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    Suffer the Little Children
    Suffer the Little Children
    Suffer the Little Children
    Ebook373 pages5 hours

    Suffer the Little Children

    By Donna Leon

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    An assault on a pediatrician reveals a web of corruption and deception in the New York Times–bestselling, Silver Dagger Award–winning series.
     
    When Commissario Brunetti is summoned in the middle of the night to the hospital bed of a senior pediatrician, he is confronted with more questions than answers. Three men—a young Carabiniere captain and two privates from out of town—have burst into the doctor’s apartment in the middle of the night, attacked him, and taken away his eighteen-month-old baby boy.
     
    What could have motivated an assault by the forces of the state so violent it has left the doctor mute? Who would have authorized such an alarming operation? At the same time, Brunetti’s colleague Inspector Vianello discovers a moneymaking scam between pharmacists and doctors in the city. But it appears as if one of the pharmacists is after more than money . . .
     
    This is a smart, suspenseful novel in the series set in a beautifully realized Venice, a glorious city seething with small-town vice.
     
    “Leon deserves her place not only with the finest international crime writers (Michael Dibdin and Henning Mankell, for example) but also with literary novelists who explore the agonies of the everyday (Margaret Drabble and Anne Tyler, among others).” —Booklist
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateDec 1, 2007
    ISBN9781555849061
    Suffer the Little Children

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    Reviews for Suffer the Little Children

