A Noble Radiance (29 page)

Brunetti raised his
eyes and stared from the window of his office. On one side of the scale was
his vague feeling that Maurizio did not have the makings of a killer, nor of
the sender of killers. On the other, then, was a scenario in which Count
Ludovico gunned down his nephew and, if that were true, then it would also
contain the Count as his own son's murderer.

Brunetti had been
wrong before in his assessment of people and their motives. Hadn't he just
been misled by and about his father-in-law? So easily had he been willing to
admit to his own wife's unhappiness, so quickly had he believed that it was his
own marriage that was at risk, while the real solution had been but a question
away, the truth to be found in Paola's simple protestation of love.

No matter how he
shifted facts and possibilities from one side to the other on these terrible
scales, the weight of the evidence always came down heavily on the side of
Maurizio's guilt. Yet still Brunetti doubted.

He thought of the way
Paola had kidded him for years about his intense reluctance ever to discard a
piece of clothing - jacket, sweater, even a pair of socks - that he found
especially comfortable. It had nothing to do with money or with the expense of
replacing the old garment, but with his certainty that nothing new could ever
be as comfortable, as comforting, as the old. And his present situation, he
realized, was caused by the same sort of reluctance to dismiss the comfortable
in favour of the new.

He picked up his
notes and went down to Patta's office for one last try, but that turned out to
be exactly as he would have written it in the script, with Patta rejecting out
of hand the 'offensive delusional suggestion' that the Count could in any way
be involved in what had happened. Patta did not go as far as ordering Brunetti
to apologize to the Count; after all, Brunetti had done no more than,
speculate, but even the speculation offended something profound and atavistic
in Patta, and it was with difficulty that he restrained his rage at Brunetti,
though he did not restrain himself from ordering Brunetti out of his office.

Back upstairs,
Brunetti slipped the four sheets of paper inside the folder and placed it in
the drawer which he usually pulled out to prop his feet on. He kicked the
drawer shut and turned his attention to a new folder which had been placed on
his desk while he was in Patta's office: the motors had been stolen from four
boats while their owners had dinner at the
trattoria
on
the small island of Vignole.

The phone saved him
from the contemplation of the full triviality of this report.
'Ciao,
Guido,'
came his brother's voice. 'We just got back.'

'But,' Brunetti
asked, 'weren't you supposed to stay longer?'

Sergio laughed at the
question. 'Yes, but the people from New Zealand left after they gave their
paper, so I decided to come back.'

'How was it?'

If you promise you
won't laugh, I'd say it was a triumph.'

Timing really is all.
Had this call come some other afternoon, even had it pulled him from sound
sleep some morning at three, Brunetti would have been happy to listen to his
brother's account of the meeting in Rome, eager to follow his explanation of
the substance of and reception given his paper. Instead, as Sergio talked about
Roentgens and residual traces of this and that, Brunetti stared down at the
serial numbers of four outboard motors. Sergio talked of deteriorated livers,
and Brunetti considered the range of horsepower from five to fifteen. Sergio
repeated a question someone had asked about the spleen, and Brunetti learned
that only one of the motors was insured against theft and that for only half
its value.

'Guido, are you
listening?' Sergio asked.

'Yes, yes, I am,'
Brunetti insisted with unnecessary emphasis. 'I think it's very interesting.'

Sergio laughed at
this but resisted the impulse to ask Brunetti to repeat the last two things
he'd heard. Instead, he asked, 'How's Paola, and the kids?'

'All fine.'

'Raffi still going
out with that girl?'

‘Yes. We all like
her.'

'Pretty soon it'll be
Chiara's turn.'

'For what?' Brunetti
asked, not understanding.

'To find a
boyfriend.'

Yes. Brunetti didn't
know what to say.

Into the expanding
silence, Sergio asked, 'Would you like to come over, all of you, this Friday
night?'

Brunetti started to
accept, but then he said, ‘Let me ask Paola and see if the kids have anything
planned.'

Voice suddenly
serious, Sergio said, 'Who ever thought we'd see this, eh, Guido?' 'See what?'

'Checking with our
wives, asking if our children have made other plans. It’s middle age, Guido’

'Yes, I suppose it
is.' Other than Paola, Sergio was the only other person he could ask. Do you
mind?'

'I'm not sure it
makes any difference if I do or not; nothing we do can stop it. But why this
serious tone today?'

By way of
explanation, Brunetti asked. Have you been reading the papers?'

'Yes, on the train
back. This thing with Lorenzoni?'

'Yes.'

'Yours?'

'Yes,' Brunetti
answered and offered nothing further.

'Terrible. The poor
people. First the son and then the nephew. If s hard to know which was worse.'
But it was evident that Sergio, newly back from Rome and still aglow with the
happiness of professional success, didn't want to speak of such things, and so
Brunetti interrupted him.

'I’ll ask Paola.
She'll call Maria Grazia.'

25

Ambiguity might well
be said to be the defining characteristic of Italian justice or - that concept
being elusive - of the system of justice which the Italian state has created
for the protection of its citizens. To many it seems that, during the time
when the police are not labouring to bring criminals before their appointed
judges, they are arresting or investigating those same judges. Convictions are
hard won and often overturned on appeal; killers make deals and walk free;
imprisoned parricides receive fan mail; officialdom and Mafia dance hand in
hand towards the ruin of the state - indeed, to the ruin of the very concept of
the state. Rossini's Doctor Bartolo might have had the Italian appeals court in
mind when he sang,
'Qualche
garbuglio si trovera.'

