Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon [64]
‘Which is easier?’ he asked, refusing to add ‘to access’ and wise enough not to use ‘to get into’.
‘Ah, the casa di cura, certainly,’ she said, with the condescension of the heavyweight champion confronted by a nightclub bouncer.
‘The other?’ he asked, curious as always about the importance the state gave to the protection and accuracy of the information it possessed about its citizens.
His question elicited a sigh and a weary shake of her head. She made a tisking sound and said, ‘With government offices, the problem’s not about getting into the system – in most cases, a high school student could do it – it’s about then being able to find the information.’
‘I’m not sure I understand the distinction,’ Brunetti admitted.
She paused, considering what example would be simple enough for a person of his limited talents. ‘I suppose it’s like a burglary, Signore. Getting into the house is easy, especially when the door is left on the latch. But once you get inside, you discover that the people live in a complete mess, with dirty dishes in the bedroom and old shoes and newspapers in the kitchen.’ She saw his dawning understanding and went on. ‘And they’ve lived that way since the house was built, so all that’s happened as time passed and more things came into the house is that the mess has turned to complete chaos, and even finding the simplest thing – a teaspoon, for example – requires you to go through the whole house room by room, and search for it everywhere.’
Not that he needed to know, but because her explanation forced him to be curious: ‘Is this the case in all public offices?’
‘Mercifully not, Commissario.’
‘Which are the best?’ he asked, unaware of the ambiguity of his question.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘There’s no best; it’s only least bad.’ Seeing that she had not satisfied him, she said, ‘Finding out who has been given a passport is usually easy. And gun permits. Those records are quite orderly. But after that there’s a great deal of confusion, and there’s no hope of knowing who has a permesso di soggiorno or a work permit, or really understanding what the rules or criteria are for getting them.’
Since those all fell under the Ministry for which Brunetti worked, the news came as little surprise. He could not resist the temptation and asked, ‘And the worst?’
‘I’m not really competent to judge,’ she said with admirably feigned modesty, ‘but the ones I find it most difficult to, well, to navigate – however easy it is to get to the point where I can – are those which authorize people to do things, or perhaps it’s better to say those agencies which are meant to protect us.’ In response to his furrowed brow, she said, ‘I mean those offices where they’re supposed to check that nurses have the right documents and that they really did study where they say they did. Or, for that fact, doctors and psychiatrists and dentists.’ She spoke with dispassion, the frustrated researcher reporting her findings. ‘There’s terrible negligence there. Getting into their system is easy, as I told you, but after that it’s all very difficult.’ Then, gracious and generous as ever, she added, ‘For them as well, I’m sure, poor things.’
Brunetti’s family occasionally watched a television programme that made public some of the worst cases of governmental negligence. For reasons he did not understand, his children found it wonderfully funny, while he and Paola cringed at the nonchalance with which its nightly revelations were greeted when presented to the authorities who had failed to prevent or detect abuses. How many fake doctors had the programme discovered, how many fake healers? And how many of them had been stopped?
Brunetti pulled himself away from these thoughts and said, ‘I’d be very grateful for anything you could find about either her or her husband.’
‘Of course, sir,’ she said, not unrelieved to have an end called to their discussion of her cyber-explorations and their resulting discoveries. ‘I’ll see what I can find.’ Then, efficiency itself,