good man.’
‘Not a boy?’ Brunetti asked, surprised.
‘No, he’s sixty and sitting out his last years until retirement.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said, doubly struck by the man’s courage. He switched his legs and leaned to tap a finger on the first page of the hand-written text. ‘Do you, or the officer who gave you this information, have proof of anything that’s written in here?’ he asked.
‘Aside from information in official documents, no: there’s nothing that anyone would admit having said. Only the usual gossip,’ she answered, and then continued, ‘It’s one thing to believe that something is happening, even to know it is. But that’s not the sort of evidence judges will accept.’ She mirrored him by folding her arms and crossing her legs, then added, ‘And you certainly don’t want anyone to know you passed on the information.’ She stopped speaking, seeming to want some acknowledgement from him.
Brunetti nodded; it sufficed.
‘Since I came here,’ she began, speaking clearly and slowly, perhaps to mask the traces of the Sardinian accent he’d heard, ‘I’ve asked the men and the one other woman in the unit to make a note of gossip and hearsay and things that get said in the bars. It’s all to be written in pencil and given to me. I copy it and destroy the original pieces of paper, so everything is clearly in my handwriting, should it ever become a problem.’
‘A problem?’ Brunetti inquired.
She glanced aside after he asked this and looked out of the window of her office, from which only the brick wall could be seen. She studied the wall, pulled her lips together, and turned back to face him.
‘What I’ve heard about you, Commissario, makes me believe you’ll understand if I say that the fact that I am a woman does not make my job any easier; indeed, it often leads to complications.’
When it seemed she was not going to proceed, Brunetti said, ‘I have no doubt of that. Many of my colleagues don’t like women on the force.’
‘Or out of it, I’d venture,’ she responded instantly. Then, returning to her former, and warmer, tone, said, ‘I have something else for you.’ She opened the drawer of her desk, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to him. She had printed his name on the flap. ‘It’s the factual information about them,’ she said. ‘Full names and addresses, phone numbers, current occupation and place of work.’ She paused briefly, then added, ‘Neither has a criminal record. Vio’s been fined for speeding on the laguna three times. Nothing else.’ Before Brunetti spoke, she added, ‘But there’s a growing . . . aura – an unpleasant one – in what is said about him.’ She cleared her throat and returned to fact. ‘There’s no copy of the photo my man took.’ Changing her voice and somehow managing to remove some of its beauty, she added, ‘You didn’t see it.’
He nodded his thanks to her and slipped the unopened envelope into the inner pocket of his jacket.
They remained silent for some time, Brunetti eager to discover where their conversation would go. The Captain, no doubt sensing this, returned to the original subject. ‘I think there has to be some truth in these rumours. They’ve come to us from a number of people: a former girlfriend of Vio’s and one distant cousin.’ After saying this, she surprised Brunetti by shrugging one shoulder in dismissal.
In the report she’d written she didn’t seem interested in whether Vio was smuggling cigarettes or not; Brunetti wasn’t much interested, either, and believed there was no sure way to stop it. ‘Do you have an opinion about him?’
She rubbed at some invisible spot on the surface of her desk while she considered how to answer. Finally she said, ‘I suppose he, or they, brought in some contraband. For the money.’ She looked at Brunetti, then added, ‘The children of friends of mine here went to school with Vio. They say he’s not particularly bright but at heart a good boy.’ After a pause, she added, ‘Unlike the uncle.’
‘And the other one? Duso?’
She shrugged. ‘His father’s a lawyer,’ she said. The word opened Brunetti’s memory, for Duso was the lawyer of a friend, who had always praised his competence and integrity.
There was no reason to mention this to Nieddu, so he remained silent and waited for her to continue. ‘He’s already working in his father’s office, so it’s only good sense for him not to get mixed up in anything illegal his friend might be part of.’ It was certainly good sense, but it didn’t prove that Duso was also a good boy.
‘And the cigarettes?’ Brunetti asked, level-voiced.
‘For the love of God, who cares?’ she demanded.
Realizing they were in perfect agreement, Brunetti proposed, ‘Shall we share anything we learn?’
‘Gladly,’ she answered. Then, although it hardly needed explanation, she added, ‘As you’ve noticed, I haven’t asked you again why you’re interested in these two men. The newspaper accounts say they took them to Pronto Soccorso.’
Brunetti nodded.
‘A neighbour of mine works at the hospital,’ she continued, her tone grown rough. ‘She told me what the young woman looked like when they left her on the dock.’
‘We don’t know what happened,’ Brunetti said, feeling awkward at how feeble it sounded.
‘But we do know who brought them,’ she snapped. Then, her anger more audible, she added, ‘People treat dogs better.’
Brunetti stood and shook his right leg to loosen his trousers, then brushed both hands down the sides to make the cloth fall correctly. When he was standing upright, he said, ‘Thank you, Laura, for your time and your cooperation. We’ll have a word with them today, if we can.’ He asked if they could exchange telefonino numbers; she smiled and agreed and pulled out her phone.
After that was done, Brunetti turned to leave her office; she made no move to follow him to the door. When he got there, he turned around to her and said, ‘One thing. When I speak to Vio, I know nothing about him or his uncle. I won’t stir up waters that are yours.’
At that, she nodded. ‘Good luck, then,’ she said, and Brunetti left, heading back to the riva and the Number Two to San Zaccaria.
6
Brunetti stood on the deck of the vaporetto while he phoned Signorina Elettra to say he had a positive identification of the two suspects and wanted to bring them in for questioning. He stuffed his phone between his shoulder and his ear, pulled out the envelope, and read her their contact information. When she asked, he said he wanted the authorization of a magistrate and that Patta would surely approve, given the connection to the American Embassy. Brunetti remembered how Patta, some years ago, had ended up in the international press: The New York Times itself had mentioned Patta’s name and said, as was its wont, that ‘the arrest struck a serious blow against the Ndrangheta.’ All blows against the Mafia, for the international press, were always ‘serious’, even ‘crippling’. No major European languages were capable of using the more apposite ‘futile’, nor yet ‘pointless’.
Brunetti specified that the two men were not to be allowed to speak to or telephone anyone once they were in police custody. He did not have to tell her that each was to be taken to a separate interrogation room and did not tell her that one of them was ‘of interest’ to the Carabinieri.
‘Send Pucetti to get Vio and ask Vianello to take another launch and bring Duso in. All they know is that they were sent to take him to the Questura, always speaking in the singular.’
‘Certainly, Commissario,’ Signorina Elettra said. ‘Shall I begin having a look?’
‘A captain in the Carabinieri just told me they checked their records and found nothing,’ Brunetti said.
Was it a clicking sound he heard, as if she’d been told something beyond belief? Or was