She waved the offer away and smiled at Vittori, as though he had been the one to speak.
‘Then let us accept that the young woman’s words were directed at one of you, Signor Vittori,’ Brunetti resumed. ‘She insisted that you had hurt her in some way,’ he said, then, before Vittori could correct him, amended it to, ‘that one of you had hurt her. Have you any idea why she might have said that?’
‘Maybe I poked her with my umbrella,’ Vittori said and turned to Griffoni to share his clever remark.
Brunetti saw the flash of rage in her eyes, but perhaps Vittori saw only a flash and interpreted it as he pleased. His smile remained even after he looked back at Brunetti.
Better to pass over reference to the umbrella for the moment, Brunetti thought.
‘Signor Vittori,’ Brunetti went on, ‘Are you quite sure you never saw her before, perhaps worked with her? Something that would at least allow her to recognize you, no matter how excessive her behaviour?’
‘How could someone like that have a job?’ Vittori said automatically, apparently pleased to find something to criticize in Brunetti’s remarks. ‘She’s been like that for a long time,’ he added.
Brunetti put on a confused smile and asked, ‘ “Someone like that”, Signor Vittori?’
‘A retarded woman, if I might use that antiquated phrase,’ Vittori said primly. Then, unable to disguise his spite, ‘A seven-year-old.’
‘Thank you, Signor Vittori. I’ll have to ask her grandmother if she’s ever done anything like this before,’ Brunetti said, interested that Vittori should be sufficiently familiar with Manuela’s history as to gauge her mental age.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t take the trouble to do that before asking me to come in here,’ Vittori said with the righteous irritation of the persecuted. Then, turning to Griffoni, he said, ‘But it did give me the chance to meet your colleague.’ My God, Brunetti thought, do adult men still behave like this?
‘If you’d never met Manuela, how is it that you know so much about the nature of her handicap?’ Griffoni asked, allowing her Neapolitan accent to appear.
Had she been a puppy that bit his caressing hand, Vittori could have been no more startled. In fact, he pulled away from her at the question, attempting to distance himself from this most unfeminine behaviour.
‘Everyone knows,’ he said. ‘Every Venetian, that is.’ Take that, you southerner, he seemed to be saying.
‘Knows what, Signor Vittori?’ Brunetti inquired.
‘That she fell into a canal – was drunk or drugged or tried to kill herself – and was under the water so long that her brain was damaged.’
‘And now she’s a seven-year-old?’ Griffoni asked mildly, then added, ‘You do seem to know a lot about a person you’ve never met, Signore.’
‘Everyone in the city knows,’ he repeated, and then added, with a self-satisfied smile, ‘As I’ve already told you.’ After thoughtful reflection, he said, ‘Besides, you just have to look at her to know there’s something wrong.’
‘You’re a very observant man,’ she said and smiled.
For a moment, Brunetti watched instinct and habit take over as Vittori smiled at the compliment. But then the smile grew uneasy and forced. ‘You just have to look at her face, those vacant eyes.’ Brunetti was surprised Griffoni didn’t shudder when she heard this.
Griffoni smiled and raised her chin, as if about to engage in some sort of philosophical speculation: and then did just that. ‘I wonder what sort of woman she’d be if she hadn’t gone into the water? If she were a thirty-year-old instead of a seven-year-old.’ She lowered her eyes and looked at Vittori. ‘Did you ever wonder about that, Signor Vittori?’
Vittori froze, his face a mask of incomprehension, and Brunetti felt a chill at the realization that Vittori had never posed this question to himself. Fifteen years had passed for him, while Manuela had remained trapped in the amber of immutability. And he had never given it a thought.
The silence expanded. Brunetti felt his mind and heart harden against this man; he looked at Griffoni and saw bleak resolution in her eyes. Vittori sat with his mouth slightly open, as if trying to find some new way to breathe.
Finally he said, ‘Why should I think about something like that?’
Rape, attempted murder, murder: Brunetti considered this escalation of crimes. But what appalled him was the fact that Vittori really meant what he said: why should he bother to think about what had been done to Manuela?
Brunetti looked at Vittori and said, ‘I’ve lived here all my life, and I’d never seen her before.’ He paused, as though considering a possibility, then went on, forcing a smile, ‘Of course, it could be that we live in entirely different parts of the city.’