Brunetti crossed his legs and pulled his notebook from his pocket. As always, the pages were blank of anything that pertained to police business, but Patta, as always, failed to realize this. ‘Let me check the dates,’ Brunetti said, flicking through the pages. ‘The sixteenth, isn’t it? Until the twentieth?’ His pause was dramatic, orchestrated to Patta’s mounting impatience. ‘I’m not sure any longer that I’m free that week.’
‘What dates did you say?’ Patta asked, flipping his desk calendar forward a few weeks. ‘Sixteenth to the twentieth?’ His pause was even more dramatic than Brunetti’s had been. ‘Well, if you can’t do it, I might be able to go. I’d have to reschedule a meeting with the Minister of the Interior, but I think I might be able to do so.’
‘That might be better, sir. Are you sure you can allow the time?’
Patta’s glance was illegible. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’s settled, then,’ Brunetti said with false heartiness.
It must have been something in his tone, or perhaps in his alacrity, that triggered alarm bells in Patta. ‘Where were you this morning?’
‘I told you, sir, speaking to the victim of a reported robbery attempt.’
‘What victim?’ Patta asked, voice heavy with suspicion.
‘A foreigner who lives here.’
‘What foreigner?’
‘Dottoressa Lynch,’ Brunetti answered and watched Patta’s face register the name. For a moment, his face was blank, but then his eyes narrowed as he pulled up the memory of who she was. As Brunetti watched, he registered the precise moment when Patta remembered not only who, but what, she was.
‘The lesbian,’ he muttered, showing what he thought of her with the contempt with which he pronounced the word. ‘What happened to her?’
‘She was attacked in her home.’
‘Who did it? Some butch dyke she picked up in a bar?’ When he saw the effect his words had on Brunetti, he moderated his tone and asked, ‘What happened?’
‘She was attacked by two men,’ Brunetti explained, and added, ‘neither of whom appeared to be a “butch dyke”. She’s in hospital.’
Patta struggled to prevent himself from remarking on this and instead asked, ‘Is this why you’re too busy to attend the conference?’
‘The conference isn’t until next month, sir. I’ve got a number of cases current.’
Patta snorted to express his disbelief then suddenly asked, ‘What did they take?’
‘Apparently nothing.’
‘Why? If it was a robbery?’
‘Someone stopped them. And I don’t know that it was a robbery.’
Patta ignored the second part of what Brunetti said and jumped on the first. ‘Who stopped them, that singer?’ he asked, suggesting that Flavia Petrelli sang on street corners for coins rather than at La Scala for a fortune.
When Brunetti didn’t rise to this, Patta continued, ‘Of course it was robbery. She’s got a fortune in that place.’ Brunetti was surprised, not by the raw envy in Patta’s voice, which seemed his normal response to wealth, but by the fact that he had any idea of what was in Brett’s apartment.
‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti said.
‘There’s no perhaps about it,’ Patta insisted. ‘If it was two men, it was robbery.’ Did women, Brunetti prevented himself from asking, busy themselves naturally with other crimes? Patta looked directly at him. ‘That means it belongs to the robbery squad. Leave it to them. This isn’t a social club here, Commissario. We’re not in business to help your friends when they get into trouble, especially not your lesbian friends,’ he said in a tone that conjured up scores of them, as if Brunetti were a latter-day St Ursula, eleven thousand young women following in his train, all virgin and all lesbian.
Brunetti had had years to accustom himself to the fundamental irrationality of much of what his superior said, but there were times when Patta still managed to amaze him with the breadth and passion of some of his wilder pronouncements. And anger him. ‘Will that be all, sir?’ he asked.
‘Yes, that will be all. Remember, this is a robbery, and it’s to be handled—’ He broke off at the sound of the telephone. Irritated by the noise, Patta grabbed the receiver and shouted into the mouthpiece, ‘I told you not to put through any calls.’ Brunetti waited to see him slam the phone down but, instead, Patta pulled it closer to his ear, and Brunetti saw shock register.
‘Yes, yes, I’m certainly here,’ Patta said. ‘Put him through.’
Patta sat a little bit higher in his chair and ran one hand through his hair, as if he expected the caller to look through the receiver and see him. He smiled, smiled again, and waited for the voice at the other end. Brunetti heard the far-off rumble of a man’s voice, and then Patta answered, ‘Good morning, sir. Yes, yes, very well, thank you. And you?’
An answer of some sort filtered through to Brunetti. As he watched, Patta reached for the pen that lay at the side of his desk, forgetting the Mont Blanc Meisterstück in his jacket pocket. He grabbed at a piece of paper and pulled it in front of him. ‘Yes, yes, sir. I’ve heard about it. In fact, I was just discussing it now.’ He paused and more words floated to him over the phone, arriving at Brunetti as no more than a dim murmur.
‘Yes, sir. I know. It’s terrible. I was shocked to hear of it.’ Another pause to wait for the voice to say something else. His eyes flashed to Brunetti and then as quickly away. ‘Yes, sir. One of my men has already spoken to her.’ There was a sharp eruption of words from the other end. ‘No, sir, of course not. It’s someone who knows her. I told him, specifically, not to disturb her, merely to see how she was and to speak to her doctors. Of course, sir. I realize that, sir.’
Patta picked up the pen by its point and tapped it rhythmically on the desk. He listened. ‘Of course, of course, I’ll assign as many men as necessary, sir. We know of her generosity to the city.’
He shot another look at Brunetti, then glanced down at the tapping pen, forcing himself to lay it flat on the desk.
He listened for a long time, staring at the pen. Once or twice, he tried to speak, but the distant voice cut him off. Finally, hand clenched on the phone, he managed to say, ‘As soon as possible. I’ll keep you informed myself. Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Yes.’ He didn’t have time to say goodbye; the voice at the other end was gone.
He put the phone down gently and looked at Brunetti. ‘That, as I suppose you realize, was the mayor. I don’t know how he found out about this, but he did.’ He made it clear that he suspected Brunetti of having called and left an anonymous message in the mayor’s office.