Uniform Justice (7 page)

‘It could have been a warning,’ she said without preamble.

‘I know,’ he answered, having thought this the instant she told him about the shooting. ‘But of what?’

7

THE SCEPTICISM THAT
had seeped into Brunetti’s bones over the years forced him to suspect that Signora Moro’s accident might have been something other than that. She must have cried out when she was shot, and the sound of a woman’s scream would surely have brought any hunter running. Low as his opinion of hunters was, Brunetti could not believe that one of them would leave a woman lying on the ground, bleeding. That conviction led him to the consideration of what sort of person would be capable of doing so, which in its turn led him to consider what other sorts of violence such a person might be capable of.

He added to these speculations the fact that Moro had served in Parliament for some time
but
had resigned about two years ago. Coincidence could link events either in kind or subject or time: the same sort of thing happened to different people or different things happened to the same person, or things happened at the same time. Moro had resigned from Parliament around the time his wife was injured. Ordinarily, this would hardly arouse suspicion, even in someone as instinctively mistrustful as Brunetti, were it not that the death of their son provided a point from which to begin a process of speculative triangulation around the ways in which the third event might be related to the other two.

Brunetti thought of Parliament in the way most Italians thought of their mothers-in-law. Not due the loyalties created by ties of blood, a mother-in-law still demanded obedience and reverence while never behaving in a manner that would merit either. This alien presence, imposed upon a person’s life by sheerest chance, made ever-increasing demands in return for the vain promise of domestic harmony. Resistance was futile, for opposition inevitably led to repercussions too devious to be foreseen.

He lifted the phone and dialled his home number. When the machine answered after four rings, he hung up without speaking, bent down to his bottom drawer, and took out the phone book. He flipped it open to the Ps and kept turning pages until he found Perulli, Augusto. He tossed the book back into the drawer and dialled the number.

After the third ring a man’s voice answered. ‘Perulli.’

‘This is Brunetti. I need to speak to you.’

After a long pause, the man said, ‘I wondered when you’d call.’

‘Yes,’ was Brunetti’s only response.

‘I can see you in half an hour. For an hour. Then not until tomorrow.’

‘I’ll come now,’ Brunetti said.

He kicked the drawer shut and left his office, then the Questura. Because he had half an hour, he chose to walk to Campo San Maurizio, and because he was early, he chose to stop and say hello to a friend in her workshop. But his mind was on things other than jewellery, so he did little more than exchange a kiss and promise to bring Paola to dinner some time soon; then he crossed the
campo
and headed up towards the Grand Canal.

He had last been to the apartment six years ago, near the end of a long investigation of a trail of drug money that led from the noses of adolescents in New York to a discreet account in Geneva, a trail that paused long enough in Venice to invest in a couple of paintings meant to join the money in the vault of that eminently discreet bank. The money had made its way safely through the empyrean realms of cyberspace, but the paintings, made of less celestial matter, had been stopped at Geneva airport. One by Palma il Vecchio and the other by Marieschi and thus both part of the artistic heritage of the country, neither
could
be exported, at least not legally, from Italy.

A mere four hours after the discovery of the paintings, Augusto Perulli had called the
carabinieri
to report their theft. No proof could be found that Perulli had been informed of their discovery – a possibility that would raise the unthinkable idea of police corruption – and so it was decided that Brunetti, who had gone to school with Perulli and had remained on friendly terms with him for decades, should be sent to talk to him. That decision had not been taken until the day after the paintings were found, by which time the man who was transporting them had somehow been released from police custody, though the precise nature of the bureaucratic oversight permitting that error had never been explained to the satisfaction of the Italian police.

When Brunetti finally did talk to his old schoolfriend, Perulli said that he had become aware of the paintings’ disappearance only the day before but had no idea how it could have happened. When Brunetti asked how it could be that only two paintings had been taken, Perulli prevented all further questioning by giving Brunetti his word of honour that he knew nothing about it, and Brunetti believed him.

