Suffer the Little Children (9 page)

A man in a white lab coat came into view at the end of the corridor, but his attention was on a sheet of paper in his hand: he ignored, or didn't see, Brunetti and the woman. He disappeared into one of the rooms without knocking.

Time passed, until finally Signora Marcolini pushed herself up and stood, but did not open her eyes. Brunetti released her arm.

‘Thank you,' she said, still breathing heavily. Eyes still closed, she said, ‘It was terrible. The noise woke me up. Men shouting, and when I looked, I saw a man hit Gustavo with something, and then he was on the ground, and then Alfredo started to scream, and I thought they were there to hurt us.'

She opened her eyes and looked at Brunetti. ‘I think we must have been a little crazy. From the fear.'

‘Fear of what, Signora?' Brunetti asked softly, hoping his question would not propel her into rage again.

‘That they'd arrest us,' she said.

‘Because of the baby?'

She lowered her head, but he heard her answer, ‘Yes.'

‘
WOULD YOU LIKE
to tell me about it, Signora?' Brunetti asked. He glanced along the corridor and saw the man in the white lab coat leave the room on the left and head back towards the double glass doors at the end of the corridor. The man went through the doors, turned, and disappeared.

Experience told Brunetti to remain as still as he could until his presence became an almost imperceptible part of the woman's surroundings. A minute passed, and then another. Intensely aware of the woman beside him, he continued to gaze off down the corridor.

Finally she said, in a softer voice, ‘We couldn't have children. And we couldn't adopt.' Another pause, and then she added, ‘Or, if we
could have, by the time our papers were processed and we were approved, the only children we could have would be . . . well, would be older. But we wanted,' she said, and Brunetti prepared himself to hear what she would say, ‘. . . a baby.' She spoke calmly, as though entirely unconscious of the pathos of what she had said, and Brunetti found an even greater pathos in that.

He still did not look at her; he permitted himself to nod in acknowledgement, but still he said nothing.

‘My sister isn't married, but Gustavo's sister has three children,' she said. ‘And his brother has two.' She glanced at him as if to register his response to this evidence of their failure, and went on. ‘Then someone here at the hospital – I think it was one of his colleagues, or one of his patients – well, someone told Gustavo about a private clinic.' He waited for her to continue, and she added. ‘We went and we had tests, and there were . . . there were problems.' The fact that Brunetti knew about the nature of the visit embarrassed him as much as if he had been caught reading someone else's mail.

Idly, she rubbed the toe of her shoe against a long scratch in the floor tiles that had been left by a cart or some heavy object. Still looking down, she added, ‘We both had problems. If it had been just one of us, it might have been possible. But with both of us . . .' Brunetti let the pause stretch out until she added, ‘He saw the
results. He didn't want to tell me, but I made him.'

Brunetti's profession had made him a master of pauses: he could distinguish them the way a concert-master could distinguish the tones of the various strings. There was the absolute, almost belligerent pause, after which nothing would come unless in response to questions or threats. There was the attentive pause, after which the speaker measured the effect on the listener of what had just been said. And there was the exhausted pause, after which the speaker needed to be left undisturbed until emotional control returned.

Judging that he was listening to the third, Brunetti remained silent, certain that she would eventually continue. A sound came down the corridor: a moan or the cry of a sleeping person. When it stopped, the silence seemed to expand to fill its place.

Brunetti glanced at her then and nodded, a gesture that could be read as agreement or as encouragement to continue. She apparently took it as both and went on, ‘After we had the results, we had no choice but to resign ourselves. To not having a baby. But then Gustavo – it must have been a few months after we went to the clinic – he said that he was examining the possibility of private adoption.'

It sounded to Brunetti as if she were repeating a statement she had prepared in advance. ‘I see,' he said neutrally. ‘What sort of possibility?'

She shook her head and said, her voice barely above a whisper, ‘He didn't say.'

Though Brunetti doubted this, he gave no indication and merely asked, ‘Did he mention the clinic?'

