Blood from a stone

Patta smiled, as if to compliment and applaud this very bright student. ‘That corresponds with my own understanding of the process, Commissario.’

‘But is it the case here?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Are the originals of the documents still on our computer?’

‘Ah, I don’t think I can answer that for you, Commissario.’

‘Who could?’

‘The computer people from the Ministry who were in here during the holidays. They came here on the order of the Minister.’ The heat. The heat. He should have known.

Brunetti could think of nothing to say. He got to his feet, asked if he should start interviewing the people whose homes had been robbed, and when Patta said he thought that would be an excellent use of his time, Brunetti excused himself and left the office.

Signorina Elettra was at her desk. She looked up at Brunetti, saw his expression, and stopped herself from saying whatever it was she was about to say.

Speaking in a conspiratorially low voice, Brunetti said, ‘The Vice-Questore just told me that some people, computer people, from the Ministry of the Interior were in here during the vacation. He said that they were,’ he continued, emphasis on the next word, ‘forwarding the files about the murder of the man in Campo Santo Stefano to their office, which is now in charge of the case.’ As he said the last phrase, he realized how close he was to losing control even of this soft voice he was using. He forced himself to relax and said, ‘Could you have a look?’

She pulled her lips tight, something she did when stressed or angry. ‘I’ve already done that, sir. In fact, that’s what I wanted to tell you, just now. It’s all gone.’ He had to lean forward to hear her.

‘All? Aren’t there things like backup and. . other things?’ he asked.

‘There are. And they’re all gone from there, too. It’s been wiped clean.’

‘Is that possible? I thought you were. .’ He didn’t know the words to express what he thought she was.

‘I am,’ she said. ‘Usually. But these people, from what you tell me, had almost a week in here. They could have found anything.’

‘Did they?’

She shook her head. ‘No. Luckily, the only things I keep on here are the current cases, and that was the only one I had.’

‘Really the only one?’ he asked, utterly confused. ‘But the, what’s it called, hard disc or hard drive,’ he said, waving a hand at her computer. ‘Aren’t there traces of other things in there?’

‘There would be. Ordinarily. But this is a new computer. I had to get it before Christmas, so the only. . the only delicate information on there was about the man in Campo Santo Stefano, and not even all of that.’

He thought of all the things she had used her computer to help him with in the past, all the codes she had broken, to make no mention of the laws, and he closed his eyes in a relief he could not fully comprehend. But then he asked, ‘Had to?’

‘In my capacity as the Vice-Questore’s administrative assistant,’ she said with overweening humility.

‘The old one?’

‘Vianello has it.’

‘In his office?’ Brunetti asked in a voice close to panic.

‘No, at home.’

‘Just like that?’ he asked. Was this a confession of abuse of office or merely of simple theft?

‘No, he had to pay the Questura for it. There’s a procedure for the transfer of office supplies to private persons, so long as they are not employees of a government agency.’

‘Aren’t the police a government agency?’ he asked.

‘Yes, of course. But his mother-in-law isn’t on the police force.’

He had to know. ‘How much did he — she — have to pay for it?’

‘Ten Euros.’

‘Planned obsolescence?’ he asked.

‘Hardly, sir. It developed a problem with the hard drive, and the technician I called said it could not be repaired and should be sold for scrap.’

‘Presumably he wrote this out for you?’

‘Of course.’

‘And then?’

‘And then Vianello’s mother-in-law offered to buy it, to save us having to pay for someone to come and take it away.’

He waited for her to continue, but she did not. As if her story were a loose tooth, he prodded at it: ‘And?’

‘And then I just happened to be there one evening and Nadia asked me to have a look at it, to see if I could think of anything, and, well, I saw what the problem was and got it working again.’ She smiled happily at the memory of this triumph.

‘I’m sure you were all surprised.’

‘Simply astounded, sir.’

25

The near-miss with the Ministry of the Interior, even though Brunetti had no idea what might have been discovered among Signorina Elettra’s records if they had found her old computer, left Brunetti shaken. At any time, they had just been shown, the information she stored could be unearthed and looted by some other agency of the government. His mind shied away from the risks he had taken in the last years and from the realization that proof of all of it lay in the hard disc of the computer now in Vianello’s possession. His career would not last a day, nor would Vianello’s, nor would Signorina Elettra’s, if the wrong people at the Questura came to learn what information the three of them had accumulated over the years and the means they had used to acquire it.

His memory went to the rich garment that Medea had sent to Jason’s bride: no matter what she or her father did, no matter how they tried, they could not put out the flames that burst from it the instant she put it on. Similarly, once information was stored in a computer, it seemed that nothing except complete destruction could reliably extinguish it.

He told himself not to exaggerate the dangers and that he really did not know enough about computers to be sure that this was true; further, the only information that had been detected concerned a crime which he had every reason to be investigating. Rizzardi’s addendum with its terrible photos was safely lodged in his phone book. When he got to his office, he hung up his coat the way he always did, checked the surface of his desk for messages or post, and with the strange sensation that unseen viewers could see what he was doing, opened his bottom drawer and pulled out the phone book. Lodged in the Ps he found the photos. He removed them and folded them into three before slipping them into the inside pocket of his jacket. As he did so, he was swept by a wave of relief so strong he felt his shirt grow damp under his arms.

The photos, however, had reminded him that Professor Winter had never got back to him. The telefonino he thought of as belonging to Signor Rossi had spent the holiday on the top of his dresser, despised and rejected of men, but as he dressed that morning for his return to the Questura, Brunetti had slipped it into his pocket.

When he took it out, he saw that its battery was running low but that the memory still stored her number. He started to key it in but then changed his mind and wrote it down on a piece of paper. He put the phone back in his pocket and left the Questura, heading up towards the public phones on the Riva degli Schiavoni.

‘Ah, Commissario,’ Professor Winter said, when he identified himself, ‘I hope you had a happy Christmas.’

‘Yes, I did. Thank you. And you?’

‘Very. I was in Mali, you see. Didn’t you get my message?’