Suffer the Little Children (13 page)

When Brunetti still did not speak, Damasco said, ‘I haven't asked him anything about what happened. Well, except if he remembers being hit, which he says he doesn't. As his doctor, that's my only concern.'

‘And as his friend?' Brunetti asked.

‘As his friend,' he began and considered for a moment. ‘As his friend I went along with Sandra's harebrained idea to have you come and talk to him.'

Pedrolli appeared to have followed their conversation; at least his eyes had shifted back and forth as the two men spoke. As Damasco finished, Pedrolli's gaze moved to Brunetti, waiting for him to respond.

‘As your friend told you,' Brunetti said, speaking to the man in the bed, ‘I'm a police officer. One of my staff called me early yesterday morning and said an assaulted man was in the hospital, and I came down here to see what had happened. My concern then was the same as it is now: an armed assault on a citizen of this city, not the reason for it and not your response to it. As far as I've learned, you acted as would any citizen who was attacked in his home: you attempted to defend your family and yourself.'

He paused and looked at Pedrolli. The doctor raised one finger.

‘I have no idea how the Carabinieri are going to proceed with this case nor how they will
present the information, and I don't know what accusations may be brought against you, Dottore,' Brunetti said, deciding it was best to stay as close as possible to the truth. ‘I do know that there is a long list of charges they believe they can bring against you.'

Here, Pedrolli held up his right hand and fluttered it back and forth in the air.

‘The officer I spoke to mentioned corruption of a public official, falsification of state documents, resisting arrest, and the assault of a public official in the performance of his duties. That last is the officer you hit.'

Again, the interrogatively raised hand.

‘No, he wasn't hurt. His nose wasn't even broken. A lot of blood, but no real damage.'

Pedrolli closed his eyes in what could have been relief. Then he looked again at Brunetti and, with the fingers of his right hand, took his left hand and slid his wedding ring up and down his finger.

‘Your wife is fine, Dottore,' Brunetti answered, wondering at Pedrolli's concern, for the woman had only recently left the room.

Pedrolli shook his head and repeated the gesture with the ring, then to make things clearer, pressed his wrists together as though they were tied. Or handcuffed.

Brunetti raised both hands as if to ward off the idea. ‘No charges have been brought against her, Dottore. And the captain I spoke to said that there probably would not be.'

At this, Pedrolli pointed the index finger of
his right hand at his heart, and Brunetti said, ‘Yes, only against you, Dottore.'

Pedrolli tipped his head to one side and shrugged the other shoulder, as if consigning himself to his fate.

For what it was worth, Brunetti added, economical with the truth, ‘I'm in no way involved in that investigation, Dottore. It will be conducted by the Carabinieri, not by us.' He paused, then continued, ‘It's a jurisdictional thing. Because they made the original arrest, the case belongs to them.' He waited for some sign that Pedrolli understood or believed this, then added, ‘My concern is with you as an injured person, the victim of an assault, if not a crime.' Brunetti smiled and turned to Dottor Damasco. ‘I don't want to tire your friend, Dottore.' Careful of his phrasing, he added, ‘If things change, would you let me know?'

Before Damasco could answer, Pedrolli reached out and seized Brunetti's wrist. He tugged at it with some force, pulling him closer to the bed. His mouth moved, but no sound emerged. Seeing Brunetti's evident confusion, Pedrolli made a cradling gesture with both arms and rocked them back and forth over his chest.

‘Alfredo?' Brunetti asked.

Pedrolli nodded.

Brunetti patted the back of Pedrolli's right hand, saying, ‘He's fine, Dottore. Don't worry about him, please. He's fine.'

Pedrolli's eyes widened, and Brunetti saw the tears gather. He looked away, pretending
Damasco had said something, and when he looked back, Pedrolli's eyes were closed.

Damasco stepped forward, saying, ‘I'll call you if anything happens, Commissario.'

Brunetti nodded his thanks, retrieved the clipboard, and left the room. The Carabiniere guard was still seated outside the door, but he barely glanced at Brunetti. At the nurses' desk, Brunetti saw no one, nor was there anyone in the corridor. He unclipped the papers and tossed them back into the waste basket, then set the clipboard on the desk. He removed the stethoscope, put it back in the drawer, and left the ward.

