Suffer the little Children Read online

  'What else could it be?' Franchi asked impatiently.

  'Indeed,' Brunetti agreed. No need, certainly, to raise that question just now.

  The pharmacist raised his hands in a gesture rich with resignation and said, 'Va bene.' He turned to Signora Invernizzi. I think the others should come in; you might as well start here’ He held up his thumb and began to count on his fingers as he said, ‘I’ll call ULSS and report this, and the insurance company, then when we have a list, we can order replacement stock, and then I'll see about getting a new computer by tomorrow morning’ The resignation in his voice could not cover the anger.

  The pharmacist walked to the counter and leaned over to pick up the phone, but the receiver had been ripped away. Franchi pushed himself off from the counter, walked around it, and headed into the corridor. ‘I’ll phone from my office’ he called back over his shoulder.

  'Excuse me, Dottore,' Brunetti said in a loud voice. 'But I'm afraid you can't go into your office’

  I can't what?' Franchi demanded, wheeling to face Brunetti.

  Brunetti joined him in the corridor, and explained, "There's evidence in there, and no one can enter until we check it.'

  'But I need to use the phone’

  Brunetti pulled his telefonino from the pocket of his jacket and handed it to the doctor. 'Here, Dottore; you can use this’

  'But the phone numbers are in there.'

  ‘I’m sorry,' Brunetti said with a smile that suggested that he was as much a victim of rules as was the pharmacist. ‘I’m sure if you dial twelve, they'll give you the numbers. Or you could call my secretary and she'll find them for you.' Before Franchi could protest, Brunetti added, 'And I'm afraid there's no sense in asking your colleagues to come in, Dottore, at least not until the scene of crime team has been here.'

  'There was none of that last time,' Franchi said in a voice pitched between sarcasm and anger.

  'This seems quite a different matter from a simple burglary, Dottore,' Brunetti said calmly.

  Franchi took the telefonino with obvious bad grace but made no attempt to use it. 'What about the other things in there?' he asked, jerking his head back towards his office.

  'I'm afraid the whole area has to be treated as a crime scene, Dottore.'

  Franchi's face reflected even greater anger, but he said only, 'All of my records are in that computer: all of the financial information about my suppliers and all my own billing and the ULSS files. The insurance policy. I can probably get another computer delivered by this afternoon, but I'll need the disc to transfer the records.'

  'I'm afraid that's impossible, Dottore,' Brunetti said, biting back the temptation to use a bit of computer jargon he had often heard and thought he understood: 'backup'. ‘I don't know if you saw, but whoever did this broke the computer open. I doubt you'd be able to retrieve anything from it.'

  'Broke it open?' Franchi asked, as though it were a phrase new to him and he weren't sure what it meant.

  'Prised it open at one end is a more accurate description, wouldn't you say, Vianello?' Brunetti asked the Inspector, who had just come into the room.

  'That metal box thing?' Vianello asked with ox-like stupidity. 'Yes. He broke it trying to get at whatever's in it’ It sounded as if the Inspector considered the computer as little different from a piggy bank. Changing the subject, he said, 'Bocchese's on the way’

  Before Franchi had time to ask, Brunetti explained, 'The scene of crime team. They'll want to take fingerprints.' With a gracious nod to Signora Invernizzi, who had followed their conversation with some interest, Brunetti said, The Signora was careful not to come inside after she opened the door, so if any prints were left, they're still here. The technicians will want to take yours,' he continued, addressing them both, 'so that they can exclude them from what they find. And those of the other people who work here; of course, but that can certainly wait a day.'

  Signora Invernizzi nodded, followed by Franchi.

  'And I'd prefer that you not disturb anything until my men have gone over it,' Brunetti added.

  'How long will that take?' Franchi asked.

  Brunetti looked at his watch and saw that it was almost eleven. 'You could come back at three, Dottore. I'm sure they'll be finished by then.'

  'And can I...' Franchi started to ask but then thought better of it and said, ‘I’d like to go out and have a coffee. I'll come back later and they can take my fingerprints, all right?'

  'Of course, Dottore,' Brunetti agreed.

