Uniform Justice

  Again, that motion of the lips. "And you have the approval of the

  Vice-Questore, of course?"

  "I hardly think a detail as insignificant as where a police officer is

  assigned is of much interest to the Vice-Questore/ Brunetti answered.

  "On the contrary, Commissario, I think the Vice-Questore is deeply

  interested in anything that concerns the police in this city."

  Tired of this, Brunetti asked, What does that mean?"

  "Just what I said, sir. That the Vice-Questore will be interested to

  learn about this." Like a tenor with register problems, Scarpa could

  not control his voice as it wobbled between civility and menace.

  "Meaning you intend to tell him about it?" Brunetti asked.

  "Should the occasion arise," Scarpa answered blandly.

  "Of course," Brunetti answered with equal blandness.

  "Is that all I can do for you, Commissario?"

  "Yes/ Brunetti said and left the office before giving in to the

  temptation to say something else. Brunetti knew almost nothing about

  Lieutenant Scarpa or what motivated him: money was probably a safe

  guess. This thought called to mind a remark Anna Comnena had made

  about Robert Guiscard: "Once a man has seized power, his love of money

  displays exactly the same characteristics as gangrene, for gangrene,

  once established in a body, never rests until it has invaded and

  corrupted the whole of it."

  An old woman lay injured in the hospital in Mestre, and

  he had to concern himself with turf battles with Patta's I

  creature and with the attempt to understand the lieutenant's motives.

  He walked up the stairs, inwardly fuming about

  Scarpa, but by the time he got back to his office he had f accepted the

  fact that his real anger was directed at his own "

  failure to foresee the attack on Moro's mother. It mattered I

  little to Brunetti that this was entirely unrealistic; somehow, j he

  should have realized the danger and done something to * '

  protect her.

  He called the hospital and, adopting the harsh, authoritarian voice he

  had learned to use when dealing with mindless bureaucracies, announced

  his rank and demanded to be connected to the ward where Signora Moro

  was being treated. There was some delay in transferring the call, and

  when the nurse on duty spoke to him, she was helpful and cooperative

  and told him that the doctor had advised that Signora Moro be kept

  until the next day, when she could go home. No, there was no serious

  injury: she was being kept an extra day in consideration of her age

  rather than her condition.

  Braced by this comforting sign of humanity, Brunetti thanked her, ended

  the call, and immediately called the police in Mogliano. The officer

  in charge of the investigation told him that a woman had come into the

  Questura that morning and admitted she had been driving the car that

  struck Signora Moro. Panicking, she had driven away, but after a

  sleepless night in which she had been the victim of both fear and

  remorse, she had come to the police to confess.

  When Brunetti asked the other officer if he believed the woman, he

  received an astonished, "Of course', before the man said he had to get

  back to work and hung up.

  So Moro was right when he insisted that 'they' had had nothing to do

  with the attack on his mother. Even that word, 'attack', Brunetti

  realized, was entirely his own invention.

  Why, then, Moro's rage at Brunetti for having suggested it? More

  importantly, why his state of anguished despair last night, far out of

  proportion for a man who had been told that his mother was not

  seriously injured?

  Awareness that he had done something else to merit Lieutenant Scarpa's

  enmity should have troubled Brunetti, but he could not bring himself to

  care: there were no degrees to implacable antipathy. He regretted only

  that Pucetti might have to bear the brunt of Scarpa's anger, for the

  lieutenant was not a man likely to aim a blow, at least not an open

  one, at people above him. He wondered whether other people behaved

  like this, deaf and blind to the real demands of their professions in

  their heedless pursuit of success and personal power, though Paola had

  long assured him that the various struggles that absorbed the

  Department of English Literature at the university were far more savage

  than anything described in Beowulf or the bloodier Shakespearean

  tragedies. He knew that ambition was accepted as a natural human

  trait, had for decades observed others striving to achieve what they

  determined to be success. Much as he knew these desires were judged to

  be perfectly normal, he remained puzzled by the passion and energy of

  their endeavours. Paola had once observed that he had been born with

  some

  essential piece missing, for he seemed incapable of desiring anything

  other than happiness. Her remark had troubled him until she explained

  that it was one of the reasons she had married him.

  Musing on this, he entered Signorina Elettra's office. When she looked

  up, he said without introduction, "I'd like to learn about the people

  at the Academy."

