Uniform Justice (29 page)

‘Yes, I’m asking specifically about anything concerning the death of Ernesto Moro, also a cadet at the Academy.’

The boy was silent for so long that Brunetti finally asked, ‘Did you know Ernesto Moro?’

‘Yes?’

‘Was he a friend of yours?’

The boy shrugged that possibility away, but before Brunetti could remind him about the microphone and the need to speak, Paolo said, ‘No, we weren’t friends.’

‘What was the reason for that?’

The boy’s surprise was obvious. ‘He was a year younger than me. In a different class.’

‘Was there anything else about Ernesto Moro that prevented him from being a friend of yours?’

The boy thought about this and finally answered, ‘No.’

‘Could you tell me about what happened that night?’

When the boy did not answer for a long time, his father turned minimally towards him and gave a slight nod.

He leaned towards his father and whispered something, the last words of which, ‘have to?’, Brunetti couldn’t help but overhear.

‘Yes,’ the Maggiore said in a firm voice.

The boy turned back to Brunetti. ‘It’s very difficult,’ he said, his voice uneven.

‘Just tell me what happened, Paolo,’ Brunetti said, thinking of his own son and the confessions he had made over the years, though he was sure none of them could compare in magnitude to what this boy might have to say.

‘I was,’ the boy began, coughed nervously, and began again. ‘I was with him that night.’

Brunetti thought it best to say nothing and so did nothing more than look encouragingly.

The boy glanced up to the top of the table at Donatini, who gave an avuncular nod.

‘I was with him,’ he repeated.

‘Where?’

‘In the showers,’ the boy said. Usually, it took them a long time to get to the confession. Most people had to build up to it with a long set of details and circumstances, all of which would make what finally happened seem inevitable, at least to themselves. ‘We were there,’ the boy said and then stopped.

Brunetti looked at Donatini, who drew his lips together and shook his head.

The silence went on so long that at last Donatini was driven to say, ‘Tell him, Paolo.’

The boy cleared his throat, looked at Brunetti, started to glance at his father but stifled the gesture and looked back at Brunetti. ‘We did things,’ he said, and stopped.

For a moment that seemed all he was going to say, but then he added, ‘To one another.’

Brunetti said, ‘I see. Go on, Paolo.’

‘A lot of us do it,’ the boy said in a voice so soft Brunetti doubted the microphone would pick it up. ‘I know it’s not right, not really, but nobody gets hurt, and everybody does it. Really.’

Brunetti said nothing, and the boy added, ‘We have girls. But at home. And so it’s … it’s hard … and …’ His voice stopped.

Brunetti avoided the eyes of the boy’s father and turned to Donatini. ‘Am I to understand that these boys engaged in sexual acts with one another?’ He thought he might as well be as clear as he could and hoped he was right.

‘Masturbation, yes,’ Donatini said.

It had been decades since Brunetti had been as young as this boy, but he still failed to understand the strength of Paolo’s embarrassment. They were boys in late adolescence, living among other boys. Their behaviour didn’t surprise him: the boy’s reaction did.

‘Tell me more about it,’ Brunetti said, hoping that whatever he heard would help this to make sense to him.

‘Ernesto was strange,’ Paolo said. ‘It wasn’t enough for him to, well, just to do what we do. He always wanted to do other things.’

Brunetti kept his eyes on the boy, hoping with his attention to spur him on to explain.

‘That night, he told me that … well, he told me he’d read about something in a magazine. Or a newspaper.’ Paolo stopped and Brunetti watched him worry at this detail. Finally he said, ‘I don’t know where he read it, but he said he wanted to do it that way.’ He stopped.

‘To do what?’ Brunetti finally asked. ‘What way?’ For an instant, he took his eyes from the boy and saw his father, sitting with his head lowered, looking down at the table as if he were willing himself not to be in the room where his son had to admit this to a policeman.

‘He said the thing he read said it made it better, better than anything,’ the boy went on. ‘But it meant he had to put something around his neck and choke himself a little bit when he … well, when he did it. And that’s what he wanted me there for, to be sure that nothing went wrong, when it happened.’