  He waited to see if the pharmacist would invite Signora Invernizzi to accompany him, but he did not. He handed Brunetti's telefonino back to him, then moved around Vianello and went down the corridor and to the exit, disappearing without a word.

  'I'd like to go home, if I may,' the woman said. 'Ill come back in an hour or so, but I think I'd like to go home and lie down for a while.'

  'Of course, Signora’ Brunetti said. 'Would you like the Inspector to go with you?'

  She smiled for the first time and shed ten years as she did so. That's very kind. But I live just across the bridge. I'll be back before lunch, all right?'

  'Certainly’ Brunetti said and walked her to the door into the calle. He stepped outside with her, wished her goodbye and stood there as she. walked away. Where the calle opened into Campo Sant'Angelo, she turned and gave him a little wave.

  Brunetti returned her wave and went back into the pharmacy.

  17

  '"That metal box thing’' Lorenzo?' Brunetti asked. 'Is that some sort of advanced cyber-speak for "hard drive"?' He thought he did quite well in disguising his pride in being able to use the term so casually.

  'No’ Vianello answered with a grin, It's my attempt to convince Dottor Franchi that he is dealing with a technical illiterate - if not two -and make him believe that neither one of us would think to wonder why he was so interested in holding on to his hard drive.'

  'By keeping it from us, that is?' Brunetti asked.

  'Exactly’ Vianello answered.

  'What do you think's on his computer?'

  Vianello shrugged. 'Something he doesn't want us to see: that's for certain. It could be the fake appointments’ Vianello considered the question a little longer and added, 'Or he's looking at websites or chatting in places where he ought not to be’

  'Is there a way you can find out?' Brunetti asked.

  Did Vianello smile? 'I couldn't’ he said, and before Brunetti could ask, added, 'nor could Signorina Elettra’ He saw Brunetti's surprise and went on. 'It's physical damage to the hard drive, and neither one of us is able to work with that, recovering information when the disc's been damaged. You need a real technician for that.'

  'But you know someone?' Brunetti prompted.

  'She does.' A strange expression flitted across Vianello's face: Brunetti had seen something like it on the faces of men who had killed out of jealousy. 'She won't tell me who he is.' He sighed. ‘I imagine she'll want to pass it on to him.'

  'Then I'll have Bocchese take it back with him’ Brunetti said, his mind busy with speculation about the hard disc and what it might contain. With a certain chagrin, he realized how limited his imagination was. 'If she takes it to this person, do you think he'll be able to find what's on there?' he finally asked Vianello.

  'It depends on how bad the damage is’ the Inspector answered. Then he added, speaking very slowly, 'But Signorina Elettra did say he's very good and that she's learned a great deal from him.'

  'But nothing else about him?'

  'He could be the former governor of Banca d'ltalia, for all I know’ Vianello answered, then smiled and added, lie's got a lot of free time now, hasn't he?'

  Brunetti pretended not to have heard.

  Bocchese and the scene of crime team showed up after about twenty minutes, and Vianello and Brunetti stood around for an hour or so while the door, the counters, and the computers were photographed and dusted for fingerprints. Brunetti explained about the bloodstains and the hard disc and asked Bocchese's men
to take eveiything back to the Questura.

  Signora Invernizzi returned a little after noon and stood on the customer side of the counter while one of the technicians took her fingerprints. Dottor Franchi came in while she was still there and, with far less grace, also had his taken. He asked when they would be finished because he wanted to get his pharmacy ready to open the next day, if possible. Bocchese's assistant told him that they would be gone in an hour, and Franchi said he would go and find a fabbro to change the lock on the side door. Brunetti waited to see if Signora Invernizzi would bring up the subject of una porta blindata, but she did not.

  When both of them were gone, Brunetti went back to the small room, where Bocchese was busy scraping a drop of blood from a point low on the wall. On the floor beside him lay a sealed plastic evidence bag, the book with the other drop of blood already inside it.

  Toil get a look at the whole place?' Brunetti asked when Bocchese glanced up at him. ‘Yes.' 'And?'

