The Girl of his Dreams

happened?'

'The tiger man,' the boy said.

Brunetti cocked his head to one side to show his confusion. 'What tiger man?' he asked.

'In the house’ the child said, waving his hand in the general direction of the houses to Brunetti's left, where stood Palazzo Benzon and the home of Giorgio Fornari.

Brunetti raised his palms in the universal sign of confusion. 'I don't know a tiger man’ he said. 'What did he do?'

'He saw us. He came in. No clothes. Tiger man’ To show what he meant, the boy stuck his ringers in his hair and ruffled it out above his head, then made cutting motions, first with one hand, then with the other, at the top of his arms. 'Tiger. Bad tiger. Loud noise. Tiger noise.'

'Did the tiger man give you these?' Brunetti asked, holding the jewellery out towards the boy.

The boy's face grew cloudy with confusion. 'No, no’ he said with a violent shake of his head. 'We take. Tiger man see.' His eyes contracted as though he were trying to remember something, or trying not to remember something. Then he said, 'Ariana. He took Ariana’ To show Brunetti what he meant, he stuck his arms out in front of him and pretended to pick something up. 'Like you do me’ he said, making it clear and raising his hands with the emptiness suspended between them. He froze.

Brunetti waited.

'Door. Ariana out door’ he said, pushing his arms away from him violently and letting his hands fly open. Brunetti saw that the boy was crying.

His knees had begun to ache, but he remained crouched down, afraid of the effect on the child if he suddenly got to his feet. He let the boy cry for some time, and when he seemed calmer, Brunetti asked, 'Who was with you?'

'Xenia’ he said, raising one of his out-thrust hands to the level of his shoulder.

'Did she see the tiger man?'

The boy nodded.

'Did she see what he did?'

He nodded again.

'Does your mother know about this?' Brunetti asked.

He nodded.

'Will she talk to me?'

The boy stared at Brunetti for some time and then shook his head.

'Because of your father?' The boy shrugged.

'Why are you in the city?' Brunetti asked. 'Work’ the boy said, and Brunetti was left speechless at the use of the word.

'Will you tell your mother that you talked to me?' 'Yes. She want.'

'Does she want anything else?' Brunetti asked.

'Tiger man. Tiger man die’ the boy said fiercely, and Brunetti realized it was not only the boy's mother who wanted him dead. 'Like Ariana’ the boy said with adult savagery.

Brunetti had had enough. He spread his fingers on the ground in front of him and pushed off, rising slowly to his feet. He heard his right knee creak. As he had feared, the boy took two steps backwards and raised an involuntary arm across his face.

Brunetti backed farther away. ‘I won't hurt you.' The boy let his arm fall to his side.

'You can go now, if you like’ he said. The boy at first seemed not to understand, so Brunetti turned and walked to the end of the calle, where it formed a T junction with Calle dell'Albero. Brunetti called back to the boy. 'I'm going back to the Questura. Tell your mother I would like to talk to her.'

The boy had materialized around the corner behind him. He shook his head at Brunetti's request, but he said nothing.

Pressing his back against the wall of the building opposite Brunetti, the boy squeezed past him. He turned left into the calle, heading towards the bridge they had both run down.

He paused at the bottom but did not look back at Brunetti. As the boy put his foot on the first step, Brunetti called after him. 'You're a good boy.' The boy ran up the bridge and disappeared down the other side.

28

''Tiger man'?' Vianello repeated after Brunetti told him about his meeting with the Fornaris and the child. 'He didn't give you any better idea of what he was talking about?'

'No. Nothing. Someone who looked like a tiger to him – came in while they were inside the place and picked the little girl up and threw her out the door.' Brunetti paused, ran a hand through his hair, and added, 'At least that's what it sounded like.'

'And for this the boy wants to kill him?'

'There was a door to the terrace in the parents' bedroom,' Brunetti reminded him. 'She could have fallen off and slid down the roof from there.'

'You might be right about that,' Vianello conceded, ‘But I don't remember seeing a tiger skin.'

'Don't be literal-minded, Lorenzo. He's a child. Who knows what he means by a tiger man? It could be someone in striped pyjamas; it could be someone who yelled at them in a deep voice’

Vianello considered this, then added, 'We don't even know if the kid's using the right word, do we?' When Brunetti said nothing, Vianello said, 'You told me he barely spoke Italian. You think he'd know the word?'

Brunetti thought the boy's understanding of Italian was more than adequate, though what Vianello said might be true. Then he remembered the way the boy had fluffed out his hair like the head of a beast and had made those motions to suggest a tiger's stripes. But the world of a child's imagination did not have to correspond to an adult's.

'Poor devil’ Vianello said.

'You mean the kid?' Brunetti asked.

'Of course I mean the kid’ Vianello said quickly. 'How old is he? Twelve? He ought to be in school, not coming to the city to go to work by breaking into houses.' Brunetti restrained himself from commenting on the inconsistency of Vianello's opinions and waited for him to continue.

'He's a kid’ the Inspector repeated indignantly. 'He's not doing these things because it's his idea to do them.' He threw up his hands in disgust and made an angry noise in his throat.

'It sounds as if you do have a certain sympathy for at least one of them’ Brunetti observed, but he smiled after he said it, and Vianello did not take offence.

'Well, you know how it is: it's always easy to have sympathy in a particular case. It's when we look at things in general that we lump them all together and say those things. Stupid things.' Presumably, Vianello meant the things he had said earlier, which would make this an apology or something close to one.

'It's just that I get crazy, not being able to do anything’

Vianello went on, and Brunetti remained silent. 1 was talking to Pucetti before I came up. They had a call from that grocery store over by the Miracoli. Seems they had a drug addict in there this morning, waving a metal rod and threatening to break the place up if they didn't give him money.'

This was a story Brunetti had heard many times, and he feared he already knew the outcome. 'They gave him twenty euros,' Vianello went on, 'and all he did was go to the bar next door and buy a bottle of wine and then sit on the bench in front of the store and start to drink it. That's when the owner called us.' Vianello stretched his legs out and stared at his feet. He too had heard this same story many times.

'So Pucetti went over. He tried to get Alvise to go with him.' Vianello, gave a deep sigh, and shook his head. 'But he was too busy. So he took Fede and Moretti, and when they got there the guy was still sitting on the bench, like he'd just been passing by and decided to rest a while. The owner identified him, Pucetti wrote out a formal denuncia, and they brought the guy back here. And after two hours we let him go.'

Vianello appeared to have finished, but then he said, 'It's just like the Mutti guy. He's disappeared. Your friend Zeccardi called earlier.'