She gave him a puzzled glance, and Brunetti explained, ‘The clinic where you had the tests.'

She shook her head. ‘No, he never mentioned the clinic, only that there was a possibility that we could have a baby.'

‘Signora,' Brunetti said, ‘I can't force you to tell me these things.' In a certain sense this was true, but sooner or later someone
would
have the authority to force her to do so.

She must have realized this, for she continued, ‘He didn't say from where, said he didn't want me to get my hopes up, but that it was something he thought he could arrange. I assumed it was because of his work or because of people he knew.' She looked through the window, then at Brunetti. ‘If I have to tell the truth, I suppose I didn't want to know. He said that everything would be
in regola
and that it would be legal. He said he had to claim that the child was his, but it wouldn't be: he told me that.'

Had he been questioning a suspect, Brunetti would have asked, voice pumped full of scepticism, ‘And you
believed
him?' Instead, in the voice of concerned friendship, he asked, ‘But he didn't tell you how this would happen, Signora?' He allowed three beats to pass and added, ‘Or did you think to ask him?'

She shook the question away. ‘No. I think I didn't want to know. I just wanted it to happen. I wanted a baby.'

Brunetti gave her a moment to recover from what she had said, then asked, ‘Did he tell you anything about the woman?'

‘Woman?' she asked, genuinely confused.

‘Whose baby it was.'

She hesitated but then tightened her lips. ‘No. Nothing.' Brunetti had the strange sensation that she had aged during this conversation, that the lines formerly confined to her neck had migrated up to the sides of her mouth and eyes.

‘I see,' Brunetti said. ‘And you never learned any more?' Surely, thought Brunetti, the man must have told her something; she must have wanted to know.

He saw that her eyes in fact were light grey and not green. ‘No,' she said, lowering her head. ‘I never discussed it with Gustavo: I didn't want to. He thought – Gustavo, that is – well, I suppose he thought it would upset me to know. He told me he wanted me to think from the very beginning that the baby was ours, and . . .' She stopped herself, and Brunetti had the feeling that she had forced herself not to add some vital final phrase.

‘Of course,' Brunetti muttered when he realized she was not going to end the sentence. He had no idea how much more he could induce her to tell him, and he did not want to continue to question her if, by displaying curiosity rather
than concern, he weakened the confidence she appeared to have developed in him.

Sandra opened the door to the room down the corridor and gestured to Signora Marcolini.

‘Your husband's very agitated, Signora. Perhaps you could come and speak to him.' Her concern was evident, and Pedrolli's wife responded to it instantly by joining her at the door, then closing it after them.

Assuming that she would be some time in the room with her husband, Brunetti decided to try to find Dottor Damasco and ask if there had been any change in Pedrolli's condition. He knew the way to
neurologia
, and when he got there he started down the corridor toward where he knew the doctors had their offices.

He found the door, but when he knocked, a male nurse who was passing told him that the doctor was just finishing his rounds and usually came back to his office after that. When he added that this should be within the next ten minutes or so, Brunetti said he would wait. When the nurse was gone, he sat in one of the now-familiar, and familiarly uncomfortable, orange chairs. Without anything to read, Brunetti leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, the better to consider what he might ask Dottor Damasco.

‘Signore? Signore?' was the next thing he heard. He opened his eyes and saw the male nurse. ‘Are you all right, Signore?' the young man asked.

‘Yes, yes,' Brunetti said, pushing himself to
his feet. It all came back, and he asked, ‘Is the doctor free now?'

The nurse gave a nervous smile. ‘I'm sorry, Signore, but he's gone. He went home as soon as he finished his rounds. I didn't know he'd gone, and when someone mentioned it, I came down here to tell you. I'm sorry,' he repeated, sounding as if he were responsible for Dottor Damasco's disappearance.

Brunetti looked at his watch and saw that more than half an hour had passed. ‘It's all right,' he said, suddenly aware of just how tired he was. He wished that, like Dottor Damasco, he could just finish his rounds and go home.