    3.5/5

    322 ratings21 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Mystery set in Venice.
    • 4/5
      Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti Venice-centered mysteries are always a delight. Low key, witty, and descriptive with interesting, realistic characters and a glimpse at the frustrating ways of trying to solve crimes while working around the restrictive regulations and the political hack who heads the department.In SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN, a pediatrician and his wife were asleep when a masked trio burst into their apartment. The doctor managed to pound one of the assailants on his nose but the doctor himself ended up in the hospital with a head injury, unable to speak. The attackers took away his eighteen-month-old son. It turned out the attackers were Carabinieri, members of an official national military police force. The kidnapping was part of a multi-city raid targeting families that had adopted their children through a private source, lying about the parentage of the babies. The children were placed in orphanages, which really upset Brunetti..Brunetti and his partner, Inspector Vianello, set out to find out how the doctor was targeted and how the entire adoption program worked. They uncovered a ring that involved pharmacists, doctors and pregnant women willing to sell their babies. Once again, wealth and position do have advantages in the culture. There is an interesting section about finding the truth on the internet and changes in birth rates.It’s wonderful being able to read a novel that doesn’t include unnecessary violence, foul language, or sex scenes. Unfortunately, the chapters are unnecessarily short.
    • 3/5
      The parallels were aggressively pat, but the narrative was still interesting. The antipathy between the carabineri and the regular police force was interesting. Are the carabineri analogous to our state troopers?
    • 3/5
      A very ponderous outing for Commissario Brunetti. A bit too much moralising and lacking in action.
    • 1/5
      I found the entire book completely pedestrian and the characters unbelievable. Her turns of phrase are awkward. There were portions of the dialog and story that the author repeated herself on the same page. You said it once. Enough. I got it the first time. If I didn't have this odd compulsion to finish everything I start I would have put this book down after 10 pages. I wish I did after the utterly unfulfilling ending rent with loose ends.
    • 3/5
      This Brunetti installment begins with a late night raid on a home where an apparent illegally adopted child resides. Brunetti's investigation delves into the morality of unwanted children being "sold" for adoption.Ms Leon takes the reader through the corruption in the medical records arena and leaves the reader wondering if the illegal adoptions are really wrong.Another enjoyable installment.
    • 4/5
      At last--Donna Leon is back! In place of whoever wrote [Through a Glass, Darkly] under her name. Not her best in my opinion, but still good. This is not really a mystery per se and the plot is not all that interesting, but it does serve to give Brunetti, Paola, Vianello another chance on a proper stage. Typical Leon wry witticism although somewhat subdued, typical Leon dialogue. Paola is much more like earlier books. Venice itself does not play as important a role as it has in earlier books. Signorina Elettra gets a great scene. The ending is possibly the best part of the book, in its understated commentary on the theme.After what I considered her disaster in Through a Glass, Darkly, I bought this book in the admittedly faint hope that Leon would revive from what appeared to be a near-fatal illness (in terms of writing). If this book was as bad as the previous, I was never going to waste my precious book money on her again--and I have every one of ther books. She may not be fully recovered, but she certainly is well on the way!
    • 2/5
      Disappointing story, series obviously not as good as before
    • 5/5
      A big draw for this series is the city of Venice. Commisario Brunetti's love for the city is beautifully evoked. Another is Donna Leon's deft use of contemporary social issues as raw material for her plots. The available material is a deep vein to mine. The third is her skillful portrayal of the interior life of her characters.That interior life is primarily through the eyes of Brunetti but shows up in other characters as well. We see the deep love and compassion that can spring from the human heart as well as the breathtaking cruelty, greed and hatred that can manifest from it. There is a long and storied history of novels that spend so much time in the interior life of their protagonists running all the way back to Henry James, the favorite of Brunetti's beloved, Paola.There are a myriad of other richly developed characters as well, Signorina Electra, Inspectore Vianello, Vice-Questore Patta, Sergeant Scarpa. And that is before the sometimes startling stream of consciousness of the villains that inhabit her novels. She steers clear of the temptation of dwelling too long in the internal landscape that many authors of this genre fall into. Much of hers is within the mind of the speaker as the dialogue unfolds or in Brunetti's musings as he reads the ancient masters. Leon wields her sharp knife and her deep sense of irony in this engaging device.Don't look for a seamless plot or a neatly tied procedural. But if you enjoy a gifted writer's nuanced insights into the interior life that drives us all written in a storied locale, then you might want to give this series a try. It's one of my favorites.
    • 4/5
      Another nice episode in the Guido Brunetti series. If you are a first time reader of Leon and you are expecting a thrilling mystery or police procedural, you will be disappointed, but for lovers of the Commissario and his family, this is great stuff. They do drink a lot, though, don't they?”
    • 2/5
      All through this book, I couldn’t figure out why I kept reading it. I guess it is because I am very interested in the Italian people and their worldviews. I kept waiting for the exciting beginning to pay off (Midnight raid by corrupt national police. Baby selling.), but all that happened is I ended up a bit angry at myself for wasting time. Nothing much happens in the middle 200 or so pages, and the ending concerns the “B” plot, which is never linked to the “A” plot, and neither one is resolved.
    • 4/5
      A pediatrician and his family are attacked in their home in the middle of the night, and their young son taken from them. The pediatrician is hospitalized after being hit on the head and loses his ability to speak. The fact that the midnight raid and abduction was undertaken by members of the Carabiniere has Commissioner Guido Brunetti stepping into the picture.Is this merely a case of illegal adoptions or something more? Watching Brunetti and his team slowly unwind the many spirals in this mystery is as enjoyable as getting more peeks into his charming family.
    • 3/5
      Moderately enjoyable continuation of the Commissario Guido Brunnetti series taking place in Venice. Not one of the more compelling mysteries. Addresses the problems of illegal adoptions by parents who can't have children.
    • 4/5
      Illegal adoptions lead to problems for the parents.
    • 4/5
      This was a tough read. Brunetti is called to the hospital when a doctor is brought in after a raid by the cabinieri. In the process of investigating the incident, Brunetti learns of the practice of 'selling' babies to infertile Italian couples. But that is not the only way laws, human and moral, are imposed to do damage.
    • 4/5
      Brunetti investigates the invasion of a pediatrician's home by another branch of law enforcement. The doctor, who acquired a baby illegally, faces multiple charges, most of which are suddenly dropped. Brunetti's investigation, however, connects with his colleague Inspector Vianello's investigation into pharmacy fraud. I missed the normal interaction between Brunetti and his family members in this installment. Their presence in a few scenes leaves the reader hungering for more. I also noted fewer descriptions of meals--both at home and in restaurants. Leon always includes social justice issues in her plots, but her outcomes tend to show how the system works rather than achieving the result true justice demands.
    • 4/5
      Commissario Guido Brunetti is awakened from his sleep to go to the scene of a home invasion that left its victim, a pediatrician, hospitalized and mute. The more Brunetti uncovers about the event and its causes, the less he likes it. Meanwhile, Inspector Vinaello’s months-long investigation to fraud involving some of Venice’s pharmacies is coming to a head. These investigative threads become tangled with tragic consequences.Leon explores a different social problem in the books in her Brunetti series. This book looks at infertility and black market babies. Brunetti reflects on his love for his children throughout the book, yet the children are largely absent from the novel, appearing only in one brief dinner scene. I enjoy the Brunetti family dynamics and I missed their good-natured banter. Brunetti finally got to the truth, as he usually does, but at a price that I suspect will haunt him.
    • 2/5
      Thank goodness this read is over. If this had been an ebook, I would not have finished it. Buuut... I bought a copy of this book at a used bookstore so I had to get my money's worth.

      I really expected an exciting story of illegal adoptions with the first chapter luring you in the plot from the hinted kidnapping of a pediatrician who is in the hospital due to life threatening injuries.