  "What, precisely, would you like to know?"

  He considered this, then finally said, "I think what I'd really like to

  know is whether any of them is capable of killing that boy and, if so,

  for what reason."

  There could be many reasons," she answered, then added, "If, that is,

  you want to believe that he was murdered."

  "No, I don't want to believe that. But if he was, then I want to know

  why."

  "Are you curious about the boys or the teachers?"

  "Either. Both."

  "I doubt it could have been both."

  "Why?" he asked.

  "Because they'd probably have different motives."

  "Such as?"

  "I haven't explained myself well," she began, shaking her head. "I

  think the teachers would do it for serious reasons, adult reasons."

  "For instance?"

  "Danger to their careers. Or to the school."

  "And the boys?"

  "Because he was a pain in the ass."

  "Seems a pretty trivial reason to kill someone."

  "Viewed from a different perspective, most reasons for killing people

  are pretty trivial."

  He was forced to agree. After a while he asked, "In what way could he

  have been a pain in the ass?"

  "God knows. I don't have any idea what bothers boys that age. Someone

  who is too aggressive, or not aggressive

  enough. Someone who is too smart and makes the others embarrassed. Or

  shows off, or ..."

  Brunetti cut her off. Those still seem like trivial reasons. Even for

  teenagers."

  Not the least offended, she said, That's the best I can come up with

  Nodding at the keyboard, she said, "Let me take a look and see what I

  can find."

  "Where will you look?"

  "Class lists and then members of their families. Faculty lists and

  then the same. Then cross-check them with, well, with other things."

  "Where did you get those lists?"

  Her intake of breath was stylishly long. "It's not that I have them,

  sir
, but that I can get them." She looked at him and waited for his

  comment; outflanked, Brunetti thanked her and asked her to bring him

  whatever information she could find as soon as she had it.

  In his office, he set himself to attempting to recall anything he'd

  heard or read, over the years, about the Academy. When nothing came,

  he turned his reflections to the military at large, recalling that most

  of the faculty were former officers of one branch or other.

  A memory slipped in from somewhere, tantalizing him and refusing to

  come into focus. Like a sharpshooter straining to see at night, he

  addressed his attention, not to the target that wouldn't appear, but to

  whatever stood beside or beyond it. Something about the military,

  about young men in the military.

  The memory materialized: an incident from some years before, when two

  soldiers paratroopers, he thought had been directed to jump from a

  helicopter somewhere in, he thought, former Yugoslavia. Not knowing

  that the helicopter was hovering a hundred metres above the ground,

  they had jumped to their death. Not knowing, and not having been told

  by the other men in the helicopter, who

  had known but were members of a military corps different from their

  own. And with that memory came another one, of a young man found dead

  at the bottom of a parachute jump, perhaps the victim of a nighttime

  hazing prank gone wrong. To the best of his knowledge, neither case

  had ever been resolved, no satisfactory explanation provided for the

  completely unnecessary deaths of these three young men.

  He recalled, as well, a morning at breakfast some years ago when Paola

  looked up from the newspaper which contained an account of the

  country's then-leader offering to send Italian troops to aid an ally in

  some bellicose endeavour. "He's going to send troops," she said. "Is

  that an offer or a threat, do you think?"

  Only one of Brunetti's close friends had opted for a career in the

  military, and they had lost touch over the last few years, so he did

  not want to call him. What he would ask him, anyway, Brunetti had no

  idea. If the Army were really as corrupt and incompetent as everyone

  seemed to believe it was? No, hardly the question he could ask, at

  least not of a serving general.

  That left his friends in the press. He called one in Milano but when

  the machine answered, he chose not to leave either his name or a

  message. The same happened when he called another friend in Rome. The

  third time, when he called Beppe Avisani, in Palermo, the phone was

  answered on the second ring.

  "Avisani."

  "Ciao, Beppe. It's me, Guido."

  "Ah, good to hear your voice," Avisani said, and for a few minutes they

  exchanged the sort of information friends give and get when they

  haven't spoken for some time, their voices perhaps made formal by a

  shared awareness that they usually now spoke to one another only when

  one of them needed information.

  After everything that had to be said about families had been said,

  Avisani asked, "What can I tell you?"

  "I'm looking into the death of the Moro boy," Brunetti answered and

  waited for the reporter to answer.

