'But I thought you just came back from...' he began, but she stopped him with a glance.
'There are so few days I manage to take,' she said modestly, and at the words, he blotted from his memory the postcards that had arrived at the Questura from Egypt, Crete, Peru and New Zealand.
Before she could suggest anything, he said, ‘I hardly think any of this is proper, Signorina.'
She gave him a look that combined shock and injury. 'I'm not sure it's anyone's business where I choose to spend my vacation, sir.'
'Signorina,' he began by way of protest, but she cut him short with her most efficient voice.
'We can discuss this again at some other time, sir, but first let me see what I can find out about those people.' She turned her head to one side, as if hearing a sound Brunetti could not. ‘I think I remember something about the Bottins, a few years ago. But I'll have to think about it.' She gave him a broad smile. 'Or I can ask my cousin.'
'Of course,' Brunetti agreed, not at all pleased at the way she had outmanoeuvred him. Habitual caution made him ask, 'Do they know you work here?'
'I doubt it’ she answered. 'Most people really aren't interested in other people or what they do, not unless it bothers or affects them in some way.' Brunetti had concluded much the same thing, through years of experience. He wondered if her belief was theoretical or practical; she seemed so young and so untender.
She looked up at him and said, 'My father never approved of the fact that I left the bank, so I doubt he's told anyone where I'm working. I imagine most of my family still think I work there. If they bother to think about it at all, that is.'
Brunetti had become aware of what his enthusiasm had led her to contemplate, and again he protested. 'Signorina, this is not a good idea. These two men were murdered.' Her glance was cool, uninterested. 'And you're really not a member of the police, not officially, that is.' As he had seen done in countless films, she turned up her palm, bent her fingers, and examined her nails, as though they were the most interesting thing in the room. With her thumbnail, she flicked an invisible speck from another nail, then glanced in his direction to see if he was finished.
'As I was saying, sir, I think I'll be on vacation next week. The Vice-Questore will be gone, so I don't think he'll be much inconvenienced by my absence.'
'Signorina’ Brunetti said, his voice calm and official, 'there could be a certain measure of danger involved here.' She didn't answer. 'You don't have the skills,' he said.
'Would you rather send Alvise and Riverre?' she asked drily, naming the two worst officers on the force. Then she repeated, 'Skills?'
He began to speak, but she cut him off again. 'What skills do you think I'm going to need, Commissario: to fire a gun or restrain a suspect or jump from a third-floor window?'
He refused to answer, not wanting to provoke her further and reluctant to admit he was responsible in any way for her hare-brained idea.
'What sort of skills do you think I've been using here since I was hired? I don't go out and arrest people, but I send you to the people you should arrest, and I give you the evidence that will help convict them. And I do it, sir, by asking people questions and then thinking about what they tell me and using that to go and ask other questions of other people.' She paused but he said nothing, merely nodded to show that he was listening to what she said.
'If I do it with this,' she said, waving a red-nailed hand above her computer keyboard, 'or I go out to Pellestrina to spend time with people I've known for years, there's really little difference.'
When he saw that she had stopped, he said, 'I'm concerned about your safety, Signorina.'
'How gallant,' she said, stunning him with her tone.
'And I don't have the authority to send you out there. It would be completely irregular.' He marvelled at the realization that he didn't have the authority to stop her.
'But I have the authority to grant myself a week's vacation, sir. There's nothing irregular about that.'
'You can't do that,' he insisted.
'Our first fight,' she said with a falsely tragic face, and he was forced to smile.
'I really don't want you to do this, Elettra,' he said.
'And the first time you've used my name.'
'I don't want it to be the last,' he shot back.
'Is that a threat to fire me or a warning that someone out there might kill me?'
He thought about his answer for a long time before he gave it. 'If you'll promise not to go out there, I'll promise never to fire you.'
'Commissario,' she said, returning to her usual formality, 'tempting as that offer is, you must understand that Vice-Questore Patta would never let you fire me, not even if I were discovered to be the person who killed those two men. I make his life too comfortable.' Brunetti was forced to admit, at least to himself, the truth of this.
'If I charge you officially with insubordination?' he asked, though both of them knew his heart wasn't in it.
As if he had not spoken, she continued, "I'll need some way to keep in touch with you.'
'We can give you a telefonino,' he said, caving in.
'It'll be easier for me to use my own,' she said. 'But I'd like to have someone there, just in case what you say is true and there is some danger.'
'Some of our men will be sent out to investigate. We can tell them you're there.'
Her answer was instant. 'No. I don't trust them not to talk to me if they see me or, if you tell them to ignore me, make such a production of it that they'll call attention to me in any case. I don't want anyone here to know what I'm doing. If possible, I don't want them even to know I'm there. Except you and Sergeant Vianello.'
Did her reluctance, he wondered, result from information he didn't have about the people who worked in the Questura or from a scepticism about human nature even more profound than his own? 'If I assign myself the investigation, then I'll be the one to go out to talk to people, just Vianello and I.'
'That would be best.'
'How long are you planning on staying out there?'
'I can stay as long as I usually do, I suppose: a week, perhaps a bit more. It's not as if the people in the village are going to see me get down from the orange bus and come up to tell me the name of the person who did it, is it, sir? I'll just go out and stay with my cousin and see what's new and what people are talking about. Nothing at all unusual about that.'
There was little left to settle. 'Would it be too melodramatic if I asked if you'd like to take a gun with you?' he asked.
'I think it would be far more melodramatic if I accepted, sir,' she said, and turned away, as glad as he to be finished with all of this. 'I'll start seeing what I can find about the Bottins, shall I?' she asked, reaching out to swing the screen of her computer towards her.
7
'You're going to let her do what?' Paola protested that night after dinner, when he had finished telling her about his trip to Pellestrina and his subsequent conversation - he wanted to call it a confrontation but thought that was an exaggeration - with Signorina Elettra in the office. 'You're going to let her go out to Pellestrina and play detective? Alone? Unarmed? With a killer running around? Are you out of your mind, Guido?'
They were still sitting at the table, the children gone off to do whatever it is dutiful and obedient children do after dinner in order to avoid their share of the housework. She set her glass, still half full of Calvados, back on the table and stared across at him. 'I repeat: are you out of your mind?'
"There was no way I could stop her’ Brunetti insisted, conscious of how weak the admission made him sound. In his recounting of the incident, he had omitted to mention that the original idea had come from him and had given Paola a modified version in which Signorina Elettra insisted on her own initiative that she take a more active part in the investigation. Brunetti heard himself emerging from his telling of the tale as the hapless boss, outwitted by his secretary and too indulgent to endanger her career by imposing upon her the necessary discipline.