Free Wilful Behaviour by Donna Leon Page B

else?’ he asked.
    ‘I could fill a history book with what went on during those years. Then, as soon as the war ended, things went back to business as usual, just like in Germany. Well, no, it took a little longer there because they had to go through all that de-Nazification stuff, not that it served for much. But these pigs, these agents, had their snouts back in the trough almost as soon as the war was over.’
    ‘You make it sound like you know them.’
    ‘Of course I do. A few of them are still alive. One of them even has a portfolio of Old Master drawings in a bank vault, has had it there since he acquired it in 1944.’
    ‘Legally?’
    Lele gave a snort of contempt. ‘If someone is in fear of his life and sells something, signs a bill of sale – and the Guzzardis were always careful to get them – then the sale’s still legal. But if someone were to steal those drawings from the bank vault and give them back to the original owner, I’m sure that would be illegal.’ Lele allowed a long pause to draw out from that remark before he said abruptly, ‘I’ll call you if I think of anything,’ and then his voice was gone.

9
    BRUNETTI HAD THE entire afternoon to muse upon what Lele had told him. He’d read little of the history of the last war, but certainly other centuries provided sufficient examples of plundering and profiteering to illustrate all that Lele had said. The sack of Rome, the sack of Constantinople: hadn’t both of them been followed by vast transfers of wealth and art and by the collateral destruction of even more? Rome had been left in ruins, and Byzantium smouldered for weeks as the victors devoted themselves to looting. Indeed, the bronze horses that pranced above the entrance of the Basilica had been part of the loot the Venetians brought home. Certainly the defeat of those cities must have been preceded by hysteria on the part of those desperate to escape. In the end, no matter how beautiful or precious, what object had any value in comparison to life? Some years ago he had read an account by a French crusader who had been present at the siege and sack of Constantinople: he’d written that ‘so much booty had never been gained in any city since the creation of the world’. But what did that count in the face of the loss of so many lives?
    Shortly after seven he pulled himself free from these reflections, moved some paper idly from one side of his desk to the other so as to give the appearance that he had done something that afternoon other than try to make sense of human history, and went home.
    He found Paola, predictably, in her study, where he joined her, flopping down on the battered sofa she refused to part with. ‘You never told me about your father,’ he said by way of introduction.
    ‘Never told you what about my father?’ she asked. Judging by both his tone and his manner that this would be a long conversation, she abandoned the notes she was preparing.
    ‘About the war. And what he did.’
    ‘You make it sound as if you’d discovered he’s a war criminal,’ she observed.
    ‘Hardly,’ Brunetti conceded. ‘But someone told me today that he fought with the Partisans up near Asiago.’
    She smiled. ‘So now you know as much as I know.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Absolutely. I know that he fought and that he was very young when he was there, but he has never chosen to talk to me about it, and I’ve never had the courage to ask my mother about it.’
    ‘Courage?’
    ‘From her tone and the way she reacted whenever I brought the subject up, as I did when I was younger, I realized that it was not something she wanted to talk about and that I shouldn’t ask him, either. So I didn’t, and then I suppose I got out of the habit of being curious about it or wanting to know exactly what he did.’ Before Brunetti could respond to this, she added, ‘Just like you with your father. All you’ve ever told me is that he came back from Africa, went off on the Russian campaign and was