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  Commissario. But I do not and will not." He saw Brunetti preparing to

  object and quickly went on, "It's not because you don't seem like a

  perfectly honest man but because I have learned to trust no one."

  Brunetti tried to speak again, and this time Moro held up a hand to

  stop him.

  "Further, you represent a state I perceive as both criminal and

  negligent, and that is enough to exclude you, absolutely, from my

  trust."

  The words, at first, offended Brunetti and roused in him a desire to

  defend himself and his honour, but in the stillness that fell after

  Moro stopped talking, he realized that the doctor's words had nothing

  at all to do with him personally: Moro saw him as contaminated simply

  because he worked for the state. Brunetti realized he had too much

  sympathy for that position to attempt to argue against it.

  Brunetti got to his feet, but he did so tiredly, with none of the faked

  energy he had devoted to the same gesture when talking to Patta. "If

  you decide you can talk to me, Dottore, please call me."

  "Of course," the doctor said with the pretence of politeness. Moro

  pushed himself from his own chair, led Brunetti to the door, and let

  him out of the apartment.

  Outside, he reached for his telefonino, only to realize he'd left it in

  the office or at home in another jacket. He resisted the siren song

  whispering to him that it was futile to call Signora Moro this late in

  the afternoon, that she wouldn't talk to him. He resisted it, at any

  rate, long enough to make two unsuccessful attempts to call her from

  public phones. The first, one of the new, aerodynamic silver phones

  that had replaced the reliable ugly oranges ones, refused to accept his

  plastic phone card, and the second rejected his attempts with a

  repeated mechanical bleat in place of a dialling tone. He yanked the

  card from the phone, slipped it back in his wallet and, feeling

  justified that he had at least made the effort, decided to go back to

  the Questura for what little remained of the working day.

  As he stood in the gondola traghetto that ran between the Salute and

  San Marco, his Venetian knees adjusted automatically to the thrust and

  counter-thrust between the strokes of the gondolieri's oars and the

  waves of the incoming tide. He looked ahead as they made their slow

  passage across

  the Canal Grande, struck by just how jaded a person could become: ahead

  of him lay Palaz/o Ducale, and behind it popped up the gleaming domes

  of the Basilica di San Marco: Brunetti stared as though they were

  nothing more than the painted backdrop in a dull, provincial production

  of Otello. How had he got to the point where he could look on such

  beauty and not be shaken? Accompanied by the dull squeal of the oars,

  he followed this train of thought and asked himself how, equally, he

  could sit across from Paola at a meal and not want to run his hands

  across her breasts or how he could see his children sitting side by

  side on the sofa, doing something stupid like watching television, and

  not feel his bowels churn with terror at the many dangers that would

  beset their lives.

  The gondola glided in to the landing, and he stepped up on to the dock,

  telling himself to leave his stupid preoccupations in the boat. Long

  experience had taught him that his sense of wonder was still intact and

  would return, bringing back with it an almost painful awareness of the

  beauty that surrounded him at every turn.

  A beautiful woman of his acquaintance had, years ago, attempted to

  convince him that her beauty was in some ways a curse because it was

  all that anyone cared about, to the almost total exclusion of any other

  quality she might possess. At the time, he had dismissed it as an

  attempt to win compliments, which he was more than willing to give, but

  now perhaps he understood what she meant, at least in relation to the

  city. No one really cared what happened to her how else explain her

  successive recent governments? just so long as they could profit from

  and be seen in the reflection of her beauty, at least for as long as

  that beauty lasted.

  At the Questura, he went up to Signorina Elettra's office, where he

  found her reading that day's Gazzettino. She smiled at his arrival and

  pointed at the lead story. The Americans' Appointed President seems to

  want to eliminate all

  restrictions on the burning of carbon-based fuels she said, then read

  him the headline: "a slap in the face for the

  FCOf OOTSTS"."

  "Sounds like something he'd do Brunetti said, not interested in

  continuing the discussion and wondering if Signorina Elettra had been

  converted to Vianello's passionate ecological views.

  She looked up at him, then back to the paper. "And this: "venice

  condemned"."

  "What?" Brunetti demanded, taken aback by headline and with no idea of

  what it referred to.

  "Well, if the temperature rises, then the ice-caps will melt, and then

  the seas will rise, and there goes Venice." She sounded remarkably

  calm about it.

  "And Bangladesh, as well, one might observe Brunetti added.

  "Of course. I wonder if the Appointed President has considered the

  consequences."

