Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon [63]
Brunetti seldom permitted himself the luxury of disliking the people he met in the course of his work. He formed first impressions, surely, sometimes very strong ones. They were often correct, but not always. Over the years, he had come to accept that the negative ones were more distorting than the positive ones: it was too easy to follow the dictates of dislike.
But, of all the world, Brunetti most hated bullies. He hated them for the injustice of what they did and for their need to make others submit. Only once in his professional life had he lost control of himself, almost twenty years ago, during the questioning of a man who had kicked a prostitute to death. He had been captured because his three initials were embroidered on the linen handkerchief he had used to wipe the blood off his shoes and dropped not far from the woman’s body.
Luckily, three officers had been detailed to question the man, an accountant who shared control of a string of girls with their pimp. When asked to identify the handkerchief, it did not escape the observation of any of the policemen that he wore an identical one in his breast pocket.
As soon as he realized the meaning and the consequences of the handkerchiefs, he had said, man to man, just one of the boys, and oh, so eager to show what a tough boy he was, ‘She was just a whore. I shouldn’t have wasted a linen handkerchief on her.’ It was then that the younger, rawer Brunetti had jumped to his feet, already halfway across the table towards him. Wiser heads, and hands, had intervened, and Brunetti had been replanted solidly in his chair to wait out, silently, the interrogation.
Times had been different then, and his attempt had had no legal consequences. In today’s legal climate, however, were the old man ever to be accused of a crime, the disclosure of Brunetti’s true profession would be milk and honey to a defence attorney.
Mulling over all of this, Brunetti made his way back to the Questura. When he got there, he went directly to Signorina Elettra’s room, where he found her reading: not a magazine, as was her usual habit in quiet moments, but a book.
She slipped a piece of paper between the pages and closed the book. ‘Light workload today?’ he enquired.
‘You might put it that way, Commissario,’ she said, placing the book to the side of her computer, the front cover facing downward.
He approached her desk and said, ‘I met a woman today, one of the people that Signora Altavilla visited with at the casa di cura.’
‘And I’d like you to see what we can find out about her,’ she concluded, just as if she were channelling his thoughts, though she made no attempt to imitate his voice.
‘It’s that obvious?’ he asked, smiling.
‘You do get a certain predatory look,’ she said.
‘What else?’
‘You don’t usually limit yourself to that person, Signore, so I’m preparing myself to see what I can find, not only about her but about her husband and any children they might have.’
‘Sartori. I don’t know her first name, and I don’t know how long she’s been there. At least a few years, I’d guess. She has a husband who seems to have the default mechanism of anger. I don’t know his name, and I don’t know about children.’
‘Do you think she’s there as a private patient?’ Signorina Elettra asked, confusing him with the question.
‘I have no idea,’ he said. He thought back to the room, but it was just a room in an old people’s home. There had been no evidence of luxury, and he had not noticed any personal items. ‘Why? What difference would it make?’
‘If she’s there as a public patient, then I’d start first with the state records, but if she’s private, I’d have to access the records of the casa di cura.’ The mere sound of the word ‘access’ falling from the lips of Signorina Elettra