Donna Leon - The Girl of his Dreams

'What man?' Brunetti asked.

'Man his son tell him.'

'And this man gave him the money for the car?'

A nod. A smile. 'And more.'

'Do you know how much more?'

'He no tell. Maybe afraid tell Gypsy because I steal, eh?' His smile had grown malevolent.

Brunetti turned away so quickly that he bumped into Vianello, who stepped back. 'Let's go,' Brunetti said, starting towards the car.

The man let them reach the car before he called after them, 'Mr Policeman, he gave me something for you.' The man's Italian flowed easily in this sentence, as if he had tired of playing the role of the bumbling Gypsy.

Brunetti, one hand on the handle of the door, looked back at the other man. The Gypsy slid his open hand into the pocket of his jacket and pulled it out a fist, which he extended towards Brunetti.

‘I Gypsy, but I no steal this,' he said as he moved his closed hand from side to side. He and Brunetti faced one another across a distance of three metres. He held his fist up higher. 'You want?' he asked.

Brunetti walked towards him, fighting the sudden rigidity of his knees. He stopped close to the man and extended his hand, arm stiff and straight. For a moment he feared the man was going to tell him to say 'please', which Brunetti did not think he would be able to do.

Brunetti opened his hand and held it palm up.

The other man brought his fist above Brunetti's and opened the index finger, then the next and then the next. Brunetti felt something drop into his palm. Before he could look, the man said, gesturing at Brunetti's hand. 'Man with money want that. Show boy was there, see all, see all what happen. But Rocich, he say give to you, Mister Policeman.' He let his hand fall to his side, turned and walked back to his roulotte. As he started to climb the steps, Brunetti allowed himself to tilt his palm so that he could see what the man had been told to give him.

The cuff link was identical to the other: silver border around a small piece of lapis.

A sharp noise caused Brunetti to flinch, but it was only the sound of the Gypsy slamming the door to his roulotte.

The lethargy into which Brunetti fell upon his return from the Gypsy encampment lasted three days before Paola asked him about it. They were seated on the terrace, after a dinner that Brunetti had barely touched and he was well into his second glass of grappa with the bottle on the table in the likely event that he wanted a third.

Gradually, as it grew darker and the evening chill settled in, he told her – all attempt at chronology or sequence ignored – what had happened. If there was any order in the story he told, it was perhaps the mounting importance of impression, the strongest saved for last, which meant the final stories he told described the mother's terrible wailing and the savage expression on the boy's face as he told Brunetti about 'tiger man'.

Even his final conversation with Fornari and his wife had not left as strong an impression. 'They didn't want to let me in’ Brunetti told her. 'But I told them I'd come back with a warrant.'

In response to the sudden tightening of her hand on his arm – it was too dark by now for him to distinguish her features, even a motion of her head – he said, 'That was nonsense, of course: no one would have given it to me. So far as we're concerned, so far as the entire magistratura is concerned, the case is closed: the girl died accidentally in a fall after robbing the Fornaris' apartment, and that is that.'

'But they did let you in?' she asked.

'Yes. You know how good a liar I am’ Brunetti said.

'You're not particularly good’ she said, a remark he took as a compliment. 'What happened?'

'She was nervous; so was he. At first I didn't think they'd have the courage to brazen it out.' And this, he realized, he meant as a compliment.

'What did you say?'

'That I'd spoken to one of the Gypsies at the camp, and he told me that Rocich claimed he had come into the city and spoken to them.' He recalled his pose during that conversation: the cool bureaucrat come in search of supporting testimony; nothing more.

Brunetti was silent for some time. He sipped at his grappa, the Tignanello Paola had given him for his birthday. Fine as it was, the taste displeased him, and he set the glass back on the table.

'It didn't work’ he admitted. 'They said they had no idea who this Rocich was or why someone with that name would want to speak to them.' It had been the woman, Brunetti recalled, who was more vociferous in her protestations: Fornari had stood beside her, shaking his head, capable of speech only when Brunetti asked him a direct question.

Brunetti uncrossed his legs and stretched them out, then lifted his feet and rested them on the lower rung of the railing of the terrace. As he did so, he remembered how, as young parents, they had been so careful about keeping the door to the terrace locked and allowed the children on to it only when one of them was with them. Even now, after decades in the apartment, Brunetti still avoided peering over the edge and looking down at the ground, four floors below.

Paola allowed a long time to pass before she asked, 'What do you think happened?'

Brunetti had thought of little else during the last few days, had made and cancelled and remade the scenario of events, had imagined it this way and imagined it that way, always with the memory of the girl's face at the forefront of his mind. 'Their daughter was there’ he finally said. 'With the boyfriend, probably in her bedroom. They heard noises in the apartment.' He closed his eyes and tried to visualize it. 'Drugged or not drugged, the boy would still see it as his duty to go and find out what it was.'

'And the stripes?' Paola suddenly asked. 'How did the little boy see them?'

He turned to face the shadow of her head against the still-fading light. 'They weren't in her bedroom doing their calculus homework, Paola. Remember, her parents were out.'

He left it to her to imagine the scene as he had: the naked boy, roused from bed, wild stripes on his arms and legs, roaring at the Gypsy children. "Tiger man’ Paola said.

'The parents' room has a door to the terrace’ Brunetti said- 'It's probably how they got in, so it's where they'd run to try to get out.' 'And then?' Paola asked.

Though Paola could not see Brunetti's shrug, she thought she heard it as his jacket rubbed against the back of his chair.

'That's anyone's guess’ he finally answered.

'But the brother said…' Paola began.

'The brother’ Brunetti cut her off to say, 'because he is a boy, was probably in charge of whatever they did. And he let his sister die.' Before Paola could protest, he went on, ‘I know, I know, he didn't let anything happen. But I'm not talking about what actually happened, whatever that was, but about how he'd see it. She was with him, so anything that happened to her was his fault.'

He paused a long time after this, then said, 'But if she was thrown off the roof, then it's not his fault.' Before she could protest, he hurried on, 'I'm just trying to see it the way he would.' He stopped talking and the noise of the city flowed up to them: passing footsteps, a man's voice coming from one of the windows beneath them, a television in the distance.

'Then why are the Fornaris acting so guilty?' Paola finally asked.

'It might not be guilt’ Brunetti said.

'What else could it be?'

'Fear.'

'Of the Gypsies?' she asked in surprise. 'Some sort of vendetta?' Her tone revealed her refusal to believe this. 'But from what you said, no one except the mother and the brother seemed much to care about what happened to her.'

'Not of the Gypsies’ Brunetti said, wondering where she had been all these years.