Beastly Things

her question. In similar manner to that with which he had conjured up Teo’s teddy bear, though casting his net much farther into the past, he ran through those elements of criminal law he had studied at university.

‘Yes and no,’ he finally said.

‘When is it a yes?’ she asked.

‘For example, if you are some sort of public official, you have to inform the authorities.’

‘And ethically?’ she asked.

‘I don’t do ethical,’ Brunetti said and returned to his champagne.

‘Is it right to stop a crime from being committed?’ she asked.

‘You want me to say yes?’

‘I want you to say yes.’

‘Yes.’ Then Brunetti added, ‘Ethically. Yes.’

Paola considered this in silence, then got up and went over to fill both of their glasses. Still silent, she came back and handed him his and sat down again. Out of the habit of decades, her left hand returned to his leg.

Sitting back in the sofa she crossed her legs, then took another sip of champagne. Looking at the painting on the far wall, the portrait of an English naturalist holding a tufted grouse they had found years ago in, of all places, Seville, she said, ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what this is all about?’

He looked at his wife, not at the naturalist and not at the tufted grouse, and said, ‘No, I’m not.’

‘Why?’

‘In the immediate sense, because I’ve had a long day and I’m very tired, and I don’t have room in my brain or in my sensibility for anything that might lead to trouble. And from the way you ask, I suspect that possibility exists.’

‘And in the larger sense or longer sense, why don’t you want to hear about it?’ she asked.

‘Because if it does lead to trouble, I’ll learn about it sooner or later, so there’s no need for you to tell me about it now.’ He leaned forward and placed his hand on hers. ‘I really can’t do this now, Paola.’

She turned up her palm, gave his a strong squeeze, and said, ‘Then I’ll go and start dinner, shall I?’

18

BRUNETTI WOKE A few times in the night, thinking about what Paola had asked him and trying to imagine what it might mean, what she was up to, for he knew she was up to something. He knew the signs from long exposure and long experience: once she started on one of what he thought of as her missions, she grew intense, sought specific information rather than concepts or ideas, and seemed to lose her sense of irony and humour. Over the years, she had had attacks of zeal, and they had often led to trouble. Brunetti sensed that another one was on the way.

Each time he woke, he had but to sense the presence of the inert lump beside him to marvel anew at her gift of plunging into sleep, no matter what was happening around her. He thought of the nights he had spent lying awake and worrying about his family or his job or his future or the future of the planet, or simply kept awake by the inability to digest his dinner. While beside him rested a monument to peace and tranquillity, motionless, barely breathing.

He woke again a bit before six and decided it was useless to try to go back to sleep. He went down to the kitchen and made himself coffee, heated milk to pour into it, and went back to bed.

Having finished the Agamemnon and in need of a break before continuing that familiar family saga, Brunetti did what he often did in such circumstances: he picked up the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and, much in the way devout Christians were said to consult the Bible, opened it at random. It was rather like playing a slot machine, he had to admit: sometimes what came up was sententious pap that led to nothing and certainly provided no riches. But sometimes the words came at him like a stream of coins, flooding out of the trough in the slot machine and splashing across his feet.

He opened to Book Two and found this: ‘Failure to read what is happening in another’s soul is not easily seen as a cause of unhappiness: but those who fail to attend to the motions of their own soul are necessarily unhappy.’ He looked up from the book and out the window, where the curtain was only half drawn; he was conscious of the light, not from the approaching dawn, but from the ambient illumination with which the city was filled.

He considered the words of the wise emperor, but then he thought of Patta, of whom many things could be said, among which was the undeniable fact that he was happy. Yet if ever man had been made who was unconscious of the motions of his own soul, that man was Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta.

In no way deterred by the failure of the book to spin up a winning combination, Brunetti opened to Book Eleven. ‘No thief can steal your will.’ This time he closed the book and set it aside. Again, he gave his attention to the light in the window and the statement he had just read: neither provided illumination. Government ministers were arrested with frightening frequency; the head of government himself boasted, in the middle of a deepening financial crisis, that he didn’t have financial worries and had nineteen houses; Parliament was reduced to an open shame. And where were the angry mobs in the piazzas? Who stood up in Parliament to discuss the bold-faced looting of the country? But let a young and virginal girl be killed, and the country went mad; slash a throat and the press was off and running for days. What will was left among the public that had not been destroyed by television and the penetrant vulgarity of the current administration? ‘Oh, yes, a thief can steal your will. And has,’ he heard himself say aloud.

Brunetti, trapped in the mixture of rage and despair that was the only honest emotion left to the citizenry, pushed back the covers and got out of bed. He stayed under the shower for a long time, indulging in the luxury of shaving there without giving a thought to the consumption of water, the energy expended to heat it, nor yet to the fact that he was using a disposable razor. He was tired of taking care of the planet: let it take care of itself for a change.

He went back to the bedroom and dressed in a suit and tie, but then he remembered where it was he and Vianello were going that morning and replaced the suit in the closet and put on a pair of brown corduroy trousers and a heavy woollen jacket. He searched around on the floor of the closet until he found a pair of Topsiders with thick rubber waffle soles. He had little idea of the proper attire for a slaughterhouse, but he knew a suit was not it.

It was seven-thirty before he left the house, stepping out into an early morning crispness that gave promise of clean air and growing warmth. These really were the best days of the year, with the mountains sometimes visible from the window in the kitchen, the nights cool enough to summon a second blanket from the closet.

He walked, stopped to get a newspaper – La Repubblica and not either of the local papers – and then in Ballarin for a coffee and a brioche. The pasticceria was busy, but not yet crowded, so most people could still find a place to stand at the bar. Brunetti took his coffee to the small round table, placed the paper to the left of his cup, and studied the headlines. A woman about his age, with hair the colour of marigolds, set her cup not far from his, studied the same headlines while sipping at her coffee, looked at him, and said, speaking Veneziano, ‘It makes a person sick, doesn’t it?’

Brunetti held up his brioche and tilted it in the equivalent of a shrug. ‘What can we do?’ had come from his lips before he remembered the words of Marcus Aurelius. The thief, it seemed, had stolen his will during the short time since he had left his home. Thus, as if he had intended his first remark as a rhetorical flourish, he looked at her directly and said, ‘Other than to vote, Signora.’

She looked at him as if she had been stopped on the street by one of the patients from Palazzo Boldu, some raving lunatic who would now reveal the Secret of the Ages. Disgust at his own moral cowardice swept Brunetti, forcing him to add, ‘And throw small coins at them if we see them on the street.’

She considered this and, seeming gratified that this man had so quickly come to his senses, set her cup in her saucer and carried it over to place it on the bar. She smiled at him, wished him good day, paid, and left.

At the Questura, he went directly to the officers’ room, but none of the day shift had arrived. In his own office, he checked for new files, but his desk was as he had left it the day before. He used his new computer to check the other newspapers, but they had no further information about the murdered man nor about the progress of the case, nor had they bothered to print the photo that had been sent to them. Interest in the dead man had been supplanted by the news that the decomposing body discovered in a shallow grave near Verona two days before had turned out