Suffer the Little Children (26 page)

On the table in front of the sofa lay a series of purple and yellow pamphlets and booklets, their covers all bearing the distinctive griffin, flying protectively over the Italian flag. Brunetti
looked up from them and smiled at the young man.

Before either could speak, a voice called out something from behind a door at one end of the room, prompting the young man to hurry towards it, saying over his shoulder, ‘He'll see you now.'

Brunetti followed him. The young man stepped inside and snapped his heels together in the balletic equivalent, Brunetti thought, of the clenched-fist salute. ‘Signor Brunetti to see you, Commendatore,' he said, and actually bowed to usher Brunetti in.

As soon as Brunetti passed in front of him, the young man stepped back into the other room, pulling the door shut behind him. Brunetti heard his footsteps click away into the distance. He glanced across the room at the figure just getting to his feet . . . And recognized the man who had been in the hospital with Patta.

Brunetti hid his surprise by raising his hand to cover his mouth as he cleared his throat. He turned his face away and coughed once, twice, then continued towards the desk, allowing himself an embarrassed smile.

In another culture, Giuliano Marcolini might have been described as fat: Italians, however, graced with a language from which euphemism springs with endless sympathy, would describe him as ‘
robusto
.' He was shorter than Brunetti, but his barrel-like chest and the stomach visible below it made him look shorter still. He wore a suit similar to the one he had been wearing
when Brunetti had first seen him, but even the vertical grey stripes of this one could not disguise his girth. The extra flesh on his face ironed out all wrinkles and made him look not significantly older than Brunetti.

His eyes were deeply recessed, the clear eyes of a Northerner, though he was tanned dark as an Arab. His ears were particularly large and seemed even more so because of the shortness of his hair. His nose was long and thick, his hands those of a labourer.

‘Ah, Commissario,' he said, getting to his feet. He came across the room, moving gracefully for so thick a man. Brunetti took his hand with a smile that he did not allow to falter as Marcolini tried to crush all of the bones in his hand. Brunetti returned the pressure, increased it, and Marcolini let go, smiling appreciatively at whatever had just taken place.

He waved Brunetti to a chair identical to those in the other room, grabbed another one and pulled it round to face Brunetti. ‘What can I do for you, Commissario?' Marcolini asked. Behind him was a wooden desk, the surface covered with files, papers, a telephone, and a number of photographs in silver frames, their backs to Brunetti.

‘Find a doctor to look at my hand,' Brunetti said with a chuckle he made sound very hearty while he waved his hand in the air between them.

Marcolini laughed out loud. ‘I like to get the sense of a man when I meet him,' he said. ‘That's one way to do it.'

Brunetti kept to himself the suggestion that smiling politely and introducing himself might perhaps serve as well and would certainly be less painful. ‘And?' Brunetti asked. ‘What do you think?' He spoke dialect and put a rough edge on his voice.

‘I think maybe we can talk to one another.'

Brunetti leaned towards him, started to speak, and then consciously stopped, as if he had thought better of it.

‘What?' Marcolini asked.

Brunetti said, ‘My job seldom lets me speak like a real man. Openly, that is. We're in the habit of being careful about what we say. Have to be. Part of the job.'

‘Careful what you say about what?' Marcolini asked.

‘Oh, you know. I wouldn't want to express an opinion that would offend anyone or that would sound aggressive or offensive in any way.' Brunetti spoke in a sort of patter, as though these were things he had been forced by rote, and against his will, to learn to say.

‘To be politically correct?' Marcolini asked, pronouncing the foreign words with a thick accent.

Brunetti made no effort to disguise the scorn in his laughter. ‘Yes, to be politically correct,' he answered, pronouncing the words with an accent just as strong as Marcolini's.

‘Who do you have to be careful about?' Marcolini asked as though he were genuinely interested.

‘Oh, you know. Colleagues, the press, the people we arrest.'

‘You have to treat them all the same way, even the people you arrest?' Marcolini asked with manufactured surprise.

Brunetti answered with a smile he tried to make as sly as possible. ‘Of course. Everyone's equal, Signor Marcolini.'

‘Even
extracomunitaria
?' Marcolini asked with ham-fisted sarcasm.