      And up to a certain point, the first chapter did sort of start with a good dose of action you'd expect from a thriller detective story. The problem is... well... after we see Detective Guido Brunetti ruffles his feathers and tries not to punch to Carabineri special forces for police brutality amid a potentially illegal raid, the story sort of fizzles into tedium.

      One of the problems of the plot is the fact pretty much everything pertaining to Dr. Gustavo Pedrolli's arrest is: "not in Guido's Jurisdiction". He is only supposed to investigate an assault that left a man with pretty severe neurological damage due to an inept rookie special force cop named Maravatti. Guido doesn't have access to the kid's possibly forged birth certificate (and the plot conveniently makes him give up because the Venice birth registry office is on strike even though the kid was supposed to be adopted in Verona so this plot hole should have been a non issue anyways). He never interviews the kid's biological mother. No heated meetings with a higher up in Internal Affairs for police brutality in what is supposed to be his jurisdiction. Um... I guess the only bit of real detective work he did within his realms of possibility is discovering some pharmacies hacked into the public healthcare system to program PCP consults for dead people but apparently nobody abused the system to either get drugs or embezzle money. And if either crime did occur, the book sort of ignores them because, well... I dunno either.

      Guido's boss Patti never really tells him to drop the assault case, but there really isn't any reason why he continues investigating the child ring because it "is not his jurisdiction." Quite frankly, outside of discovering the medical record hacking fraud, the only real police work he did in the whole book is enter a pharmacy that suffered a nasty break in, let a clerk tamper with the crime scene that is covered with bloodied glass shards in the floor (doesn't anyone watch CSI?), and somehow a mysterious super smart computer guy we never meet manages to salvage 99% of the computer hard drive in time for the rather unexciting finale. The book doesn't give us an exact year where it is supposed to take place, but it mentions flat computer screens now exist, so it has to happen after 2005. Even then, computer hard drives are quite brittle and I would be hard pressed to believe one that was damaged so badly by a clumsy burglar was salvageable. Heck, isn't Venice supposed to be surrounded by canals everywhere? If the crook had just dumped the computer into the water, well, I guess nobody would have found out about the ending, which is a bit of a non issue anyways. Yeah, these plot holes sure were not very well thought out.

      Now, after I have finished venting about the story, I have noticed other problems of the book that I wish to address. I have never read previous books from this author. The good news is that it looks like this is an episodic series so reading prior books is pretty much optional. The bad news (for me) is that I do not know if Guido was supposed to have some sort of character development in prior books.

      Here are some excerpts that made my eyes roll real hard:

      "Brunetti's eye was drawn to a pair of sleek, tanned female thighs which presented themselves to the beholder, proof of the ease which cellulite could be banished in a single week." WTF?

      There's more!

      "He saw a group of tourists approach and judged them to be Eastern Europeans, even before he gave the decision any conscious thought. He studied them as they walked past him: sallow complexions; blond hair, either natural or assisted in that direction; cheap shoes, one remove from cardboard; plastic jackets that had been dyed and treated in an unsuccessful attempt to make them resemble leather. Brunetti had always felt a regard for these tourists because they looked at things. Probably too poor to buy most of what they saw, they still gazed about them with respect an awe and unbridled delight. With their cheap clothes and their bad haircuts and their packed lunches, who knew what it cost them to come here?"

      I know Venice is an expensive touristy city and all, but the book really feels aged when it comes to well, not viewing Eastern European visitors as half starved savages. This particular scene is from Guido's POV. Isn't he supposed to be the good guy?

      "He's in La Paz (Bolivia). Ordinarily, the name of the city would have caused Brunetti to joke and ask if her father were there to arrange a deal in cocaine, but the mounting evidence that many, if not most, of the calls made on telefonini were intercepted and recorded dissuaded him from doing so."

      Yes, Guido sure thinks every rich tourist visiting a city in Latin America is only there to get drugs when that same person would have zero difficulty getting it in Italy in the first place. But how nice of him to view Latin America in such a way!

      "Paola had again observed, months ago, that he should spend a day counting the times he saw tits and ass. And here he found himself contemplating evidence, though, strangely enough, he was comforted by the sight of all that lovely flesh."

      CRIIIIINGE!!!!

      I won't even delve much into detail the nonsensical scene early in the book where a coffee shop Guido and another detective visit constantly when an African migrant gets all jittery the moment he sees the two cops. Umm... the guy has a fully valid legal work permit. Like... why would he go all psycho if the cops would have zero grounds to deport him in the first place?

