A Noble Radiance (17 page)

'Damage?' Brunetti
asked.

'The lungs, from what
I could see. He must have smoked like a Turk, this boy, and been smoking for
years,' Bortot said and paused to light a cigarette. 'And the spleen,' he
started and then paused. 'The damage might have been from natural exposure, but
it doesn't explain why it's so small. But it's hard to tell when he's been in
the ground so long.'

'More than a year?'
Brunetti asked. 'That's what I'd guess, yes. Is it the Lorenzoni boy?' he
asked. 'Yes.'

'Well, the time's
about right, then. If they killed him soon after they took him, it would be a
bit less that two years, and that's about what I would guess.' He crushed out
his cigarette. You have children?' he asked, making the question general.

All three policemen
nodded.

'Well, then,' Bortot
said inconclusively and excused himself, explaining that he had three more
autopsies to perform that afternoon.

Barzan, with
remarkable generosity, offered to have his driver take them back to Venice,
and, tired by the site of death, Brunetti agreed. Neither he nor Vianello had
much to say as they sped south, though Brunetti was struck by how much less
interesting the scenery was, seen from the window of a car. From the ground,
as well, no warning was given about what places were
'Zona Proibita'.

15

The morning papers,
as Brunetti had anticipated, fell upon the Lorenzoni story with vulpine
avidity. Because of their assumption that the reading public was incapable of
recalling even the most important details of a story that had appeared eighteen
months before - in which assumption Brunetti believed them to be correct - each
story began by retelling the story of the original kidnapping. In them, Roberto
was variously described as 'the oldest son', 'the nephew', and 'the only son'
of the Lorenzoni family, and the kidnapping was reported to have taken place in
Mestre, Belluno, and Vittorio Veneto. Not only the readers seemed to have
forgotten the details.

Doubtless due to
their failure to obtain a copy of the autopsy report, the ghoulish delight the
press usually took in cases of exhumation was strangely absent from the
accounts, the writers contenting themselves with the lacklustre 'advanced stage
of decomposition' and 'human remains'. Reading the stories, Brunetti found
himself uncomfortable with his own disappointment at the tepid language,
worried that his palate had become accustomed to richer fare.

On his desk when he
reached his office was a video cassette in a padded brown envelope which
carried his name. He called down to Signorina Elettra. 'Is this the tape from
RAI?' he asked.

'Yes, Dottore. It got
here yesterday afternoon.'

He looked down at the
envelope, but it seemed to be unopened. 'Did you watch it at home?' he asked.

'No. I don't have a
cassette player.'

'Or you would have?'

'Of course.'

'Shall we go down to
the lab and have a look at it?' he suggested.

'I'd like that, sir’
she said and hung up.

She was waiting for
him at the door of the ground-floor laboratory, today dressed in a pair of
jeans that had been ironed to within an inch of their life. The casual note was
reinforced by a pair of what he thought must be cowboy boots with dangerous
toes and slanted heels. A silk crepe blouse re-established a professional tone,
as did the severe chignon into which her hair was pulled today.

‘Is Bocchese here?'
he asked.

'No, he's giving
evidence today’

'Which case?'

'The Brandolini
robbery’

Neither of them
bothered to shake their heads at the fact that this four-year-old robbery,
which had been followed two days later by an arrest, was getting to trial only
now. 'But I asked him yesterday if we could use the lab to watch it, and he
said it was all right’ she explained.

Brunetti opened the
door and held it for her. Signorina Elettra went over to the VCR and switched
it on as though she were entirely at home in the lab. He slipped in the tape.
They waited for a few moments until the screen lit up with the RAI logo and
test pattern, quickly followed by the date and a few lines of what Brunetti
assumed was technical information.

'Do we have to send
this back?' he asked, moving away from the screen and seating himself on one of
the wooden folding chairs that faced it.

She came and sat in
the chair next to him. 'No. Cesare said it's a copy. But he'd prefer that no
one else finds out he sent it.'

Brunetti's reply was
cut off by the voice of the announcer, giving the then-new facts of the
Lorenzoni kidnapping and telling his viewers that RAI was bringing them an
exclusive message from Count Ludovico Lorenzoni, the father of the victim. He
explained, while the screen showed footage of the predictable tourist sites in
Venice, that the Count had made the appeal that afternoon and that it would be
shown exclusively on RAI in hopes that the kidnappers would heed the appeal of
a bereaved parent. Then, with the screen lingering on a low-angle shot of the
facade of San Marco, the announcer handed over to the RAI crew in Venice.

A man in a dark suit
and serious expression stood in the broad hallway of what Brunetti recognized
to be the Lorenzoni palace. Behind him could be seen the double doors to the
study in which Brunetti had spoken to the family. He summarized what the other
man had said, then turned and opened one of the doors to the study. It swung
open to allow the camera to focus on, then draw near, Count Ludovico, who sat
behind a desk Brunetti did not remember being in the room.

At first, the Count
looked down at his hands, but as the camera drew closer, he raised his eyes and
looked directly at it. A few seconds passed, the camera found the right
distance and stopped moving, and the Count began to speak.