BRUNETTI TOOK HIS
time returning to the Questura, his mind occupied by the things he had failed to ask and the lingering unknowns of the Pedrolli . . . he didn't even know what to call it: Case? Situation? Dilemma? Mess?

Without information about the other adoptions, and in the face of Pedrolli's continuing silence, Brunetti knew as little about the details of the acquisition of the doctor's baby as he did of the others. He had no idea if the mothers were Italian or where they had given birth to their babies, how or where they took physical possession of the babies, what the going rate was. This last phrase appalled him. There was also the bureaucratic issue: just how much paperwork was needed to give evidence of
paternity? In an orange metal box that had once contained Christmas biscuits, he and Paola kept the children's birth certificates, inoculation and health records, certificates of baptism and first communion, and some school records. The box stood, if memory served, on the top shelf of the wardrobe in their room, while their passports were in a drawer in Paola's study. He had no memory of how they had managed to get passports for the children: surely they must have been asked to provide birth certificates, and those certificates must also have been necessary to enrol the kids in school.

All official information about Venetian births and deaths, as well as changes in official place of residence, is kept at the Ufficio Anagrafe. As Brunetti left the hospital he decided to pass by the office: no time better than the present to speak to someone there about the bureaucratic process that led to the creation of legal identity.

He followed a slow-moving snake of tourists across Ponte del Lovo, down past the theatre and around the corner, but when Brunetti arrived at the Ufficio Anagrafe, tucked into the warren of city offices on Calle Loredan, his plan was to be frustrated by the most banal of reasons: city employees were on strike that day to protest about delays in the signing of their contract, which had expired seventeen months before. Brunetti wondered if the police – city employees, after all – were allowed to strike, and deciding that they were, he went into Rosa Salva for a coffee and then over to Tarantola to
see what new books had come in. Nothing caught his fancy: biographies of Mao, Stalin, and Lenin would surely lead him to despair. He had read an unpleasant review of a new translation of Pausanias and so left it unbought. Because he made it a rule never to leave a book-store without buying something, he settled for a long out-of-print translation of the Marquis de Custine's 1839 travels in Russia, printed in Torino in 1977:
Lettere dalla Russia
. The period was closer to the present than ordinarily would have interested him, but it was the only book that appealed, and he was in a hurry, strike or not.

Brunetti was conscious of how very virtuous he felt in proceeding to the Questura to go back to work, now that he knew about the strike and the possibility it offered him of going home to start on the book. Instead, buoyed by pride in his self-restraint, he set the book on his desk and picked up the papers that had accumulated there. Try as he might to concentrate on lists and recommendations, Brunetti felt his attention drawn towards the unanswered questions surrounding Pedrolli. Why had Marvilli refused to divulge more information? Who had authorized the Carabinieri raid on the home of a Venetian citizen? What power had summoned the Vice-Questore to Pedrolli's hospital room not half a day after he arrived there? And how was it, anyway, that the Carabinieri had learned about Pedrolli's baby?

His reflections were interrupted by the ringing of his phone.

‘Brunetti.'

‘Come down here now.' And then Patta's voice was gone.

As he stood, Brunetti's eye was caught by the copy on the back cover of the book he had just bought, ‘. . . the arbitrary imposition of power which characterized . . .'

‘Ah, M. le Marquis,' he said out loud, ‘if you knew the half of it.'

Downstairs, he found no sign of Signorina Elettra. He knocked and entered Patta's office without waiting to be told to do so. Patta was at his desk, the papers of the overworked public official spread before him; even his summer tan had begun to fade, contributing to the total effect of tireless dedication to the many obligations of office.

Before Brunetti moved towards Patta's desk, the Vice-Questore asked, ‘What are you working on, Brunetti?'

‘The baggage handlers at the airport, sir, and the Casinò,' he answered, much as he might inform a dermatologist about the foot fungus he kept picking up at work.

