‘Very funny, very funny, Guido.’
‘All right. Forget the underwear and tell me about him.’
‘As chief usher, he sees that papers are processed and delivered on time.’
‘And “processed and delivered” means. .?’
Brusca sat back and crossed his legs, then raised one hand in a gesture indicative of motion. ‘There’s a central deposit where all documents regarding cases are kept. When they’re needed during a hearing or trial, the ushers see that they’re delivered to the right courtroom so the judge can consult them if necessary. Then, when the hearing is over, the ushers take them back to the central deposit and refile them. When the next hearing is held, they’re delivered again. When a verdict is reached, all of the papers in the case are moved to a permanent storage deposit.’
‘But?’
‘But papers sometimes go missing or aren’t delivered, and when they aren’t there, the judge has no choice but to postpone the hearing and set a later date. And if the hearing is anywhere near a holiday, then the judge might think it best to delay until after the holiday, but in both cases the judge has to check the docket and see when there is an opening to schedule a hearing, and then there might be long delays.’
Brunetti nodded: this had been his general understanding of how things worked. ‘Then tell me,’ he said, ‘because to listen to you is to put my ear to the beating heart of goddess Rumour, what’s going on here?’
Brusca smiled, but barely so. It was an expression not of humour or amusement but one that acknowledged human nature as it was, not as anyone would want it to be. ‘Before I say anything about what might be going on here, I have to tell you one thing.’ He paused long enough to be sure he had Brunetti’s full attention, then continued. ‘He’s a decorous man, Fontana. It’s an old-fashioned word, I know, but he’s an old-fashioned man. Almost as if he were from our parents’ generation: that’s how people speak of him. He wears a suit and tie to work every day, does his job, is polite with everyone. I’ve never, in all these years, heard a word against him and, as you know, if there is a word to be heard against anyone at the Commune, it generally ends up being repeated to me. Sooner or later, I probably hear everything. But never a word against Fontana, save that he is tedious and shy.’
It seemed to Brunetti that Brusca had finished so he asked, ‘Then why is his name on those documents? And why did you see fit to bring them to me?’ It occurred to Brunetti then to ask, ‘And how did they come to you in the first place?’
Brusca looked at his lap, then at Brunetti, then at the wall, then back at Brunetti. ‘Someone who works at the Tribunale gave them to me.’
‘For what purpose?’
Brusca shrugged. ‘Perhaps because they wanted the information to pass beyond the Tribunale.’
‘That’s certainly happening,’ Brunetti said, but he did not smile. Then, ‘Will you tell me who it was?’
Brusca shook the question away. ‘It doesn’t matter, and I told her I wouldn’t tell anyone.’
‘I understand,’ said Brunetti, who did.
After waiting in vain for Brusca to say something further, Brunetti said, ‘Tell me what it means. Or what you think it means.’
‘You mean the delays?’
‘Yes.’
Brunetti leaned back in his chair, linked his hands behind his head, and examined the ceiling.
‘In the case of an acrimonious divorce, where there is a lot of money involved, it would serve the purposes of the richer party to delay things for long enough to move or hide assets.’ Before Brunetti could ask, Brusca explained: ‘If the papers were delivered to the wrong courtroom on the day of a hearing, or not delivered at all, then the judge would be within his or her rights in ordering a postponement until all the necessary documents were available.’
‘I think I begin to understand,’ Brunetti said.
‘Think of the courthouses you’ve been in, Guido, and think of all those stacks of files lined up against the walls. You’ve seen them in every courthouse.’
‘Isn’t everything being entered into computers?’ Brunetti suddenly asked, remembering the circulars distributed by the Ministry of Justice.
‘All in the fullness of time, Guido.’
‘Which means?’
‘Which means it will take years. I work in personnel, so I know that two people have been assigned to the job: it will take them years, if not decades. Some of the files they have to transcribe go back to the fifties and sixties.’
‘Is it Fontana’s job to see that the papers are delivered?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the judge?’ Brunetti asked.
‘She is said to have been for some time the apple of his dull little eye.’
‘But he’s just a clerk, for heaven’s sake. And she’s a judge. Besides, he’s got to be twenty years older than she is.’
‘Ah, Guido,’ Brusca said, leaning forward and tapping a single finger against Brunetti’s knee, ‘I never knew you had such a conventional mind. Guilty of class and age prejudice, all in one go. All you can think about is love, love, love. Or sex, sex, sex.’
‘What should I be thinking about, instead?’ Brunetti said, forcing himself to sound curious and not offended.
‘In the case of Fontana,’ Brusca relented, ‘perhaps you could think of love, love, love, at least from what I’ve heard. But in the case of Her Honour, you’d be better advised to think of money, money, money.’ Brusca sighed, then said in a sober voice, ‘I think a great number of people are more interested in money than in love. Or even in sex.’
However interesting the thought of pursuing this thesis, Brunetti was more interested in information, and so he asked, ‘And is Judge Coltellini among them?’
Jokes fled and Brusca’s voice and face grew bleak. ‘She comes from greedy people, Guido.’ Brusca paused and then added, as if revealing a mystery he had just resolved, ‘It’s strange. We think that love of music can run in families, or maybe the ability to paint. So why not greed?’ As Brunetti remained silent, he asked, ‘You ever think about that, Guido?’
‘Yes,’ answered Brunetti, who had.
‘Ah,’ Brusca allowed himself to say and then went on, abandoning the general for the specific, ‘Her grandfather was a greedy man, and her father is to this day. She learned it from them, came by it honestly, you might say. If her mother weren’t dead, I’d go so far as to say the judge would consider an offer to sell her if she could.’
‘Did you ever have trouble with her?’
‘No, not at all,’ Brusca said, looking genuinely surprised by the question. ‘As I told you, I just sit there in my tiny office at the Commune and I keep track of all of the employee records: when people get hired, how much they earn, when they retire. I do my job, and people talk to me and tell me things, and occasionally I have to make a phone call and ask a question. To clarify something. And sometimes the answers people give me prompt me to be surprised, and then they tell me more about it, or they tell me other things. And over the years they’ve come to think it’s my business to know about everything.’
‘And people trust you to take things like this,’ Brunetti said, ‘out of the Tribunale.’
Brusca nodded, but it was such a sober nod that Brunetti asked, ‘Because you are pure of heart and clean of limb?’
Brusca laughed and the mood of the room lightened. ‘No. Because the questions I ask are usually so routine and boring that it would never occur to anyone not to tell me the truth.’
‘That’s a technique I’d like to master,’ Brunetti said.
4
Their parting was amicable, if awkward, both avoiding the fact that Brusca had never explained why he had come to Brunetti or what he wanted him to do with the information he now had. Since Brusca had made it clear that Coltellini was a woman animated by the desire for money, it was easy to conclude that she was being paid by people whose cases were being delayed. But that it was easy did not make it true, nor did it make it provable in a court of law.