CB19 A Question of Belief (2010) by Donna Leon Page B

Tribunale are at my disposal, should I choose to ask about them.’
    ‘Haven’t you?’ Brunetti asked.
    ‘Never before,’ she said. ‘I’ve always thought I’d keep him in reserve.’ She searched for the proper simile. ‘Like a squirrel burying a nut, in case it turns out to be a long, hard winter.’
    ‘To me, it sounds more like the wolf in “ Cappuccetto Rosso ”,’ Brunetti said, ‘dressed up as the Grandmother and just waiting for the right time to gobble her up.’
    ‘But I don’t want to gobble him up,’ she insisted. ‘I just want to ask him some questions.’
    ‘If Paris was worth a Mass,’ Brunetti observed, ‘then perhaps information about Fontana is worth a coffee.’
    Primly, she said, ‘It’s not you who has to have it with him.’
    ‘I know,’ replied Brunetti, not at all certain how much of her tale was truth, how much art, not that one was ever sure of that with Signorina Elettra. To get her away from the subject, he asked, ‘And Signor Puntera?’
    ‘A friend of mine at the bank once worked as a consultant for him, I think. I’ll see if he’s still working in Venice and ask him what he knows.’
    Brunetti could not remember, in all these years, that Signorina Elettra had ever used a female source. ‘Is it easier to get men to talk?’ he asked.
    ‘You mean, easier than getting women to talk?’
    ‘Yes.’
    She tilted her head and looked at the closed door to Patta’s office. ‘I suppose it is. Women are much more discreet than men, at least when it comes to boasting. Or we boast about different things.’
    ‘Is that why you prefer to use men?’ he asked, not aware until after he had asked the question of how crass it made her sound.
    ‘No,’ she answered calmly. ‘It would be more dishonest to get information from women this way.’
    ‘Dishonest?’ he repeated.
    ‘Of course it’s dishonest, what I do. I’m taking advantage of people’s innocence and betraying their trust. You want that not to be dishonest?’
    ‘Is it more dishonest than breaking into someone’s computer system?’ he asked, though he thought it was.
    She gave him a puzzled glance, as if amazed that he could ask such an obvious question. ‘Of course it is, Dottore. Information systems are built to stop you from breaking in: people know you’re going to do it or try to do it. So in a sense, they’re warned, and they take precautions, or they should. But when people tell you things in confidence or trust you with information they think you’re not going to repeat, they have no defences.’ She reached forward and touched a few keys, but nothing changed on the screen.
    ‘So I’ll go and have a coffee with him and see what he can tell me about Araldo Fontana, model worker.’
    ‘For what it’s worth,’ Brunetti said, ‘my source was convinced that there’s nothing to tell about him. He said Fontana is a decorous man; he even seemed surprised that I should want to know anything about him.’
    ‘ “Decorous,” ’ she repeated, savouring the word. ‘How long has it been since I’ve heard that?’ she asked with a small smile.
    ‘Probably too long,’ Brunetti said. ‘It’s a nice thing to say about a person.’
    ‘Yes it is, isn’t it?’ Signorina Elettra agreed and then said nothing for a long time. ‘I suppose it could be said about my friend at the Tribunale.’
    ‘The clerk?’
    ‘Yes.’ Brunetti waited, but all she said was, ‘I’ll ask him about Fontana.’
    ‘See if he knows anything about a Judge Coltellini, if you can,’ Brunetti requested. He had hesitated before, but if Fontana was a dead end, perhaps she had best take a look at the other name that had appeared on the papers.
    ‘Luisa?’
    ‘Yes. Do you know her?’
    ‘No, but I used to work with her sister. At the bank. She was one of the assistant directors. Nice person.’
    ‘She ever have anything to say about her sister?’
    ‘Not that I can remember,’ Signorina Elettra said. ‘But I suppose I can