The boy gave an enormous sigh, pulling air into his lungs, preparing himself for the final leap. ‘I told him he was crazy, but he wouldn’t listen.’ He brought his hands together and folded them primly on the table.

‘He had the stuff there in the bathroom, and he showed me the rope. It was where it was … I mean, where it was after, when they found him. It was long, so he could sort of crouch on the floor in there and pretend to fall over. And that would make him choke. And that’s why it was so good. The choking, or something. Or that’s what he said.’

Silence. From beyond the wall, everyone in the room could hear a low humming noise: computer? tape recorder? It hardly mattered.

Brunetti remained absolutely silent.

The boy began again. ‘So he did it. I mean, he had this bag and put it over his head and over the rope. And then he started laughing and tried
to
say something, but I couldn’t understand what he said. I remember he pointed at me and laughed again, then he started to … and after a while, he crouched down and sort of fell over to the side.’

The boy’s face grew suddenly red and Brunetti watched his hands grip at one another. But he went on, unable to stop himself from telling it all until it was finished. ‘He kicked a few times and his hands started to wave around. And then he started to scream or something and kick real hard. I tried to grab him, but he kicked me so hard he knocked me out of the shower. But I went back and I tried to untie the rope, but the plastic bag was tied over it, so I couldn’t get to the rope, and when I did, I couldn’t untie the knot because he was yanking around so much. And then, and then, he stopped kicking, but when I got to him it was too late, and I think he was dead.’

The boy wiped at his face, which was covered with sweat.

‘And then what did you do, Paolo?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I don’t know. For the first minute, I just was there, next to him. I never saw a dead person before, but I don’t remember what I did.’ He glanced up, then immediately down. As Brunetti watched, his father reached out and placed his left hand on top of his son’s clenched hands. He squeezed them once and left his hand there.

Encouraged by that pressure, Paolo went on. ‘
I
guess I panicked. I thought it was my fault because I hadn’t been able to save him or stop him. Maybe I could have, but I didn’t.’

‘What did you do, Paolo?’ Brunetti repeated.

‘I wasn’t thinking much, but I didn’t want them to find him like that. People would know what happened.’

‘And so?’ Brunetti prodded.

‘I don’t know where I got the idea, but I thought if it looked like a suicide, well, it would be bad, but it wouldn’t be as bad as … as the other.’ This time, Brunetti didn’t press, hoping that the boy would continue by himself.

‘So I tried to make it look like he hanged himself. I knew I had to pull him up and leave him there.’ Brunetti’s eyes fell to their clasped hands; the father’s knuckles were white. ‘So that’s what I did. And I left him there.’ The boy opened his mouth and pulled air into his lungs as though he’d been running for kilometres.

‘And the plastic bag?’ Brunetti asked when his breathing had grown calmer.

‘I took it with me and threw it away. I don’t remember where. In the garbage somewhere.’

‘And then what did you do?’

‘I don’t remember much. I think I went back to my room.’

‘Did anyone see you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Your roommate?’

‘I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘Maybe. I don’t remember how I got back to my room.’

‘What’s the next thing you do remember, Paolo?’

‘The next morning, Zanchi woke me up and told me what had happened. And then it was too late to do anything.’

‘Why are you telling me this now?’ Brunetti asked.

The boy shook his head. He separated his hands and grabbed at his father’s with his right. Finally in a soft voice, he said, ‘I’m afraid.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of what will happen. Of what it could look like.’

‘What’s that?’

‘That I didn’t want to help him, that I let it happen to him because I didn’t like him.’

‘Did people think you didn’t like him?’

‘That’s what he told me to do,’ Paolo said, turning minimally away from his father, as if fearful of what he would see on his face, but not letting go of his hand. ‘That’s what Ernesto told me to do. So people wouldn’t know about the other thing.’

‘That you were, well …?’

‘Yes. All of us do it, but we usually do it with different guys. Ernesto just wanted to do it with me. And I was ashamed of that.’

The boy turned to his father. ‘
Papà
, do I have to say any more?’

