Free By Its Cover by Donna Leon Page A

memory.
    ‘Who was it?’
    ‘Battistella.’ Brunetti remembered him: a fool who had drifted his way to early retirement and could still occasionally be seen in the bars, talking about his illustrious career as a defender of justice. Over the years, Brunetti had noticed, he was no longer offered drinks but seemed willing to buy them for anyone who listened to him, which guaranteed him a constant audience.
    ‘He was thrilled, of course, Battistella. Here was the son of one of the richest families in the city, the heir, the ladies’ man, inviting us in for a coffee,’ Vianello said, his voice growing even harder. ‘Battistella fell in love with him, I think. If he’d wanted to escape, Battistella would have helped him, probably would have given him his gun and held the door for him.’
    ‘Why was he being brought in?’
    ‘A young girl, only about fifteen, sixteen. She’d ended up in the hospital with some sort of overdose the night before. She’d been at a party at the palazzo , but she wasfound – it was never explained how – at the side entrance to the hospital.’ Vianello paused and, voice even harder, corrected himself. ‘She said she was at the palazzo , but none of the people she said were there remembered seeing her.’
    ‘What happened to her?’
    Vianello gave an eloquent shrug. ‘She was a minor, so the record was sealed. She spent the night in the hospital, and the next morning she was allowed to go home. And when she finally told her parents about what had happened, they called us.’
    ‘And that’s why you went to see him?’ Brunetti reached for another sandwich but saw that Vianello had eaten the last one. He finished his wine.
    ‘The magistrate called him and said he wanted to speak to him about what had happened at the party, but Gianni said he was too busy, and what party was he talking about, anyway?’ Vianello picked up his glass, but there was none left, and he set it down again.
    ‘After the call, the magistrate sent us over to bring him in for a conversation.’
    ‘To see if he could remember the party? Or the girl.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘Was it Rotili?’ Brunetti asked, naming a particularly aggressive magistrate whose successes had earned him a transfer to a small town on the border between Piemonte and France, where he could concern himself with the theft of skis and barn animals.
    ‘Yes, and this was probably the thing that led to his transfer. Gianni’s father was still alive then, and he refused to believe his son could do anything wrong.’
    Brunetti had never met the late Count, but he knew his reputation and the extent of his power. ‘So Rotili went to Piemonte?’
    ‘Yes,’ Vianello answered without comment.

    ‘And how did the story of the girl end?’ Brunetti asked.
    ‘She named four people she said had been there. All of them were at least fifteen years older than she was,’ Vianello added. ‘Including Gianni.’
    ‘And none of them had been at a party and they had never seen the girl in their lives?’
    ‘Yes. And two of them were women,’ Vianello said, unable to hide his disgust.
    ‘How did Battistella behave?’
    ‘I was only a patrolman then, and I had the sense to keep my mouth shut, but it was pretty awful.’
    ‘Meaning?’
    ‘Meaning he was a man of about fifty who kowtowed to someone who couldn’t have been much more than thirty, who’d been arrested in at least two other countries by then, and who was known as a drug user, probably a dealer who sold them to his rich friends.’ Vianello leaned forward, bracing his weight on his forearms.
    ‘He told Battistella the girl must be crazy, to invent a story like that. When Battistella agreed with him, Morosini said it was probably because of drugs, and he thought it was terrible, the way people didn’t discipline their children.’
    Vianello shifted back in the bench with no warning, as if trying to get away from his words or from the memory of the scene. ‘I’d had some experience by then,