Wilful Behaviour Read Free Page A

of Brunetti, brought them two small glasses of white wine and went back to the bar.
    ‘
Cin cin
,’ they both said and took small sips. Marco nodded in appreciation. ‘Better than what you get in most bars.’ He took another small sip and set the glass down.
    Brunetti said nothing, knowing that this was the best technique to induce a reluctant witness to speak.
    ‘I won’t waste our time, Guido,’ Marco said in a different, more serious, voice. He took the short stem of his wine glass between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and moved the glass in a small circle, a gesture instantly familiar to Brunetti. Ever since he’d been a small boy, Marco’s hands had always betrayed his nervousness, whether it was by breaking the points of his pencils during exams or plucking at the top button of his shirt whenever he had to speak to a girl he liked. ‘Are you guys like priests?’ Marco asked, glancing up for an instant, then back at the glass.
    ‘Which guys?’ Brunetti asked, honestly confused by the question.
    ‘Cops. Even if you’re a commissario. I mean, if I tell you something, can it be like it used to be when we were kids and went to confession: the priest couldn’t tell anyone?’
    Brunetti sipped at his wine to hide his smile. ‘I’m not sure it’s the same thing, Marco. They weren’t allowed to tell, no matter what we told them, no matter how bad it was. But if you tell me about a crime, I’ll probably have to do something about it.’
    ‘What sort of crime?’ When Brunetti didn’t answer, Marco went on, ‘I mean, how big a crime would it have to be before you had to tell?’
    The urgency in Marco’s voice showed this was not some sort of parlour game, and so Brunetti considered the question before he answered, ‘I can’t say. That is, I can’t give you a list of things I’d have to report. Anything serious or anything violent, I suppose.’
    ‘And if nothing’s happened yet?’ Marco asked.
    Brunetti was surprised by this question from Marco, a man who had always lived in the real, the concrete. It was very strange to hear him posing a hypothetical question; Brunetti wondered if he’d even ever heard Marco use a complex grammatical structure, so accustomed was he to his use of the simple declarative.
    ‘Marco,’ he said, ‘why don’t you just trust me and tell me what it is and then let me think about how to handle it?’
    ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you, Guido. God knows I do; that’s why I came to talk to you. It’s just that I don’t want to get you into any sort of trouble by telling you something you might not want to know about.’ He looked in the direction of the bar, and Brunetti thought he was going to call for more wine, but then he looked back, and Brunetti realized Marco was checking to see if anyone could hear what they were saying. But the other men at the bar seemed busy with their own conversation.
    ‘All right, I’ll tell you,’ Marco said. ‘And then you can decide what to do with it.’
    Brunetti was struck by how similar Marco’s behaviour, even the rhythm of his speech, was to that of so many suspects he had questioned over the years. There always came a point where they gave in and stopped resisting their desire to make it clear just how it was or had been or what had driven them to do what they had done. He waited.
    ‘You know, well, maybe you don’t know that I bought a new shop near Santa Fosca,’ Marco began and paused for Brunetti to respond.
    ‘No, I didn’t.’ Brunetti knew better than to give anything but a simple answer. Never ask for more, never request clarification. Just let them talk until they run themselves out and have nothing else to say: that was when you began to ask questions.
    ‘It’s that cheese shop that belonged to the balding guy who always wore a hat. Nice guy; my mother used to go to his father when we lived over there. Anyway, last year they tripled his rent so he decided to retire, and I paid the
buon’