Uniform Justice (28 page)

At the admission, Pucetti lowered his hands, and Brunetti sensed a general relaxing of his
body
as he allowed the menace of his presence to slip away. He had no doubt that, were he to take his eyes off Cappellini, he would see that Pucetti had managed to return to his normal size.

The boy calmed down, at least minimally. He allowed himself to slip down lower on the bed, extended his legs and let one of his feet hang off the side. ‘He hated him, Filippi. I don’t know why, but he always did, and he told us all that we had to hate him, too, that he was a traitor. His family was a family of traitors.’ When he saw that Brunetti made no response to this, Cappellini added, ‘That’s what he told us. The father, too. Moro.’

‘Do you know why he said that?’ Brunetti asked in a voice he allowed to grow soft.

‘No, sir. It’s what he told us.’

Much as Brunetti wanted to know who the others were, he was aware that it would break the rhythm, so he asked, instead, ‘Did Moro complain or fight back?’ Seeing Cappellini’s hesitation, he added, ‘When Filippi called him a traitor?’

Cappellini seemed surprised by the question. ‘Of course. They had a couple of arguments, and one time Moro hit him, but somebody stopped it, pulled them apart.’ Cappellini ran his right hand through his hair, then propped himself up on both hands, letting his head sink down between his shoulders. There was a long pause. Pucetti and Brunetti might just as easily have been two stones.

‘What happened that night?’ Brunetti finally prodded him.

‘Filippi came in late. I don’t know whether he had permission or he used his key,’ Cappellini explained casually, as if he expected them to know about this. ‘I don’t know who he was with; it might have been his father. He always seemed angrier, somehow, when he came back from seeing his father. Anyway, when he came in here …’ Cappellini paused and waved his hand at the space in front of him, the same space now filled by the motionless bodies of the two policemen. ‘He started talking about Moro and what a traitor he was. I’d been asleep and I didn’t want to hear it, so I told him to shut up.’

He stopped speaking for so long that Brunetti was finally prompted to ask, ‘And then what happened?’

‘He hit me. He came over here to the side of the bed and reached up and hit me. Not really hard, you understand. Just sort of punched me on the shoulder to show me how mad he was. And he kept saying what a shit Moro was and what a traitor.’

Brunetti hoped the boy would continue. He did. ‘And then he left, just turned and walked out of the room and went down the hall, maybe to get Maselli and Zanchi. I don’t know.’ The boy stopped and stared at the floor.

‘And then what happened?’

Cappellini looked up and across at Brunetti. ‘I don’t know. I fell asleep again.’

‘What happened, Davide?’ Pucetti asked.

With no warning, Cappellini started to cry, or at least tears started to roll down his cheeks. Making no attempt to brush them away he spoke through them. ‘He came back later. I don’t know how long it was, but I woke up when he came in. And I knew something was wrong. Just by the way he walked in. He wasn’t trying to wake me up or anything. Just the opposite, maybe. But something woke me up, as if there was energy all over the place. I sat up and turned on the light. And there he was, looking like he’d just seen something awful. I asked him what was wrong, but he told me it was nothing and to go back to sleep. But I knew something was wrong.’

The tears slid down his face, as if independent of his eyes. He didn’t sniff, and he still made no attempt to wipe them away. They ran down his cheeks and fell on to his shirt, darkening it.

‘I suppose I went back to sleep, and the next thing I knew, people were running down the halls shouting and making a lot of noise. That’s what woke me up. Then Zanchi came in and woke Filippi up and told him something. They didn’t speak to me, but Zanchi gave me a look, and I knew I couldn’t say anything.’

He stopped again, and the two policemen watched his tears fall. He nodded at Pucetti. ‘Then you all came and started asking questions, and I did what everyone else did, said I didn’t know anything.’ Pucetti made a sympathetic patting gesture in the air with his right hand. The boy raised a hand and wiped away the tears
on
the right side of his face, ignoring the others. ‘It’s what I had to do.’ He used the inside of his elbow to wipe all of the tears away; when his face emerged, he said, ‘And then it was too late to say anything. To anybody.’