  "I don't think that's in his powers, considering consequences Brunetti

  observed. It was his custom to avoid political discussions with the

  people with whom he worked; he was uncertain whether foreign politics

  were included under that ban.

  "Probably not. Besides, all the refugees will end up here, not

  there."

  "What refugees?" Brunetti asked, not clear where the conversation was

  going.

  "From Bangladesh. If the country is flooded and finds itself

  permanently under water, the people certainly aren't going to remain

  there and agree to drown so that they don't inconvenience anyone.

  They'll have to migrate somewhere, and as there's little chance they'll

  be allowed to go east, they'll end up here."

  "Isn't your geography a bit imaginative here, Signorina?"

  "I don't mean they, the Bangladeshis, will come here, but

  the people they displace will move west, and the ones they displace

  will end up here, or the ones That they in then turn displace will."

  She looked up, confused at his slowness in understanding. "You've read

  history, haven't you, sir?" At his nod, she concluded, Then you know

  that this is what happens."

  "Perhaps," Brunetti said, his scepticism audible.

  "We'll see," she said mildly and folded the paper closed. "What can I

  do for you, sir?"

  "I spoke to the Vice-Questore this morning, and he seemed reluctant to

  put his entire faith in Lieutenant Scarpa's opinion that the Moro boy

  killed himself."

  "Is he afraid of a Moro Report on the police?" she asked, grasping at

  once what Patta himself probably refused to admit.

  "More than likely. At any rate, he wants us to exclude all other

  possibilities before he closes the case."

  There's only one other possibility, isn't there?"

  "Yes."

  "What do you think?"
She shoved the paper aside on her desk and leaned

  slightly forward, her body giving evidence of the curiosity she managed

  to keep out of her voice.

  "I can't believe he committed suicide."

  She agreed. "It doesn't make sense that a boy that young would leave

  his family behind."

  "Kids don't always have their parents' feelings in mind when they

  decide to do something," Brunetti temporized, unsure why he did so;

  perhaps to muster the arguments he knew would be presented against his

  own opinion.

  "I know that. But there's the little sister," she said. "You'd think

  he'd give her some thought. But maybe you're right."

  "How old is she?" Brunetti asked, intrigued by this mystery child in

  whom both parents had displayed so little interest.

  There was something about her in one of the articles about

  the family, or perhaps someone I know said something about her,

  Sigiiorma Eiettra answered, Everyone s talking about them now." She

  closed her eyes, trying to remember. She tilted her head to one side,

  and he imagined her scrolling through the banks of information in her

  mind. Finally she said, "It must be something I read because I don't

  have any emotional memory of having heard it, and I'd have that if

  someone had told me about her."

  "Have you saved everything?"

  "Yes, all of the newspaper clippings and the articles from the

  magazines are in the file, the same one that has the articles about

  Dottor Moro's report." Before he could ask to see it, she said, "No,

  I'll look through them. I might remember the article when I see it or

  start reading it." She glanced at her watch. "Give me fifteen minutes

  and I'll bring it up to you."

  Thank you, Signorina," he said and went to his office to wait for her.

  He called Signora Moro's number, but still there was no answer. Why

  had she not mentioned the daughter, and why, in both houses, had there

  been no sign of the child? He started to make a list of the things he

  wanted Signorina Elettra to check and was still adding to it when she

  came into the office, the file in her hand. "Here it is, sir," she

  said as she came in. "Valentina. She's nine."

  "Does it say which parent she lives with?"

  "No, nothing at all," she said. "She was mentioned in an article about

  Moro, six years ago. It said he had one son, Ernesto, twelve, and the

  daughter, Valentina, three. And the article in La Nuova mentions

  her."

  "I didn't see any sign of her when I spoke to the parents."

  "Did you say anything?"

  "About the girl?"

  "No, I don't mean that, sir. Did you say anything that might have

  given her mother the opportunity to mention her?"

  Brunetti tried to recall his conversation with Signora Moro. "No,

  nothing that I can remember."

  "Then it's possible she wouldn't have mentioned her, isn't it?"

  For almost two decades, Brunetti had shared his home with one, then

  both, of his children, and he could not recall a single instant when

  physical proof of their existence had been absent from their home:

  toys, clothing, shoes, scarves, books, papers, Discmen lay spread about

  widely and chaotically. Words, pleas, threats proved equally futile in

  the no-doubt biological need of the young of the human species to

  litter their nest. A man of meaner spirit might have considered this

  an infestation: Brunetti thought of it as one of nature's ways to

  prepare a parent's patience for the future, when the mess would become

  emotional and moral, not merely physical.

