The Girl of his Dreams

woman from the social services would meet them. Brunetti used the time to tell Steiner about finding the body and the complete results of the autopsy.

Steiner nodded and said, ‘I’ve heard that they hide things that way, though we've never encountered it’ He shook his head a few times, as if attempting to expand his understanding of the limits of human behaviour, then said, 'The kid's eleven years old, and she's hiding jewellery in her vagina.' He was silent for a while, then muttered, 'Dio buono’

The boat passed under the Rialto, but none of the men in the cabin noticed. 'The woman who'll meet us, Cristina Pitteri, has worked with the Gypsies for about ten years,' Steiner said in a voice so neutral it forced Vianello and Brunetti to exchange a quick glance.

'What's she do?' Vianello asked.

'She's a psychiatric social worker by training,' Steiner explained. 'Used to work at Palazzo Boldu. But she asked for a transfer: she ended up in the office that deals with the different nomad groups.'

'There's others?' Vianello asked.

'Yes. The Sinti. Not as criminal as the Gypsies, but they come from the same places and live much the same way’

'What does she do?' Brunetti asked.

Steiner considered this until the boat was passing under the Ponte degli Scalzi and then in front of the train station. 'She's in charge of something called 'inter-ethnic liaison'‘ he answered, using the foreign words.

'Which means?' asked Vianello.

Steiner's face softened into a grin, but only momentarily, and then he said, 'As far as I can see, I think it means she tries to make them make sense to us and us to them’

‘Is that possible?' Vianello asked.

Steiner got to his feet and pushed open the door that led to the steps. He turned and said over his shoulder, 'Better ask her', and went up on deck.

The pilot brought the boat to a halt in one of the taxi docks to the right of the imbarcadero of the 82. The three men stepped on to the dock; Brunetti and Vianello followed Steiner up to the road, where a dark Carabinieri estate car waited, motor running. A robust woman with short dark hair who looked to be in her late thirties stood on the pavement next to the car, smoking a cigarette. She wore a skirt and sweater under a box-cut jacket, and dark brown walking shoes that had the glow of expensive leather. She had a round face in which the features all seemed to have been squeezed too close together. Her eyes were close set, and her upper lip much thicker than the lower, giving the impression that, in a kind of continental shift, her features were slowly migrating towards her nose.

Steiner approached her and extended his hand. She paused long enough for everyone to register that she had done so, then gave her hand to the Maresciallo.

'Dottoressa’ he said with neutral deference, 'this is Dottor Brunetti and Ispettore Vianello, his assistant. They're the ones who found the girl.'

She flicked the cigarette aside and briefly studied Brunetti's face, and then Vianello's, before she extended her hand to Brunetti. Her grip was as fleeting as it was limp; they exchanged titles as a form of greeting. She nodded at Vianello, turned, and got into the back seat of the car. A silent Steiner got into the front seat beside the driver, leaving the other two, in the absence of any motion on the part of Dottoressa Pitteri to slide across the seat, to walk around the back of the car to the door on the other side. Brunetti opened it a few centimetres then waited for a break in the traffic before climbing in. Taking his place on the uncomfortable middle of the seat, he was careful to angle his knees and thighs to the left to keep from touching those of the woman beside him. Vianello clambered in and slammed the door, pressing himself close against it.

The driver, a uniformed officer, said something softly to Steiner, who answered 'SI’ after which the car pulled away from the kerb. 'Dottoressa Pitteri has worked with the Rom for some time now, Commissario’ Steiner said. 'She knows the girl's parents, and so I'm sure her presence will be a great help to us when we tell them.'

'And to the girl's family, as well, I should hope,' Dottoressa Pitteri interrupted, speaking with muffled indignation. ‘I think that's rather more important.'

‘I hardly thought it needed saying, Dottoressa,' Steiner said blandly. As he spoke, his eyes remained on the road before them, as though he considered it his duty to keep the driver constantly warned of approaching danger.

They started across the causeway, and Brunetti's eyes were pulled to the left and to the smokestacks and holding tanks of Marghera. The newspapers had told him that morning that cars with even-numbered licence plates were permitted on the street today; the odd-numbered ones could drive tomorrow. There had been no substantial rain for a month: it had done nothing but sprinkle, and so only God knew what was swirling around in the air they breathed. 'Microdust', it was called, and Brunetti could never read the name without conjuring up tiny particles of chemicals, all those poisons Marghera had been hurling up into the atmosphere for three generations, digging their way ever deeper into his lungs and into his tissues.

Vianello, whose ecological sympathies used to be, but were no longer, a source of fun at the Questura, looked in the same direction. Try to close it’ Vianello said with no introduction, nodding towards the representative smokestacks of the industrial area, 'and they're out in protest the next day. 'Save our jobs.'' The Inspector gestured to the left, then let his hand fall to his lap in what Brunetti thought a melodramatic gesture of frustration and despair.

No one in the car spoke for a while, but then Dottoressa Pitteri asked, 'Would you rather they starved, Ispettore? And their children?' Her voice held a combination of irony and condescension and she spoke with great clarity, as if she feared a man as simple-minded as a police inspector might not be able to understand a more complex question.

'No, Dottoressa’ Vianello said, 'I'd like them to stop pumping Cloruro vinile monomero into the air our children breathe.'

'Certainly they've stopped that in the last years’ she said.

'So they say’ Vianello replied, then added, 'If you choose to believe them.'

In the ensuing silence, the noise of a passing truck sounded uncommonly loud.

Brunetti had followed the play of emotion on the woman's face in the rearview mirror, and he saw her purse her lips as she turned away from the offending smokestacks.

Though Brunetti was curious to learn whatever the woman could tell him about the Gypsies, the obvious antipathy between her and Steiner made him reluctant to raise the subject while the other man was present. 'Have you been out there before, Maresciallo?' he asked, using the formal Lei to address the other man.

'Twice.'

'For these same people, the Rocich?'

'Once. The other time it was to bring back a woman who tried to pick a tourist's pocket on the vaporetto.' Steiner's voice was a study in neutrality.

'What did you do?'

‘I put her in the car and brought her back out here.' For a moment, Brunetti thought Steiner had stopped, but after a pause the Maresciallo resumed. 'It was the usual story: she said she was pregnant. We were short-staffed that day, and I didn't want to waste time on it: take her to the hospital to verify the pregnancy, take witness statements from the man and from the two witnesses who saw what happened, then call the social services…' He let his voice trail off for a moment. 'So I decided to take her to the place where she said she was living and let the matter drop.'

'And so you never bothered to get witness statements about what really happened?' Dottoressa Pitteri suddenly asked. 'You just assumed she was guilty?'

'It wasn't necessary to get them.'

'But I'm asking you why, Maresciallo. Because you simply assumed that, if she was a Rom, she had to be guilty of anything she was accused of doing? Especially by a tourist?' She pronounced the last word with heavy emphasis, dragging out each syllable.

'No, not for that,' Steiner said, eyes still forward.

'Then why?' she demanded. 'Why was it so convenient simply to assume she was guilty?'