  "Not suicide, then?" he asked, not bothering with polite pieties.

  That's what I want to know," Brunetti answered.

  Without hesitation, Avisani volunteered. "If it wasn't suicide, then

  the obvious reason is the father, something to do with him."

  "I'd got that far, Beppe," Brunetti said with an entire absence of

  sarcasm.

  "Of course, you would. Sorry."

  "The report came out too long ago," Brunetti said, certain that a man

  who had spent twenty years as a political reporter would follow his

  thinking and also dismiss the report as a possible cause. "Do you know

  what he worked on while he was in Parliament?"

  There was a long pause as Avisani followed the trail of Brunetti's

  question. "You're probably right," he said at last, then, "Can you

  hold on a minute?"

  "Of course. Why?"

  T've got that stuff in a file somewhere."

  "In the computer?" Brunetti asked.

  "Where else?" the reporter asked with a laugh. "In a drawer?"

  Brunetti laughed in return, as though he'd meant the question as a

  joke.

  "Just a minute Avisani said. Brunetti heard a click as the phone was

  set down on a hard surface.

  He looked out of the window as he waited, making no attempt to impose

  order upon the information that tumbled around in his mind. He lost

  track of time, though it was far more than a minute before Avisani was

  back.

  "Guido?" he asked, 'you still there?"

  "Yes."

  "I haven't got much on him. lie was there for three years, well, a bit

  less than that, before he resigned, but he was kept pretty well out of

  sight."

  "Kept?"

  The party he ran for chose him because he was famous at the time and

  they knew they could win with him, but after he was elected and they

  got an idea of what his real ideas were, they kept him as far out of

  sight as they could."

  Brunetti had seen it happen before as honest people were elected into a

  system they hoped to reform, only to find themselves gradually absorbed

  by it, like insects in a Venus' fly-trap. Because Avisani had seen far

  more of it than he, Brunetti drew a pad towards him and said only, "I'd

  like to know what committees he worked on." ,v

  "Are you looking for what I think you are someone he might have

  crossed?"

  "Yes."

  Avisani made a long noise that Brunetti thought was meant to be

  speculative. "Let me give you what I have. There was a pension

  committee for farmers," Avisani began, then dismissed it with a casual,

  "Nothing there. They're all nonentities." And then, The one that

  oversaw sending all that stuff to Albania."

  "Was the Army involved in that?" Brunetti asked.

  "No. I think it was done by private charities. Caritas, organizations

  like that."

  "What else?"

  The Post Office."

  Brunetti snorted.

  "And military procurement," Avisani said with undisguised interest.

  "What does that mean?"

  There was a pause before he answered, "Probably examining the contracts

  with the companies that supply the military."

  "Examining or deciding?" Brunetti asked.

  "Examining, I'd say. It was really only a subcommittee, which means

  they'd have no more power than to make recommendations to the real

  committee. You think that's it?" he asked.

  "I'm not sure there is an "it"," Brunetti answered evasively, only now

  forcing himself to recall that his friend was a member of the press.

  With laboured patience, Avisani asked, "I'm asking as a curious friend,

  Guido, not as a reporter."

  Brunetti laughed in relief. "It's a better guess than the postmen.

  They're not particularly violent."

  "No, that's only in America," Avisani said.

  Agreement's awkwardness fell between them, both of them aware of the

  conflict between their professions and their friendship. Finally


  Avisani said, "You want me to follow up on this?"

  At a loss as to how to phrase it, Brunetti said, "If you can do it

  delicately."

  "I'm still alive because I do things delicately, Guido," he said

  without any attempt at humour, gave a farewell not distinguished by its

  friendliness, and hung up.

  Brunetti called down to Signorina Elettra, and when she answered, said,

  "I'd like you to add one more thing to your .. ." he began, but was at

  a loss for a name for what Signorina Elettra did. To your research,"

  he said.

  "Yes, sir?" she asked.

  "Military procurement."

  "Could you be a bit more precise?"

  "Getting and spending," he began, and a line Paola was forever quoting

  rushed towards him. He ignored it and continued, "For the military. It

  was one of the committees Moro was on."

  "Oh, my," she exclaimed. "However did that happen?"

  Hearing her unfeigned astonishment, Brunetti wondered

  how long it would take him to explain her reaction to a foreigner. Her