Brunetti confined himself to a puffing noise rich with disgust. He was a man who could not yet trust himself with words, but who wanted this fellow spirit to know how he felt about foreigners.

‘My father called them niggers,' Marcolini volunteered. ‘He fought in Ethiopia.'

‘Mine was there, too,' Brunetti, whose father had fought in Russia, lied.

‘It started so well. My father told me they lived like princes. But then it all fell apart.' Marcolini could not have sounded more cheated if all those things had been taken away from him, as well.

‘And now they're all here,' Brunetti said with fierce disgust, oh, so slowly lowering the cards from in front of his chest. He threw up his hands in a gesture redolent of helpless outrage.

‘You're not a member, are you?' Marcolini asked, apparently not thinking it necessary to be more specific.

‘Of the Lega?' Brunetti asked. ‘No.' He allowed a short pause and then added, though it was by now clearly no more necessary than
Marcolini's identifying of the Lega, ‘Not a formal member, at any rate.'

‘What does that mean?' Marcolini surprised him by asking.

‘That I think it's wisest to keep my political ideas to myself,' Brunetti said, a man refreshed at finally being able to speak the truth. But then, to avoid any possible confusion, he added, ‘At least it's best to do so while I'm at work or working.'

‘I see, I see,' Marcolini said. ‘But what brings you here, Commissario? Conte Falier called and asked if I'd meet you. You're his son-in-law, aren't you?'

‘Yes,' Brunetti agreed in a neutral voice. ‘As a matter of fact, it's about
your
son-in-law that I'd like to speak to you.'

‘What about him?' Marcolini asked instantly, with some curiosity but little enthusiasm.

‘My department got drawn into his trouble with the Carabinieri,' Brunetti said, his voice suggesting displeasure at the memory.

‘How?'

‘The night of the raid, I was called to the hospital to see him.'

‘I thought that was the Carabinieri,' Marcolini said.

‘Yes, it was, but our office never processed the notice from the Carabinieri, so when it happened, we were called.' Affecting the voice of an irritated bureaucrat, Brunetti added, ‘It wasn't our case, but I was told a citizen had been attacked.'

‘So you went?'

‘Of course. When they call you, you have to go,' Brunetti said, pleased with how much he sounded like the little drummer boy.

‘Right. But you still haven't told me why you're here.'

‘I'd like, first, to be completely frank with you, Signore,' Brunetti said.

Marcolini's nod was surprisingly gracious.

‘My superior doesn't like it that we've been mixed up in Carabinieri business, so he's asked me to look into it.' Brunetti paused, as if to check that Marcolini was following him, and at the older man's nod, he went on. ‘We've been given different stories about the child. One version says it's Pedrolli's child by some
extracomunitaria
woman he met in the South,' he said, managing to put as much contempt as he dared into the words, ‘
extracomunitaria
' and ‘South'. He saw this register with Marcolini and went on, ‘Then there's the other story that says it was this woman's child by her husband.' He paused to let Marcolini speak.

‘Why do you want to know about this, Commissario?'

‘As I told you, Signore, if it's not Pedrolli's child, then we think we should leave it to the Carabinieri.' He smiled, then went on. ‘But if the child is his, then some intervention from my superiors, as well as from you, might make enough difference to help.'

‘Intervention?' Marcolini asked. ‘Help? I don't know what you're talking about.'

Brunetti put on an expression of limpid good will. ‘With the social services, Signore. The child will probably end up in an orphanage.' This was fact, leaving Brunetti to continue with the fiction. ‘It might be possible, in the end – and for the child's good – for him to be returned to his parents.'

‘His parents,' Marcolini exploded, his voice stripped of all affability, ‘. . . are a pair of Albanians who sneaked into this country illegally.' He paused for effect and then repeated, ‘Albanians, for the love of God.'

Rather than respond to this, Brunetti changed his expression to one of the most intense interest, and Marcolini went on, ‘The mother is probably some sort of whore; whatever she is, she was willing enough to sell the baby for ten thousand Euros. So if he's put in an orphanage and kept away from her, it's all the better for him.'

