Roberto, the girl said in the original police report, bent to try to move the rock, and when he was stooped down, two men emerged from the bushes beside him. One put a pistol to the boy's head, while the other came and stood just outside her window, pointing his pistol at her. Both wore ski masks.

She said that, at first, she thought it was a robbery, and so she put her hands in her lap and tried to remove the emerald ring she was wearing, hoping to drop it to the floor of the car, safe from the thieves. The car radio was playing, so she couldn't hear what the men said, but she told the police she realized it wasn't a robbery when she saw Roberto turn and walk into the bushes in front of the first man.

The second man remained where he was, outside her window, pointing his gun at her but making no attempt to speak to her for another few moments, and then he backed into the bushes and disappeared.

The first thing she did was to lock the door of the car. She reached between the seats of the car for her telefonino, telefonino, but its batteries had run down, and it was useless. She waited to see if Roberto would come back. When he didn't - she didn't know how long she waited - she backed away from the gate, turned, and drove towards Treviso until she came to a phone booth at the side of the highway. She dialled 113 and reported what had happened. Even then, she said, it didn't occur to her that it could be a kidnapping; she had even thought it might be a joke of some sort. but its batteries had run down, and it was useless. She waited to see if Roberto would come back. When he didn't - she didn't know how long she waited - she backed away from the gate, turned, and drove towards Treviso until she came to a phone booth at the side of the highway. She dialled 113 and reported what had happened. Even then, she said, it didn't occur to her that it could be a kidnapping; she had even thought it might be a joke of some sort.

Brunetti read through the rest of the report, looking to see if the officer who spoke to her had asked why she would think such a thing could be a joke, but the question didn't appear. Brunetti opened a drawer and looked for a piece of paper; finding none, he leaned down and pulled an envelope from his wastepaper basket, turned it over and made a note on the back, then went back to the report.

The police contacted the family, knowing no more than that the boy had been taken away at gunpoint. Count Ludovico arrived at the villa at four that morning, driven there by his nephew, Maurizio. The police were, by then, treating it as a probable kidnapping, so the mechanism to block all the family funds had been put into motion. This could be done only with those funds in the country, and the family still had access to their holdings in foreign banks. Knowing this, the commissario commissario from the Treviso police who was heading the investigation attempted to impress upon Count Ludovico the futility of giving in to ransom demands. Only by blocking any attempt to give the kidnappers what they demanded could they be dissuaded from future crimes. Most times, he told the Count, the person was never returned, often never found. from the Treviso police who was heading the investigation attempted to impress upon Count Ludovico the futility of giving in to ransom demands. Only by blocking any attempt to give the kidnappers what they demanded could they be dissuaded from future crimes. Most times, he told the Count, the person was never returned, often never found.

Count Ludovico insisted that there was no reason to believe that this was a kidnapping. It could be a robbery, a prank, a case of mistaken ident.i.ty. Brunetti was well familiar with the need to deny the horrible and had often dealt with people who could not be made to believe that a member of their family was endangered or, often, dead. So the Count's insistence that it was not, could not be, a kidnapping was entirely understandable. But Brunetti wondered, again, at the suggestion that it could be some sort of prank. What sort of young man was Roberto that the people who knew him best would a.s.sume this?

That it was not was proven two days later, when the first note arrived. Sent express from the central post office in Venice, probably dropped into one of the slots outside the building, it demanded seven billion lire, though it did not say how the payment was to be arranged.

By then the story was splashed all over the front pages of the national newspapers, so there could have been no doubt on the kidnappers' part that the police were involved. The second note, sent from Mestre a day later, dropped the ransom to five billion and said that the information about how and when to pay it would be phoned to a friend of the family, though no one was named. It was upon receipt of this note that Count Ludovico made his televised appeal to the kidnappers to release his son. The text of the message was attached to the report. He explained that there was no way he could raise the money, all of his a.s.sets having been frozen. He did say that, if the kidnappers would still contact the person they intended calling and tell him what to do, he would gladly exchange places with his son: he would obey any command they gave. Brunetti made a note on the envelope, telling himself to see if he could get a tape of the Count's appearance.