The Maggiore, instead of answering his son, looked across the table at Brunetti. Instead of replying, Brunetti leaned forward, gave the time, and said that the interview was over.

Silently, all five of them got to their feet. Donatini, who was closest to the door, went and opened it. The Maggiore wrapped his right arm around his son’s shoulders. Brunetti pushed his chair under the table, nodded to Vianello that they would leave now, and moved towards the door. He was just a step from the door when he heard a noise behind him, but it was only Vianello, who had stumbled against his chair.

Seeing that Vianello was all right, Brunetti took a final glance at the father and son, who were facing one another. And as he watched he saw Paolo, who had his father’s complete attention, close his right eye in a single wink of triumphant, sly satisfaction. In the same instant, the father’s right hand came up and gave the boy an approving punch on the right biceps.

27

VIANELLO HADN’T SEEN
it; he had been facing away from that millisecond of complicit understanding between father and son. Brunetti turned towards the door and passed in front of a silent Donatini. In the hall, he waited until Vianello emerged, followed by the two Filippis and their lawyer.

Brunetti closed the door of the interrogation room, moving slowly to give himself time to think.

Donatini spoke first. ‘It’s your decision, Commissario, about what to do with this information.’ Brunetti was entirely unresponsive, didn’t even bother to acknowledge that the lawyer had spoken.

In the face of Brunetti’s silence, the Maggiore
spoke
. ‘It might be better if that dead boy’s family were left with the memory of him that they have,’ he said solemnly, and Brunetti was shamed to realize that, had he not seen the momentary flash of triumph between him and his son, he would have been moved by the man’s concern for Ernesto’s family. He was swept by a desire to strike the man across the mouth but instead turned away from all of them and started down the corridor. From behind him, the boy called out, ‘Do you want me to sign anything?’ and then a moment later, intentionally delayed, ‘Commissario?’

Brunetti kept walking, ignoring them all, bent on getting back to his office, like an animal that has to return to its cave in order to feel safe from its enemies. He closed the door behind him, knowing that Vianello, however confused by his superior’s behaviour, would leave him alone until called.

‘Check and mate and game at an end,’ he said aloud, so much the victim of the energy surging in him that he could not move. Clenching his hands and closing his eyes didn’t help at all: he was left with the image of that wink, that sustaining punch. Even if Vianello had seen it, he realized, it would make no difference for them, nor for Moro. Filippi’s story was credible, the entire performance perfectly pitched. He cringed at the memory of how he had been moved by the boy’s embarrassment, how he had superimposed upon his halting account what he imagined would be his own son’s response in
the
same circumstances and seen fear and remorse where there had been only low cunning.

Part of him longed to hear Vianello’s voice at the door so that he could tell him how they had been duped. But there would be no purpose, he realized, and so he was glad that the Inspector stayed away. His own rashness in going off to talk to Cappellini had given the Filippis time to concoct their story; not just to concoct it but to work on it and to put into it all of the ingredients that were sure to appeal to the sentimentalism of anyone who heard it. What cliché did they leave untouched? Boys will be boys. My shame is greater than my guilt. Oh, spare from further pain the suffering mother of the lad.

Brunetti turned and kicked the door, but the noise and the jolt of pain in his back changed nothing. He confronted the fact that anything he did would have the same effect: nothing would change, regardless of how much pain was endured.

He looked at his watch and saw that he’d lost all track of time while questioning the boy, though the darkness outside should have told him how late it was. He’d given no orders, but there was certainly no reason to hold Filippi, and Vianello must surely have let him go. He wanted desperately not to see any of them when he left, so he forced himself to stand there, eyes closed and head leaning back against the door, for another five minutes, and then he went downstairs.

Cowardice made him avoid the officers’ room, though he could see light coming from the door as he went silently down the steps. Outside he turned to the right and walked to the
riva
to take a
vaporetto
, suddenly desiring the distraction presented by the many people on board at this hour.

One was just pulling away as he arrived at the
imbarcadero
, so as he waited for the next he had ten minutes to study the people who arrived, most of them Venetian by the look of them. When it came, he boarded the boat, crossed to the far side and stood at the rail, back turned to the glory of the city.