  "But I would have seen some sign of her, I think," he insisted.

  "Maybe they've sent her to stay with relatives," Signorina Elettra

  suggested.

  "Yes, perhaps," Brunetti agreed, though he wasn't convinced. No matter

  how often his kids had gone to stay with their grandparents or other

  relatives, signs of their recent habitation had always lingered behind

  them. Suddenly he had a vision of what it must have been for the Moros

  to attempt to remove evidence of Ernesto's presence from their homes,

  and he thought of the danger that would remain behind: a single, lonely

  sock found at the back of a closet could break a mother's heart anew; a

  Spice Girls disc carelessly shoved into the plastic case meant to hold

  Vivaldi's flute sonatas could shatter any calm. Months, perhaps years,

  would pass before the house would stop being a minefield, every cabinet

  or drawer to be opened with silent dread.

  His reverie was interrupted by Signorina Elettra, who leaned forward to

  place the file on his desk.

  "Thank you," he said. "I have a number of things I'd like you to try

  to check for me." He slid the paper towards her, listing them as he

  did so.

  *34

  "Find out, if you can, where the girl goes to school. If she's living

  here or lived here with either of them, then she's got to be enrolled

  in one of the schools. There are the grandparents: see if you can

  locate them. Moro's cousin, Luisa Moro I don't have an address for her

  might know." He thought of the people in Siena and asked her to call

  the police there and have them find out if the child was living with

  them. She ran her finger down the list as he spoke. "And I'd like you

  to do the same for his wife: friends, relatives, colleagues," he

  concluded.

  She looked at him and said, "You aren't going to let this go, are

  you?"

  He pushed himself back in his chair but didn't get to his feet. "I

  don't like any of it, and I don't like anything I've heard. Nobody's

  told me the truth and nobody's told me why they won't."

  "What does that mean?"

  Brunetti smiled and said it gently. "For the moment, all it means is

  that I'd like you to get me all the information I've asked for."

  "And when I do?" she asked, not for an instant doubting that she would

  find it.

  Then perhaps we'll start proving a negative."

  "Which negative, sir."

  "That Ernesto Moro didn't kill himself."

  Before he left the Questura, he made one more call to Signora Moro's

  number, feeling not unlike an importunate suitor growing ever more

  persistent in the face of a woman's continued lack of response. He

  wondered if he'd overlooked some mutual friend who might put in a good

  word for him and realized how he was returning to the tactics of former

  times, when his attempts to meet women had been animated by entirely

  different hopes.

  Just as he was approaching the underpass leading into Campo San

  Bartolomeo, his mind on this unsettling parallel, he registered a

  sudden darkness in front of him. He looked up, still not fully

  attentive to his surroundings, and saw four San Martino cadets

  wheeling, arms linked, as straight across as if on parade, into the

  calk from the campo. The long dark capes of their winter uniforms

  swirled out on either flank and effectively filled the entire width of

  the calle. Two women, one old and one young, instinctively backed up

  against the plate glass windows of the bank, and a pair of

  map-embracing tourists did the same against the
windows of the bar on

  the

  other side. Leaving the four shipwrecked pedestrians in their wake,

  the unbroken wave of boys swept towards him.

  Brunetti raised his eyes to theirs boys no older than his own son and

  the glances that came back to him were as blank and pitiless as the

  sun. His right foot might have faltered for an instant, but by an act

  of will he shoved it forward and continued towards them, stride

  unbroken, his face implacable, as though he were alone in Calle della

  Bissa, the entire city his.

  The boys drew closer, and he recognized the cadet to the left of centre

  as the one who had tried to interrogate him at the school. The

  atavistic urge of the more powerful male to assert his supremacy

  shifted Brunetti's direction two compass points until he was heading

  straight for the boy. He tightened his stomach muscles and stiffened

  his elbows, preparing for the shock of contact, but at the instant

  before impact, the boy next to the one who had become Brunetti's target

  loosened his grip and moved to the right, creating a narrow space

  through which Brunetti could pass. As his foot entered the space, he

  saw, from the corner of his eye, the left foot of the boy he recognized

  move minimally to the side, surely bent on tripping him. Carefully,

  thrusting forward with his full weight behind him, he took aim at the

  boy's ankle and felt a satisfying jolt as the toe of his shoe found its