Bocchese said, waving towards the shirt, simple white cotton, the sort of thing any man would wear.
‘No jacket, eh?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No. All he was wearing was the shirt and trousers,’ Bocchese said. ‘He must have been wearing a jacket or a sweater. Too cold last night to go out without one.’
‘Or he could have been killed in his own house?’ Brunetti suggested. It was his turn to provoke: he wanted Bocchese to agree with him before remarking that most people did not walk around in their houses with their keys in their pockets.
‘Yes,’ Bocchese said, sounding very unconvinced.
‘But?’
‘Rizzardi’s report says he has Madelung. He hasn’t sent the photos yet, but I’ve seen it before. It’s possible someone here has seen him. Or they’d know him at the hospital.’
‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti agreed, uncertain that anyone would recognize a photo of the battered face. Bocchese was being cooperative, so he decided not to mention the keys again.
‘Anything else?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No. If I find anything or think of anything, I’ll let you know, all right?’
‘Thanks,’ Brunetti said. Bocchese had mentioned the man’s disease, certain that anyone who saw him would remember him. He wondered if a shoe salesman would. ‘Can you send me an email with the information about the shoe?’
5
WHEN HE RETURNED to his office, Brunetti found Signorina Elettra still sitting at his computer. She looked up when he came in and smiled. ‘I’m almost finished, Commissario. As I was here, I thought I’d download a few more things, and then it’s ready.’
‘Dare I ask how you managed to procure this marvel, Signorina?’ he asked, leaning forward with both hands on the back of a chair.
She held up one finger to ask him to wait and returned her attention to the keyboard. She was wearing green today, a light wool dress he did not remember her having worn before. She rarely wore green: perhaps her choice was in honour of springtime; even the Church used green as the ecclesiastical colour of hope. Trying not to appear to do so, he watched her work, struck by the totality of her concentration. He might as well have been somewhere else for all the attention she paid him. Was it the program or working on the new computer that enthralled her so? he wondered. And how was it possible that something so alien from the unruly mess of life could exert such an attraction on such a person? Computers failed to interest Brunetti: yes, he used them and was glad of being able to do so, but he was always much happier to send this green-clad hunter off in pursuit of the game that proved too elusive for his limited skills. He simply could not work up any enthusiasm for the concept, had no desire to spend endless hours sitting in front of the screen and seeing what he could make the computer do for him.
Brunetti was sufficiently attuned to the times in which he lived to realize how foolish his prejudice was and how it sometimes slowed down the pace at which he could work. Had it not been that way with the investigation into the protest against European milk quotas that had blocked the autostrada near Mestre for two days last autumn? Because Signorina Elettra had been on vacation when that happened, he had had to wait two days before learning that the men who had set fire to cars trapped by the farmers’ roadblock were petty criminals from Vicenza, urban criminals who had probably never seen a cow in their lives. And it was not until her return that he found out they were also cousins of the head of the provincial association of farmers, the man who had organized the protest.
His memory drifted back to that protest, which his superior, Vice-Questore Patta, had ordered him to observe in case the violence spread to the bridge to Venice and thus into their territory. He remembered the helmeted Carabinieri with their Plexiglas shields and face masks and polished black boots that turned their legs into highly polished stems and thinking how much like giant bugs they looked. He recalled the sight of them marching forward, their shields locked together, pressing ahead to repel any protest from the assembled farmers.
And there he was, the man with the neck, leaping unsummoned into Brunetti’s memory. He had stood in a group of people on the other side of the blocked road from Brunetti, milling around their stopped cars and looking across the road divider at the farmers and the police. Brunetti remembered the taurine neck and bearded face and the clear eyes that watched the two opposed lines of men with what seemed to be a mixture of confusion and exasperation, but then Brunetti’s attention had been pulled away by the explosion of violence and vandalism into which the protest descended.
‘… many graces with which we are favoured by a beneficent Europe,’ he heard Signorina Elettra say and called his attention back to her.
‘In what particular way, Signorina?’ he asked.
‘The funds to Interpol to combat the falsification of merchandise that is protected by patents from any country in the European Union,’ she said with a smile, the one she used when at her most predatory. Brunetti gave an inner tremble at the thought of the patent authorizations that must be streaming out of the offices of certain countries.
‘I thought the NAS took care of all of that,’ he said.
‘Yes, they do, at least in Italy.’ She gave the computer keys an affectionate caress then whisked away a random mote of dust from the screen. Then, brightly, looking across at him, ‘It seems there is a small clause near the end of the ministerial decree, making provision for local entities to apply for supplementary funding.’
Conscious of how formulaic their conversation sometimes became, he asked, ‘Funding for what purpose, Signorina?’
‘To help with research at the local level into…’ she began. A quiet sigh escaped her lips and she held up a hand. The other, like the tongue of a mother cat too long prevented from licking its newest-born, began to smooth the keys, and her eyes fell to the screen. She tapped out a silent request.
Brunetti came around the desk and sat.
In less than a minute, she looked up at him, then back at the screen, and read, ‘“… at the local level to ensure that all efforts on the part of the competent Ministry to investigate and impede the counterfeiting of patented products be initiated and supported by supplementary funding in accordance with Regulation blah blah blah, subsection blah blah, with supplementary reference to Ministerial Decree blah blah blah, of 23 February 2001.”’
‘And when that is not pretending to make sense, what might it mean?’ Brunetti inquired.
‘It creates another pig’s trough where the clever can dine, sir,’ she said simply, her eyes still on the screen as though they delighted in dining off some rich interpretation of those words. When Brunetti did not respond, she went on, ‘And in essence it means that we are free to use the money as we please, so long as our intention is to investigate and impede the production of these products.’
‘That would certainly give the agency doing the investigating and the impeding a great deal of latitude in how to spend the money.’
‘They are not fools, these men in Brussels,’ she observed.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that it is another gift to bureaucrats who are as inventive as they.’ Then, after a pause meant perhaps to give weight to what was to follow, she added, ‘Or who have the perseverance to read through the four hundred and twelve pages of the decree to find that particular paragraph.’
‘Or to those who might receive a quiet, private suggestion about where it would be most profitable to direct their attention?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Do I detect the voice of a Euro-sceptic, sir?’
‘You do.’
‘Ah,’ she whispered; then, as if unable to prevent herself from asking, she added, ‘But that won’t stop you from keeping the computer?’
‘In the presence of a trough, it is difficult not to oink,’ Brunetti replied.
She looked at him, eyes wide with delight. ‘I doubt that I have ever heard a more apposite explanation of the failure of our political system, sir.’
