Donna Leon - The Girl of his Dreams

Good sense interrupted his reflections to remind him that nothing anyone had told him mentioned any specific action on the part of Antonin that would or could render him suspect in any way. In fact, all Antonin had done was come to give a blessing at the funeral of the mother of an old friend: what prevented Brunetti, then, from viewing this as an act of simple generosity? Decades ago, Antonin had brushed past Brunetti with an abrasive edge, and then he had become a priest.

Despite his mother's faith, anti-clericalism was part of Brunetti's genetic structure: his father had had only the worst to say about the clergy, an attitude explained by the contempt for power his experience of war had created in him. His mother had never offered opposition to her husband's beliefs just as she had never offered a good word about the clergy, though she was a woman who managed to find something good to say about most people – once even about a politician. These thoughts and memories kept pace with him as he walked back to work.

On his desk at the Questura, as he had feared, Brunetti discovered the fallout from Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta's attendance at the Berlin conference – no doubt transmitted by phone from his room at the Adlon. Their weekly 'crime alert' would next week be dedicated to the Mafia, no doubt with a view to extirpating it root and branch, something the country had been trying to do, with varying degrees of flaccidity, for more than a century.

He read through the copy of Patta's message, probably emailed to the Questura by Signorina Elettra from her own room in Abano Terme.

This is a war situation: we must consider ourselves to be at war with the Mafia, which is to be treated as a separate state existing within other states.

All of our forces to be mobilized.

Inter-agency cooperation to be maximized.

Liaison officer to be named.

Ministry of the Interior, Carabinieri, Guardia di Finanza contacts to be created and maintained.

Application to be made for special funding under Legge 41 bis.

Inter-Cultural dynamics to be stressed.

Brunetti stopped reading here, perplexed by the precise meaning of 'Inter-Cultural dynamics'. He knew from long experience that the people of the Veneto viewed things differently from those of Sicily, but he did not believe it was a gulf that required bridging by 'inter-cultural' anything. But trust Patta to have already seen the advantage to be offered by the possibility of 'special funding'.

Brunetti turned his attention to the growing file of papers and witness statements that had accumulated about a knife-fight that had taken place the week before in front of a bar on the riva of the Giudecca. The fight had ended with two men in the hospital, one with a lung that had been punctured by a fish-scaling knife and the other with an eye he was likely to lose, the result of a wound caused by the same knife.

The statements given by four witnesses explained that the knife had been drawn during an exchange of words, after which it had been thrust, then dropped, by one of the men, only to be picked up by the other and used again. Where the statements did not concur was in the attribution of ownership and original use of the knife, and in the chronology of the struggle. The brother and cousin of one man, who had been in the bar at the time the fight broke out, insisted that he had been assaulted, while the brother-in-law and friend of the other said that he had been the victim of unprovoked aggression. On both sides thus was simple truth suppressed. Both men's fingerprints were on the handle, both men's blood on the blade. Six of the other people in the bar, all natives of the Giudecca, could not remember seeing or hearing anything, and two Albanian workers who had stopped for a beer disappeared after the original questioning but before being asked for identity papers.

Brunetti looked up from reading the last papers in the file, struck by just how similar cultural dynamics on the Giudecca were to those said to be current in Sicily.

Vianello appeared at the door to Brunetti's office. 'You hear anything about this fight?' Brunetti asked, using the pages of the report to wave the Inspector to a seat.

'You mean those two idiots who ended up in hospital?'

'Yes.'

'One of them used to work in Porto Marghera, unloading boats, but I heard they had to get rid of him.' 'Why?' Brunetti asked.

'Usual stuff: too much alcohol and too few brains, and too much gone missing from what he was unloading.' 'Which one is he?'

'The one who lost an eye,' Vianello answered. 'Carlo Ruffo. I met him once.'

'You sure?' Brunetti asked. The medical report in the file had said only that the eye was in danger. 'About the eye, I mean.'

'It seems so. He picked up some sort of infection in the hospital, and the last I heard there was no hope they could save the eye. The infection seems to have spread to the other one.'

'So he'll be blind?' Brunetti asked.

'Perhaps. Blind and violent.'

'Odd combination.'

'Didn't stop Samson, did it?' Vianello asked, surprising Brunetti with the reference, before going on, 'I know this guy. Being blind and deaf and dumb wouldn't stop him from being violent.'

'You think he started it?'

Vianello's shrug was eloquent. 'If he didn't, then the other one did. In the end, it's the same thing.'

'Another violent man?'

'So I'm told, only he usually takes it out on his wife and kids.'

Brunetti paused then said, 'You make it sound like it's common knowledge.' 'On the Giudecca, it is.' 'And no one says anything?'

Again, that shrug. 'They figure it's none of their business, which is the way they think, and they also figure we wouldn't be able to do anything about it, and that's probably true.' Vianello crossed his legs and pushed himself back in the chair. 'If I ever raised a hand to Nadia, she'd have me pinned to the wall of the kitchen with the bread knife in two seconds.' After a reflective pause, he added, 'Maybe more women ought to respond like that.'

Brunetti was not in the mood for this sort of discussion and so he asked, 'You got a favourite for the owner of the knife?'

'My guess is that it was Ruffo's. He always carried one, at least that's what I was told.'

'The other one, Bormio?' Brunetti asked, recalling the name from the file.

'Just what people say.'

'Tell me.'

'That he's a troublemaker, especially with his family, as I told you, but that he'd never start anything with someone stronger than he is.' Vianello folded his arms across his chest and said, 'So my money's on Ruffo.'

'Why does it always seem to happen there?' Brunetti asked, not thinking it necessary to name the Giudecca.

Vianello raised his hands in a gesture of incomprehension then let them fall to his lap. 'Beats me. Maybe it's because they're workers, most of them. They do hard physical work, and that makes them less self-conscious about using their bodies to do violent things. Or maybe it's because that's the way things have always been settled: you hit someone or you pull a knife.'

There seemed nothing for Brunetti to add to this. 'You came up about the new orders?' he asked.

Vianello nodded but did not roll his eyes. 'Yes. I wondered what you thought would come of it?'

'You mean, other than finding a soft job for Scarpa?' Brunetti asked with a cynicism that surprised even himself. If Patta was going to take advantage of the current market flurry in the Mafia, then he was sure to see that his assistant and fellow Sicilian, Lieutenant Scarpa, got in on the ground floor.

'Something almost poetic in Scarpa's being assigned to a special unit dealing with the Mafia, don't you think?' Vianello enquired with feigned innocence.

A sense of his position pulled Brunetti back. 'We can't be sure about that,' he answered. Though he was.