Brunetti allowed a few moments to pass so that they might again enjoy the experience of having filled with rich meaning the spaces between their words. Signorina Elettra touched a few keys, then started to get to her feet.
Brunetti raised a hand to stop her. ‘Do you remember that trouble on the autostrada last year?’ Realizing how unclear his question was, he added, ‘With the farmers?’
‘About milk quotas?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about it, sir?’
‘A man was killed this morning. I’ve just come from talking to Rizzardi.’ She nodded to show that the news of the murder had already reached the Questura. ‘When I saw him – the man, not Rizzardi – I realized he looked familiar, and then I remembered that it was out there on the autostrada that I saw him.’
‘Was he one of the protestors?’
‘No. He was on the other side of the autostrada; his car was one of the ones blocked by the protest. I saw him there, standing with the other people who got stuck.’
‘And you remembered him?’
‘When you read Rizzardi’s report, you’ll understand,’ Brunetti said.
‘What would you like me to do, sir?’
‘Contact the Carabinieri. Lovello in Mestre was in charge of it. See if they’ve got photos or maybe a video.’ So many charges of excessive violence had been brought against the police and the Carabinieri in recent years that some commanders insisted on filming actions with a potential for violence.
‘And check with Televeneto,’ he added. ‘They had a crew out there, so they should have something: see if they’ll give you a copy.’
‘Was RAI there?’
‘I don’t remember. But the local people would know if the big boys showed up. If so, see if you can get them to send you copies of whatever they shot, as well.’
‘What does this man look like?’
‘He’s big, very thick around the shoulders and neck. Beard: he had it then, too. Dark hair, light eyes.’
She nodded. ‘Thank you, sir. I’ll tell them that so they can sort through the shots before they send me any.’
‘Good, good,’ Brunetti said.
‘He was stabbed, wasn’t he?’ she asked.
‘Yes. But Rizzardi said he had water in his lungs. They found him in a canal.’
‘Did he drown?’
‘No, the knife killed him.’
‘How old was he?’ she asked.
‘In his forties.’
‘Poor man,’ she said, and Brunetti could but agree.
6
THAT LEFT PATTA. The obligation to deal with his superior often filled Brunetti with an anticipatory weariness, as if he were a swimmer who had miscounted laps and suddenly realized he still had ten to do in water that grew increasingly chilly. Also, like any athlete in competition, Brunetti had made a study of the track record of his opponent. Patta was quick off the block, had no compunction about obstructing the path of other competitors so long as he could get away with doing so, but lacked staying power and often dropped back in any long competition. Unfortunately, no matter how far behind he might fall in a race, he could be depended upon to appear at the award ceremony, and the force did not exist that could prevent him from hauling himself up on to the podium the instant that medals started to be handed round.
To know this was to be forewarned, but to be forewarned served little purpose when one’s opponent was Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, Sicily’s best gift to the forces of order, kept for more than a decade at his position in Venice in anomalous defiance of the rule that high police officials were transferred every few years. Patta’s tenacity in his post had puzzled Brunetti until he realized that the only policemen who were systematically transferred away from the cities where they combated crime were those who met with success, especially those who were successful in their opposition to the Mafia. To manage the arrest of the highest members of a Mafia clan in a major city was to guarantee transfer to some backwater in Molise or Sardegna, where major crimes included the theft of livestock or public drunkenness.
Thus perhaps Patta’s professional longevity in Venice, where the mounting evidence of Mafia infiltration did nothing to spur his efforts to combat it. Mayors came and went, all of them pledging to correct the ills their predecessors had ignored or encouraged. The city grew dirtier, hotels proliferated and rents increased, every available inch of sidewalk space was rented out to someone wanting to sell unusable junk from a portable stall, and still the waves of promises to sweep away all these ills rose up ever new and ever higher. And there, becalmed at a safe distance behind the breaking wave, was Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, friend to every politician he had ever met, the now-almost-permanent face of the forces of order in the city.
Brunetti, however, a tolerant and moderate man, had trained himself to count his superior’s virtues rather than his faults, and so he acknowledged that there was no proof that Patta was in the pay of any criminal organization; he had never ordered the mistreatment of a prisoner; he would upon occasion believe incontrovertible evidence of the guilt of a wealthy suspect. Had he been a judge, Patta would surely have been a thoughtful one, always ready to weigh the social position of the accused. In the broad scale of things, Brunetti often reflected, these were not ruinous weaknesses.
Signorina Elettra sat at her desk outside her superior’s office and smiled at Brunetti as he entered. ‘I thought I’d report to the Vice-Questore,’ he said.
‘He’ll be glad of the distraction,’ she said soberly. ‘His younger son just called to say he’s failed his exam.’
‘The less-bright one?’ Brunetti inquired, forcing himself not to refer to the boy as stupid, though he was.
‘Ah, Commissario, you force me to make a distinction that is beyond my powers,’ she said with a straight face and serious voice.
Some years ago, Roberto Patta had more than once come close to being arrested, saved only by his father’s position. His involvement with the sale of drugs, however, had come to an end in an early morning car crash in which his fiancee had died, and only his father’s position had kept him from being tested for alcohol and drugs until almost a full day after the accident, when both tests proved negative. With her death, however, something seemed to have snapped inside the boy, and he had abandoned – according to the rumours that circulated in the Questura – both drink and drugs and devoted his limited energies to finishing his degree and becoming an accountant.
It was a hopeless attempt. Brunetti knew it; Patta probably did, as well, yet the boy persisted, taking the same exams year after year, always failing them and determining each time to study harder and take them again, probably never pausing to consider that the state exams – should divine intervention confer his degree – would be even more difficult. Various officers whose children were in the same class as he repeated the stories about his dogged efforts, and over the course of years the common mind of the Questura had gone from considering him the spoiled child of a negligent father to the hard-working, if limited, son of a devoted parent. The mystery of it – fatherhood was always a mysterious thing to Brunetti – was Patta’s devotion to his two sons and his desire that they succeed in life by their own merits, an idea that had formed in him in response to the accident.
‘How long ago did he speak to him?’ Brunetti asked.
‘About an hour,’ she answered and then added in a different voice, ‘His father was busy talking on his
‘How old is he now, do you know?’
‘Twenty-six, I think.’
‘God, he’ll never make it, will he?’
She shook away the very possibility. ‘Not unless someone can fix things for him with the examining
