Suffer the Little Children (15 page)

BRUNETTI WENT BACK
downstairs with Vianello, then continued to Signorina Elettra's office, where he found her busy on the phone. She beckoned him into the room, signalled that he was not to leave, and continued what appeared to be a series of monosyllabic responses to a flood of verbosity from the other end of the line. ‘Yes. No. Of course. Yes. Yes,' she said, each response interrupted by a long pause, during some of which she busied herself with jotting things down. ‘I understand,' she said, ‘Signor Brunini is very eager to see the doctor and, yes, he and his companion would come as private patients.' Again, there ensued a silence that seemed even longer now that Brunetti had heard the name and wondered what she was up to.

‘Yes, I realize, of course. Yes, I'll wait.' She held the phone away and rubbed at her ear, then drew the receiver back at the sound of a female voice. ‘Oh, really? So soon? Ah, Signora, you're wonderful. Signor Brunini will be very pleased. Yes, I have it. Three-thirty on Friday. I'll call him right now. And thank you.'

Signorina Elettra put the phone down and glanced at Brunetti, then wrote a few words on the paper in front of her.

‘Dare I ask?' Brunetti said.

‘The Villa Colonna Clinic. In Verona,' she said. ‘Where they went.'

Though the transmission was somewhat semaphoric, Brunetti had no difficulty understanding it.

‘And that led you to . . .' Brunetti began, then realized that he was lacking an adequate verb. ‘To speculate?' he concluded.

‘Yes, you could say that,' she answered, obviously pleased by his choice of word. ‘About all manner of things. But chiefly about the coincidence that a number of people who were examined at this clinic were put in contact with the person or persons who had a baby to sell' – one could only admire her directness.

‘You putting your money on the clinic?'

The arc of her eyebrow rose no more than a millimetre, but the motion spoke of endless possibility.

Brunetti returned to even more uncertain territory. ‘Signor Brunini?' he enquired.

‘Ah, yes,' she said. ‘Signor Brunini.' Brunetti
waited until finally she continued. ‘I thought it might be interesting to present the clinic with another couple desperate to have a child and rich enough to pay anything to have one.'

‘Signor Brunini?' he asked, recalling that crime films always advised impostors to select a name close enough to their own to allow them to respond to it automatically.

‘Even so.'

‘And Signora Brunini?' he asked. ‘Did you have someone in mind for the role?'

‘I thought someone familiar with the investigation should accompany you so that there would be two people able to form an opinion of the place.'

‘Go along with
me
?' Brunetti asked, though the emphasis was hardly necessary.

‘Friday at three-thirty,' she said. ‘There's a Eurocity to Munich that leaves at 1:29. That means it will get to Verona at three.'

‘And would this person who goes along with me be Signora Brunini?'

She hesitated a moment, considering this question, though Brunetti knew her well enough to believe she had already answered it. ‘I thought perhaps the desire for a child would appear more urgent for Signor Brunini if she were his, er, his companion. Younger, and very much in want of a child.'

Brunetti grasped at the first straw that floated past him. ‘What about medical records? Wouldn't a doctor at this clinic want to examine them before he saw . . . them?'

‘Oh, those,' she said, as if already bored with mere details. ‘Dottor Rizzardi has asked a friend at the Ospedale to prepare them.'

‘For Signor Brunini and his, er, his companion?'

‘Exactly. They should be ready, and Dottor Rizzardi's friend has only to fax them to Verona.'

Did he have a choice? The question was absurd.

Little happened over the day and a half before Brunetti had to take up the role of Signor Brunini. The couples who had been arrested in Verona and Brescia were sent home, and the police request that they be kept under house arrest was rejected by magistrates in both cities. The children, two articles stated, had been given into the care of the social services. Dottor Pedrolli, too, was told by the Venetian magistrate assigned the case that he could return to his home and to his work, but following the advice of Dottor Damasco, he chose to remain in the hospital. The Carabinieri had decided to bring against him only charges having to do with the false adoption of the baby: mention was no longer made of resisting arrest or injuring a police officer in performance of his duties. Neither he nor his wife made any attempt to contact Brunetti, who was careful to request a written report from the Carabinieri, though there was precious little to report.