‘I didn't know that, Signore,' Brunetti said, sounding disapproving.

‘I'm sure there's a lot about this you don't know and that the Carabinieri don't know,' Marcolini said with mounting anger. ‘That his story about his affair in Cosenza is a lie. He went down there for some sort of medical conference, and while he was there, he made a deal to buy the baby.' Brunetti managed to express surprise at hearing this, as if he were hearing about it for the first time.

Marcolini got to his feet and walked behind his desk. ‘I could understand if it really
happened the way he said in the beginning. A man has needs, and he was away for a week, so I'd understand if he'd knocked her up. And then at least it would be his son. But Gustavo's never been the type who knows how to have a good time, and all this was was some little Albanian bastard his mother brought to market, and my son-in-law was stupid enough to buy it and bring it home.'

Marcolini picked up one of the photos on his desk and brought it back with him. Standing over Brunetti, he pressed the frame into his hand. ‘Look, look at him, the little Albanian.'

Brunetti looked at the photo and saw Pedrolli, his wife and, between them, a tow-headed infant with a round face and dark eyes.

Marcolini paced away, turned at the wall, and came back to Brunetti. ‘You should have seen him, the little cuckoo, with his square Albanian head, flat at the back the way they all are. You think I want my daughter to be his mother? You think I'm going to let something like that inherit everything I've worked for all my life?' He took the photo back and tossed it face down on to his desk. Brunetti heard the glass shatter, but Marcolini must not have heard it or must not have cared, for he snatched up another one and thrust it at Brunetti.

‘Look, there's Bianca when she was two. That's what a baby is supposed to look like.' Brunetti gazed at the photo of a tow-headed infant with a round face and dark eyes. He said nothing but was careful to nod in appreciation
of whatever it was he was meant to detect in the photo. ‘Well?' demanded Marcolini. ‘Isn't she? Isn't she what a baby's supposed to look like?'

Brunetti handed it back, saying, ‘She's very beautiful, Signore. Then and now.'

‘And married to a fool,' Marcolini said and let himself down heavily into his chair.

‘But aren't you worried for her, Signore?' Brunetti asked in a voice he struggled to fill with concern.

‘Worried about what?'

‘That she'll miss the baby?'

‘Miss it?' Marcolini asked, and then he put his head back and laughed. ‘Who do you think made me make the phone call?'

BRUNETTI COULD NEITHER
hide nor disguise his astonishment. His mouth hung open for a second before he thought to close it. ‘I see,' he said, but in an unsteady voice.

‘Surprised you, didn't I?' Marcolini said with a deep laugh. ‘Well, she surprised me, too, I have to confess. I thought she'd taken to the child: that's what kept me quiet for so long, though the older he got, the more I saw him turning into a little Albanian. He didn't look like one of us,' he said, his voice earnest. ‘And I don't mean me and Bianca or my wife: he just didn't look like an Italian.'

Marcolini looked to see if he had Brunetti's attention, and though he certainly had that, Brunetti did his best to make it look as if he had
his approval, as well. ‘But I wasn't sure because, well, she seemed to take to him, and I didn't want to do anything or say anything that would hurt her feelings or make things difficult between us.'

‘Of course,' Brunetti said with a friendly smile, one father to another. Then he prodded, ‘But?'

‘But then one day she was at home – my home, our home, that is. The day there was that story in the paper about that Romanian woman who sold her baby. Down in the South,' Marcolini added with particular contempt. ‘That's where everything happens. They don't know the meaning of honour.'

Brunetti nodded, as though he had never heard a greater truth spoken.

‘I said something. I was angry, and as soon as I said it, I was afraid I might have said too much. At any rate, that's when she told me that they had done the same thing, well, that she thought that's what Gustavo had done. Anyway, the baby wasn't his.' Marcolini broke off, as if to see that Brunetti was still following his story. Brunetti made no attempt to disguise his mounting interest.

‘Until that time, I swear I still thought the baby was Gustavo's, and that he looked the way he did because of the mother: that her influence was stronger than his. Like with Blacks: you just need a little bit, and the genes take over.' From the way Marcolini spoke, he might as well have been Mendel, explaining the rules that governed his peas.