Part 16 (1/2)

'You know him?' Brunetti asked, surprised to realize she might.

'Yes, for a number of years. He sometimes asks me for information.'

Helpless to resist, Brunetti asked, 'What sort of information?'

'Nothing to do with the police, sir, or with what I do here; I can a.s.sure you of that.' And that was all she said.

'You spoke to him?'

'Yes.'

'What did he say?'

'That he spoke to a number of people, and some of them said the man you asked about was a good man, and some of them said he was bad.' Brunetti felt a sudden jolt of anger: the c.u.maean Sibyl could do better than that, for G.o.d's sake.

He waited a moment for his anger to pa.s.s and asked, 'Didn't he express an opinion?'

'No,' she answered.

'Did he know him?' Brunetti asked, almost demanded.

'You'd have to ask him that, sir.'

Brunetti let his gaze wander off beyond her, to a photograph of a former Questore. 'Anything else?' he finally asked.

'I spent some time following the tracks of the person or persons who broke into my computer,' she said. 'The tracks lead back to Rome.'

'Where in Rome?' he asked peevishly. Instantly contrite, he added, 'Well done,' and smiled. He knew she would be pleased to be able to tell him it was the Ministry of the Interior, so he asked only, 'Who was it?'

'Il Ministero degli Esteri.'

'The Foreign Ministry?' he asked, unable to disguise his surprise.

'Yes.' Then, before he could ask, she added, 'I'm sure.'

Brunetti's imagination, already halfway up the steps of the Ministry of the Interior, had to hopscotch across the city to an entirely different building, and the mental list of possibilities he had prepared had to be tossed away and a new one prepared. For more than a decade, the two ministries had vied with one another in seeing who could best ignore the problem of illegal immigration, and when some disaster at sea or incident at the border made denial temporarily difficult, they switched to mutual recrimination and then to deceit. Numbers could be adjusted, nationalities altered, and the press could always be counted on to slap a photo of a bedraggled woman and child on to the front page, whereupon popular opinion would lapse into sentimentality long enough to allow the current s.h.i.+pload of refugees into the country, after which people lost interest in the subject, thus permitting the ministries to return to their normal policy of willed ignorance.

But that still did not explain the interference of the Foreign Ministry if Signorina Elettra said it was they, then so it was in a case of such apparent insignificance. He had no idea why they should choose to concern themselves with the murder of an itinerant street pedlar, though there were certainly many reasons why they might choose to concern themselves with the murder of a man in possession of six million Euros in diamonds.

'I've already started asking questions,' she said. During recent years, Brunetti's understanding of her methods had expanded sufficiently that he no longer pictured her sitting at her desk, making phone call after phone call or, like the Little Match Girl, walking from person to person in search of aid. This understanding, however, stopped far short of a firm grasp of the arcana of her contacts and of the skill with which she pilfered from the supposedly secret files of both government and private agencies. Not only government ministries were capable of willed ignorance.

'And Bocchese wants to see you,' she said.

That seemed to be all she wanted to tell him, so he thanked her and went down to Bocchese's office. On the steps, he encountered Gravini, who held up a hand both in greeting and to stop Brunetti.

'They're gone, sir, the ambulanti ambulanti,' he said, looking concerned, as if he feared Brunetti would hold him responsible for the men's disappearance. 'I spoke to my friend Muhammad, but he hasn't seen anyone from that group for days and says that their house is empty.'

'Does he have any idea of what might have happened to them?'

'No, sir. I asked him, but all he knew was that they were gone.' Gravini raised his hand again to display his disappointment and said, 'I'm sorry, sir.'

'That's all right, Gravini,' Brunetti said. Then he added, knowing that everything that was said in the Questura was repeated, 'We've been relieved of the case, so it doesn't matter any more.' He patted Gravini on the shoulder to show his good faith and continued down the stairs.

When he entered the lab, Brunetti found the technician bent over a microscope, the fingers of one hand busy adjusting a k.n.o.b on the long barrel.

Bocchese, one eye pressed to the instrument, made a noise that could have been a greeting or could just as easily have been a grunt of satisfaction at whatever he saw under the lens. Brunetti walked over and had a look at the plate of the microscope, expecting to see a gla.s.s slide. Instead, he saw a dark brown rectangle, half the size of a pack of cigarettes, that appeared to be metal of some sort.

'What's that?' he asked without thinking.

Bocchese didn't answer him. Adjusting the k.n.o.b, he studied the object for a few moments more, then drew back from the eyepiece, turned to Brunetti and said, 'Take a look.'

He slid down from the stool, and Brunetti took his place. He had looked at slides in the past, usually when Bocchese or Rizzardi wanted to show him some detail of human physiology or the processes that const.i.tuted its destruction.

He placed his right eye to the sculpted eyepiece and closed the other. All he saw was what appeared to be an enormous eye, but black and metallic, with a round hole in the centre as its iris. He braced his open palms on the table, blinked once, and looked again. The image still resembled an eye, with the thinnest of lines indicating the eyelashes.

He stood upright. 'What is it?'

Bocchese moved beside him and slid the metal piece from its place under the lens. 'Here, take a look,' he said, handing it to Brunetti.

The rectangle certainly had the weight of metal; on its surface Brunetti saw a sword-wielding knight mounted on a caparisoned horse no bigger than a postage stamp. The man's armour was carved in great detail, as was that of the horse. His head and face were covered by a helmet, but the horse wore only some sort of protection on its ears, and a thin line of damask material down the front of its face. It was the horse's eye, he realized, that he had seen. Without the magnification, he had to hold the plaque to the light to be able to see the tiny hole of the iris.

'What is it?' Brunetti asked again.

'I'd say it's from the studio of Moderno, which is what my friend wanted me to tell him.'

Utterly at a loss, Brunetti asked, 'What friend and why did he want you to tell him?'

'He collects these things. So do I. So whenever he's offered a really good piece, he asks me to check it for him to see that it's what the seller says it is.'

'But here?' Brunetti asked, indicating the laboratory.

'The microscope,' Bocchese said, giving it the sort of affectionate pat one might give a favourite dog. 'It's much better than the one I have at home, so I can see every detail. It helps me be certain.'

'You collect these?' Brunetti asked, holding the rectangle up close to his face, the better to examine the scene. The horse reared up, nostrils flared in fear or anger. The knight's left hand, covered in a thick mailed glove, pulled the reins tight while his right arm poised just at the farthest point of backward extension. In less than a second, both horse and man would crash forward, and G.o.d pity anything that stood before them.

Bocchese's answer was an exercise in caution. 'I've got a few.'

'It's beautiful,' Brunetti said, handing it back carefully. 'I've seen them in museums, but if you can't get close to them, then you can't really see the detail, can you?'

'No,' Bocchese agreed. 'And you miss the patina, and the feel of it.' To display that last, he held out his hand, the bronze piece cus.h.i.+oned in his palm, and hefted it up and down a few times. 'I'm glad you think it's beautiful.' Bocchese's expression was as warm as his voice had suddenly become.

Brunetti held his breath at the intimacy of the moment. In the years they had worked together, he had never doubted the technician's loyalty, but this was the first time Brunetti had seen him express a feeling stronger than the detached irony with which he chronically viewed human activity. 'Thank you for showing it to me,' was all Brunetti could think of to say.

'Niente, niente,' Bocchese said and pulled a metal box from his pocket. When he opened it, Brunetti saw that the inside was thickly padded, top and bottom, with some sort of soft material. Bocchese slipped the plaque inside, closed the box, and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

'She told you I wanted to see you?' the technician asked.