Griffoni continued reading the report to the end. ‘She was unconscious for a week,’ she said. ‘And then she woke up naturally but could remember nothing – nothing – of the events before her fall – fall – into the water.’ She handed him the papers, saying, ‘Read the rest.’
He did and had barely finished when the boat pulled up to the San Zaccaria stop. He followed Griffoni from the boat. They walked along the riva, both on autopilot, towards the Questura. At one point, uncertain of his memory of what they had both read, Brunetti stopped and took another look at the report. ‘When she finally did wake up, it took them only a day to see that something was wrong,’ he said, then read aloud: ‘ “Patient has no memory of incident and great difficulty in explaining the events preceding it. Her language is childlike, and she seems not to understand her condition.” ’ He continued reading the doctors’ day-by-day evidence that far more was wrong with this girl than they had at first assumed, until that evidence became incontrovertible: an adolescent had fallen into the water, and a child had been pulled out.
‘They didn’t bother with a full examination when they brought her in,’ he said and closed his eyes. ‘A wound on her head, bruising on her body, pulled from the water, and they didn’t give her a full examination!’
‘And then, I suppose,’ Griffoni said in a voice she struggled to contain, ‘they thought they’d wait until she woke up before they told the mother or told the police.’
Brunetti thought Griffoni’s anger might blossom into something else, but it did not. He started towards the Questura again. He wondered if the mother even knew; surely, they would have to have told her; the girl was a minor. Or maybe they thought that by giving her the medical files they were fulfilling their obligations.
Griffoni followed him up to his office and sat opposite him; the sun streaming in from the windows turned her hair into a golden crown. ‘What now?’ she asked.
‘I still have to talk to the man who pulled her out of the water,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’m supposed to see him tomorrow at noon. I had to invite him to lunch to get him to talk to me.’
‘Do you think he knows anything?’
Brunetti waved a hand in the air to show his uncertainty. ‘He’s a drunk. Everyone who’s spoken of him says he is. When I called to ask to speak to him, I could hear a glass clicking against the phone.’
‘They’re unreliable, drunks,’ Griffoni said.
‘And if his brain’s been soaking in alcohol for the last fifteen years, it’s even less likely he’ll remember anything.’
‘Then why bother?’
‘There’s nothing else,’ Brunetti admitted.
They sat in silence until Brunetti said, ‘The medical report changes everything, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed.
Griffoni stared out the window while together they listened to a boat passing from left to right under the windows. ‘Maybe. So are you suggesting that her fall was more likely . . . involuntary?’
‘Maybe,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Her grandmother told me that Manuela had become very withdrawn in the months before it happened.
‘How did she know that?’
‘Manuela’s mother told her.’
She nodded. ‘She’d know, I suppose.’ Griffoni crossed her legs and slumped down in her chair. She folded her arms and looked out of the window. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘if I think about this, I want to cry.’ She pressed both hands to the sides of her mouth and smoothed the skin back.
‘She could be my younger sister.’ She shook her head and went on, ‘That hardly matters. She’s a young woman who’s lost her future. She could be like this for another half a century. My God, think of it.’ Her voice had grown unsteady and trailed away on the final words.
‘I think it’s time we went home,’ was all Brunetti could think of saying.
That is what they did.
18
The next morning he woke with an ache, but this time it was in his mind, not in his joints. He’d spent the better part of the last week getting nowhere, involving not only himself but another commissario, a magistrate, his superior, Vice-Questore Patta, and Patta’s secretary, Signorina Elettra. Five people’s attention had resulted in no discoveries save unprovable information about a rape committed fifteen years before, of which there existed no possibility that the victim would remember.
He lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, then turned his head and looked out at the roofs of the city, which glistened with autumnal rain.
He looked at the clock and saw that it was almost nine: Paola had let him sleep. He turned on his side, telling himself that he would plan his day, and went back to sleep.
Half an hour later, Paola woke him by saying his name and setting a cup and saucer down next to him. The sound, and then the smell, bored down into wherever he was and pulled him free. He flopped on to his back, pushed himself up against the back of the bed, and rubbed at his eyes.