Suffer the Little Children (18 page)

He leaned forward to pick up the bottle, then decided against it and set it back on the table. ‘I went to Verona with Signorina Elettra,' he said, surprising himself with the revelation. ‘We were a couple desperate to have a child. I wanted to see if the clinic is involved with these adoptions.'

‘Did they believe you? At the clinic?' she asked, though to Brunetti the more important matter was whether the clinic was in fact involved in the false adoptions.

‘I think so,' he said, considering it better not to attempt to explain why this might be so.

Paola shifted her feet on to the floor and sat up. She placed her glass on the table, then turned to Brunetti and picked a long dark hair from the front of his shirt. She let it drop to the carpet and got to her feet. Saying nothing, she went into the kitchen to prepare the rest of dinner.

AS THE DAYS
passed, the Pedrolli case, and to a lesser degree the cases of illegal adoption in other cities, disappeared from the news. Brunetti continued to interest himself in a semi-official way. Vianello managed to find the transcript of the conversation Brunetti had had with the woman who lived near Rialto. When the Inspector went to speak to her, she could remember nothing further, save that the woman who made the phone call had worn glasses. The apartment opposite, where the pregnant woman had spent those days, turned out to be owned by a man in Torino and was rented out by the week or month. When questioned, the managing agent found only an indication that a Signor Giulio D'Alessio, who had not given an address
and had preferred to pay with cash, had rented the apartment during the period when the young woman had been there. No, the agent had no clear memory of Signor Rossi. The trail, if indeed it had been a trail, ended there.

Marvilli did not return either of the calls Brunetti made to his office, and the other contacts he had at the Carabinieri failed to divulge any information other than what had been given to the press: the children were in the care of social services and the investigation was proceeding. He did learn, however, that a fax had been sent by the Carabinieri to the Questura the day before the raid, informing the Venice police of the planned raid and giving Pedrolli's name and address. The absence of reply from the police had been taken by the Carabinieri to signify assent. In response to Brunetti's request, the Carabinieri sent a copy of the fax, along with the receipt for its successful transmission to the appropriate number at the Questura.

Brunetti's reports to the Vice-Questore had included this information, as well as a note of the failure of all attempts to locate the missing fax. In response, Patta suggested that Brunetti return to his other cases and let the Carabinieri get on with Dottor Pedrolli.

Brunetti could not understand the media's apparent lack of interest in the story: he assumed that the veil of official or bureaucratic privacy would have descended to cover the children, their names and their whereabouts, but the parents and the lengths to which they had gone
in order to obtain children would surely still be of interest to readers and viewers alike. In a country where the presence of a child in a criminal case, whether as the victim of murder or the survivor of an attempt – or, even better, as the perpetrator – was sure to keep media coverage of a case percolating for days, perhaps weeks, it was strange that these people had so swiftly disappeared from public view.

Years after her arrest for the murder of her child, an interview with ‘la madre di Cogne' – even simply an article about her – was a sure-fire way to raise viewer or reader numbers. Even a Ukrainian who tossed her newborn into a skip was bound to get headlines for three days. But the local press dropped Pedrolli after two days, though
La Repubblica
kept the story going for another three before it was superseded by the death of a young Carabiniere, shot by a convicted murderer out of prison on a weekend pass. It was the speed with which the Pedrolli story vanished from
Il Gazzettino
and
La Nuova
, however, that aroused Brunetti's curiosity, so on the second morning when there was no mention of the case in the papers, he called his friend Pelusso at his office. The journalist explained that the word at
Il Gazzettino
was that the story had not appealed to someone, and so it had been dropped.

Brunetti, a dedicated reader of that newspaper, knew who the chief advertisers were, and Signorina Elettra had discovered that Signora Marcolini belonged to the plumbing supply
branch of the family. Thus Brunetti observed ‘To say toilet is to say Marcolini.'

‘Indeed,' agreed Pelusso, but then quickly added, as though driven to it by whatever remnant of respect for accuracy had managed to survive his decades of journalistic employment, ‘He's the likely suspect, because of his daughter, but no one here mentioned his name directly.'