Appended was a list of the names and addresses of everyone questioned in connection with the case, the reason the police had questioned them, and their relationship to the Lorenzonis. Separate pages held transcripts or summaries of these conversations.

Brunetti let his eye run down the list. He recognized the names of at least a half dozen known criminals, but he was unable to see any common thread connecting them. One was a burglar, another a car thief, and a third, Brunetti knew, having put him there, was in prison for bank robbery. Perhaps these were some of the people the Treviso police used as informers. All led nowhere.

Some other names he recognized, not because of their criminality, but because of their social position. There was the parish priest of the Lorenzoni family, the director of the bank where most of their funds were held, and the names of the family lawyer and notary.

Doggedly, he read through every word in the file; he studied the block printing on the plastic-covered ransom notes and the lab report that accompanied them, saying that there were no fingerprints and that the paper was too widely sold to be traceable; he examined the photos of the opened gate to the villa taken both from a distance and close up. This last included a photo of the rock that had blocked the gate. Brunetti saw that it was so large that it could not have fitted through the bars of the gate: whoever had put it there would have to have done so from inside. Brunetti made another note.

The last papers contained in the file had to do with the finances of the Lorenzonis and included a list of their holdings in Italy, as well as others they were known to possess in foreign countries. The Italian companies were more or less familiar to Brunetti, as they were to every Italian. To say 'steel' or 'cotton' was pretty much to p.r.o.nounce the family name. The foreign holdings were more diverse: the Lorenzonis owned a Turkish trucking company, beet processing plants in Poland, a chain of luxury beach hotels in the Crimea, and a cement factory in the Ukraine. Like so many businesses in Western Europe, the interests of the Lorenzoni family were expanding beyond the confines of the continent, many of them following the path of victorious capitalism towards the East.

It took him more than an hour to read through the file, and when he finished, he took it down to Signorina Elettra's office. 'Could you make me a copy of everything here?' he asked as he placed it on her desk.

'The photos, too?'

'Yes, if you can.'

'Has he been found, the Lorenzoni boy?'

'Someone has,' Brunetti answered but then, conscious of this minor evasion, added, 'It's probably him.'

She pulled in her lips and raised her eyebrows, then shook her head and said, 'Poor boy. Poor parents.' Neither of them said anything for a moment, and then she asked, 'Did you see him when he appeared on television, the Count?'

'No, I didn't.' He couldn't remember why, but he knew he hadn't seen it.

'He was wearing full make-up, the way the newscasters do. I know about that sort of thing. I remember thinking at the time that it was a strange thing for a man to be made to do especially in those circ.u.mstances.'

'How did he seem to you?' Brunetti asked.

She thought about this for a moment .and then answered, 'He seemed without hope, absolutely certain that, whatever he begged or pleaded, it wasn't going to be given to him.'

'Despair?' Brunetti asked.

'You'd think that, wouldn't you?' She looked away from him and paused again. Finally she answered, 'No, not despair. A sort of tired resignation, as if he knew what was going to happen and knew he couldn't do anything to stop it.' She looked back at Brunetti and gave a combination smile and shrug. I'm sorry I can't explain it better than that. Perhaps if you looked at it yourself, you'd see what I mean.'

'How could I get a copy?' he asked.

1 suppose RAI must have it in their files. I'll call someone I know in Rome and see if I can get a copy.'

'Someone you know?' Brunetti sometimes wondered if there were a man in Italy between the ages of twenty-one and fifty that Signorina Elettra didn't know.

'Well, really someone Barbara knows, an old boyfriend of hers. He works in the news department in RAI. They graduated together'

'Then he's a doctor?'

'Well, he has a degree in medicine, though I don't think he's ever practised. His father works for RAI, so he was offered a job as soon as he got out of university. Because they can say he's a doctor, they use him to answer medical questions that come up -you know the sort of thing they do: when they have a programme about dieting or sunburn and they want to be sure that what they tell people is true, they set Cesare to doing the research. Sometimes he even gets interviewed, Dottor Cesare Bellini, and he tells people what the latest medical wisdom is.'