The boy looked at Pucetti, then back at Brunetti, then down at his hands, clasped in his lap. Brunetti glanced at Pucetti, but neither of them risked saying anything.

Beyond the door, footsteps went by, then came back after a minute or so but did not stop. Finally Brunetti asked, ‘What do the other boys say?’

Cappellini shrugged away the question.

‘Do they know, Davide?’ Pucetti asked.

Again, that shrug, but then he said, ‘I don’t know. No one talks about it. It’s almost as if it never happened. None of the teachers talks about it either.’

‘I thought there was some sort of ceremony,’ Pucetti said.

‘Yes, but it was stupid. They read prayers and things. But no one said anything.’

‘How has Filippi behaved since then?’ Brunetti asked.

It was as if the boy hadn’t considered it before. He raised his head, and both Brunetti and Pucetti could see how surprised he was by his own answer. ‘Just the same. Just the same as ever. As if nothing’s happened.’

‘Has he said anything to you about it?’ Pucetti asked.

‘No, not really. But the next day, that is, the
day
they found him, when all of you came here to the school and started asking questions, he said he hoped I realized what happened to traitors.’

‘What do you think he meant by that?’ Brunetti asked.

With the first sign of spirit the boy had shown since the two men came into his room, Cappellini shot back, ‘That’s a stupid question.’

‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ Brunetti admitted. ‘Where are the other two?’ he asked. ‘Zanchi and Maselli.’

‘Their room is down to the right. The third door.’

‘Are you all right, Davide?’ Pucetti asked.

The boy nodded once, then again, leaving his head hanging down, looking at his hands.

Brunetti signalled to Pucetti that they should leave. The boy didn’t look up when they moved, nor when they opened the door. Outside, in the corridor, Pucetti asked, ‘Now what?’

‘Do you remember how old they are, Zanchi and Maselli?’ Brunetti said by way of answer.

Pucetti shook his head, a gesture Brunetti interpreted to mean they were both underage and thus obliged to have a lawyer or parent present when they were questioned, at least if what they said were to have any legal weight at all.

Brunetti saw then the futility of having rushed here to speak to this boy; he regretted the folly of having given in to his impulse to follow the scent laid down by Filippi. There was
virtually
no hope that Cappellini could be led to repeat what he had just said. Once he spoke to cooler heads, once his family got to him, once a lawyer explained to them the inescapable consequences of an involvement with the judicial system, the boy was certain to deny it all. Much as Brunetti longed to be able to use the information, he had to admit that no sane person would admit to having had knowledge of a crime and not going to the police; much less would they allow their child to do so.

It struck him that, in similar circumstances, he would be reluctant to allow his own children to become involved. Surely, in his role as police officer, he would offer them the protection of the state, but as a father he knew that their only hope of emerging unscathed from a brush with the
magistratura
would be his own position and, more importantly, their grandfather’s wealth.

He turned away from the boys’ room. ‘Let’s go back,’ he told a surprised Pucetti.

26

ON THE WAY
back to the Questura, Brunetti explained to Pucetti the laws regarding statements from underage witnesses. If what Cappellini told them was true – and Brunetti’s bones told him it was – then he bore some legal responsibility for his failure to tell the police what he knew. This, however, was only negligence; the actions of Zanchi and Maselli – if they were involved – and of Filippi, were active and criminal and, in the case of Filippi, subject to the full weight of the law. But until Cappellini confirmed his statement in the presence of a lawyer, his story had no legal weight whatsoever.

Their only hope, he thought, was to attempt the same strategy with Filippi as had worked
with
his roommate: pretend to have full knowledge of the events leading to Moro’s death and hope that, by asking questions about the small details that still remained unexplained, they could lead the boy to a full explanation of just what had happened.

Holding the mooring rope, Pucetti jumped on to the Questura dock and hauled the boat up to the side of the pier. Brunetti thanked the pilot and followed Pucetti into the building. Silent, they went back to the interrogation rooms, where they found Vianello standing in the corridor.

‘They still here?’ asked Brunetti.

‘Yes,’ Vianello said, glancing at his watch, then at the closed door. ‘Been in there more than an hour.’

‘Hear anything?’ Pucetti asked.