      That scene made me notice yet another issue I felt with this book: if this book had been written by a rookie author today, it would have had an insanely low chance of getting trad published. Like, outside of the jittery migrant worker that doesn't even say a word in the whole book and an Indian or Pakistani taxi driver that scuttles through the city real fast, pretty much 100% of the characters of the book are fair white characters with the majority having blond hair and green eyes. If you are searching for even the smallest modicum of diversity in supporting characters, this book seems to be stuck in the 1950's. Now, I have never been to Venice, but I would assume 15 years ago you would see a more sizeable migrant community. The weird thing is that what really motivated me to finish this book was to see if I was lucky enough to spot more of these cringey passages. And yes, a minor character which is a spoiler is very ableist. *shudder*

      Like, I could accept Guido liked using his right hand reading Playboy in his spare time, but he is neither doing that, his wife spend 90% of her scenes in the book feeding him food and wine without showing any windows of her personality (except that autumn makes her bitchy for no reason whatsoever). Guido was not even supposed to continue researching the baby ring because "it isn't his jurisdiction", so what was the motivator? Oh yes, he is supposed to love kids.

      The weird thing is that in the two scenes he interacts with his 2 kids, it's like... they seem like Christmas tree decorations that say something fun they did at school and he isn't even paying attention to them. The kids could be zapped by a laserbeam and chances are Guido wouldn't care. I even assumed he was in a childless marriage the vast majority of the book.

      So in a nutshell, I have no idea how in the hell this plot hole ridden book managed to get a trad publication. To add salt into the wound, I swear the final 3 chapters read like a caffeinated first draft that was written 4 hours before the deadline and published without any corrections. This book is quite solid proof that a trad book is definitely not superior to a self published novel.
    • 4/5
       I have continued with the Donna Leon series and continue to enjoy them. Suffer the Little Children concerns illegal adoption with the usual twists and turns. The ending of this one was particularly well-crafted and different from other books in the series. I think that willingness to change up the plot with each book keeps the series fresh.
    • 5/5
      An exploration of the abuse of confidence and trust. It begins with an infertile couples attempt to have a child and spirals from there. Brunetti’s continues to investigate human frailties and greed. The Venetian atmosphere is well maintained.
    • 3/5
      Subtitle could be The Mystery That Wasn't. I always enjoy these books just for the location and feeling I've moved across the globe. This is one of the weaker in the series.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Suffer the Little Children - Donna Leon

    Suffer the Little Children

    Also by Donna Leon

    Death at La Fenice

    Death in a Strange Country

    The Anonymous Venetian

    A Venetian Reckoning

    Acqua Alta

    The Death of Faith

    A Noble Radiance

    Fatal Remedies

    Friends in High Places

    A Sea of Troubles

    Wilful Behaviour

    Uniform Justice

    Doctored Evidence

    Blood from a Stone

    Through a Glass, Darkly

    Suffer the Little Children

    Donna Leon

    imge

    Copyright © 2007 by Donna Leon and Diogenes Verlag AG Zurich

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 or permissions@groveatlantic.com.

    First published in 2007 in the United Kingdom by William Heinemann,

    The Random House Group Limited, London

    Published simultaneously in Canada

    Printed in the United States of America

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Leon, Donna.

    Suffer the little children / Donna Leon.

        p. cm.

    ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4906-1 (e-book)

    1. Brunetti, Guido (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—Italy—Venice—

    Fiction. 3. Venice (Italy)—Fiction. 4. Physicians—Fiction. 5. Kidnapping—

    Fiction. 6. Pharmacists—Fiction. I. Title.

    PS3562.E534S84

    2007

    813’.54—dc22 2006052610

    Atlantic Monthly Press

    an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

    841 Broadway

    New York, NY 10003

    Distributed by Publishers Group West

    www.groveatlantic.com

    For Ravi Mirchandani

    Welche Freude wird das sein,

    Wenn die Götter uns bedenken,

    Unsrer Liebe Kinder schenken,

    So liebe kleine Kinderlein!

    How happy we will be

    If the gods are gracious

    And bless our love with children,

    With darling little children!

    Die Zauberflöte

    The Magic Flute

    Mozart

    1

    ‘... and then my daughter-in-law told me that I should come in and tell you about it. I didn’t want to, and my husband told me I was an idiot to get involved with you because it would only lead to trouble, and he’s got enough trouble at the moment. He said it would be like the time when his uncle’s neighbour tapped into the ENEL line and started to steal his electricity, and he called to report it, and when they came, they told him he had to ...’

    ‘Excuse me, Signora, but could we go back to what happened last month?’

    ‘Of course, of course, but it’s just that it ended up costing him three hundred thousand lire.’

    ‘Signora.’

    ‘My daughter-in-law said if I didn’t do it, she’d call you herself, and since I’m the one who saw it, it’s probably better that I come and tell you, isn’t it?’