'How many years did he spend in medical school?'

'Seven, I think, just like Barbara.'

'To be interviewed about sunburn?'

Again the smile appeared, just as quickly to be shrugged away. "There are too many doctors already; he was lucky to get the job. And he likes living in Rome.'

'Well, then, call him if you would.'

'Certainly, Dottore, and I'll bring you the copies of the report as soon as I make them.'

He saw thatthere was still something she wanted to say. 'Yes?'

'If you are going to reopen the investigation, would you like me to make a copy for the Vice-Questore?'

'If s a bit early to say we're going to reopen the investigation, so a single copy for me would suffice,' Brunetti said in his most oblique voice.

'Yes, Dottore,' came Signorina Elettra's non-committal answer, 'and I'll see that the originals get back into the file'

'Good. Thank you'

'Then I'll call Cesare'

'Thank you, Signorina,' Brunetti said and went back up to his office, thinking of a country that had too many doctors but where it grew more difficult year by year to find a carpenter or a shoemaker.

5.

Though the man in Treviso who had headed the Lorenzoni kidnapping was unknown to Brunetti, he well remembered Gianpiero Lama, who had been in charge of that part of the investigation handled by the Venice police. Lama, a Roman who had come to Venice heralded by the successful arrest and subsequent conviction of a Mafia killer, had worked in the city for only two years before being promoted to the position of Vice-Questore and sent to Milan, where Brunetti believed him still to be.

He and Brunetti had worked together, but neither of them had much enjoyed the experience. Lama had found his colleague too timid in the pursuit of crime and criminals, unwilling to take the kind of risks which Lama believed necessary. Since Lama had also thought it perfectly acceptable that the law sometimes be ignored, or even bent, in order to effect an arrest, it was not uncommon that the people he arrested were later released on some technicality discovered by the magistratura. magistratura. But as this usually happened some time after Lama's original handling of the case, his behaviour was seldom viewed as the cause of the subsequent dismissal of the charges or the overturning of a conviction. The perceived audacity of Lama's behaviour had ignited his career, and like a flaring rocket he rose higher and ever higher, each promotion preparing the way for the next. But as this usually happened some time after Lama's original handling of the case, his behaviour was seldom viewed as the cause of the subsequent dismissal of the charges or the overturning of a conviction. The perceived audacity of Lama's behaviour had ignited his career, and like a flaring rocket he rose higher and ever higher, each promotion preparing the way for the next.

Brunetti recalled that it was Lama who had interviewed the Lorenzoni boy's girlfriend, he who had failed to follow up either her or the father's suggestion that the kidnapping could have been a joke. Or if he had questioned them about it, Lama had failed to make any mention of it in his report Brunetti pulled the envelope towards him and began another list, this time of those people who might help him learn more, if not about the actual kidnapping, then about the Lorenzoni family. At the top of fiie list he automatically put the name of his father-in-law, Count Orazio Falier. If anyone in the city would be sensitive to the delicate spider's web where n.o.bility, business, and enormous wealth were interwoven, it was Count Orazio.

Signorina Elettra's entrance distracted him momentarily from the list. 'I called Cesare' she said as she placed a folder on his desk. 'He took a look in his computer and found the date, so he says h.e.l.l have no trouble in getting a copy of the tape. He'll send it up by courier this afternoon.' Even before he could ask how she did it, Signorina Elettra answered. 'It has nothing to do with me, Dottore.

He said he's corning to Venice next month, and I think he wants to use his having spoken to me as an excuse to get in touch with Barbara again.'

'And the courier?' Brunetti asked.

