The Girl of his Dreams

And he let his sister die.' Before Paola could protest, he went on, ‘I know, I know, he didn't let anything happen. But I'm not talking about what actually happened, whatever that was, but about how he'd see it. She was with him, so anything that happened to her was his fault.'

He paused a long time after this, then said, 'But if she was thrown off the roof, then it's not his fault.' Before she could protest, he hurried on, 'I'm just trying to see it the way he would.' He stopped talking and the noise of the city flowed up to them: passing footsteps, a man's voice coming from one of the windows beneath them, a television in the distance.

'Then why are the Fornaris acting so guilty?' Paola finally asked.

'It might not be guilt’ Brunetti said.

'What else could it be?'

'Fear.'

'Of the Gypsies?' she asked in surprise. 'Some sort of vendetta?' Her tone revealed her refusal to believe this. 'But from what you said, no one except the mother and the brother seemed much to care about what happened to her.'

'Not of the Gypsies’ Brunetti said, wondering where she had been all these years.

'Then of what?' she asked, failing to see it.

'The state. The police. Being accused and being caught up in the mechanism of justice.' What greater fear stalked the average citizen? Being the victim of a robbery was nothing in comparison.

'But they didn't do anything. You said you checked their story, and they got home after the girl was already dead. And the father really was in Russia.'

'They aren't afraid for themselves’ Brunetti told her. 'For the daughter, for whatever she saw and didn't tell them and then didn't tell the police, or for whatever she might have seen her boyfriend do.' He decided to trust her with this, as well, and added, 'Or anything she might have done’

He heard her sudden intake of breath. 'But the little boy talked about Tiger Man, not about a girl’ she said.

'He's just a kid, Paola. He probably ran the instant he saw someone come out of the bedroom. And left his sister there.' Brunetti got to his feet. 'It would be more reason for him to feel guilty and more reason for him to say someone else was responsible.' He saw how unsatisfied this possibility left her but said only, ‘I think I'd like to go to bed.'

'And leave it like that?' she asked, shocked.

'It's not one of your novels, where everything gets explained in the last chapter, with people sitting around in the library.'

'The books I read aren't like that,' she said indignantly.

'Neither is life’ Brunetti answered and extended his hand to help her to her feet.

* * *

Two days later, Ariana Rocich was buried on San Michele, her grave paid for by the comune di Venezia. No one was certain of the girl's religion, so officialdom decided that she be given Christian burial. Brunetti and Vianello attended, both of them having ordered large wreaths, the only flowers on her coffin.

The chaplain of the hospital, Padre Antonin Scallon, read the service over the coffin placed beside the open hole, the white skirt of his tunic invisible against the white roses of the wreaths. The ceremony took place in a different part of the cemetery from the one where Brunetti's mother had been buried, but the same trees stood here, as well.

The blossoms had disappeared, leaving no trace on the grass. But green shoots, soon to be the first leaves of the season, covered the trees, and birds whizzed in and out among them, building and preparing.

When the priest finished the reading, he turned to the two men standing there: no one else attended. He raised his hand and made the sign of the cross over the empty grave, and then above the coffin, and then he raised his hand in benediction of the two men who were there with her that day. When the priest lowered his hand, the workers whose job it was to lower the box approached from the sides of the grave and lifted the ropes.

Vianello turned away and started down the path that led to the courtyard and the portone out to the boat landing. Padre Antonin closed his book, lifted his hand over the coffin which the men were now sliding towards the grave, and made a gesture that was half wave, half blessing. He turned away.

Brunetti stepped towards him and put his right hand on the priest's arm. 'Thank you, Padre,' he said and leaned forward to kiss the other man on both cheeks. Arm in arm, they turned from the grave and started back towards the city.

Donna Leon

Donna Leon has lived in Venice for many years and previously lived in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, where she worked as a teacher. Her previous novels featuring Commissario Brunetti have all been highly acclaimed; recently Friends in High Places, which won the CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, Blood From A Stone, Through a Glass, Darkly and Suffer the Little Children.

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