    ‘Certainly.’

    ‘So when the radio said it was going to rain this morning, I put my umbrella and boots by the door, just in case, but then it didn’t, did it?’

    ‘No, it didn’t, Signora. But you said you wanted to tell me about something unusual that happened in the apartment opposite you?’

    ‘Yes, that girl.’

    ‘Which girl, Signora?’

    ‘The young one, the pregnant one.’

    ‘How young do you think she was, Signora?’

    ‘Oh, maybe seventeen, maybe older, but maybe younger. I have two boys, you know, so I could tell if she was a boy, but she was a girl.’

    ‘And you said she was pregnant, Signora?’

    ‘Yes. And right at the end of it. In fact, that’s why I told my daughter-in-law, and that’s when she told me I had to come and tell you about it.’

    ‘That she was pregnant?’

    ‘That she had the baby.’

    ‘Where did she have the baby, Signora?’

    ‘Right there, in the calle across from my place. Not out in the calle, you understand. In the apartment across the calle. It’s a little way down from my place, opposite the house next door, really, but because the house sticks out a little bit, I can see into the windows, and that’s where I saw her.’

    ‘Where is this exactly, Signora?’

    ‘Calle dei Stagneri. You know it. It’s near San Bortolo, the calle that goes down to Campo de la Fava. I live down on the right side, and she was on the left, on the same side as that pizzeria, only we’re both down at the end, near the bridge. The apartment used to belong to an old woman – I never knew her name – but then she died and her son inherited it, and he started to rent it out, you know, the way people do, by the week, to foreigners, or by the month.

    ‘But when I saw the girl in there, and she was pregnant, I thought maybe he’d decided to rent it like a real apartment, you know, with a lease and all. And if she was pregnant, she’d be one of us and not a tourist, right? But I guess there’s more money if you rent by the week, especially to foreigners. And then you don’t have to pay the ...

    ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I suppose that isn’t important, is it? As I was saying, she was pregnant, so I thought maybe they were a young couple, but then I realized I never saw a husband in there with her.’

    ‘How long was she there, Signora?’

    ‘Oh, no more than a week, maybe even less. But long enough for me to get to know her habits, sort of.’

    ‘And could you tell me what they were?’

    ‘Her habits?’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘Well, I never saw too much of her. Only when she walked past the window and went into the kitchen. Not that she ever cooked anything, at least not that I saw. But I don’t know anything about the rest of the apartment, so I don’t know what she did, really, while she was there. I suppose she was just waiting.’

    ‘Waiting?’

    ‘For the baby to be born. They come when they want.’

    ‘I see. Did she ever notice you, Signora?’

    ‘No. I’ve got curtains, you see, and that place doesn’t. And the calle’s so dark that you can’t really see into the windows on the other side, but about two years ago, whenever it was, they put one of those new street lamps just across from her place, so it’s always light there at night. I don’t know how people stand them. We sleep with our shutters closed, but if you didn’t have them, I don’t know how you’d get a decent night’s sleep, do you?’

    ‘Not at all, Signora. You said you never saw her husband, but did you ever see any other people in there with her?’

    ‘Sometimes. But always at night. Well, in the evening, after dinner, not that I ever saw her cook anything. But she must have, mustn’t she, or someone must have taken her food? You have to eat when you’re pregnant. Why, I ate like a wolf when I was expecting my boys. So I’m sure she must have eaten, only I never saw her cook anything. But you can’t just leave a pregnant woman in a place and not feed her, can you?’

    ‘Certainly not, Signora. And who was it you saw in the apartment with her?’

    ‘Sometimes men would come in and sit around the table in the kitchen and talk. They smoked, so they’d open the window.’

    ‘How many men, Signora?’

    ‘Three. They sat in the kitchen, at the table, with the light on, and they talked.’

    ‘In Italian, Signora?’

    ‘Let me think. Yes, they spoke Italian, but they weren’t us. I mean they weren’t Venetian. I didn’t know the dialect, but it wasn’t Veneziano.’

    ‘And they just sat at the table and talked?’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘And the girl?’

    ‘I never saw her, not while they were there. After they left, sometimes she would come out into the kitchen and maybe get a glass of water. At least, I’d see her at the window.’

    ‘But you didn’t speak to her?’

    ‘No, as I told you, I never had anything to do with her, or with those men. I just watched her and wished she’d eat something. I was so hungry when I was pregnant with Luca and Pietro. I ate all the time. But I was lucky that I never gained too much ...’

    ‘Did the men eat, Signora?’

