Uniform Justice by Donna Leon Page A

she was shot?’
    ‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m waiting for – the police report.’
    ‘Where is she now?’ Brunetti asked.
    ‘That’s something else I’m trying to find out.’
    ‘She’s not with her husband?’
    ‘I don’t know. I had a look at the files at the Comune, but she’s not listed as resident at his address, even though they own the apartment jointly.’ So habituated had Brunetti become to her useful criminality that it did not for an instant trouble him that a person with greater sympathy for legal precision would translate her phrase ‘had a look at’ as ‘broke into’.
    There could certainly be many explanations for why Moro’s wife was not registered as resident at his Dorsoduro address, though the most obvious interpretation was that she did not live with her husband. ‘Let me know when you get hold of the report on the shooting,’ he said, wondering if this would launch her into further denunciation. Like most Venetians, Brunetti had no interest in hunting, judging it an endeavour that was expensive, inconvenient, and excessively loud. Further, experience as a policeman as well as his habit of reflecting upon human behaviour had too often suggested a frightening correlation between a man’s interest in firearms and feelings of sexual inadequacy.
    ‘It could have been a warning,’ she said without preamble.
    ‘I know,’ he answered, having thought this the instant she told him about the shooting. ‘But of what?’

7
    THE SCEPTICISM THAT had seeped into Brunetti’s bones over the years forced him to suspect that Signora Moro’s accident might have been something other than that. She must have cried out when she was shot, and the sound of a woman’s scream would surely have brought any hunter running. Low as his opinion of hunters was, Brunetti could not believe that one of them would leave a woman lying on the ground, bleeding. That conviction led him to the consideration of what sort of person would be capable of doing so, which in its turn led him to consider what other sorts of violence such a person might be capable of.
    He added to these speculations the fact that Moro had served in Parliament for some time but had resigned about two years ago. Coincidence could link events either in kind or subject or time: the same sort of thing happened to different people or different things happened to the same person, or things happened at the same time. Moro had resigned from Parliament around the time his wife was injured. Ordinarily, this would hardly arouse suspicion, even in someone as instinctively mistrustful as Brunetti, were it not that the death of their son provided a point from which to begin a process of speculative triangulation around the ways in which the third event might be related to the other two.
    Brunetti thought of Parliament in the way most Italians thought of their mothers-in-law. Not due the loyalties created by ties of blood, a mother-in-law still demanded obedience and reverence while never behaving in a manner that would merit either. This alien presence, imposed upon a person’s life by sheerest chance, made ever-increasing demands in return for the vain promise of domestic harmony. Resistance was futile, for opposition inevitably led to repercussions too devious to be foreseen.
    He lifted the phone and dialled his home number. When the machine answered after four rings, he hung up without speaking, bent down to his bottom drawer, and took out the phone book. He flipped it open to the Ps and kept turning pages until he found Perulli, Augusto. He tossed the book back into the drawer and dialled the number.
    After the third ring a man’s voice answered. ‘Perulli.’
    ‘This is Brunetti. I need to speak to you.’
    After a long pause, the man said, ‘I wondered when you’d call.’
    ‘Yes,’ was Brunetti’s only response.
    ‘I can see you in half an hour. For an hour. Then not until tomorrow.’
    ‘I’ll come now,’ Brunetti said.
    He