During the next three
days, Brunetti, cast down into darkness of spirit by a deadening sense of the
futility of his labours, considered the nature of justice and, with Cicero a
voice that refused to cease, the nature of moral goodness. All, it seemed to
him, to no purpose, like the troll lurking under the bridge in a children's
tale he'd read decades ago, the list he'd made lurked in his desk drawer,
silent, not forgotten.

He attended
Maurizio's funeral, feeling more disgust at the hordes of ghouls with cameras
than at the thought of what lay in that heavy box, its edges sealed with lead
against the damp of the Lorenzoni family vault. The Countess did not attend,
though the Count, red-eyed and leaning on the arm of a younger man, walked from
the church behind the body of the man he'd killed. His presence and the
nobility of his bearing hurled Italy into a paroxysm of sentimental admiration
not seen since the parents of a murdered American boy donated his organs so
that young Italians, children of the country of his murderer, could live.
Brunetti stopped reading the papers, but not before they reported that the
examining magistrate had decided to treat Maurizio's death as a case of justified
self-defence.

He devoted himself,
like a man with toothache who prods at the affected tooth with his tongue, to
the motors. In a world with no sense, motors were as vital as life, and so why
not find them? Alas, it proved too easy to do so - they were quickly discovered
in the home of a fisherman on Burano, his neighbours so suspicious at having
seen him bring them in, one after the other, from his boat that they called the
police to report him.

Late in the day after
this triumph, Signorina Elettra appeared at the door of this office.
'Buon giorno,
Dottore’
she said as she came in, her face hidden and her voice muffled by. the immense
bouquet of gladioli she carried in her arms.

'But what's this,
Signorina?' he asked, getting up from his chair to steer her clear of the one
that stood between her and his desk.

'Extra flowers,' she
answered. 'Do you have a vase?' She set the bouquet down on the surface of his
desk, then placed beside them a sheaf of papers that had suffered from both her
grip and the water on the stems of the flowers.

'There might be one
in the cupboard’ he answered, still confused as to why she would bring them up
to him. And extra? Her flowers were usually delivered on Monday and Thursday;
this was Wednesday.

She opened the door
to the cupboard, rustled through the objects on the floor, came up with
nothing. She waved a hand in his direction and went back towards the door,
saying nothing.

Brunetti looked at
the flowers, then at the papers that lay beside them, a fax from Doctor Montini
in Padova. Roberto's lab results, then. He tossed them back on the desk. The
flowers spoke of life and possibility and joy; he wanted nothing more to do
with the dead boy and his dead feelings about him and his family.

Signorina Elettra was
quickly back, carrying a Barouvier vase Brunetti had often admired when he saw
it on her desk. ‘I think this will be perfect for them’ she said, setting the
water-filled vase down beside the flowers. She started to pick them up, one by
one, and slip them into the vase.

'How are they extra,
Signorina?' Brunetti asked and then smiled, the only response, really, to the
conjunction of Signorina Elettra and fresh flowers.

'I did the
Vice-Questore's monthly, expenses today, Dottore, and I saw that there was
about five hundred thousand lire left.'

‘From what?'

‘From what he's
authorized to spend on clerical supplies every month,' she answered, placing a
red flower between two white ones. 'So since there's one day left in the month,
I thought I'd order some flowers.'

‘For me?'

'Yes, and for
Sergeant Vianello, and some for Pucetti, and then some roses for the men down
in the guard room.'

'And for the women in
the Ufficio Stranieri?' he asked, wondering if Signorina Elettra was the sort
to give flowers only to men.

'No,' she said.
They've been getting them twice a week, with the regular order, for the last
two months.' She finished the flowers and turned to him.

'Where would you like
them?' she asked, setting them on the corner of his desk. 'Here?'

'No, perhaps on the
window sill.'

Dutifully she carried
them over and placed them in front of the central window. "Here?' she
asked, turning so that she could see Brunetti's expression.

'Yes’
he said, his face relaxing into a smile. They're perfect.
Thank you, Signorina.'

'I'm glad you like
them, Dottore.' Her smile answered his own.

He went back to his
desk, thought of putting the papers into the file unread, but then smoothed
them out with the side of his hand and began to read. And might as well have
saved his time, for it was nothing more than a list of names and numbers. The
names meant nothing to him, though he thought they must be the various tests the
doctor had prescribed for the tired young man. The numbers, as well, might
have referred to cricket scores or prices on the Tokyo exchange: it was meaningless
to him. Anger at this latest impediment erupted, and as quickly disappeared.
For a moment, Brunetti thought of tossing the papers away, but then he pulled
the phone towards him and dialled Sergio's home number.

When he had said the
right things to his sister-in-law and promised they'd be there for dinner
Friday night, he asked to speak to his brother, who was already home from the
laboratory. Tired of the exchange of pleasantries, Brunetti said without
introduction, 'Sergio, do you know enough about lab tests to tell me what the
results mean?'