'I address my words
to the persons who are responsible for the disappearance of my son, Roberto,
and I ask that they listen to me with attention and charity. I am willing to
pay any sum at all for the return of my son, but the agencies of the state have
prevented that: I no longer have access to any of my assets, and there is no way
I can hope to raise the sum demanded, either here in Italy or abroad. If I
could do this, I swear upon my honour that I would, and I further swear that I
would gladly give that sum, any sum, to assure the safe return of my son’

Here the Count paused
and looked down at his hands. After a moment, he returned his eyes to the
camera.

'I ask these people
to have compassion on me and on my wife, who joins me in my entreaty. I appeal
to their feelings of humanity and I ask them to free my son. If they wish, I
will gladly exchange places with him: they have but to tell me what they want
me to do, and it will be done. They have said that they will contact me through
a friend of mine whom they have not named. All they need to do is contact this
person and leave instructions. Whatever they ask, I will do, and do gladly, if
it will assure me the return of my beloved son’

The Count paused
here, but briefly.

‘I appeal to their
sense of compassion and ask that they have mercy on my wife and on me’

The Count stopped,
but the camera remained on his face until he glanced to the left of the camera
for a second, then back into its lens.

The screen gradually
darkened, to be replaced in a moment by the studio announcer. He reminded the
viewers that this had been a RAI exclusive and added that anyone having
information about Roberto Lorenzoni should call the number listed at the bottom
of the screen. Apparently because this was a file copy and not one that was
shown on the RAI stations, no number appeared.

The screen went dark.

Brunetti got up and
turned down the sound, leaving the television on. He pushed the 'rewind' button
and waited until the tape stopped humming. When he heard it dick to a stop, he
turned to Signorina Elettra. 'What do you think?'

‘I was right about the
make-up,' she said.

'Yes,' Brunetti
agreed. 'Anything else?'

'The language?' she
suggested.

Brunetti nodded.
‘You
mean
that he referred to them as "they" and not as "you"?' he
asked.

'Yes,' she answered.
'That seems strange. But maybe it was too difficult for him to address them
directly, given what they'd done to his son’

‘Possible,' Brunetti
agreed, trying to imagine how a father would react to this, the greatest of
horrors.

He reached out and
hit the 'play
⁷
button again. The tape began once more, but this time
there was no sound.

He glanced at
Signorina Elettra, who raised her eyebrows. ‘I never take the headphones on
planes’ he explained. If s remarkable, what you see in films if there's no
sound to distract you’

She nodded, and
together they watched the tape play through again. This time, they could see
the eyes of the announcer flit across the script that was playing somewhere
just to the left of the camera. The other one, outside the door to the Count's
study, seemed to know his lines by heart, though the seriousness of his face
seemed forced and unnatural.

If Brunetti had
expected the Count's nervousness or anger to come through more clearly this
way, he was mistaken. Viewed in silence, he seemed to be without emotion. When
he looked down at his hands, any viewer would doubt that the Count could ever
find the will to look up again, and when his eyes flashed for that fleeting
moment to the side of the camera, it was a gesture utterly devoid of curiosity
or impatience.

When the screen again
darkened, Signorina Elettra said, ‘Poor man, and he had to sit there while they
put make-up on his face’ She shook her head, eyes closed, as though she'd
walked in on an indecent act.

Again, Brunetti
pressed the 'rewind' button, and again the tape reversed itself and wound to a
stop. He pressed the 'reject button, and the tape sprang out. Brunetti slipped
it into its box and the box into the pocket of his jacket.

'Something horrible
should happen to them’ she said with sudden ferocity.

'Execution?
^’
Brunetti asked, bending forward to turn off both the VCR and the television.

She shook her head.
'No. No matter how horrible these people are, no matter what people do, we
can't allow any government to have that power.'

'Because they can't
be trusted?' Brunetti asked.

'Would you trust this
government?' she asked.

Brunetti shook his
head.

'Can you name a
government that you would trust?' she continued.

'To decide about the
life and death of a citizen?' He shook his head, and asked, 'But then how punish
people who do things like this?'

'I don't know. I want
them to be destroyed, want them to die. I'd be a liar to deny that. But it's
too dangerous a power to be given to
...
to anyone.'

He remembered
something Paola had once said; he no longer recalled the context. Whenever
people want to argue dishonestly, she'd said, they pull out a specific example
so ovewhelming as to render disagreement impossible. But no matter how compelling
specific cases were, she always insisted, law was about principle and about
universals. Individual cases proved themselves and nothing else. Since he had
so often seen the individual horror of the aftermath of crime, Brunetti well
understood the impulse to call for new laws, more punitive laws. As a
policeman, he knew that the rigour of the law was most often exercised on the
weak and the poor, and he further knew that the law's severity was no
impediment to crime. He knew all of this as a policeman, but as a man and as a
father, he still longed to see the people who had snuffed out the life of this
young man brought to justice and brought to suffering.

He walked over and
opened the door to the lab, and they left, returning to their jobs and to the
world where crime was something to be stopped, not the subject of philosophical
speculation.