Suffer the Little Children (12 page)

‘Dessert?' Chiara asked her mother, and Brunetti realized that he had managed to save space for something sweet.

‘There's fig ice-cream,' Paola said, filling Brunetti with a flush of anticipation.

‘Fig?' Raffi asked.

‘From that place over by San Giacomo dell'Orio,' Paola explained.

‘He's the one who does all the weird flavours, isn't he?' Brunetti asked.

‘Yes. But the fig's sensational. He said these are the last of the season.'

Sensational it was, and after the four of them had managed to knock off an entire kilo, Brunetti and Paola repaired to the living room, each with a small glass of grappa, just what Brunetti's Uncle Ludovico had always prescribed to counteract the effects of a heavy meal.

When they were sitting side by side, watching the dim remnants of light they thought could still be seen in the west, Paola said, ‘When the clocks go back, it'll be dark even before we eat. It's what I hate most about the winter, how dark it gets, how soon and for how long.'

‘Good thing we don't live in Helsinki, then,' he said and took a sip of grappa.

Paola squirmed around until she found a more comfortable position and said, ‘I think you
could name any city in the world, and I'd agree that it's a good thing we don't live there.'

‘Rome?' he offered, and she nodded. ‘Paris?' and she nodded more forcefully. ‘Los Angeles?' he ventured.

‘Are you out of your mind?'

‘Why this sudden devotion to
patria
?' he asked.

‘No, not to
patria
, not to the whole country, just to this part of it.'

‘But why, all of a sudden?'

She finished her grappa and turned aside to set the glass on the table. ‘Because I took a walk over towards San Basilio this morning. For no reason, not because I had to go anywhere or do anything. Like a tourist, I suppose. It was still early, before nine, and there weren't a lot of people around. I stopped in a
pasticceria
, a place I've never been in before, and I had a brioche that was made of air and a cappuccino that tasted like heaven, and the barman talked about the weather with everyone who came in, and everyone spoke Veneziano, and it was like I was a kid again and this was just a sleepy little provincial town.'

‘It still is,' Brunetti observed.

‘I know, I know, but like it was before millions of people started coming here.'

‘All in search of that brioche that's made of air and the cappuccino that's like heaven?'

‘Exactly. And the inexpensive little trattoria where only the locals eat.'

Brunetti finished his grappa and rested his
head against the back of the sofa, his glass cradled in his hands. ‘Do you know Bianca Marcolini? She's married to the paediatrician, Gustavo Pedrolli.'

She glanced at him and said, ‘I've heard the name. Works in a bank. Does social things, I think: you know, Lions Club and Save Venice and things like that.' She paused and Brunetti could almost hear the pages of her mind flipping over. ‘If she's the one I think she is – that is, if it's the Marcolini family I think it is – then my father knows hers.'

‘Personally or professionally?'

She smiled at this. ‘Only professionally. Marcolini is not the sort of man my father would acknowledge socially.' She saw the expression with which Brunetti greeted this and added, ‘I know what you think of my father's politics, Guido, but I can assure you that even he finds Marcolini's politics repellent.'

‘For what specific reason?' Brunetti asked, though he was not surprised. Count Orazio Falier was a man as likely to despise politicians of the Right as those of the Left. Had a Centre existed in Italy, he would no doubt have found cause to despise them, as well.

‘My father has been heard to call his ideas Fascistic.'

‘In public?' enquired Brunetti.

This caused Paola to smile again. ‘Have you ever known my father to make a political remark in public?'

‘I stand corrected,' Brunetti admitted, though
he found it difficult to imagine a political position which someone like the Count would consider Fascistic.

‘Have you finished
The Ambassadors
?' Brunetti asked, thinking this more polite than asking if she had had time to begin her research on infertility.

‘No.'

‘Good, then don't bother with the research I asked you to do.'

‘On infertility?'

‘Yes.'

She was evidently relieved. ‘But I would like you to keep your shell-like ears open for anything you might hear about Bianca Marcolini or her family.'

‘Including the dreadful father and his even more dreadful politics?'

‘Yes. Please.'

