
‘Will there be anything else, Signore?’ Before he could respond, she said, ‘They’ve sent the photos and videos from the protest.’
Brunetti could not disguise his astonishment. ‘So fast?’
Her smile was as compassionate as that of a Renaissance Madonna. ‘By computer, sir. They’re in your email.’ She glanced over his shoulder and studied the wall behind him for a few seconds, then added, ‘I have a friend who works in the central health office for the Veneto. I can ask him to have a look to see if there’s some central record kept of cases of this disease…’
‘Madelung,’ Brunetti supplied. The look she gave him showed him that the repetition was not necessary.
‘Thank you,’ she said to show there were no hard feelings, and then, ‘There might be numbers for the Veneto, if people are being treated.’
‘Rizzardi said he’d call someone he knows in Padova,’ Brunetti said, hoping to spare her the effort.
She made a dismissive noise. ‘They might want an official request. Doctors often do,’ she said, as though she were a biologist speaking of some lower order of insect. ‘It could take days. Even longer.’ Brunetti appreciated her discretion in not bothering to say how quickly her friend might do it.
‘He was in the lane coming south when I saw him,’ he suddenly said.
‘Which means?’
‘He might have been coming down from Friuli. Could you ask your friend if they have the same sort of records, too?’
‘Of course,’ she said amiably. ‘The men who blocked the road were protesting about the new milk quotas, weren’t they?’ she asked. ‘Lowering production?’
‘Yes.’
‘Greedy fools,’ she said with emphasis that surprised him.
‘You seem sure of that, Signorina,’ he remarked.
‘Of course I am. There’s too much milk, there’s too much cheese, there’s too much butter, and there are too many cows.’
‘Compared to what?’ he asked.
‘Compared to common sense,’ she said heatedly, and Brunetti wondered what he had stumbled into.
Paola cooked with oil, not butter; he’d be sick if he had to drink a glass of milk, they did not eat much cheese, and Chiara’s principles had long since sent beef fleeing from their table, so Brunetti was – in terms of behaviour – on Signorina Elettra’s side of whatever principle was under discussion here. What he did not understand, however, was the force underlying her fervour, nor did he want to stand there and discuss it.
‘If you receive anything from your friend, let me know, would you?’
‘Of course, Commissario,’ she said with her usual warmth and turned to her computer. Brunetti decided to go and have a look for the dead man in the films they had been sent of the incident last autumn.
Brunetti climbed the stairs to his office, reminding himself he could now access any video file that had been put into the new system.
He opened his mail account and found the link. Within seconds, the screen showed him, first, the original report and the written notes of the individual officers who had been there. After he read those, he had no trouble opening the file containing the police videos and those from the television station. When he watched the first clip and saw the flames consuming the minivan bearing the Televeneto logo, he understood the station’s eagerness to cooperate.
He watched the first two clips, each lasting only a few seconds, but there was no sign of the man, then another, without success. Then, in the fourth, the man appeared. He stood, as Brunetti now remembered him standing, at the edge of the traffic island that divided the north and south sections of the autostrada. He was on screen for only a few seconds, his head and his distinctive neck and torso visible in front of a red car stopped in the middle of the road. A few people, three men and a woman, stood next to him, all of them staring straight ahead. The camera panned back to show a single row of helmeted men moving forward, their transparent shields side by side, all of them united in lock step. The video ended.
Brunetti opened the next one. This time the camera shot from behind the rank of Carabinieri as they approached the ragged group of farmers, their advancing line opening to flow around a car that had been set on fire. The next clip had been taken, it seemed, from a
He typed in Pucetti’s address and forwarded the email and attached video clips, shut down his computer, and went downstairs in search of the man himself.
8
BRUNETTI PAUSED AT the door of the officers’ squad room and had a look around. Vianello, talking to the new recruit, Dondini, had his back to the door. Pucetti, upon whose lowered face Brunetti could not help but read the results of their last interchange, seemed as oblivious to his surroundings as he was to the papers spread on the surface of his desk. The worst part of Brunetti was glad to see the younger man so preoccupied: it would spare the rest of them a lot of trouble in future if he learned greater discretion in breaking the rules and perhaps the law.
‘Pucetti,’ he called as he came in. ‘I’ve got a favour to ask.’ He walked towards the young man’s desk, gesturing to Vianello to join them when he could.
Pucetti shot to his feet, but he no longer snapped out a salute at the sight of his superior. ‘I’ve found the man who was in the canal this morning. Have you read the report?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ Pucetti said.
‘There’s a series of videos from that incident with the farmers on the autostrada last year. He was there.’