‘All that can wait,' Patta said, a sentiment in which Brunetti most heartily joined. Then, when Brunetti stood in front of him, Patta asked, ‘You've heard about this mix-up with the Carabinieri, I assume?'

Mix-up, was it? ‘Yes, sir.'

‘Good, then. Sit down, Brunetti. You make me nervous standing there.'

Brunetti did as he was told.

‘The Carabinieri over-reacted, and they'll be lucky if the man in the hospital doesn't bring charges against them.' Patta's remark raised Brunetti's estimation of the man who had stood with the Vice-Questore outside Pedrolli's door. After a moment's reflection, Patta tempered his opinion and said, ‘But I doubt that he will. No one wants that sort of legal trouble.' Indeed. Brunetti was tempted to ask if the white-haired man at the hospital would be involved in whatever legal mess were to ensue, but good sense suggested that he keep his knowledge of Patta's meeting to himself and so he asked, ‘What would you like me to do, sir?'

‘There seems to be some uncertainty about the nature of the communications that took place between the Carabinieri and us,' Patta began. He peered across at Brunetti, as if to enquire whether he were receiving the coded message and knew what to do with it.

‘I see, sir,' Brunetti said. So the Carabinieri could produce evidence that they had informed the police of the projected raid, but the police could find no evidence that they had received it. Brunetti's mind cast back to the rules of logic he had studied with such interest, decades ago now, at university. There had been something about the difficulty – or was it the impossibility? – of proving a negative. This meant that Patta was thrashing about, trying to decide which would be less risky: to blame the Carabinieri for their excessive use of force or to find someone at the Questura to take the
rap for the failure to transmit the Carabinieri's message?

‘In light of what's happened to this doctor, I'd like you to keep an eye on things and see that he's treated decently. So that nothing more happens.'

Brunetti prevented himself from completing the Vice-Questore's sentence by adding, ‘. . . that would lead to trouble for me'.

‘Of course, Vice-Questore. Would it be all right if I spoke to him, perhaps to his wife?'

‘Yes,' Patta said. ‘Do whatever you want. Just see that this doesn't get out of control and cause trouble.'

‘Of course, Vice-Questore,' Brunetti said.

Patta, with responsibility effectively transferred to someone else, directed his attention to the papers on his desk.

‘I'll keep you informed, sir,' Brunetti said and got to his feet.

Clearly too busy with the cares of office to respond, Patta waved a hand at him, and Brunetti left.

Because Paola had agreed to help him by asking around about Bianca Marcolini, Brunetti steeled himself and went down to the computer in the officers' room, where he managed to surprise his colleagues by the ease with which he connected to the Internet and then typed in the letters for ‘
infertilità
', having to go back to correct only two typing errors.

For the next hour, Brunetti was the centre of what became a team effort on the part of the
uniformed branch to help the research along. Though none of the younger men actually pushed him aside, the occasional hand did slip in below his to type in a word or two; Brunetti, however, never quite relinquished possession of the keyboard or mouse. The fact that he insisted on printing out everything that was of interest to him gave him the sense, however spurious, that he was engaged in the same sort of research he used to conduct in the university library.

When he was finished and went to the printer to pick up the stack of papers that had accumulated, he was struck by two thoughts: it was all so fast, virtually instant, but he had no idea how true any of it was. What made one website more reliable than another, and what, in heaven's name, was ‘Il Centro per le Ricerche sull'Uomo'? Or ‘Istituto della Demografia'? For all Brunetti knew, either the Catholic Church or the Hemlock Society could be behind all of the sources he had consulted.

He had long accepted that most of what he read in books and newspapers and magazines was only an approximation of the truth, always slanted to Left or Right. But at least he was aware of the prejudices of most journalists and had thus, over the decades, learned to read aggressively, and so he could almost always find some kernel of fact – he entertained no illusions of finding the truth – in what he read. But with the Internet, he was so ignorant of context that all of the sources carried equal weight with him. Brunetti was adrift in what could well be a sea
of Internet lies and distortions and utterly without the compass he had learned to use in the more familiar sea of journalistic lies.