Thus, urged by the restless desire to force something, anything, to happen, Brunetti arrived at the station on Friday afternoon on
time to catch the 1:29 Eurocity to Munich, scheduled to stop at Verona at 2:54.

‘You know, we can stop this if you'd like,' Brunetti said as the train pulled into the Verona station.

Signorina Elettra looked up from her copy of
Il Manifesto
, smiled, and responded, ‘But then I'd have to go back to the office, wouldn't I, Commissario?' Her smile was warm, but it did not linger as she shut the paper and got to her feet. She set the newspaper on the seat, took her coat and put it over her arm.

She went into the corridor, and Brunetti picked up the paper, calling after her. ‘You've forgotten this.'

‘No, better leave it there. I doubt that patients at this clinic read anything other than
Il Giornale
. I'd hardly want to trigger alarms by walking in with a Communist newspaper.'

‘One does tend to forget that they eat babies,' Brunetti said conversationally as they made their way to the end of the carriage.

‘Communists?' she asked, turning to him at the top of the steps.

‘So my Aunt Anna believed,' Brunetti said, then added, ‘Probably still does.' He followed her down the steps, and together they walked to the stairway that led to the lower level and the station exit.

A few taxis stood in line; Brunetti opened the back door of the first and waited as Signorina Elettra got in. He closed it and walked around
to the other side. He gave the driver, who appeared to be either Indian or Pakistani, the name and address of the Villa Colonna, and the man nodded as though they were familiar.

Neither Brunetti nor Signorina Elettra spoke as the taxi pulled into traffic, turning left in front of the station and moving off towards what Brunetti calculated must be the west. He was amazed, as he so often was, at how many cars crowded the roads, at how loud it all was, even through the closed windows of the taxi. Cars appeared to come at them from all directions, some sounding their horns, a noise Brunetti had always found particularly aggressive. The driver muttered under his breath in a language that was not Italian, braking and surging ahead in response to spaces that closed or opened ahead of them. Try as he might, Brunetti never quite managed to understand the cause and effect relationship between what a driver saw and what he did: perhaps there was none.

He sat back and studied the endless rows of new buildings to his left, all low, all ugly, and all apparently selling something.

Voice low, Signorina Elettra said, ‘Shall we go ahead with what we planned?'

‘I think so,' he replied, though it was she who had planned their roles, not they together, and surely not he. ‘It will make me look more than a little desperate, and it suggests that I'm willing to do anything at all to keep you happy.'

‘And it gives me an interesting role to play.'

Before he could respond, the taxi came to a
sharp halt, pitching them forward, forcing them to brace their hands against the seats in front to avoid crashing into them. The driver swore and banged his fist repeatedly against the dashboard as he continued to mutter to himself. In front of them stood a square-backed truck, its red brake lights glaring. As they sat and watched, black fumes poured from beneath the truck. Within seconds, the taxi was trapped in a black cloud, and the inside began to fill with the acrid smell of burning oil.

‘Is that truck going to explode?' Brunetti asked the driver, not bothering to ask himself how the man would know.

‘No, sir.'

Strangely comforted, Brunetti sat back and glanced at Signorina Elettra, who had her hand over her mouth and nose.

Brunetti was pulling out his handkerchief to hand to her when the taxi suddenly jerked forward and slid around the truck. Then they moved off at a speed that pressed them against the backs of their seats. When Brunetti looked, there was no sign of the truck.

‘My God,' Signorina Elettra said, ‘how can people live like this?'

‘I've no idea,' Brunetti answered.

They lapsed into silence and before long the taxi slowed and turned into an oval driveway in front of a three-storey building, all gleaming metal and glass.

‘Twelve Euro, fifty,' the driver said as they drew to a halt.

Brunetti gave him a ten and a five and told him to keep the change. ‘Would you like a receipt, sir?' the driver asked. ‘I can make it for any amount you like.'