'He said he'll put it down against the report RAI's doing on the airport road,' she said, reminding Brunetti of one of the most recent scandals. Billions had been paid to friends of the government officials who had arranged the planning and construction of the useless autostrada autostrada out to Venice's tiny airport. Some of them had subsequently been convicted of fraud, but the case was now caught up in the endless appeal process, while the ex-Minister who had made a fortune by masterminding the whole thing continued not only to receive his state pension, rumoured to be in excess of ten million lire a month, but was said to be off in Hong Kong, ama.s.sing yet another fortune. out to Venice's tiny airport. Some of them had subsequently been convicted of fraud, but the case was now caught up in the endless appeal process, while the ex-Minister who had made a fortune by masterminding the whole thing continued not only to receive his state pension, rumoured to be in excess of ten million lire a month, but was said to be off in Hong Kong, ama.s.sing yet another fortune.

He pulled himself back from this reverie and looked up at Signorina Elettra. 'Please thank him for me,' Brunetti finally said.

'Oh, no, Dottore, I think we should let him think we're the ones doing him a favour, giving him an excuse to get in touch with Barbara again. I even told him I'd say something to her about it, so he'd have an excuse to call her.'

'And why is that?' Brunetti asked.

She seemed surprised that Brunetti would not have seen it. 'In case we need him again. You never know, do you, when we might want to make use of a television network?' Remembering the last shambles of an election, when the owner of three of the largest television networks had used them shamelessly to advance his campaign, he waited for her comment. 'I think it's time the police, rather than the others, made use of them'

Brunetti, always wary of political discussions, thought it best to demur, and so pulled the copy of the hie towards him and thanked her as she left.

The phone rang before Brunetti could do anything more than think about making calls. When he answered it, he heard the familiar voice of his brother.

'Ciao, Guido, Guido, come stai!' come stai!'

'Bene' Brunetti answered, wondering why Sergio would call him at the Questura. His mind, and then his heart, fled to his mother. 'What's wrong, Sergio?' Brunetti answered, wondering why Sergio would call him at the Questura. His mind, and then his heart, fled to his mother. 'What's wrong, Sergio?'

'Nothing, nothing at all. It's not about Mamma Mamma that I'm calling' As it had managed to do since their childhood, Sergio's voice calmed him, a.s.sured him that all was well or soon would be. 'Well, not about her directly.' that I'm calling' As it had managed to do since their childhood, Sergio's voice calmed him, a.s.sured him that all was well or soon would be. 'Well, not about her directly.'

Brunetti said nothing.

'Guido, I know you've gone to see Mamma Mamma the last two weekends. No, don't even say anything. I'm going on Sunday. But I want to ask you if you'd go the next two' the last two weekends. No, don't even say anything. I'm going on Sunday. But I want to ask you if you'd go the next two'

'Of course,' Brunetti said.

Sergio went on as though he hadn't heard. 'If s important, Guido. I wouldn't ask unless it were.'

'I know that, Sergio. I'll go' Having said that, Brunetti felt embarra.s.sed to ask the reason.

Sergio continued. 'I got a letter today. Three weeks to get a letter here from Rome. Puttana Eva, Puttana Eva, I would I would walk walk here from Rome in less time than that. They had the fax number of the laboratory, but did they think to send a fax? No, the idiots sent it through the mails' here from Rome in less time than that. They had the fax number of the laboratory, but did they think to send a fax? No, the idiots sent it through the mails'

From long experience, Brunetti knew that Sergio had to be headed off once he got on to the subject of any of the state's variously incompetent services. 'What was in the letter, Sergio?'

'The invitation, of course. That's why I'm calling you'

'For the conference on Chern.o.byl?'

'Yes, they've asked us to read our paper. Well, Battestini will read it, since his name is on it, but he's asked me to explain my part of the research and to help answer questions afterwards. I didn't know until I got the invitation that we'd go. That's why I didn't call you until now, Guido.'

Sergio, a researcher in a medical radiology lab, had been talking about this conference, it seemed, for years, though it was really no more than months. The damages wrought by the incompetencies of yet another state system could now no longer be hidden, and this had given rise to endless conferences on the effects of the explosion and subsequent fall-out, this latest one to be held in Rome next week. No one, Brunetti thought in his more cynical moments, dared to suggest that no further nuclear reactors be built or tests performed - here he silently cursed the French - but all rushed to the endless conferences to engage in collective hand-wringing and the exchange of terrible information.