Instead, making a pretence of being fully awake, he thanked the young man and started back towards the reception desk. Passing the nurses' station, he approached the glass doors that led to the ward. He was stunned to see, halfway down the corridor, a few paces from the closed door of Pedrolli's room, the unmistakable back of his superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta. Brunetti recognized the broad shoulders in the cashmere overcoat and the thick head of silver hair. What he did not recognize was the attentive, posture of the Vice-Questore, who was leaning towards a man, all of whom save an outline was blocked from view by Patta's body. Patta raised his right hand and patted at the air between them in a conciliatory manner, then lowered it to his side and moved back a step as if to allow more room for the man's response.

Beta dog deferring to alpha dog, was Brunetti's instant thought, and he retreated until he was partly hidden behind the chest-high counter of the nurses' station. Should Patta start to turn towards him, he would have time to back away and out of sight while he decided if he wanted his superior to discover him; he could take a few steps down the corridor, turn, then give vent to the very real surprise he felt at seeing his superior here at this hour.

The other man, most of his considerable bulk still obscured by Patta's body, raised both hands in what could be exasperation or surprise, then jabbed an angry finger repeatedly towards the closed door of Pedrolli's room. In response, Patta's head shook from side to side, then nodded up and down, much in the manner of a toy dog in the back of a car that had just hit a rough patch.

Suddenly the other man wheeled away from Patta and started down the corridor away from him. All Brunetti saw before he ducked behind the counter was the man's back: neck almost as thick as his head, short buzz-cut white hair, a body almost as wide as it was tall. When Brunetti looked again, he saw that Patta had made no motion to follow the man. As Brunetti watched, the man reached the doors at the end of the corridor and shoved them open, slamming the right one back against the wall with a crack that reverberated down the corridor.

Brunetti's impulse was to approach Patta and feign surprise, but good sense propelled him
backwards, down a corridor, then through another set of doors. He waited there a full five minutes, and when he returned to
neurologia
, there was no sign of Patta.

BRUNETTI WENT BACK
to the corridor outside Pedrolli's room, waiting for Signora Marcolini to emerge so that he could slip back into his role of sympathetic listener. He reached into his jacket pocket for his
telefonino
but discovered that he had left it at home. He did not want to miss Signora Marcolini when she emerged, but he did want to call Paola and tell her he would not be home for lunch and had no idea when he would be.

He sat in the plastic chair and stared into space, careful to keep his head forward and away from the temptation of the wall behind him. After less than a minute, he went to the end of the corridor and read the list of instructions for evacuation in case of fire, then the list
of doctors working on the ward. Gina came through the door on the other side of the desk.

‘Signora Gina, excuse me, but could I use the phone?'

She gave him a very small smile and said, ‘Dial nine first.' He picked up the phone behind the nurses' desk and dialled his home number.

‘Sì?'
he heard Paola answer.

‘Still too tired to talk?' he couldn't resist asking.

‘Of course not,' she answered. Then, ‘Where are you?'

‘At the hospital.'

‘Trouble?'

‘The Carabinieri over-reacted making an arrest, it seems, and the man is here. He's a doctor, so at least he's assured of good care.'

‘The Carabinieri attacked a doctor?' she said, incapable of keeping the shock from her voice.

‘I didn't say they attacked him, Paola,' he said, though what she said was true enough. ‘I said they over-reacted.'

‘And what does that mean, that they drove their boats too fast taking him to the hospital? Or made too much noise and disturbed the neighbours when they were kicking in his door?'

Though Brunetti tended to share Paola's scepticism about the overall competence of the Carabinieri, he did not, in his caffeine-and-sugar-induced state, want to have to listen to her voice it. ‘It means he resisted arrest and broke the nose of one of the men who were sent to get him.'

She was on to him like a hawk. ‘One of the men? How many were there?'

‘Two,' Brunetti chose to lie, marvelling at how quickly he had been manoeuvred into defending the men who had assaulted Pedrolli.