That night after dinner he told Paola about Pucetti, hoping she would agree that this would, if not assure, then at least increase Signorina Elettra's safety.
'What an odd couple they are,' Paola said.
'Who?'
'Signorina Elettra and Pucetti.'
'They're hardly a couple’ Brunetti protested.
'No, I know that. But I mean, as people; it's so odd that people like that, so bright, should be working for the police.'
Not a little indignant, Brunetti said, ‘I work for the police, as well. I hope you haven't forgotten that.'
'Oh, don't be such a thin-skinned baby, Guido’ she said, putting her hand on his arm. 'You know exactly what I mean. You're a professional, with a law degree, and you joined the police when things were different, when it was a respectable thing to do with your life.'
'Does that mean it isn't any more?'
'No, I suppose it's still respectable’ she began, then, seeing his expression, hastily said, ‘I mean of course it's a respectable choice; you know I mean that. But it's just that the best people, people like you, aren't joining it any more. In ten years, it will be filled with Pattas and Alvises, the ambition-maddened and the hopelessly stupid.'
'Which is which?' Brunetti asked.
She laughed at that. 'Well might you ask.' They were drinking verbena tisane out on the terrace, the children safely returned to their books. Four very plump clouds, pink with the reflected light of evening, formed a distant backdrop to the campanile of San Polo; the rest of the sky was clear and promised another day of glory.
She returned to the subject. 'Why do you think it is that so few really worthwhile people join now?'
Instead of answering, he asked a question. 'It's the same for you, isn't it? What sort of new colleagues are you getting at the university?'
'God, we sound like Pliny the Elder, don't we, sitting around and grumbling about how disrespectful youth is and how everything is going to hell?'
'People have always said that. It's one of the few constants in the histories I read: every age sees the one before it as the golden age when men were virtuous, women pure, and children obedient.'
'Don't forget "respectful",' Paola suggested. 'The children or the women?' 'Both, I suppose.'
Neither of them spoke for a long time, not until the clouds had drifted to the south and served to frame the campanile of San Marco.
Brunetti broke the silence by asking, 'Who'd join now?' He let the question lie, and when Paola didn't bother to answer, he went on, 'It happens too often: we work to arrest them, then when we do, the lawyers get their hands on the case, or the judges, and they end up getting off. I've seen it happen dozens of times, and I'm seeing it happen more and more often. There's that woman who got married in Bologna last week. Two years ago she stabbed and killed her husband. Sentenced to nine years. But she's out on appeal after three months in jail, and now she's married again.'
Ordinarily, Paola would have made some ironic comment on the bravery of the new husband, but she waited to see if he was finished. When he went on, what he said shocked her. ‘I could retire, you know.' Still she didn't say anything. 'I've got the years in service. Well, almost. I suppose what I mean is I could retire in two years.'
Paola asked, 'Is that what you want to do?'
He sipped at his tisane and found it had grown cold. He tipped the cold tea out into the large terracotta tub that held the oleander, poured a fresh cup, added honey, and said, 'Probably not. Not really. But it costs so much at times to watch what happens and not be able to do anything to stop it.' Brunetti leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out in front of him, his cup held between both hands. 'I'm over-reacting, I know, to this thing with the woman getting married, but every once in a while I read something or something happens, and I just can't stand it'
'Didn't the papers say he beat her?' Paola asked.
‘I know someone in Bologna. He did the original questioning. She said nothing about that until she spoke to a lawyer. She'd been having an affair with the guy she married.'
'None of that was in the papers, so I suppose none of it was mentioned at her trial,' Paola said.
'No, there was no proof of the affair. But she killed the husband, maybe during an argument, as she said, and now she's married to the other guy, and nothing will happen to her.'
'Happily ever after?' Paola suggested.
"That's only a small case,' he began but instantly corrected himself, 'No, no one's murder is small. I mean it was a single case, and maybe there'd been an argument. But it happens all the time: men kill ten, twenty people, and then some clever lawyer, or more often, some incompetent judge, gets them out. And they don't hesitate a minute till they go back to doing what they do best, killing people.'
Paola, who had long experience of listening to him in these moments, had never heard Brunetti so distressed or angry about the conditions under which he worked.
'What would you do if you retired?'
'That's just it: I have no idea. It's too late to try to take the law exams; I'd probably have to go back to university and start all over again.'
'If there is one thing I recommend you don't do,' she interrupted, 'it is to think about going back to university.' Her shudder of horror at the thought was no less real for being consciously manufactured.
They considered the question for a while, but neither came up with anything. Finally Paola said, 'Didn't the noble Romans always go back to their farms and devote themselves to the improvement of the land and the writing of letters to friends in the city, lamenting the state of the Empire?'
'Umm,' Brunetti agreed. 'But I'm afraid I'm not noble.'
'And thank God you're not a Roman’ Paola added.
'Nor do we have a farm.'
'I suppose that means you can't retire’ she concluded and asked for another cup of tisane.
The weekend passed quietly. Brunetti had no clear idea of when Signorina Elettra planned to go out to Pellestrina. He thought of calling her at home, even looked up her number in the phone book, something he'd never done before. He found the listing, a low number in Castello that would put her home, he calculated, somewhere near Santa Maria Formosa. While he had the page open, he checked for other Zorzis and found at least two who lived within a few numbers of her address: family?
She had given him the number of her telefonino, but he'd left it in the office, and so short of calling her at home, he had no way of knowing what she was doing until Monday morning, when he would or would not see her at her desk at the Questura.
On Saturday evening, Pucetti called to tell him he was already on Pellestrina and already at work, though he had seen no sign of Signorina Elettra. His brother-in-law, Pucetti explained, after discovering that he and the owner of the restaurant in Pellestrina had many acquaintances in common, had secured Pucetti the chance to work at least until the owner could find out if Scarpa was coming back.
On Sunday afternoon Brunetti went into the room that had, over the course of years, been transformed from spare bedroom to junk room. On top of a wardrobe in one corner he found the hand-painted chest that had somehow come to him from his Uncle Claudio, the one who had always wanted to be a painter. Large enough to house a German Shepherd, the chest was entirely covered with brightly coloured flowers of confused species, assembled in gaudy promiscuity. For some reason it held maps, all thrown inside with much the same confusion as prevailed on the top and sides of the box.
Brunetti began by shifting them from one side to the other as he hunted for the map he wanted. Finally, when this proved futile, he began the slow, inescapable process of removing them one by one. The more he looked, the more it wasn't there. At last, after he had shifted most of the nations and continents of the world, he found the map of the laguna he had used, years ago, when he and his schoolfriends spent weekends and holidays exploring the weaving channels that surrounded the city.