Vianello shook his head. ‘Not a word. I went in a half-hour ago to ask them if they wanted anything to drink, but the lawyer told me to get out.’

‘How’d the boy look?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Worried.’

‘The father?’

‘The same.’

‘Who’s the lawyer?’

‘Donatini,’ Vianello said in a studiedly neutral voice.

‘Oh, my,’ Brunetti answered, finding it interesting that the most famous criminal lawyer in the city should be chosen by Maggiore Filippi to represent his son.

‘He say anything?’ Brunetti asked.

Vianello shook his head.

The three men stood in the corridor for a few minutes until Brunetti, tiring of it, told Vianello he could go back to his office and himself went up to his own. There he waited until, almost an hour later, Pucetti phoned and told him that Avvocato Donatini said his client was ready to talk to him.

Brunetti called Vianello and told him he’d meet him at the interrogation room but deliberately made no haste in going downstairs. Vianello was there when he arrived. Brunetti nodded, and Vianello opened the door and stood back, allowing his superior to pass into the room before him.

Donatini stood and extended his hand to Brunetti, who shook it briefly. He smiled his cool smile, and Brunetti noticed that he had had extensive dental work since last they met. The Pavarotti-style caps on his upper front teeth had been replaced with new ones that better corresponded to the proportions of his face. The rest was the same as ever: skin, suit, tie, shoes all joining in a hallelujah to wealth and success and power.

The lawyer gave Vianello a curt nod but did not offer his hand. The Filippis, father and son, looked up at the policemen but did not acknowledge their arrival with even a nod. The father wore civilian clothes, but it was a suit that, like Donatini’s, spoke so eloquently of wealth and power that it might as well have
been
a uniform. He was perhaps Brunetti’s age but looked a decade younger, the result of either natural animal grace or hours in a gym. He had dark eyes and the long, straight nose that was mirrored on the face of his son.

Donatini, staking a claim to the proceedings, waved Brunetti to a seat at the opposite end of the rectangular table and Vianello to a chair across from the father and son. Thus he himself faced Brunetti, while the other two looked at Vianello.

‘I won’t waste your time, Commissario,’ Donatini said. ‘My client has volunteered to talk to you about the unfortunate events at the Academy.’ The lawyer looked to his side, where the cadet sat, and the boy gave a solemn nod.

Brunetti gave what he thought was a rather gracious one.

‘It would seem that my client knows something about the death of Cadet Moro.’

‘I’d be very eager to hear what that is,’ Brunetti said with a curiosity he allowed to be tempered with
politesse
.

‘My client was …’ Donatini began, only to be stopped by Brunetti, who held up a hand, but gently and not very high, to suggest a moment’s pause. ‘If you don’t mind, Avvocato, I’d like to record what your client has to say.’

This time it was the lawyer who responded with
politesse
, which he conveyed by the merest inclination of his head.

Brunetti reached forward, conscious as he did so of how often he had done the same thing, and
switched
on the microphone. He gave the date, his name and rank, and identified all of the people in the room.

‘My client …’ Donatini began again, and again Brunetti saw fit to stop him with a raised hand.

‘I think it would be better, Avvocato,’ Brunetti said, leaning forward to switch off the microphone, ‘if your client were to speak for himself.’ Before the lawyer could object or question this, Brunetti went on with an easy smile, ‘That might give a greater appearance of openness on his part, and it would certainly then be easier for him to clarify anything that might seem confusing.’ Brunetti smiled, aware of how elegant had been his implication that he reserved the right to question the boy as he spoke.

Donatini looked at Maggiore Filippi, who until now had remained motionless and silent. ‘Well, Maggiore?’ he asked politely.

The Maggiore nodded, a gesture his son responded to with what appeared to be an involuntary half-salute.

Brunetti smiled across at the boy and turned the microphone on again.

‘Would you tell me your name, please?’ he asked.

‘Paolo Filippi.’ He spoke clearly and louder than he had spoken the last time, presumably for the benefit of the microphone.

‘And are you a third-year student at the San Martino Military Academy in Venice?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could you tell me what happened at the Academy on the night of November third of this year?’

‘You mean about Ernesto?’ the boy asked.