‘Are the police going to pay me for this or is it supposed to be one of my duties as a citizen of the state?'

Brunetti pushed himself to his feet. ‘The police will get you another grappa.'

BRUNETTI SLEPT UNTIL
almost nine, after which he dawdled in the kitchen to read the papers Paola had gone out and got before leaving for the university. All of the articles named the people arrested in the Carabinieri round-up: only
Il Corriere
's account mentioned that the Carabinieri were still searching for the man believed to have organized the trafficking. None of the articles discussed the fate of the children, though
La Repubblica
did say that they varied in age from one to three years.

Brunetti paused after reading this: if simply hearing that a baby had been taken from his parents at eighteen months could incite someone as unimaginative as Alvise to rage, imagine what the reality would be for the parents of a
three-year-old. Brunetti could not bring himself to think of the people who had adopted the children as anything other than their parents: not as illegal parents, not as adoptive parents: only as parents.

He went directly to his office and found some papers on his desk – routine things – staffing, promotions, new regulations concerning the registering of firearms. There was also, and more interestingly, a note from Vianello. The Inspector wrote that he had gone to meet someone to talk about ‘his doctors'. Not with, but about, which was enough to tell Brunetti that the Inspector was continuing with what had become his all-but-private investigation of the connection he suspected existed between three specialists at the Ospedale Civile and at least one local pharmacist, possibly more.

Vianello's interest had first been piqued some weeks before, when one of his informants – a man whose identity Vianello was unwilling to reveal – had suggested that the Inspector might be interested in the frequency with which certain pharmacists who were authorized to schedule specialist appointments referred their clients to these three doctors. Vianello had mentioned the suggestion to Signorina Elettra, who found it as intriguing as he did. Together they had turned it into a kind of school science project, competing with one another to discover just how these three doctors might have earned the attention of Vianello's source.

Illumination had been provided by Signorina
Elettra's sister Barbara, herself a doctor, who had explained to them a recent bureaucratic innovation which permitted pharmacists access to the central computer of the city health service so as to enable them to schedule specialist appointments for their patients when these visits were recommended by their regular doctors. The patient would thus be saved the time spent in hospital queues waiting to schedule an appointment, and the pharmacist would be paid a fee for performing the service.

Signorina Elettra had seen one possibility immediately, as had Vianello: all an enterprising pharmacist needed was a specialist, or more than one, willing to accept appointments for what were effectively phantom patients. And how much easier to create need for those appointments than for that same pharmacist to add a single line, recommending a specialist visit, to the bottom of an ordinary prescription? The health service, ULSS, was not known for the efficiency of its bookkeeping, so it was unlikely that the handwriting on these prescriptions would be examined closely: all that had to be in order were the patient's name and health service registration number. Patients almost never saw their own computer records, so there was little chance that they would learn that these phantom appointments had been made in their names: the health system would thus have no reason to question the doctor's charge for having seen the patient, nor the pharmacist's fee for having scheduled the appointment.
And whatever arrangement the pharmacist and doctor might come to between themselves would certainly remain private, though 25–75 would seem an equitable division. If a specialist visit cost between 150 and 200 Euros, happy the pharmacist who managed to schedule four or five a week, and happy the doctors who could increase their income without having to increase their workload.

Presumably, then, Vianello was that morning again somewhere in the city talking to the man who had first mentioned the arrangement to him or to one of the other people who kept him supplied with information the police might find useful. What Vianello gave in exchange for this information Brunetti had no idea and did not choose to ask, just as he hoped no one would ask how he managed to repay his own sources for the information they provided him.

Knowing he would learn more when Vianello returned, Brunetti dialled the number of
neurologia
and asked to speak to Signora Sandra.

‘It's Commissario Brunetti, Signora,' he said when she came to the phone.

‘He's fine,' she offered, avoiding pleasantries to save them both time.

‘Is he talking?' Brunetti asked.

‘Not to me and not to anyone on the staff, at least not that I know about,' she said.

‘To his wife?'

