Suffer the Little Children by Donna Leon Page A

professional manner. After a moment, she asked, ‘So what do we do?’
    â€˜Pedrolli and his wife apparently went to a clinic – I assume it’s a private clinic – in Verona. A fertility clinic, or at least one that works with problems of fertility. I’d like you to see if you can find one in Verona that specializes in fertility problems. Two of the other couples who adopted illegally were patients there.’
    She said, calmer now that she had a task to focus on, ‘I suppose it shouldn’t be difficult to find. After all, how many fertility clinics can there be in Verona?’ He left her to it and went upstairs.
    It was more than an hour later when she came to his office. He saw that she wore a green skirt that fell to mid-calf. Below it were a pair of boots that put Marvilli’s to shame.
    â€˜Yes, Signorina?’ he asked when he had finished examining the boots.
    â€˜Who would have believed it, sir?’ she asked, apparently having forgiven him for his attempt to defend the Carabinieri.
    â€˜Believed what?’
    â€˜That there are three fertility clinics, or private clinics with specialist departments for fertility problems, in or near Verona?’
    â€˜And the public hospital?’
    â€˜I checked. They handle them through the obstetrical unit.’
    â€˜So that makes four,’ Brunetti observed. ‘In Verona.’
    â€˜Extraordinary, isn’t it?’
    He nodded. A broad reader, Brunetti had been aware for years of the sharp decline in sperm counts among European men, and he had also followed with distress the publicity campaign that had helped defeat a referendum that would have aided fertility research. The positions many politicians had taken – former Fascists in favour of artificial insemination; former Communists following the lead of the Church – had left Brunetti battered both in spirit and in mind.
    â€˜If you’re sure they went to a clinic there, then all I’ll have to do is find their medical service numbers: they’d have to give them, even for a private clinic.’
    When Signorina Elettra had first arrived at the Questura, such a statement would have impelled Brunetti into an impromptu lecture on a citizen’s right to privacy, in this case the sacred privacy that must exist between a doctor and his patient, followed by a few words about the inviolability of access to a person’s medical history. ‘Yes,’ he answered simply.
    He saw that she wanted to add something and raised his chin questioningly.
    â€˜It would probably be easier to check their phone records and see what numbers they called in Verona,’ she suggested. Brunetti no longerenquired as to how she would go about obtaining those.
    He watched as she wrote down Pedrolli’s name, then she looked at him and asked, ‘Does his wife use his name or her own?’
    â€˜Her own. It’s Marcolini: first name Bianca.’
    She glanced at him and made a small noise of either affirm ation or surprise. ‘Marcolini,’ she repeated softly and then, ‘I’ll see what I can find out,’ and left.
    After she was gone, Brunetti thought about who might be able to provide him with the names of the other people the Carabinieri had arrested. Quicker, perhaps, to try the existing bureaucratic channels and simply ask the Carabinieri themselves.
    He started by calling the central command at Riva degli Schiavoni and asking for Marvilli, only to learn that the Captain was out on duty and not available by telephone. Forty minutes later, Brunetti had spoken to Marvilli’s commander as well as to those in Verona and Brescia, but each of them said he was not at liberty to divulge the names of the people who had been arrested. Even when Brunetti claimed that he was calling at the order of his superior, the Questore of Venice, no information was forthcoming. When he requested that the guard be removed from in front of Dottor