Two years later, the man who had been detained with the paintings was again arrested by the Swiss, this time for trafficking in illegal aliens, and this time in Zurich. In the hope of making a deal with the police, he admitted that
he
had indeed been given those paintings by Perulli, and asked to take them across the border to their new owner, but by then Perulli had been elected to Parliament and was thus exempt from arrest or prosecution.

‘
Ciao
, Guido,’ Perulli said when he opened the door to Brunetti, extending his hand.

Brunetti was conscious of how theatrical was his own hesitation before he took Perulli’s hand: Perulli was equally conscious of it. Neither pretended to be anything but wary of the other, and both were open in studying the other for signs of the years that had passed since their last meeting.

‘It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?’ Perulli said, turning away and leading Brunetti into the apartment. Tall and slender, Perulli still moved with the grace and fluidity of the youth he had shared with Brunetti and their classmates. His hair was still thick, though longer than he had worn it in the past, his skin smooth and taut, rich with the afterglow of a summer spent in the sun. When was it that he had begun searching the faces of the acquaintances of his youth for the telltale signs of age? Brunetti wondered.

The apartment was much as Brunetti remembered it: high-ceilinged and well-proportioned, sofas and chairs inviting people to sit at their ease and speak openly, perhaps indiscreetly. Portraits of men and women from former eras hung on the walls: Perulli, he knew, spoke of them casually, suggesting that they were ancestors, when in reality his family had for
generations
lived in Castello and dealt in sausage and preserved meat.

New were the ranks of silver-framed photos that stood on a not particularly distinguished copy of a sixteenth-century Florentine credenza. Brunetti paused to examine them and saw reflected in them the trajectory of Perulli’s career: the young man with his friends; the university graduate posed with one of the leaders of the political party to which Perulli had then given allegiance; while the adult man stood arm in arm with a former mayor of the city, the Minister of the Interior, and the Patriarch of Venice. Behind them, in an even more elaborate frame, Perulli’s face smiled from the cover of a news magazine that had since abandoned publication. This photo, and Perulli’s need that people see it, filled Brunetti, against his will, with an enormous sadness.

‘Can I offer you something?’ Perulli asked from the other side of the living room, standing in front of a leather sofa and clearly wanting to settle this before he sat down.

‘No, nothing,’ Brunetti said. ‘Thanks.’

Perulli sat, pulling fussily at both legs of his trousers to keep them from stretching at the knees, a gesture Brunetti had observed before, but only in the old. Did he sweep the bottom part of his overcoat aside before he sat down on the vaporetto?

‘I don’t suppose you want to pretend we’re still friends?’ Perulli asked.

‘I don’t want to pretend anything, Augusto,’
Brunetti
said. ‘I just want to ask you a few questions, and I’d like you to give me honest answers.’

‘Not like the last time?’ Perulli asked with a grin he tried to make boyish but succeeded only in making sly. It caused Brunetti a moment’s uncertainty: there was something different about Perulli’s mouth, about the way he held it.

‘No, not like the last time,’ Brunetti said, surprised at how calm he sounded, calm but tired.

‘And if I can’t answer them?’

‘Then tell me so, and I’ll go.’

Perulli nodded, and then said, ‘I didn’t have any choice, you know, Guido.’

Brunetti acted as though the other hadn’t spoken and asked, ‘Do you know Fernando Moro?’

He watched Perulli react to the name with something stronger than mere recognition.

‘Yes.’

‘How well do you know him?’

‘He’s a couple of years older than we are, and my father was a friend of his, so I knew him well enough to say hello to on the street or maybe go and have a drink with, at least when we were younger. But certainly not well enough to call him a friend.’ Some sense warned Brunetti what was going to come next, so he was prepared to hear Perulli say, ‘Not like I know you,’ and so did not respond.

‘Did you see him in Rome?’

‘Socially or professionally?’

‘Either.’

‘Socially, no, but I might have run into him a few times at Montecitorio. But we represented different parties, so we didn’t work together.’

‘Committees?’

‘No, we worked on different ones.’

