Friends in High Places

her parents are surgeons, you see. So I thought it might help if I could speak to them, even a little bit. And since I don’t speak German or English, I thought maybe it would show them I’m not just a dumb cop if I could speak to them in Russian.’

‘That sounds very wise. Well, I’ll leave you to your grammar,’ Brunetti said.

He turned to leave, and from behind him, Pucetti said, ‘Das vedanya.’

Knowing no Russian, Brunetti could not respond in kind, but he said goodnight and left the building. The woman’s teaching mathematics, and Pucetti’s studying Russian to be good enough to please her parents. On his way home, Brunetti considered this, wondering if, in the end, he himself was nothing but a dumb cop.

On Fridays Paola did not have to go to the university, and so she usually spent the afternoon preparing a special meal. All of the family had come to expect it, and that night they were not disappointed. She had found a leg of lamb at the butcher’s behind the vegetable market and served it with tiny potatoes sprinkled with rosemary, zucchini trifolati, and baby carrots cooked in a sauce so sweet that Brunetti could have continued to eat them for dessert, had that not been pears baked in white wine.

After dinner he lay, not unlike a beached whale, in his usual place on the sofa, permitting himself just the smallest glass of Armagnac, merely a whisper of liquid in a glass so small as barely to exist.

When Paola joined him after dismissing the children to their homework with the life-endangering threats they had come to anticipate, she sat down and, far more honest in these things than he, poured herself a healthy swig of Armagnac. ‘Lord, this is good,’ she said after the first sip.

As if in a dream, Brunetti said, ‘You know who called me today?’

‘No, who?’

‘Franco Rossi. The one from the Ufficio Catasto.’

She closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. ‘Oh, God, and I thought it was all over or had gone away.’ After a while she asked, ‘What did he say?’

‘He wasn’t calling about the apartment.’

‘Why else would he call you?’ Before he could answer, she asked, ‘He called you at work?’

‘Yes. That’s what’s so strange about it. When he was here, he didn’t know I worked for the police. He asked me, well, he sort of asked me what I did, and all I said was that I’d studied law.’

‘Do you usually do that?’

‘Yes.’ He offered no other explanation, and she asked for none.

‘But he found out?’

‘That’s what he said. Someone he knew told him.’

‘What did he want?’

‘I don’t know. He was calling on his telefonino, and since it sounded like he was going to tell me something he didn’t want made public, I suggested he call me back from a public phone.’

‘And?’

‘He didn’t call.’

‘Maybe he changed his mind.’

To the extent that a man can shrug when he is filled with lamb and lying on his back, Brunetti shrugged.

‘If it’s important, he’ll call back,’ she said.

‘I suppose so,’ Brunetti said. He considered having the slightest little sip more of Armagnac, but instead dropped off to sleep for half an hour. When he woke, all thought of Franco Rossi had fled, leaving him only with the desire for that sip of Armagnac before he went down the hall to bed.

5

As Brunetti had feared, Monday was to bring him the results of Vice-Questore Patta’s lunchtime conversation with the Questore. The summons came at about eleven, soon after Patta’s arrival at the Questura.

‘Dottore?’ Signorina Elettra called from the door of his office, and he glanced up to see her standing there, a blue folder in one hand. For a moment he wondered if she had chosen the folder to match the colour of her dress.

‘Ah, good morning, Signorina,’ he said, waving her toward his desk. ‘Is that the list of the stolen jewellery?’

‘Yes, and the photos,’ she answered, handing him the file. ‘The Vice-Questore asked me to tell you he’d like to speak to you this morning.’ Her voice held no hint that peril lurked in the message, so Brunetti did no more than nod in acknowledgement. She remained where she was, and he opened the file. Four colour photos were stapled to the page, each of a single piece of jewellery, three rings and an elaborate gold bracelet containing what looked like a row of small emeralds.

‘It looks like she was prepared for a robbery,’ Brunetti said, surprised that anyone would go to the trouble of having what looked like studio photos taken of her jewellery and immediately suspicious of insurance fraud.

‘Isn’t everyone?’ she asked.

Brunetti looked up, making no attempt to hide his surprise. ‘You can’t mean that, Signorina.’

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t mean it, especially as I work here, but I certainly can mean it.’ Before he could question her, she added, ‘It’s all people talk about.’

‘There’s less crime here than in any other city in Italy. Just look at the statistics,’ he said hotly.

She did not roll her eyes to the heavens but contented herself with saying, ‘Surely you don’t think they represent what really happens here, Dottore?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘How many break-ins or robberies do you think actually get reported?’

‘I just told you. I’ve seen the crime statistics. We all have.’

‘Those statistics aren’t related to crime, sir. Surely you should know that.’ When Brunetti refused to rise to the bait, she asked, ‘You don’t really believe that people bother to report crimes here, do you?’

‘Well, perhaps not all of them, but I’m sure most people do.’

‘And I’m sure most people don’t,’ she said with a shrug that softened her posture but did nothing to soften her voice.

‘Can you give me some reason why you believe this?’ Brunetti asked, laying the folder down on his desk.

‘I know three people whose apartments have been robbed in the last few months who haven’t reported it.’ She waited for Brunetti to speak, and when he didn’t, she added, ‘No, one of them did. He went down to the Carabinieri station next to San Zaccaria and told them his apartment had been robbed, and the sergeant in charge told him to come back the next day to report it because the lieutenant wasn’t there that day, and he was the only one who could handle robbery reports.’

‘And did he go?’

‘Of course not. Why bother?’

‘Isn’t that a negative attitude to have, Signorina?’

‘Of course it’s negative,’ she shot back with far more impudence than she usually directed at him. ‘What sort of attitude do you expect me to have?’ At the heat of her tone, the comfort usually provided by her presence fled the room, leaving Brunetti feeling the same tired sadness he felt whenever he and Paola had an argument. In an attempt to free himself of this sensation, he looked down at the photos and asked, ‘Which piece did the gypsy woman have?’

Signorina Elettra, equally relieved by the change of atmosphere, leaned over the photos and pointed to the bracelet. ‘The owner’s identified it. And she’s got the original receipt which describes it. I doubt that it will make any difference or be much use, but she said she saw three gypsies in Campo San Fantin the afternoon her place was robbed.’

‘No,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘It won’t be any use.’

‘What is?’ she asked rhetorically.

In ordinary circumstances, Brunetti would have made a light remark to suggest that the laws were no different for the gypsies than for anyone else, but he didn’t want to endanger the easy mood that had been restored between them. Instead, he asked, ‘How old is the boy?’