‘Are you sure of the date, Commissario?’ Signorina Elettra asked, but she said it as a statement and not a question.
Signorina Elettra had found the newspaper accounts of the incident, as had he, so there was no doubt as to the date. She knew this and he knew this, so her remark was a coded announcement that . . . Brunetti’s mind flashed to but immediately excluded: ‘she had failed to find it but was still searching’, ‘it did not appear in the files’, and settled on ‘she suspected it had been lost’.
‘Those files were all computerized, weren’t they?’ Brunetti asked.
‘At the time, yes.’ Signorina Elettra answered. ‘Everything from the paper reports was transcribed and entered into the system.’
‘And the paper copy?’ Griffoni, who had moved over to prop herself against Brunetti’s place at the windowsill, asked.
‘Destroyed, of course,’ Signorina Elettra said and, as though she had been waiting for them to catch up with her, relaxed back in her chair.
Both heads swivelled towards her at the same moment, both faces registering comprehension. Brunetti left it to the other commissario to state the obvious. ‘So if the computer doesn’t have the report, then it’s gone.’ Never had the simple word sounded so final to Brunetti.
Signorina Elettra nodded but went on to say, ‘Before you start suspecting conspiracy, you should know that about a third of the reports that were put into the system are missing, at least for that year. There was a bug in the program, and before they found it, they continued to enter material and destroy the originals.’
‘How long did it take to discover what was happening?’ Griffoni asked.
‘They’d entered almost everything before they noticed.’
Brunetti and Griffoni exchanged a glance. In her shrug, he read her irritation with incompetence and error. She asked, ‘What about the hospital? If they took her there, then a medical report must exist.’
Ah, Brunetti thought, is this how southerners imagine us to be? Creatures of order, routine, method? The last time he had been to the hospital, it was to visit his sister-in-law the night before she was to be operated on for varicose veins. He’d walked in on his brother taping a plastic folder to her leg; inside the clear plastic was a sheet of paper on which could be read, ‘Operate on THIS leg.’ He had chosen not to comment.
‘Let me see what I can find out,’ Brunetti said and picked up Signorina Elettra’s phone.
14
Because he was Venetian and had the rank of commissario, Brunetti was quickly put through to the Records Office. He explained his request to a man with a voice that sounded machine-generated, who proceeded to explain the process for requesting a copy of a patient report. So long as a magistrate submitted a formal request, the hospital would provide a copy of the services administered on a given day to the person named in the request.
Before he could pass this information to the others so that they could engage in universal rejoicing, the man added that those files, from fifteen years ago, existed only in paper form and would have to be searched for and found by someone familiar with the filing system.
‘Have you any idea of how long this might take?’ Brunetti asked.
In the long pause, he heard the real answer. The man, however, gave the official one: ‘It shouldn’t take more than a few days.’ Well, thought Brunetti, it shouldn’t take more than thirty years to build the dykes meant to protect the city against acqua alta, either. But he said, ‘If I were to have my friend, Dottor Rizzardi, call you and ask how long it will take, what answer would you give him?’ He put as much amiability as he could muster into his voice.
‘Is he a good friend?’ the man asked.
‘For more than thirty years.’ It was an exaggeration, but it was made in a worthy cause.
‘I’d tell him not to bother waiting,’ the man answered in a voice that was now recognizably human. Brunetti liked the fact that he made no attempt to excuse or justify what he said. He thanked him, and hung up.
He looked at the two women and shook his head. ‘Hopeless,’ he managed to say.
Griffoni, who was now sitting on the windowsill, having pushed herself up on to it while Brunetti was on the phone, jumped down and started towards the door. ‘I’ll be in my office. I have to write the report on the mugging,’ she said and left. Brunetti, telling Signorina Elettra he had calls to make, went upstairs to his office.