Wilful Behaviour Read Free

turned and called back to Paola, ‘Will you ask him?’
    ‘Of course,’ Paola answered, knowing that she would, as much now for her own curiosity as for any desire to do a favour for this girl.
    ‘Then thank you, Professoressa. I’ll see you in class next week, then.’ With that Claudia walked to the door, where she paused and looked up at Paola. ‘I really liked the books, Professoressa,’ she called up the stairway. ‘It broke my heart when Lily died like that. But it was an honourable death, wasn’t it?’
    Paola nodded, glad that at least one of them seemed to have understood.

2
    BRUNETTI, FOR HIS part, gave little thought to honour that morning, busy as he was with the task of keeping track of minor crime in Venice. It seemed at times as though that were all they did: fill out forms, send them off to be filed, make up lists, juggle the numbers and thus keep the crime statistics reassuringly low. He grumbled about this, but when he considered that accurate figures would require even more paperwork, he reached for the documents.
    A little before twelve, just as he was beginning to think longingly of lunch, he heard a knock on his door. He called out, ‘
Avanti
,’ and looked up to see Alvise.
    ‘There’s someone to see you, sir,’ the officer said with a smile.
    ‘Who is it?’
    ‘Oh, should I have asked him who he was?’ Alvise asked, honestly surprised that such a thing could be expected of him.
    ‘No, just show him in, Alvise,’ Brunetti said neutrally.
    Alvise stepped back and waved his arm in obvious imitation of the white-gloved grace of traffic officers in Italian movies.
    The gesture led Brunetti to believe that no less a personage than the President of the Republic might be entering, so he pushed back his chair and started to get to his feet, if only to maintain the high level of civility Alvise had established. When he saw Marco Erizzo come in, Brunetti walked around his desk and took his old friend by the hand, then embraced him and patted him on the back.
    He stepped back and looked at the familiar face. ‘Marco, how wonderful to see you. God, it’s been ages. Where have you been?’ It had been, how long, a year, perhaps even two, since they’d spoken, but Marco had not changed. His hair was still that rich chestnut brown, so thick as to cause his barber difficulty, and the laugh lines still radiated in happy abundance from around his eyes.
    ‘Where do you think I’ve been, Guido?’ Marco asked, speaking Veneziano with the thick Giudecchino accent his classmates had mocked him for almost forty years ago, when he and Brunetti had been at elementary school together. ‘Here, at home, at work.’
    ‘Are you well?’ Brunetti asked, using the plural and thus including Erizzo’s ex-wife and their two children as well as the woman he now lived with and their daughter.
    ‘Everyone’s good, everyone’s happy,’ Marco said, an answer that had become his standard response. Everything was always fine, everyone was always happy. If so, then what had brought him to the Questura this fine October morning, when he certainly had more urgent things to do running the many shops and businesses he owned?
    Marco glanced down at his watch. ‘Time for
un’ombra
?’
    For most Venetians, any time after eleven was time for
un’ombra
, so Brunetti didn’t hesitate before assenting.
    On the way to the bar at the Ponte dei Greci, they talked about nothing and everything: their families, old friends, how stupid it was that they so seldom saw one another for longer than to say hello on the street before hurrying off to whatever it was that occupied their time and attention.
    Once inside, Brunetti walked towards the bar, but Marco put a hand on his elbow and pulled him to a bench at a booth in front of the window; Brunetti sat opposite him, sure he’d find out now what it was that had brought his friend to the Questura. Neither of them had bothered to order anything, but the barman, from long experience