‘What about his reputation?’

‘What about it?’

Brunetti restrained the sigh that seeped up from his chest and answered neutrally, ‘As a politician. What did people think of him?’

Perulli uncrossed his long legs and immediately recrossed them the opposite way. He lowered his head and raised his hand to his right eyebrow and rubbed at it a few times, something he had always done when he considered an idea or had to think about his response. Seeing Perulli’s face from this new angle, Brunetti noticed that something was different about the angle of his cheekbones, which seemed sharper and more clearly defined than they had been when he was a student. His voice, when he finally spoke, was mild. ‘I’d say people generally thought he was honest.’ He lowered his hand and tried a small smile, ‘Perhaps too honest.’ He enlarged the smile, that same engaging smile that girls, then women, had proven unable to resist.

‘What does that mean?’ Brunetti asked, striving to fight against the anger he felt growing in response to the sniggling tone of Perulli’s answers.

Perulli didn’t answer immediately, and as he
thought
about what to say or how to say it, he pursed his lips into a tight little circle a few times, a gesture Brunetti had never noticed in him before. Finally he said, ‘I suppose it means that he was sometimes difficult to work with.’

That told Brunetti nothing, so he asked again, ‘What does that mean?’

Perulli couldn’t restrain a quick gleam of anger as he looked across at Brunetti, but when he spoke his voice was calm, almost too calm. ‘To the people who disagreed with him, it meant that it was impossible to persuade him to look at things from a different point of view.’

‘Meaning their point of view?’ Brunetti asked neutrally.

Perulli did not rise to the bait and, instead, said only, ‘From any point of view different from the one he had decided on.’

‘Did you ever have this experience with him?’

Perulli shook the idea away with a negative motion of his head. ‘I told you, we never worked on the same committees.’

‘What committees did he work on?’ Brunetti asked.

Perulli put his head back against the top of his chair and closed his eyes, and Brunetti could not stop himself from thinking that the gesture was consciously posed to show the energy Perulli was willing to expend in order to answer the question.

After what seemed an inordinately long time, Perulli said, ‘As far as I can remember, he was on the committee that examined the Post Office,
and
one that had something to do with farming, and a third one …’ He broke off and glanced at Brunetti with a very small, private smile, then he continued, ‘I don’t really remember what that one was. Maybe the mission in Albania, all that humanitarian aid stuff, or maybe the one about farmers’ pensions. I can’t be sure.’

‘And what did these committees do?’

‘What all of them do,’ Perulli said, his voice honestly surprised that a citizen should need to ask. ‘They study the problem.’

‘And then?’

‘Make recommendations.’

‘To whom?’

‘To the government, of course.’

‘And then what happens to their recommendations?’

‘They’re examined and studied, and a decision is made. And if it’s necessary, a law is passed or the existing law is changed.’

‘As simple as that, eh?’ Brunetti said.

Perulli’s smile didn’t have time to blossom fully before the frost of Brunetti’s tone blighted that smile.

‘You can joke if you want, Guido, but it’s not easy, running a country like this.’

‘You really think you run it?’

‘Not I, personally,’ Perulli said in a tone that suggested some regret at this fact. ‘Of course not.’

‘All of you together, then? The people in Parliament?’

‘If not we, then who?’ Perulli demanded,
voice
rising to something that resembled indignation but was closer to anger.

‘Indeed,’ Brunetti said simply. After a long pause, he went on, his voice perfectly normal, ‘Do you know anything else about these committees, perhaps who else served on them?’

Deprived of an immediate target for his displeasure by Brunetti’s sudden change of subject, Perulli hesitated before he answered. ‘I’m not sure there’s much to be said about any one of them. They aren’t important, and usually new members or those who aren’t well connected get appointed to them.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said neutrally. ‘Do you know any of the other people who served on these committees?’

He was afraid he had pushed Perulli too far and that the man might dismiss his question or refuse to give him any more time, but after a moment the parliamentarian answered, ‘I know one or two of them, but not at all well.’