manage to discover anything about the cause of the postponements in the law cases listed on the paper. The computer system at the Courthouse was down, and because the two people who were in charge of it were on vacation, the database would not be available for at least a week. Unfortunately, this exclusion applied equally, she discovered, to both authorized and unauthorized attempts to consult the information it contained.
Hoping for some news of success before he went on vacation, Brunetti called down to her and asked if she had had time to follow up on Fontana’s landlord, Marco Puntera. She came close to apologizing for not having been able to do so, explaining that her friend no longer worked at the bank and she had been so busy drawing up Vice-Questore Patta’s instructions for the holiday period that she had been too busy to see what she could find about Signor Puntera. She promised to get to it when the Vice-Questore was safely off to the island of Ponza, where he and his family were to be guests of the head of the city council of Venice, who had a summer home there.
‘Yet another way to ensure the complete objectivity of the forces of order in any investigation of local politicians,’ Brunetti said when he heard the name of Patta’s host.
‘I’m sure the Vice-Questore is resistant to blandishments of any kind,’ Signorina Elettra said in response to Brunetti’s suggestion. ‘You know how often he speaks of the need to avoid even the possibility of favouritism of any sort.’
‘I know well how he speaks of it,’ Brunetti said, and then they turned their attention to his absence during vacation and what needed to be done while Brunetti was gone. She wished him a buona vacanza and said she’d see him in two weeks.
Taking her good wishes as permission to leave, Brunetti went home and began to pack things other than books.
The next morning, the Brunettis got the 9:50 Eurostar, changed in Verona, and headed north with mounting enthusiasm. In Bolzano, they would change to a local train to Merano, and then the Vinchgau trenino to Malles, where the car would be waiting for them. Soon after they left Verona, they were travelling through a universe of grapevines. There was some poem that Brunetti had been forced to read in his third-year English class, something about cannon on the left and cannon on the right; only in this case it was grapevines, kilometre after kilometre of them, all pruned to an identical size; and for all he knew, the grapes as well identical in variety and size.
The time passed as time does in a train: Brunetti, happy to be in open country, looked out the window; Chiara talked to the two young people sharing the compartment with them; while Raffi, seated opposite his mother in one of the centre seats, hid under his headphones, occasionally nodding his head to the rhythm. At one point, as his head took on a particularly metronomic beat, Paola glanced up from her book and managed to confuse the five other people in the compartment by saying, in English, ‘Unheard melodies are indeed sweeter’, whereupon she returned her attentions to the observations of Mr James.
Brunetti tuned in and out of the conversation taking place between his daughter and the people sitting in the window seats. He gathered that they were going to spend two weeks with friends in Bolzano, where they would listen to music and rest. Since both of them had remarked on how easy school was and how boring life in general was, Brunetti was tempted to ask them what they were going to rest from, but he instead devoted his attention to the grapes. Miniature tractors were patrolling the aisles between the rows of vines, spraying them. As the train began to slow for its approach into Trento, he noticed that the driver of one of the tractors was wearing the same sort of white protective suit that the crime squad wore, save that his entire head was covered with a hood and a mask.
Brunetti tapped Paola’s knee to get her attention and pointed out the window. ‘Looks like a Martian, doesn’t he?’ Brunetti asked.
Paola stared out the window for some time, then looked across at Brunetti. ‘See why we eat bio fruit?’ she asked.
As if the name of an edible item had penetrated his headphones and prompted an instinct never in abeyance, Raffi said in a surprisingly loud voice, ‘I’m hungry.’ Paola,