‘You think it's necessary to mention it?' Brunetti asked. ‘After all, as you said, she's his daughter, and this sort of publicity can't work to anyone's good.'

‘Don't be so certain about that, Guido,' the journalist answered. ‘The Carabinieri broke in: the husband might still be in the hospital for all anyone knows. And they took the baby. That's got to be enough to earn the two of them a great deal of sympathy, regardless of how they got the baby in the first place.'

This presented an interesting possibility to Brunetti, and he said, ‘The Carabinieri, then.'

‘Why would they squelch a story like this?'

‘Well, first, to dispose of something that presents them in a bad light, but also maybe to lead the people they think are behind all of this to believe it's safe to begin coming out of the woodwork,' Brunetti suggested. When Pelusso said nothing, Brunetti continued, forming his ideas as he continued to speak. ‘If this is some sort of ring, it means whoever's organizing it knows a number of people who want babies and are willing to pay for them, and that means there
have got to be other women who have agreed to give them up after they're born.'

‘Obviously.'

‘But you can't postpone that, can you?' Brunetti asked. ‘If a woman's going to have a baby, then she's going to have it when the baby is ready to come, not when some middle man tells her it's time.'

‘And if there's as much money in this as I've heard there is,' Pelusso continued slowly, adding his own reasoning to Brunetti's, ‘then they'll get back in touch with their buyers.'

Immediately alert, Brunetti asked, ‘Do you hear much about this sort of thing?'

‘I think a lot of it's urban myth,' Pelusso answered. ‘You know, like the Chinese who never die because there's never a funeral. But a lot of people do talk about this business of buying and selling babies.'

‘You ever hear anyone mention a price?' Brunetti asked, hoping that Pelusso would not ask him why the police didn't already have this information.

There followed a longish pause, as though Pelusso were entertaining that same thought, but when he spoke, it was merely to answer Brunetti's question. ‘No, not with any certainty. I've heard rumours, but as I told you, Guido, people talk about it the way they talk about everything: “I heard this from someone who knows.” “My friend knows all about this.” “My neighbour has a cousin who has a friend who . . .” There's no way to know whether we're being told the truth or not.'

Brunetti stopped himself from observing that this uncertainty was a common phenomenon and hardly limited to Pelusso's experience as a member of the press. Brunetti had no way of knowing if Italians were more gullible than other people, or whether they were simply less informed. He had heard rumours of countries where there existed an independent press that provided accurate information and where the television was not all controlled by one man; indeed, his own wife had expressed belief in the existence of these marvels.

Pelusso's voice summoned him back from these meanderings. ‘Is there anything else?' the journalist asked.

‘Yes. If you do hear anything definite about who wanted the stories dropped, I'd appreciate it if you'd give me a call,' Brunetti said.

‘I'll let you know,' Pelusso said and was gone.

Brunetti replaced the phone, his imagination drawn, by some route he could not identify, to poems Paola had read to him, years ago. They had been written by an Elizabethan poet about the deaths of his two children, a boy and a girl. Brunetti remembered her indignation that the poet was far more disturbed by the death of his son than that of his daughter, but Brunetti recalled only the shattered man's wish that he ‘could lose all father now'. How profound would suffering have to be for a man to wish he had never been a father? Two of their friends had seen their children die, and neither had ever come back from that pain. By force of will, he
pressed his attention towards the people who might be able to provide him with information about this business in babies, and he recalled his unsuccessful visit to the Ufficio Anagrafe.

Brunetti decided to phone them and within minutes had the information. If a man and the woman of a newborn child came into their office and signed a declaration that the man was the father of the child, that, in essence, was the end of it. Of course, they were required to present their identity cards and proof of the birth; if they chose, they could even do it at the hospital, where there was a branch of the office.

Brunetti had just whispered the words, ‘A licence to steal', when Vianello came into his office without bothering to knock.

