Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(76)

There had been no noise from any other part of the apartment, but that did not exclude the possibility of Paola’s presence, especially if she had given her soul over to reading. He sometimes told her that Attila could storm through the house and she’d not notice if she were reading. She had most recently disputed this by claiming that it would depend on the book.

Her door was open, so he went in. And found her on the sofa, with Henry James. She looked up at him and smiled. ‘What a beautiful shirt that is,’ she said.

‘My wife gave it to me.’

‘Did she?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good taste, I’d say.’

‘Especially in men,’ he answered, then said, ‘Let me get something to drink. I want to talk to you.’

As he passed through the door, heading for the kitchen, he heard her call from behind, ‘Bring two glasses, then.’

During the time it took him to tell Paola the story of Marcello Vio, his uncle, the two Americans in the boat, the women tossed into the sea, and Duso’s reluctant agreement to help the police, Brunetti got up three times. Once he went into the bedroom and came back wearing a thick sweater over his woollen shirt; twice he got up to turn on lights in the room. When he finished, their wine was barely touched and Paola was visibly shaken by what he’d told her.

‘How can you do this, Guido?’ she asked, her face stricken. ‘Day after day, learning about what people will do to one another.’

‘What else can I do to earn a living?’ he asked before he realized how perilous was the ice onto which this subject might lead them. If he was without work, his wife would support the family or, more unthinkable, his wife’s family would. He realized how primitive this feeling was but, as a friend of his father had often said, he had only one head, so he had only one way to think about things. ‘There’s little I’m qualified for,’ he said, dragging them both away from a consideration of economic realities.

‘Law?’ she asked, although she surely knew the answer.

‘I’d have to pass the exams again, and that would be a nightmare.’ Curious now, he wondered out loud, ‘What else could I do?’

She smiled and suggested, ‘Convert and become an Anglican, and then become a priest.’ When he snorted at this, she said, ‘People confide in you, Guido. They trust you.’

He shook the idea away with both his head and his hands.

‘Then what?’ she asked.

It took him some time to think of an answer, and the best, and truest, he could find was, ‘I’d like to live in the country and work the land.’

His wife of many years, the true reader of his heart, looked at him in open-mouthed surprise and was, for one of the few times in their marriage, incapable of speech.





27


Things changed little regarding the case. Lucy Watson remained in the Ospedale dell’Angelo, her condition unchanged. JoJo Peterson, the Questura was informed by email, had moved forward the date on her ticket and had already returned to the United States. She would, of course, supply any information they required from her.

Marcello Vio was finally charged with leaving the scene of an accident, although the full legalities regarding the incident in the laguna were still unclear. His legal representative explained to the authorities that the city was responsible for maintaining the safety of its waterways, that his client had been in so serious a state of shock as a result of the accident that he could think of nothing but getting the girls and himself to a place of greater safety. He took them to the hospital out of his sense of responsibility for their well-being but was himself so traumatized by the accident and by his own unexamined injuries that he had perhaps acted rashly. But still his first thought had been their safety, and he had taken it upon himself to take them to the hospital, not called to report the accident and wait for help to arrive. The fact that he later returned to the hospital, specifically to the Pronto Soccorso, where he had last seen the girls, was presented as evidence of his concern for them and his desire to learn that they had received treatment.

As Brunetti read the lawyer’s explanation, he paused to consider the skill with which both the presence of Filiberto Duso and Marcello Vio’s abandonment of the girls had been swept under the carpet. His trip to the Emergency Room – which the document failed to mention had happened at the instigation of the Questura – was presented as proof of his sincere concern with their well-being.

Brunetti read the lawyer’s explanation with growing interest in the way it flirted with the truth while avoiding it, but when he looked at the last page, he recognized the name of the lawyer. ‘Oh, you old devil,’ he said and laughed, as one would at the appointment of the former CEO of Exxon to the board of the WWF.

Well, Marcello Vio was in good hands if Manlio De Persio was handling his case. There were few tricks he did not know, few policemen who had not had a case evaporate when De Persio argued for the accused, and when his client lost, no lawyer in the Veneto was better at dragging the case through appeal after appeal to ever-higher courts until, quite often, it outlasted the statute of limitations and the case was dropped. It was rumoured that De Persio’s friends referred to him as ‘The Pharmacist,’ for the number of ‘Prescrizioni’ he had won for his clients. Judicial time ran out, and the cases were dismissed.

De Persio was held in grudging admiration – a mixture of respect and envy – by his colleagues, although none succeeded in genuinely liking him.