    ‘Eat? Why, no, I don’t think they ever did. That’s strange, isn’t it, now that you mention it? They didn’t drink anything, either. They just sat there and talked, like they were waiting for a vaporetto or something. After they left, sometimes she’d go into the kitchen, but she never turned the light on. That was the funny thing: she never turned the lights on at night, not anywhere in the apartment, at least anywhere I could see. I could see the men sitting there, but I saw her only during the day or, sometimes, when she walked past a window at night.’

    ‘And then what happened?’

    ‘Then one night I heard her calling out, but I didn’t know what she was saying. One of the words might have been mamma, but I’m not really sure. And then I heard a baby. You know the noise they make when they’re born? Nothing like it in the world. I remember when Luca was born ...’

    ‘Was anyone else there?’

    ‘What? When?’

    ‘When she had the baby.’

    ‘I didn’t see anyone, if that’s what you mean, but there must have been someone. You can’t just leave a girl to have a baby on her own, can you?’

    ‘At the time, Signora, did you wonder why she was living in the apartment alone?’

    ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I thought her husband was away or that she didn’t have one, and then the baby came too fast for her to get to the hospital.’

    ‘It’s only a few minutes to the hospital from there, Signora, isn’t it?’

    ‘I know, I know. But it can happen, you know, that it comes on you very fast. My two boys took a long time, but I’ve known women who had only a half-hour, or an hour, so I figured that’s what happened with her. I heard her, and then I heard the baby, and then I didn’t hear anything.’

    ‘And then what happened, Signora?’

    ‘The next day, or maybe it was the day after that – I don’t remember – I saw another woman, standing at the open window and talking on the telefonino.’

    ‘In Italian, Signora?’

    ‘In Italian? Wait a minute. Yes, yes, it was Italian.’

    ‘What did she say?’

    ‘Something like, Everything’s fine, We’ll see one another in Mestre tomorrow.’

    ‘Could you describe this woman, Signora?’

    ‘You mean what she looked like?’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘Oh, let me think a minute. She was about the same age as my daughter-in-law. She’s thirty-eight. Dark hair, cut short. Tall, like my daughter-in-law, but perhaps not as thin as she is. But, as I told you, I saw her only for a minute, when she was talking on the telefonino.’

    ‘And then?’

    ‘And then they were gone. The next day, there was no one in the apartment, and I didn’t see anyone there for a couple of weeks. They just vanished.’

    ‘Do you know if any of your neighbours noticed any of this, Signora?’

    ‘Only the spazzino. I saw him one day, and he said he knew there was someone in there because they left a garbage bag outside the door every morning, but he never saw anyone going in or out.’

    ‘Did any of the neighbours ever say anything to you about it?’

    ‘No, not to me. But I imagine some of them must have noticed that someone was in there, or heard something.’

    ‘Did you speak to anyone about this, Signora?’

    ‘No, not really. To my husband, but he told me not to have anything to do with it, that it wasn’t any of our business. If he knew I was here now, I don’t know what he’d do. We’ve never been involved with the police before, and it always leads to trouble ... oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that, not really, but you know how it is, I mean, you know how people think.’

    ‘Yes, Signora, I do. Can you remember anything else?’

    ‘No, not really.’

    ‘Do you think you’d recognize the girl again if you saw her?’

    ‘Maybe. But we look so different when we’re pregnant, especially at the end like she was. With Pietro, I looked like a ...’

    ‘Do you think you’d recognize any of the men, Signora?’

    ‘Maybe, maybe I would. But maybe I wouldn’t.’

    ‘And the woman?’

    ‘No, probably not. She was there, at the window, for only a minute and she was standing sort of sideways, like she was keeping her eye on something in the apartment. So no, not her.’

    ‘Can you think of anything else that might be important?’

    ‘No, I don’t think so.’

    ‘I’d like to thank you for coming to see us, Signora.’

    ‘I wouldn’t have if my daughter-in-law hadn’t made me. You see, I told her about it while it was going on, how strange it all was, with the men and no lights and all. It was something to talk about, you see. And then when she had the baby and then they all disappeared, well, my daughter-in-law told me I had to come and tell you about it. She said I might get into trouble if anything happened and you found out I saw her there and hadn’t come in to tell you. She’s like that, you see, my daughter-in-law, always afraid she’s going to do something wrong. Or that I will.’

    ‘I understand. I think she told you to do the right thing.’

    ‘Maybe. Yes, it’s probably a good thing I told you. Who knows what it’s all about, eh?’

    ‘Thank you again for your time, Signora. The Inspector will go downstairs with you and show you the way out.’

    ‘Thank you. Er ... ?’

    ‘Yes, Signora?’

    ‘My husband won’t have to find out that I’ve been here, will he?’

    ‘Certainly not from us, Signora.’

