Donna Leon - The Girl of his Dreams

Her smile was that of a doting aunt, delighted that the forces of order joined her in seeing into the pure heart of this boy. Brunetti noticed that there were only two sheets of paper left. 'Assault on a police officer’ she said, placing one of them in front of Brunetti, perhaps to suggest that playtime was almost at an end.

'He got into an argument in a restaurant in Bergamo’ she explained. 'It started when one of those Tamils who sell roses came in. The minister's son – his name is Antonio – told him to get out, and when the Tamil didn't go, he started to shout at him. Someone at another table, this was the police officer, who was having dinner with his wife, went over and tried to quiet him down’ 'What happened?'

'According to the original report, the boy pulled a knife and stabbed at the Tamil, but he backed away in time. Then things got confused, but the boy ended up, handcuffed, on the floor.

'And then?'

'Then things get even more confused,' she said, setting the last paper on top of the others.

Brunetti looked at it: a government form he did not recognize. 'What is it?' he asked.

'An expulsion order. The Tamil was on a plane to Colombo the next day.' Her voice was neutral. 'When they checked his papers, they discovered that he had been arrested a number of times before and told to leave the country.'

'But this time they helped him leave?' Brunetti asked unnecessarily. 'It seems.'

'And the police officer?'

'When he submitted his written report the following day, he remembered that the Tamil had been drunk and abusive and had threatened the girl.' When she saw Brunetti's expression, she added, 'Known for their violence, these Sri Lankans, aren't they?'

Brunetti restrained himself from comment and studied the surface of his desk. Finally he said, 'How lucky for the boy that the policeman remembered.'

Retrieving the last two pages, she glanced at them, though Brunetti knew this was more for show than from necessity. 'He also remembered that there had been no knife. He said it must have been one of the Tamil's roses.'

'He actually said that?' demanded an astonished Brunetti.

Waving the papers, she answered, 'Wrote it.' After a minimal pause, she went on, 'The police in Bergamo appear to have lost the original statement he gave when they got to the restaurant.'

'And the girl?' Brunetti asked. 'Did she remember that detail, about the rose, too?'

Signorina Elettra gave the shadow of a shrug and said, 'She said she was too frightened to remember.'

‘I see.'

'How long has he known the Fornari girl?' 'From what the people I know said, it's only a few months.'

'He's the heir, isn't he?' Brunetti asked. 'Yes.'

'What actually happened to the older brother?'

'He was living with a tribe in New Caledonia, doing some sort of anthropological research. Living like them. And this tribe, or so the reports say, was attacked by the tribe living in the next valley and the boy disappeared during a raid.'

'Killed?' Brunetti asked.

She raised her shoulders and let them drop. 'No one knows for sure. He'd shaved his head and got all the tribal scars, so whoever raided might have thought he was one of them.'

Brunetti shook his head at the waste of it, and she added, 'The attack wasn't reported until months later, and by then there was no trace of him.'

'Which means?'

'From what I read, either the tribe he was living with would have buried him, or the others would have carried off his body after they killed him’

Brunetti did not want to know more than that. He changed the subject by asking, 'So Antonio became the heir?'

'Yes’

'Were they close?'

'Very. Or at least that's what the articles that appeared at the time said. "Brothers who were blood brothers," all those things the sentimental press loves.'

'Blood brothers?'

'Antonio went out there to visit him, it seems, and while he was with the tribe he went through some sort of ritual that made him a member, along with his brother.' She paused, trying to recall some of the things she had read and apparently not thought it necessary to copy. 'Learning how to hunt with a bow and arrow – all that Tarzan sort of thing that boys like,' she said. 'It was never clear if the brother who's missing – Claudio – got the ritual scars on his cheeks, but both of them did the tattoos and ate the honey-covered larvae.' She gave a delicate shiver at the thought of it, or at the thought of either.

'Tattoos?' Brunetti asked.

'You know the sort of thing. We have to look at them all summer. Those bands on the arms and legs: woven and geometric. You see them all over.'

Indeed. And in photos hanging on the walls of apartments. Reddish hair, all fluffed out and making his head look bigger, and tattoos on his arms that looked like stripes. 'Tiger man,' Brunetti said out loud.

'What?' she asked, and then more politely, ‘I beg your pardon.'

'Are there any photos of him?' 'Too many’ she said tiredly.

'Go and print me some of them’ he said. 'Please, now.' He reached for the phone to call for a boat and a car and then for Vianello to go with him.

'So you think he's tiger man?' Vianello asked when Brunetti finished repeating what Signorina Elettra had told him. They were on one side of the deck of the police boat, heading towards Piazzale Roma, where Brunetti hoped the car he had called for would be waiting. Foa cut the boat suddenly to the left to avoid hitting a sandalo carrying four people and a dog that pulled too quickly in front of them. Foa sounded his horn twice and shouted something to the man at the helm, but he didn't even glance in their direction.

'And you think that's enough to let you go after him?' Vianello asked, his voice rising in volume as he neared the end of the sentence, almost shouting by the time he reached the last word. The Inspector threw both hands towards heaven, as if wanting to pass his question on to some higher authority than the man standing beside him.

Brunetti let his glance drift away from Vianello's face and toward the facade of the buildings on the left side of the canal. He noticed that the palazzo to the right of the Faliers' was finally being restored. He had been at school with the son of the former owners, remembered when the father had gambled the palazzo away in some private gambling club, after which the entire family had had to move. Though they'd been good friends, Brunetti had never heard from the boy again.

'Well?' Vianello called Brunetti's attention back by asking. When Brunetti did not respond, the Inspector went on, 'Even if what you say is true, and this boy he called the tiger man did do something to the Gypsy girl, we've got no chance of proving it. Do you hear me, Guido; no chance. Zero.'

Brunetti's attention started to wander to the buildings behind Vianello, but the Inspector called it back by placing his hand on Brunetti's arm. 'Guido, this is suicide for you. You go out there, and let's say you manage to convince this kid's parents to bring him in to talk about "tiger man".' To express his opinion of the probable consequences of this, Vianello closed his eyes, and Brunetti saw the muscles of his jaw draw tight.

'So you've got an under-age witness – and I'm sure the kid's family will have a long accumulation of arrests and convictions – and you're going to get this kid – and may I interject here what you told me, that the kid barely speaks Italian? – and you're going to get this kid to bring testimony against the son of the Minister of the Interior?'

The boat suddenly veered into a cross-wave, knocking both of them against the railing. Foa pulled the wheel back and turned his eyes forward again.

Brunetti opened his mouth to suggest they go down into the cabin before continuing this conversation, but Vianello rode right over him, 'And you think you'll find a prosecuting magistrate – whose career depends, as I hardly need to point out to you, upon that same Minister – and you think this prosecuting magistrate is going to work to get a conviction?' He pushed his face closer to Brunetti and added, 'On this testimony?' Then, as if that question were not sufficiently devastating, he added, 'On this evidence?'