Brunetti thanked him and said it wasn't necessary, got out and went around to open the door for Signorina Elettra. She swung both feet out and stood, then took his arm and leaned towards him. ‘It's show time, Commissario,' she said and gave him a broad smile that ended in a wink.

The automatic doors opened into a reception area that might have served for an advertising agency, perhaps even a television studio. Money was in evidence. It did not shout and it did not whistle, nor did it try in any vulgar way to call attention to itself. But it was there, evident in the parquet, the Persian miniatures on the walls, and in the pale leather chairs and sofa that sat around three sides of a square marble table on which rested a bouquet of flowers more splendid than anything Signorina Elettra had to date thought of ordering for the Questura.

A young woman quite as beautiful as the flowers, if somewhat more restrained in colour choice, sat at a glass-topped table. No papers and nothing to write with could be seen, only a flat-screen computer and a keyboard. Through the surface of the desk, Brunetti saw that she sat with her feet neatly together, a pair of brown shoes peeping out from the bottom of what looked like black silk slacks.

She smiled as they approached, revealing dimples on either side of a perfect mouth. Her
hair appeared to be naturally blonde, though Brunetti had abandoned the idea that he could any longer tell, and her eyes were green, though one seemed to be just minimally larger than the other. ‘May I help you?' she asked, making it sound as if this were her single goal in life.

‘My name is Brunini,' he said. ‘I have a three-thirty appointment with Dottor Calamandri.'

Again that smile. ‘One moment and I'll check.' She turned aside and typed a few letters into the computer, tapping them out carefully with the tips of her blunt-cut fingernails. She waited a second, glanced back at them and said, ‘If you'll take seats over there, the dottore will see you in five minutes.'

Brunetti nodded and started to turn away. The young woman came around her desk to lead them to the seats, almost as if she doubted they could make the two-metre trip unaided.

‘Would either of you like something to drink?' she asked, her smile refusing to fade.

Signorina Elettra shook her head, not bothering to say thank you. She was, after all, the spoiled companion of a wealthy man, and such women did not smile at their inferiors. Nor did they smile at women who were younger than they, especially when they were in the company of a man.

They sat down and the young woman returned to her desk, where she busied herself at her computer, the screen of which Brunetti could not see. He looked at the magazines lying beneath the flowers:
AD
,
Vogue
,
Focus
. Nothing
so vulgar as
Gente
or
Oggi
, or
Chí
, the sort of magazine one looked forward to being able to read in the doctor's waiting room.

He picked up
Architectural Digest
but tossed it down before opening it, remembering that the reason he was there was to be attentive to the wishes of his companion. He leaned towards her and asked, ‘Are you all right?'

‘As soon as this is over, I will be,' she said, looking up at him and trying to smile.

Neither spoke for some time, and Brunetti's attention wandered back to the covers of the magazines. He heard a door open and looked up to see another woman, older than the one at the desk and less attractive, approaching them. Her brown hair was parted in the middle and cut to just below her ears, falling forward on both sides of her face. She wore a white lab jacket over a grey wool skirt. Her legs were fine and well-muscled, the legs of a woman who played tennis or ran, but no less beautiful for that.

Brunetti stood. The woman extended her hand, saying, ‘Good afternoon, Signor Brunini.' Brunetti expressed his pleasure in meeting her. He noticed the reason for the hair style: a thick layer of makeup attempted – and failed – to cover the rough pitting left by acne or some other skin disease. The scars, confined to the sides of her cheeks, were almost completely hidden by her hair. ‘I'm Dottoressa Fontana, Dottor Calamandri's assistant. I'll take you to him.'

Signorina Elettra, secure in the presence of far
less competition than that offered by the woman at the desk, could afford a gracious smile. She took Brunetti's arm, suggesting that she might need his help to make whatever distance it was to Dottor Calamandri's office.

Dottor Fontana led them down a corridor where the elegance of the waiting room gave way to the practical sense of a medical institution: the floor was made of square grey tiles, and the prints on the walls were black and white city prospects. The doctor's legs looked as good from the back as from the front.