‘Is it?’ Brunetti asked lightly, having decided that this scene would be better played as farce than as tragedy. ‘Why do you believe that?’
Patta reached over and pulled the papers to him. He lifted them, checked the address of the sender and pounded his forefinger repeatedly upon the letterhead above it: Ministry of the Interior, sure enough.
‘Well, that’s a credit to the person who sent it, I suppose,’ Brunetti said. Should he play this as a scene from Oscar Wilde or from Pirandello? Then, in a much firmer voice, he said, ‘May I suggest that, to save ourselves time and effort, and possibly embarrassment, we do one simple thing?’
Caught off balance, Patta asked, ‘What?’
‘See if there is a Eugenia Viscardi working in the office of the Minister of the Interior.’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Brunetti. Of course there is.’ For emphasis, Patta gave the papers another tap, this time with the back of his fingers. ‘She signed this.’
‘Someone signed it, Dottore: I don’t question that for a moment. But whether that person is Eugenia Viscardi and whether a woman named Eugenia Viscardi works for the Minister of the Interior, those are different matters entirely.’
‘That’s impossible,’ Patta said in an unnecessarily loud voice.
‘Then shall we find out?’ Brunetti offered.
‘How?’
‘By asking the person I fear you believe responsible for these excesses to check to see if this woman actually works there.’
‘Signorina Elettra?’ Patta asked in a softer voice.
‘Yes. For her it’s as simple as . . .’ The simile failed Brunetti and forced him to change to, ‘It’s very simple for her.’
Unwilling to be a witness to Patta’s uncertainty, Brunetti looked out of the window and noticed that the leaves had begun to drop from the vines that had overgrown the wall surrounding the garden on the other side of the canal.
‘Why don’t you believe it?’ Patta asked in what passed, with him, for a reasonable voice.
‘The vagueness of the accusations, for one thing,’ Brunetti answered. ‘And the failure to name a single person directly. It’s a blanket accusation against the entire Questura. And what’s the value of a signature that’s only scanned and sent? What legal value or credibility does it have?’
Patta pulled the email back towards himself and read through it again. He sighed and read it all a second time, his finger following the lines of the five specific accusations.
He looked at Brunetti and said, ‘Sit down, Commissario.’ When Brunetti was seated, Patta said, ‘There seemed to be something wrong with it on first reading. A certain . . . lack of clarity, especially in the accusations made. And, of course, the tenuous signature.’ Brunetti noticed the shift to the passive voice. Signora Viscardi, Assistant to the Minister of the Interior, whose signature was now tenuous, was no longer credited with having made the accusations. Instead, they had been made, requiring no need to attribute the making of them to a specific person. The gears of a Maserati could not be shifted more easily.
Brunetti sat and watched his superior in deferential silence, wondering how long it would take before the U-turn was complete and the Vice-Questore would reveal that he had smelled a rat from the beginning.
‘I smelled a rat from the beginning, you know,’ Patta said. ‘I’m glad to see that you share my suspicions.’ He smiled at Brunetti as at a valued colleague. He pushed himself back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. ‘Any suggestions?’
‘Something like this really leaves us only one thing to do, don’t you think, Signore?’
Patta nodded sagely but said nothing.
‘Once Signorina Elettra checks to see whether this Viscardi woman exists, that is,’ Brunetti said, waving towards the papers that lay between them, as if Signora Viscardi were lying there herself, already half exposed to their exacting vision. ‘If she does not, then you two can decide how best to respond to this attack.’ He was careful to use the plural and keep himself free from any involvement in that decision.
‘Exactly,’ Patta confirmed. The Vice-Questore picked up his phone and pressed in some numbers. Both of them could hear the phone ringing in the outer office. One, two and then Patta said, ‘Signorina, could you step in here for a moment?’
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