Donna Leon - About Face

Instead, he said, ‘I suppose the Protezione Civile will file a formal denuncia , and someone will be asked to investigate.’ The same impulse that had silenced his previous comment helped him refrain from observing that it would prove impossible to find a single offender, not when most factories did what they wanted, and the engines of docked cruise ships poured out whatever they pleased for as long as they stayed.

‘But they’ve already investigated, or how else did they get those numbers?’ Chiara demanded, as if she held him responsible, and then immediately repeated, ‘And what are we supposed to do until they do investigate, stop breathing?’

Brunetti felt a surge of delight to hear his wife’s rhetorical devices echoed in his daughter’s voice, even that old warhorse of logic, the rhetorical question. Ah, she would cause a lot of trouble, this child, if only she could keep her passion and her sense of outrage.

Some time later, Paola came into the living room with coffee. She handed him a cup, saying, ‘There’s sugar in it’, and sat down next to him. The second section of Il Gazzettino lay open on the table where Brunetti had set it down, and Paola inquired, with a nod in its direction, ‘What revelations does it bring us today?’

‘Two city administrators are under investigation for corruption,’ Brunetti said and sipped at his coffee.

‘They’ve chosen to ignore the rest of them, then?’ she asked. ‘I wonder why.’

‘The prisons are full.’

‘Ah.’ Paola finished her coffee. She set her cup down and said, ‘I’m glad you didn’t toss oil on the fires of Chiara’s enthusiasm.’

‘It didn’t sound to me,’ Brunetti replied, setting his own empty cup on the face of the Prime Minister, ‘as if she needed any encouragement.’ He sat back, thought about his daughter for a while, and said, ‘I’m glad she’s so angry.’

‘Me, too,’ Paola said, ‘though I suppose we’d better disguise our approval.’

‘You really think that’s necessary? After all, she probably got it from us.’

‘I know,’ Paola admitted, ‘but it’s still wiser not to let her know.’ She studied his face for a moment, then added, ‘Truth to tell, I’m surprised you approve; well, that you do so strongly.’

She laid her hand on his thigh, patted it twice. ‘You let her rave on, and I could almost hear you ticking off the errors in logic she used.’

‘Your very own favourite, argumentum ad absurdum ,’ Brunetti said with unconcealed pride.

Paola had a particularly idiotic smile on her face as she turned to him. ‘It is my heart’s delight, that one.’

‘You think we’re doing a good thing?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Doing what?’

‘Raising them to be so clever in argument?’

Brunetti’s tone, light as he tried to make it, failed to disguise his real concern. ‘After all, if a person doesn’t know the rules of logic, it will sound as if they’re being sarcastic, and that’s not something people like.’

‘Especially when they hear it from a teenager,’ Paola added. After a moment, as if trying to ease his fears, she offered, ‘Very few people pay attention to what anyone else says during a discussion, anyway. So maybe we don’t have to worry.’

They sat silent for some time until she said, ‘I spoke to my father today, and he told me he has three days to decide about this thing with Cataldo. He asked me if you’d managed to find out anything about him.’

‘No, I haven’t,’ Brunetti said, biting back the impulse to say it had been less than twenty-four hours since he had been asked to do it.

‘Do you want me to tell him that?’

‘No. I’ve already asked Signorina Elettra to see what she can find.’ Then, vaguely, knowing how many times he had used this excuse, ‘Something else came up. But she might have something by tomorrow.’ It took some time before he asked, ‘Does your mother say much about them?’

‘Either of them?’

‘Yes.’

‘I know that he was very eager to divorce his first wife.’ Her voice was a study in neutrality.

‘How long ago was that?’

‘More than ten years. He was over sixty.’ Brunetti hought Paola had finished, but after a pause that might have been deliberate, she continued, ‘and she was barely thirty.’

‘Ah,’ he contented himself with saying.

Before he devised a way to ask about Franca Marinello, Paola said, reverting to the original subject, ‘My father doesn’t tell me about his business involvements, but he’s interested in China, and I think he sees this as a possibility.’

Brunetti decided to avoid a second round of discussion of the ethics of investing in China. ‘And Cataldo?’ he asked. ‘What does your father say about him?’

She patted his thigh in an entirely friendly way, as if Franca Marinello had disappeared from the room. ‘Not much, at least not to me. They’ve known one another for a long time, but I don’t think they’ve ever worked together on anything. I don’t think there’s much love lost between them, but this is business,’ she said, sounding almost too much like her father’s child.

‘Thanks,’ Brunetti said.

Paola leaned forward and picked up the cups. She got to her feet and looked down at him. ‘Time for you to pick up your broom and get back to the Augean Stables.’

Back at the stables, things were reasonably quiet. Another of the commissari came in after four to complain about Lieutenant Scarpa, who was refusing to turn over some files relating to a two-year-old murder in San Leonardo. ‘I can’t figure out why he’s doing this,’ said Claudia Griffoni, who had been at the Questura only six months and thus was not yet fully acquainted with the Lieutenant and his ways.

Though she was Neapolitan, her appearance defied every racial stereotype: she was a tall, willowy blonde with blue eyes and skin so clear that she had to be careful of the sun. She could have posed on a poster for a Nordic cruise, though, had she actually worked on the ship, her doctorate in oceanography would have qualified her for a position more exacting than that of hostess. As would the uniform she was wearing in Brunetti’s office, one of three she had had tailored to celebrate her promotion to commissario. She sat across from him, straight in her chair, long legs crossed. He studied the cut of the jacket, short and tight fitting, with hand-stitching along the lapels. The trousers, after a length that delighted Brunetti, were cut tight at the ankle.

‘Is it because he wasn’t given the case, so he wants to slow us all down and make it even harder to find the killer?’ Griffoni asked. ‘Or is it something personal between him and me that I don’t know about? Or does he just not like women? Or women police?’

‘Or women police who outrank him?’ Brunetti tossed into the pot, curious to see how she would react but also convinced that this was the reason for Scarpa’s constant attempts to undermine her authority.

‘Oh, sweet Jesus,’ she exclaimed, tilting her head back, as if to address the ceiling. ‘It’s not enough that I have to put up with this from killers and rapists. Now I’ve got to deal with it from the people I work with.’

Curious, Brunetti said, ‘I doubt it’s the first time.’ He wondered how Signorina Elettra would respond to the quality of tailoring on the uniform.

She returned her attention to Brunetti and said, ‘We all get a fair bit of it.’

‘What do you do when it happens?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Some of us try to flirt our way out of it. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. You ask them to come along to help defuse a domestic argument, and they act like you’ve asked them for a date.’