'I'm glad you're getting the chance to go, Sergio. Congratulations. Can Maria Grazia go with you?'

'I don't know yet. She's almost finished with the place on the Giudecca, but someone's asked her to make plans and give an estimate for a complete restoration in a four-floor palazzo palazzo over in the Ghetto, and if she doesn't get them done by then, I doubt she'll be able to come.' over in the Ghetto, and if she doesn't get them done by then, I doubt she'll be able to come.'

'She trusts you to go to Rome by yourself?' Brunetti asked, knowing, even as he asked it, how foolish the question was. Similar in many things, i fratelli fratelli Brunetti shared a common uxoriousness which was often a source of humour among their friends. Brunetti shared a common uxoriousness which was often a source of humour among their friends.

'If she gets the contract, I could go to the moon by myself, and she wouldn't even notice.'

'What's your paper about?' Brunetti asked, knowing he was unlikely to understand the answer.

'Oh, it's technical stuff, about fluctuations in red and white blood cell counts during the first weeks after exposure to fall-out or intense radiation. There are some people in Auckland we've been in touch with who are working on the same thing, and it seems that their results are identical to ours. That's one of the reasons I wanted to go to the conference - Battestini would have gone anyway, but this way someone else pays for us, and we get to see them and talk to them and compare results.'

'Good, I'm happy for you. How long will you be gone?'

The conference lasts six days, from Sunday until Friday, and then I might stay on in Rome for two days more and not get back until Monday. Wait a minute; let me give you the dates.' Brunetti heard the flipping of pages, and then Sergio's voice was back. 'From the eighth until the sixteenth. I should be back the morning of the sixteenth. And, Guido, I'll go the next two Sundays.'

'Don't be silly, Sergio. These things happen. I'll go while you're away, and then you go the Sunday after you get back, and I'll go the next one. You've done the same for me'

'I just don't want you to think I don't want to go and see her, Guido' just don't want you to think I don't want to go and see her, Guido'

'Let's not talk about that, all right, Sergio?' Brunetti asked, surprised how painful he still found the thought of his mother. He had tried for the last year, with singular lack of success, to tell himself that his mother, that bright-spirited woman who had raised them and loved them with unqualified devotion, had moved off to some other place, where she waited, still quick-witted and eager to smile, for that befuddled sh.e.l.l that was her body to come and join her so that they could drift off together to a final peace.

1 don't like asking you, Guido' his brother repeated, reminding Brunetti as he did of how careful Sergio had always been not to abuse his position as elder brother or the authority that position invested him with.

Brunetti recalled a term his American colleagues were in the habit of using, and he 'stonewalled' his brother. 'Tell me about the kids, Sergio.'

Sergio laughed outright at the way they'd fallen into the familiar pattern: his need to justify everything; his younger brother's refusal to find that necessary. 'Marco's almost finished with his military service; he'll be home for four days at the end of the month. And Maria Luisa's speaking nothing but English so she'll be ready to go to the Courtauld in the autumn. Crazy, isn't it, Guido, that she's got to go to England to study restoration?'

Paola, Brunetti's wife, taught English Literature at the University of Ca Foscari. There was little his brother could tell him about the insanity of the Italian university system that Brunetti did not already know.

'Is her English good enough?' he asked.

'Better be, huh? If it isn't. I'll send her to you and Paola for the summer.'

'And what are we supposed to do, speak English all the time?'

'Yes.'

'Sorry, Sergio, we never use it unless we don't want the kids to know what we're saying. Both of them have taken so much of it in school that we can't even do that any more.'

'Try Latin,' Sergio said with a laugh. 'You were always good at that.'

'I'm afraid that was a long time ago,' said Brunetti sadly.

Sergio, ever sensitive to things he couldn't name, caught his brother's mood. 'I'll call you before I leave, Guido.'