‘They just got a call downstairs,' Vianello said without preamble. ‘Someone broke into the pharmacy in Campo Sant'Angelo.'

‘One of your pharmacists?' Brunetti asked with undisguised interest.

Vianello nodded but before Brunetti could ask another question, said, ‘We're still looking into bank records.'

‘Broke in and did what?' Brunetti asked, wondering if this could be an attempt to destroy evidence or throw dust in the eyes of anyone taking an interest in the pharmacy.

‘Whoever called said she opened the door and didn't even bother to go in when she saw what had happened. She called us immediately.'

‘But she didn't say what happened?' asked Brunetti with ill-disguised exasperation.

‘No. I asked Foa to take us over. He's got the launch waiting.' When Brunetti remained at his desk, Vianello said, ‘I think we should go. Before anyone else gets there.'

‘Interesting coincidence, isn't it?' Brunetti asked.

‘I'm not sure what it is, but I doubt either one of us thinks this is a coincidence,' Vianello answered.

Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost ten. ‘Why was she just getting there now? Shouldn't they have opened an hour ago?'

‘She didn't say, or if she did, Riverre didn't tell me. All he said was that she called and said someone had broken into the place.' In response to the growing impatience in Vianello's voice, Brunetti got to his feet and joined him at the door. ‘All right. Let's go and have a look.'

The quickest way was for Foa to turn into Rio San Maurizio and then take them to Campo Sant'Angelo. They crossed the
campo
and approached the pharmacy. Light filtering in from outside illuminated the posters on display in the two shop windows, though no lights appeared to be on inside. Brunetti's eye was drawn to a pair of sleek, tanned female thighs which presented themselves to the beholder, proof of the ease with which cellulite could be banished in a single week. Next to them a white-haired couple stood side by side on a spun-sugar beach, each gazing longingly into the eyes of the other,
their hands joined; behind them glistened a tropical sea, on the sand below them a box of arthritis medicine.

‘Is this the only entrance?' Brunetti asked, pointing to the intact glass door between the two windows.

‘No, the staff uses a door down the
calle
around that side,' Vianello answered, displaying a dubious familiarity with the workings of the pharmacy. Following his own directions, the Inspector led Brunetti to the left and then into a
calle
that led back towards La Fenice.

As they approached the first door on the right, a woman of about Brunetti's age stepped from the doorway, asking, ‘Are you the police?'

‘
Sì
, Signora,' Brunetti answered, introducing himself and then Vianello. She could have been any of hundreds of Venetian women her age. Her hair was cut short and dyed dark red; her weight was concentrated in her torso, but she had the sense to disguise this with a box-cut jacket over a matching tan T-shirt. Good calves showed under a knee-length brown skirt, and she wore brown pumps with low heels. She carried the remnants of a summer tan and wore little makeup beyond pale lipstick and blue eye shadow.

‘I'm Eleonora Invernizzi. I work for Dottor Franchi.' Then, as if to prevent them from taking her for one of the pharmacists, she added, ‘I'm the saleswoman.' She did not extend her hand and gazed back and forth at the two men.

‘Could you tell us what happened, Signora?'
Brunetti asked. She was standing in front of the closed wooden door that presumably led into the pharmacy, but Brunetti made no move towards it.

She shifted the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder and pointed to the lock. Both of them could see the damage: someone had jimmied open the door, with such force that the wood was splintered and stuck out jaggedly above and below the keyhole, suggesting that a crowbar had slipped a few times before it found sufficient purchase to spring the lock and allow the door to be pushed open.

Signora Invernizzi said, ‘If I've told him once, I've told the dottore a hundred times that this lock is an invitation to thieves. Every time I tell him, he says, yes, he'll change it, get a
porta blindata
, but then he doesn't, and then I tell him again, and still he doesn't do it.' She pointed to the metal grate that covered a small window in the door. ‘I touched it there when I pushed the door open,' she said. ‘Otherwise, I haven't touched anything. I didn't even go inside. I just looked and then called you.'