‘I don't know, Commissario. She went home, about half an hour ago, but she said she'd be back by lunchtime. Dottor Damasco came on to
the ward about an hour ago and is in with him now.'

‘If I were to come over there, could I speak to him?'

‘To whom? Dottor Damasco or Dottor Pedrolli?'

‘Either. Both.'

Her voice softened to a whisper. ‘The Carabiniere is still outside his room. They don't let anyone in except his wife and the medical staff.'

‘Then I suppose I'd like to speak to Dottor Damasco,' Brunetti said.

After a long pause, the nurse said, ‘Come over now, and perhaps you could talk to them both.'

‘I beg your pardon.'

‘Come to the desk. If I'm not there, wait for me. There'll be a stethoscope in the right-hand drawer.' She hung up.

Brunetti left without telling anyone where he was going, walked to the hospital, and went directly to the neurology ward. No one was behind the desk. Brunetti felt a moment's nervousness, looked down the corridor to be sure it was empty, then stepped behind the desk and opened the top drawer on the right. He slipped the stethoscope around his neck and returned to the other side of the desk. He took two sheets of paper from the wastepaper basket and attached them to a clipboard, then bent over the papers and began to read.

A moment later, Signora Sandra, today in black jeans and black tennis shoes, joined him. Another nurse Brunetti did not recognize came
up behind them and Sandra said, addressing Brunetti, ‘Ah, Dottore, I'm glad you could come. Dottor Damasco is waiting for you.' Then, to the other nurse, ‘Maria Grazia, would you take Dottor Costantini down to 307, please? Dottor Damasco is waiting for him.'

He wondered if Sandra wanted to keep herself entirely out of her subterfuge, should there be trouble later, but then it occurred to him that her protective manner towards Dottor Pedrolli might well already have made the guards suspicious of her.

Keeping one eye on the papers, copies of lab reports that made no sense to him at all, Brunetti followed the nurse towards the room. A uniformed Carabiniere sat outside. He looked at the nurse, then at Brunetti, as they approached.

‘Dottor Costantini,' the nurse explained to the officer, indicating Brunetti. ‘He's here for a consultation with Dottor Damasco.'

The guard nodded and went back to the magazine spread on his lap. The nurse opened the door, announced the arrival of Dottor Costantini, and allowed Brunetti to enter the room without joining him. She closed the door.

Damasco looked in his direction and nodded. ‘Ah, yes, Sandra told me you wanted to see us.' He then looked at Pedrolli, whose eyes were on Brunetti, and said, ‘Gustavo, this is the man I told you was here before.'

Pedrolli kept his attention on Brunetti.

‘He's a policeman, Gustavo. I told you that.'

Pedrolli raised his right hand and moved it
back and forth above his chest, in the place where the stethoscope lay against Brunetti's. ‘The Carabinieri have a guard outside. The only way he could get in here to talk to you was by pretending to be a doctor,' Damasco explained.

Pedrolli's face softened: his beard disguised the hollows in his cheeks, which Brunetti thought had deepened overnight. He lay flat on the bed, a blanket pulled to his waist; above it Brunetti saw a blue and white pyjama jacket. Pedrolli's hair had once been light brown but was now, like his beard, mixed with equal portions of grey. He had the light skin and eyes that often accompany fair hair. A black bruise ran down from behind his left ear and disappeared into his beard.

Brunetti remained silent, waiting to see if Pedrolli would, or could, say anything. As he set the chart on the table next to the doctor's bed, his arm brushed across the stethoscope, making him feel foolish in his impersonation.

A minute passed, and none of the men spoke. Finally Damasco said, making no attempt to disguise his displeasure, ‘All right, Gustavo. If you insist, we'll continue to play guessing games.' To Brunetti he said, ‘If he raises one finger, the answer is yes. Two means no.'

When Brunetti said nothing, Damasco prodded him, ‘Go ahead, Commissario. It's time-consuming and probably unnecessary, but if this is the way Gustavo's decided to protect himself, then that's the way we'll play it.' Damasco reached out and grabbed one of Pedrolli's
blanketed feet; he gave it an affectionate shake, as if to contradict the exasperation in his words.