  'And somebody doesn't like him’ came Bocchese's reply. Then, after a moment, 'Or doesn't like pharmacists, or computers, or boxes of medicine or, for all I know, cash registers.'

  'Always trying to interpret things, aren't you, Bocchese, and make them fit into some master plan?' Brunetti asked with a laugh. To the technician, a cigar was always a cigar, and a series of events was a series of events and not cause for speculation.

  'What about the blood?' Brunetti asked.

  "There's something that looks like a piece of skin and a bit of leather caught under this flange that got pulled up from the back’ Bocchese said, pointing with the tips of a pair of tweezers to where Brunetti had seen the streak of blood on the casing of the hard drive.

  'And that means?' Before Bocchese could answer, Brunetti said, 'If you tell me it means there's a piece of skin and a piece of leather there, I'll never let you sharpen Paola's kitchen knives again’

  'And tell her I refused, I imagine?' Bocchese asked.

  'Yes’

  'Then I'd say,' the technician began, 'that he had trouble prising at it with the crowbar, or whatever it was, tried to move the tip of it to a more effective place, and tore his glove and cut his hand in the process’ 'Cut it badly?'

  Bocchese took some time to answer this. I'd say no. It was probably only a small cut’ He anticipated Brunetti's thought and said, 'So, no, I wouldn't bother to call the hospital and ask if anyone's come in to have a hand sewn up today.' After a moment, with audible reluctance, Bocchese added, 'And I'd also say that this is a very impatient as well as a very angry person’

  'Thanks,' Brunetti said. 'After you take a sample of the blood on that,' he added, pointing at the hard disc, 'could you see that it goes to Signorina Elettra?'

  As if he found this the most normal thing in the world, Bocchese nodded and returned his attention to the bloodstain.

  At the front of the shop, Brunetti found Vianello talking with one of the photographers. ‘You ready to go?' he asked.

  Brunetti explained to the technician that the owner would be back soon with a locksmith. As he and Vianello walked past the door to the side room, Brunetti called goodbye to Bocchese, who was still on his knees, leaning over to study the electric socket.

  Outside, Vianello asked, 'Want to walk?' and it seemed like the best of ideas to Brunetti.

  The day, which had started foggy and damp and in a very bad mood, had decided to treat itself to some sun. Without discussion, Brunetti and Vianello turned right and crossed the bridge towards Campo San Fantin. They passed the theatre without really seeing it, bom eager to reach Via XXII Marzo and then the Piazza, where the promise of warmth would surely be fulfilled.

  As they approached the Piazza, Brunetti watched the people they passed, at the same time half listening to Vianello's lesson on how information was preserved on the hard disc of a computer and how it was possible to retrieve it, even long after the user thought it had been erased.

  He saw a group of tourists approach and judged them to be Eastern Europeans, even before he gave the decision any conscious thought. He studied them as they walked past him: sallow complexions; blond hair, either natural or assisted in that direction; cheap shoes, one remove from cardboard; plastic jackets that had been dyed and treated in an unsuccessful attempt to make them resemble leather. Brunetti had always felt a regard for these tourists because they looked at things. Probably too poor to buy most of what they saw, they still gazed about them with respect and awe and unbridled delight. With their cheap clothes and their bad haircuts and their packed lunches, who knew what it cost them to come here? Many, he knew, slept for nights on buses in order to spend a single day walking and looking and not shopping. They were so unlike the jaded Americans, who had of course seen bigger and better, or the world-weary Western Europeans, who also believed they had but were too sophisticated to say so.

  As they entered the Piazza, the Inspector, who appeared not to have registered the tourists, said, 'The whole world's gone mad with fear of avian flu, and we have more pigeons than people.'

  ‘I beg your pardon,' Brunetti said, his attention still on the tourists.

  ‘I read it in the paper two days ago,' Vianello said. 'There's about sixty thousand of us, and the current population of pigeons - well, the one given in the paper, which is not the same thing - is more than a hundred thousand.'

  'That can't be possible’ Brunetti said, suddenly disgusted by the thought. Then, more soberly, 'Who'd count them, anyway, and how'd they do it?'