    ‘Thank you. I don’t want you to think anything bad of him, but he just doesn’t like us to get mixed up in things.’

    ‘I understand completely, Signora. You can be perfectly sure that he won’t find out.’

    ‘Thank you. And good morning.’

    ‘Good morning, Signora. Inspector Vianello, will you take the Signora to the front door?’

    2

    Gustavo Pedrolli lay on the edge of the sleep of the just, curled round the back of his wife. He was in that cloudy space between waking and sleeping, reluctant to trade his happiness for mere sleep. The day had brought him an emotion different from any he had ever known, and he refused to let himself drift away from the radiance of memory. He tried to remember when he had ever been this happy. Perhaps when Bianca had said she would marry him, or on the actual day of their wedding, the Miracoli filled with white flowers and Bianca stepping up to the landing from the gondola, as he hurried down the steps to take her hand and her into his care for ever.

    He had known happiness, certainly – on completing his medical studies and finally becoming un dottore, on being appointed assistant chief of paediatrics – but those happinesses were far removed from the flooding joy he had felt just before dinner, when he finished giving Alfredo his bath. He had fastened both sides of the diaper with practised hands and pulled on the flannel bottoms of his son’s pyjamas. Then he slipped the duck-covered pyjama top over his head, and when it emerged, had played their usual game of hunting for the child’s hands before pulling them one at a time through the sleeves. Alfredo squealed with delight, as surprised as his father at the sight of his tiny fingers as they peeped through the open ends of the sleeves.

    Gustavo picked him up by the waist, hefting him up and down as Alfredo waved his arms in the same rhythm. ‘And who’s a beautiful boy? And who’s his father’s darling?’ Gustavo asked. As always, Alfredo raised one of those clenched marvels, unfurled a finger, and placed it on his own nose. Dark eyes intent on his father’s, he pressed his broad nose flat to his face, then lifted his finger away, only to point to himself repeatedly, throwing his arms around and squealing all the while with delight.

    ‘That’s right, Alfredo is his papà’s darling, papà’s darling, papà’s darling.’ There followed more dangling, more lifting up, more waving. He did not toss the boy into the air: Bianca said the baby became too excited if they played like that before bedtime, so Gustavo merely raised him up and down repeatedly, occasionally drawing him close to kiss the end of his nose.

    He took the boy into his bedroom and carried him over to the cot. Above it hung a galaxy of floating, turning shapes and animals; the top of the dresser was a zoo. He hugged the boy to his chest, careful to exert only the gentlest of pressure, well aware of the fragility of those ribs. Alfredo squirmed, and Gustavo buried his face in the soft folds of his son’s neck.

    He moved his hands down and held the boy at arm’s length. ‘And who is Papà’s darling?’ he asked again in a singsong voice; he could not stop himself. Again Alfredo touched his own nose, and Gustavo felt his heart turn. The tiny fingers moved through the air until one of them rested on the tip of Gustavo’s nose, and the boy said something that sounded like ‘Papà’, waved his arms and gave a goofy, toothless smile.

    It was the first time Gustavo had heard the boy say the word, and he was so moved that one of his hands flew to his own heart. Alfredo fell against his shoulder; luckily, Gustavo had the presence of mind, and enough experience with frightened children, to make a joke of it and ask, ‘And who is trying to climb into his papà’s sweater?’ Holding Alfredo against his chest, he pulled at one side of his cardigan and wrapped it around the boy’s back, laughing out loud to show what a wonderful new game this was.

    ‘Oh, no, you can’t try to hide in there. Not at all. It’s time to go to sleep.’ He lifted the boy and placed him on his back in the cot. He pulled up the woollen blanket, making sure his son’s chest was covered.

    ‘Sweet dreams, my little prince,’ he said, as he had said every night since Alfredo had begun to sleep in the cot. At the door he lingered, but only for a moment, so that the boy would not develop the habit of trying to delay his father’s exit from the room. He looked back at the tiny lump and found tears in his eyes. Embarrassed at the thought that Bianca would see them, he wiped them away as he turned from the open door.

    When he reached the kitchen, Bianca had her back to him, just pouring the penne through the strainer. He opened the refrigerator and took a bottle of Moët from the bottom shelf. He put it on the counter, then took a pair of crystal flutes, from a set of twelve that Bianca’s sister had given them as a wedding present.

    ‘Champagne?’ she asked, as curious as she was pleased.

    ‘My son called me Papà,’ he said and peeled the golden foil from the cork. Avoiding her sceptical glance, he said, ‘Our son. But just this once, because he called me Papà, I want to call him my son for an hour, all right?’

