‘Good morning, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said, approaching the desk.
‘Yes, what is it?’ Patta asked, as though a waiter had approached his table while he was deep in conversation.
‘I wanted to tell you about the man who was found over near the Giustinian this morning, sir.’
‘The drowned man?’ Patta asked.
‘The report must have been confused, sir,’ Brunetti said, remaining at some distance from Patta’s desk. ‘There was water in his lungs: that’s in Rizzardi’s report. But he was stabbed before he went into the water. Three times.’
‘So it’s murder?’ Patta said in a voice that registered understanding but was devoid of interest or curiosity.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You better take a seat, then, Brunetti,’ Patta said, as though he had suddenly noticed that the man in front of him was still standing.
‘Thank you, sir,’ answered Brunetti. He sat, careful not to make any sudden moves, at least not until he figured out Patta’s mood.
‘Why would someone stab him and put him in the water?’ Patta asked, and Brunetti refused to allow himself to answer that, if he knew why, he could go out and arrest the person who did it and thus save them all a great deal of time and effort.
‘Do you have an identification?’ Patta asked before Brunetti could respond to his first question.
‘Signorina Elettra is working on it, sir.’
‘I see,’ Patta said and left it at that. Abruptly, the Vice-Questore got to his feet and walked over to the window. He stood gazing out of it for so long that Brunetti began to wonder if he should ask him something in order to recapture his attention, but he decided to wait it out. Patta opened the window and let a draught of soft air into the room, then closed it and came back to his chair. ‘Do you want it?’ he asked when he sat back down.
The options open to Brunetti made the question ludicrous. His choices were Pucetti’s baggage handlers, the anticipated increase in pickpocketing that springtime and Easter were bound to bring to the city, the never-ending illegal harvesting of clams, or a murder. But softly, softly, he warned himself. Never let Patta know what you are thinking, and never ever let him know what you want. ‘If there’s no one else free to handle it, sir. I could pass the Chioggia case’ – how much better than calling it the illegal clamming – ‘to the uniformed branch. Two of them are Chiogiotti and could probably use their families to find out who’s digging the clams.’ Eight years at university to chase after illegal clammers.
‘All right. Take Griffoni: she might like a murder for a change.’ Still, after all these years, Patta could astonish him with some of the things he said.
He could also astonish Brunetti with the things he did not know. ‘She’s in Rome, sir: that course in domestic violence.’
‘Ah, of course, of course,’ Patta said with the wave of a man so busy that he could not be expected to remember everything.
‘Vianello isn’t assigned to anything at the moment.’
‘Take anyone you want,’ Patta said expansively. ‘We can’t have something like this happening.’
‘No, sir. Of course not.’
‘A person can’t come to this city and be murdered.’ Patta managed to sound indignant, but there was no way to tell if his emotions were aroused by what had happened to the man or because of what would happen to tourism as a result. Brunetti did not want to ask.
‘I’ll get busy with it then, sir.’
‘Yes, do,’ Patta told him. ‘Keep me informed of what happens.’
‘Of course, sir,’ Brunetti said. He glanced at Patta, but he had started to read one of the papers that lay on his desk. Saying nothing, Brunetti let himself out of the office.
7
HE CLOSED THE door behind him. In response to Signorina Elettra’s glance, Brunetti said as he approached her desk, ‘He asked me to take the case.’
She smiled. ‘Asked, or did you have to encourage him?’
‘No, the suggestion was his. He even told me to ask Griffoni to work on it with me.’ If her smile had been connected to a dimmer, his words had turned the knob down. He went on, as though he had noticed nothing peculiar about her response to the attractive blonde Commissario’s name, ‘Forgetting she’s in Rome, of course. So I asked for Vianello, and he didn’t object.’
Calm restored, Brunetti decided to hammer it into place and asked, the idea having come to him while he was with Patta, ‘Isn’t there a new rule, some sort of statute of limitations, for students at the university?’ Even Patta did not deserve to be subjected, year after year, to the consequences of this farce.
‘There’s talk of changing the rules so that they have to leave after a certain time,’ she answered, ‘but I doubt that anything will come of it.’
Talk of normal things appeared to have restored her mood; to maintain it, Brunetti asked, ‘Why?’
She turned towards him fully and rested her chin on her hand before she answered. ‘Think about what would happen if everyone agreed to accept the obvious and hundreds of thousands of these students were sent away.’ When he did not comment, she continued. ‘They’d have to accept – and their parents would have to accept – that they are unemployed and likely to remain that way.’ Before Brunetti could speak, she voiced the argument he was about to make: ‘I know they’ve never worked, so they wouldn’t appear in the statistics as having lost their jobs. But they’d have to face the fact, as would their parents, that they’re virtually unemployable.’ Brunetti agreed with her, with a brief nod. ‘So for as long as they’re enrolled in a university, government statistics can ignore them, and they in turn can ignore the fact that they’re never going to have decent jobs.’ He thought she was finished, but she added, ‘It’s an enormous holding pool of young people who live off their parents for years and never learn a skill that would make them employable.’
‘Such as?’ Brunetti inquired.
She raised her hand and ran it through her hair. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Plumbing. Carpentry. Something useful.’
‘Instead of?’
‘The son of a friend of mine has been studying Art Administration for seven years. The government cuts the budget for museums and art every year, but he’s going to get his degree in Art Administration.’
‘And then?’
‘And then he’d be lucky to get a job as a museum guard, but he’d scorn that because he’s an art administrator,’ she said. In a kinder voice, she added, ‘He’s a bright boy and loves the subject, and for all I know would be perfect for a job in a museum. Only there are not going to be any jobs.’
Brunetti thought of his son, now in his first year, and his daughter, soon to enter the university. ‘Does this mean my children face the same future?’
She opened her mouth to speak but stopped herself.
‘Go ahead,’ Brunetti said. ‘Say it.’
He saw the moment when she decided to do so. ‘Your wife’s family will see that they’re protected, or your father-in-law’s friends will see that they’re offered jobs.’
Brunetti realized she never would have said something like this a few years ago and probably would never have said it now had he not provoked her with his reference to Griffoni. ‘The same as with the children of any well-connected family?’ he asked.
She nodded.
Suddenly mindful of her politics, he asked, ‘You don’t object to this?’
She shrugged, then said, ‘Whether I do or I don’t won’t change it.’
‘Did it help you get your job at the bank?’ he asked, referring to the job she had left, more than a decade ago, to come and work at the Questura, a choice no one who worked with her had ever understood.
She lifted her chin from her hand, saying, ‘No, my father didn’t help. In fact, he didn’t want me to work in a bank at all. He tried to convince me not to do it.’