Free Uniform Justice by Donna Leon Page A

realized, led nowhere: until he had an idea of what Moro might be a target of, or for whom, all speculation was as flimsy as the jumbled bits and pieces of information upon which he chose to base it.
    The arrival of Signorina Elettra put an end to his fragmentary musings. ‘You saw that?’ she asked as she came in, nodding towards the autopsy report.
    ‘Yes. What do you make of it?’
    ‘I can’t understand it, why a boy like that would kill himself. It doesn’t make any sense at all.’
    ‘It’s not so unusual, I’m afraid, kids killing themselves.’
    His remark seemed to cause her pain. She stopped in front of his desk, another folder in one hand. ‘But why?’
    ‘I spoke to one of the cadets over there. He said there was no way to be sure about the future, or that there even would be one for them.’
    ‘That’s nonsense,’ she snapped angrily. ‘Of course there’s always a future.’
    ‘I’m just repeating what he told me.’
    ‘A cadet?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    She was silent for a long time, then finally said, ‘I went out with one of them for a while.’
    Immediately curious, Brunetti asked, ‘When you were a student?’
    Her mouth moved in a sly smile: ‘Not last week, certainly.’ Then she went on, ‘Yes, when I was eighteen.’ She looked down at the floor in a moment’s reflection and then said, ‘No, as a matter of fact, I was only sixteen. That explains it.’
    He knew a set-up line when he heard it. ‘Explains what?’
    ‘How I could have put up with him.’
    Brunetti half rose in his chair and gestured towards the other. ‘Have a seat, please.’ She swept one hand behind her as she sat, straightening her skirt, then placed the folder flat on her lap.
    ‘What did you have to put up with?’ he asked, puzzled by the idea of Signorina Elettra as a person capable of enduring anything she didn’t wish to.
    ‘I was going to say that he was a Fascist and that they all were, and probably still are today, but it might not be true of all of them. So I’ll say only that
he
was a Fascist, and a bully, and a snob and that most of his friends were, too.’ From long experience of her, Brunetti could sense when Signorina Elettra was doing no more than practising verbal
solfeggi
and when she was preparing to launch into an aria; he detected signs of the second.
    ‘But you see that only now?’ he asked, offering her the briefest of
recitativi
as a means of prompting the aria.
    ‘We used to see them, my friends and I, swanning around the city in their capes, and we thought they were the most exciting, wonderful boys in the world. Whenever one of them spoke to one of us, it was as though the heavens had opened to allow a god to descend. And then one of them …’ she began. Then, seeking the proper words, she changed her mind and went on, ‘I began going out with one of them.’
    ‘Going out?’ he inquired.
    ‘For a coffee, for a walk, just to go down to the Giardini to sit on a bench and talk.’ With a rueful smile, she corrected herself. ‘To listen, that is.’ She smiled across at him. ‘I believe one could employ a new noun here, sir: a listen, instead of a conversation. That’s what I had whenever we met: a listen.’
    ‘Perhaps it was a quicker way for you to get to know him,’ Brunetti suggested drily.
    ‘Yes,’ she said brusquely. ‘I got to know him.’
    He didn’t know quite what question to ask. ‘And what was it that makes you say those things about him?’
    ‘That he was a snob and a Fascist and a bully?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You know Barbara, don’t you?’ she asked, mentioning her older sister.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘She was in medical school at the time, living in Padova, so I didn’t see much of her except on the weekends. I’d been going out with Renzo for about three weeks when she came home one weekend, and I asked her to meet him. I thought he was so wonderful, so clever, so thoughtful.’ She snorted at the memory of her own youth and went on. ‘Imagine