    Seeing his expression, she abandoned the steaming pasta and moved to his side. She picked up the glasses and tilted them towards him. ‘Fill both of these, please, so we can toast your son.’ Then she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

    As in the first days of their marriage, the pasta grew cold in the sink, and they drank the champagne in bed. Long after it was gone, they went into the kitchen, naked and famished. Ignoring the dry pasta, they ate the tomato sauce on thick slices of bread, standing at the sink and feeding chunks to one another, then washed it down with half a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Then they went back to the bedroom.

    He lay suspended in the afterglow of the evening and marvelled that, for some months now, he had feared that Bianca had somehow changed in her ... in her what? It was natural – he knew this from his practice – for a mother to be distracted by the arrival of a new child and thus to seem less interested in or responsive to the father. But that night, with the two of them behaving like teenagers gone wild at the discovery of sex, had eliminated any uncertainties.

    And he had heard that word: his son had called him Papà. His heart filled again and he slid himself closer to Bianca, half hoping she would wake and turn to him. But she slept on, and he thought of the morning, and the early train to Padova he had to catch, so he began to will himself towards sleep, ready now to drift off to that gentle land, perhaps to dream of another son, or a daughter, or both.

    He became vaguely conscious of a noise beyond the door to the bedroom, and he forced himself to listen, to hear if it was Alfredo calling or crying. But the ringing noise was gone, and so he followed it, his lips curved in memory of that word.

    As Doctor Gustavo Pedrolli sank into the first and most profound sleep of the night, the sound came again, but he no longer heard it, nor did his wife, sleeping beside him, naked and exhausted and satisfied. Nor did the child in the other room, sunk in happiness and dreaming, perhaps, of the wonderful new game he had learned that night, hidden and safe under the protection of the man he now knew was Papà.

    Time passed, and dreams played in the minds of the sleepers. They saw motion and colour; one of them saw something that resembled a tiger; and all of them slept on.

    The night exploded. The front door of the apartment burst inward and slammed against the wall: the handle gouged a hole in the plaster. A man leaped into the apartment: he wore a ski mask, something that resembled a camouflage uniform, and heavy boots; and he carried a machine-gun. Another masked man, similarly uniformed, followed him. Behind them came another man in a dark uniform but without a mask. Two more men in the same dark uniform remained outside the house.

    The two masked men ran through the living room and down the hall towards the bedrooms. The man without a mask followed more cautiously. One of the masked men opened the first door, and seeing it was a bathroom, left it open and moved down the hallway towards an open door. He saw the cot, the mobiles moving slowly in the draught created by the open door.

    ‘He’s here,’ the man called out, making no attempt to keep his voice down.

    The second masked man went to the door of the bedroom opposite. Still holding his machine-gun, he ran in, the other man close behind him. The two people in the bed sat up, startled by the light from the hallway: the third man had switched on the light before going into the room where the baby slept.

    The woman screamed and pulled the covers up over her breasts. Dottor Pedrolli launched himself from the bed so suddenly that the first intruder was taken by surprise. Before he could react, the naked man was on him, one fist crashing down on his head, the other slamming into his nose. The intruder cried out in pain and went down as Pedrolli screamed to his wife, ‘Call the police, call the police!’

    The second masked figure raised his gun and pointed it at Pedrolli. He said something, but the mask over his mouth distorted the words, and no one in the room could understand them. Pedrolli was beyond hearing him, anyway, and came at him, hands raised to attack. Instinctively, the masked man reacted. Raising the butt of his gun towards the head of the approaching figure, he caught him above the left ear.

    The woman screamed, and from the other room the baby sent up an answering wail, that high keening noise of infant panic. She pushed back the covers and, driven by instinct and no longer conscious of her nakedness, ran towards the door.

    She stopped abruptly when the man without a mask stepped into the doorway, blocking her escape. She raised her arms to cover her breasts in a gesture she was not conscious of making. Seeing the tableau in the room, he moved quickly to the side of the man with the rifle that pointed at the naked man who lay motionless at his feet. ‘You fool,’ he said and grabbed at the thick material of the other’s jacket. He pulled the man around in a semicircle and pushed him stumbling away. He turned back towards the woman and raised his hands, palms towards her. ‘The baby’s all right, Signora. Nothing will happen to him.’

    She stood, frozen in panic, unable to scream.

    The tension was broken by the masked man on the floor, who moaned and then struggled, as if drunkenly, to his feet. He put one gloved hand over his nose, and when he pulled it away he seemed shocked by the sight of his own blood. ‘He broke my nose,’ he said in a muffled voice, then pulled his mask over his face and let it fall to the floor. Blood continued to drip from his nose on to the front of his jacket. As he turned towards the man who appeared to be in

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