Read Online Suffer the Little Children by Donna Leon - Free Book Online Page B

asked.
    â€˜Exactly. There’s no way a squad of Carabinieri would come into the city and break into a home without having permission from a judge and without having informed us.’
    â€˜Patta?’ Vianello asked. ‘Could he have known?’
    The Vice-Questore’s name had been the first to come to Brunetti’s mind, but the more he considered this, the less likely it seemed. ‘Possibly. But then we would have heard.’ He did not mention that the inevitable source of that information would not have been the Vice-Questore himself but his secretary, Signorina Elettra.
    â€˜Then who?’ Vianello asked.
    After some time, Brunetti said, ‘It could have been Scarpa.’
    â€˜But he belongs to Patta,’ Vianello said, making no attempt to disguise his distaste for the Lieutenant.
    â€˜He’s mishandled a few things recently. He could have taken it straight to the Questore as a way of trying to bolster his position.’
    â€˜But when Patta hears about it?’ Vianello asked. ‘He’s not going to like having been hopped over by Scarpa.’
    It was not the first time that Brunetti had considered the symbiosis between those two gentlemen from the South, Vice-Questore Pattaand his watchdog, Lieutenant Scarpa. He had always assumed that Scarpa’s sights were set on the Vice-Questore’s patronage. Could it be, however, that the Lieutenant saw his liaison with Patta as nothing more than a flirtation, a stepping stone on the way to the realization of a higher ambition and that his real target was the Questore himself?
    Over the years, Brunetti had learned that he underestimated Scarpa to his cost, so perhaps it was best to admit this possibility and bear it in mind in his future dealings with the Lieutenant. Patta might be a fool and much given to indolence and personal vanity, but Brunetti had seen no evidence that he was corrupt in anything beyond the trivial nor that he was in the hands of the Mafia.
    He glanced away from Vianello to follow this train of thought. Have we arrived, then, he wondered, at the point where the absence of a vice equals the presence of its opposite? Have we all gone mad?
    Vianello, accustomed to Brunetti’s habits, waited until his superior’s attention returned and asked, ‘Shall we ask her to find out?’
    â€˜I think she’d enjoy that,’ Brunetti answered immediately, though he suspected he should not give even this much encouragement to Signorina Elettra’s habit of undermining the system of police security.
    â€˜Do you remember that woman who came in about six months ago, the one who told us about the pregnant girl?’ Brunetti asked.
    Vianello nodded and asked, ‘Why?’
    Brunetti cast his mind back to the woman he had interviewed. Short, older than sixty, with much-permed blonde hair, and very worried that her husband would somehow become aware that she had been to see the police. But someone had told her to come. A daughter or a daughter-in-law, he remembered, was mixed up in it somehow.
    â€˜I’d like you to check if there was a transcript made of the interview. I don’t remember whether I asked for one, and I don’t remember her name. It was in the spring some time, wasn’t it?’
    â€˜I think so,’ Vianello answered. ‘I’ll see if I can track it down.’
    â€˜It might not have anything to do with this, but I’d like to read what she said, maybe talk to her again.’
    â€˜If there is a transcript, I’ll find it,’ Vianello said.
    Brunetti looked at his watch. ‘I’m going over to the hospital to see what his wife will tell me,’ he said to Vianello. ‘And do ask Signorina Elettra if she can find out who was informed about the Carabinieri . . . operation.’ He wanted to use a stronger word – attack, raid – but he restrained himself.
    â€˜I’ll speak to her when she comes in this afternoon,’