  Vianello shrugged. 'Who knows how any official number is detennined?' Suddenly his mood brightened, either at the growing warmth of the Piazza or the absurdity of the subject, and he asked, 'You think there are people working for the Comune who are paid to go around and count pigeons?'

  Brunetti considered this for a moment and answered, 'It's not as if pigeons stay in the same place all day long, is it? So some of them might have been counted twice.'

  'Or not at all,' Vianello suggested and then added, suddenly venomous, 'God, I hate them.'

  'Me, too,' Brunetti agreed. 'I think most people do. Loathsome things’

  'But just touch one of them’ Vianello went on, heated now, 'and you've got the animalisti screaming about cruelty to animals and our responsibility to all God's little creatures.' He threw up his hands in disgust or confusion. Brunetti was about to mention his surprise that such talk could come from the Questura's own paragon of all things environmental, when his eye shifted to the facade of the Basilica and those absurdly asymmetrical cupolas, the whole lopsided glory of it.

  Brunetti stopped walking and put his hand up to quiet Vianello. In an entirely different voice, almost solemn, he asked, 'We're lucky, aren't we?'

  Vianello glanced aside at Brunetti and then followed his gaze to San Marco and the flags whipping in the breeze, the mosaics above the doors. The Inspector stood there for some time, looking at the church, then glanced to the right, across the water and towards San Giorgio with its ever-vigilant angel. In an entirely uncharacteristic gesture, Vianello raised his free arm and moved it in an arc that encompassed the buildings around them as well as those across the water, then he turned to Brunetti and patted his arm, quickly, twice. For a moment, Brunetti thought the Inspector was going to speak, but he remained silent and moved away towards the Riva degli Schiavoni and the sun-splashed walk down to the Questura.

  They decided to stop and have lunch on the way but would not do so until they had put at least two bridges between themselves and San Marco. Vianello knew a small trattoria on Via Garibaldi, where they had penne with a sauce of peppers, grilled melanzane, and pecorino affumicato, followed by a baked roll of turkey breast filled with herbs and pancetta.

  During the meal, Vianello attempted to explain the basic operating principles of the computer but was forced to abandon the attempt halfway through the pasta. He was reduced to saying, 'She'll have this guy look at it, and then weTl see what's possible.'

  Neither wanted dessert, even though the owner swore that the pears in the
cake came from his own trees on Burano. Brunetti signalled for coffee, his mind still on the tangible reality of the pharmacy. 'No normal person did that,' he said with no prelude.

  'Vandals aren't normal people,' answered Vianello. 'Neither are drug addicts.'

  'Come on, Lorenzo, think about what we saw there. It's not a couple of kids on a railway bridge with a can of spray paint.' The coffee came and Brunetti spent a great deal of time stirring sugar into it, recalling the scene inside the pharmacy.

  Vianello finished his own coffee and set down the cup. 'All right,' he said, ‘I agree. But why would someone want to do a thing like that? If anything, the doctors he's involved with would do anything to keep us from paying attention to him, or to them.'

  'Are we agreed’ Brunetti asked, 'that it's not a coincidence, that he's not just any pharmacist or any store chosen at random?'

  Vianello let out a puff of air to show how unlikely he considered this.

  'Then why?' Brunetti asked.

  'Let’s hope Elettra's friend can tell us that’ Vianello said and raised his hand to call for the bill.

  18

  Autumn advanced. The days grew shorter, and after the clocks went back, they grew shorter still. As happened every year, Paola grew snappish during the first days when darkness arrived sooner, causing her husband and children to keep their heads down until her usual spirits returned, when family life would revert to normal.

  Brunetti had transferred his professional attention to his ongoing cases, and the eye he kept on the Pedrolli case grew increasingly inattentive. Though he twice called the social services, he was unable to discover the whereabouts of the child. The reports he wrote grew shorter and then ceased entirely for lack of information, but still he could not banish

  Dottor Pedrolli from his mind. Weary of the need to seek information indirectly and always having to find arcane ways to induce people to divulge what they knew, Brunetti checked his notebook for the number of Marvilli's office and dialled it. 'Marvilli’