However interesting the thought of pursuing this thesis, Brunetti was more interested in information, and so he asked, ‘And is Judge Coltellini among them?’

Jokes fled and Brusca’s voice and face grew bleak. ‘She comes from greedy people, Guido.’ Brusca paused and then added, as if revealing a mystery he had just resolved, ‘It’s strange. We think that love of music can run in families, or maybe the ability to paint. So why not greed?’ As Brunetti remained silent, he asked, ‘You ever think about that, Guido?’

‘Yes,’ answered Brunetti, who had.

‘Ah,’ Brusca allowed himself to say and then went on, abandoning the general for the specific, ‘Her grandfather was a greedy man, and her father is to this day. She learned it from them, came by it honestly, you might say. If her mother weren’t dead, I’d go so far as to say the judge would consider an offer to sell her if she could.’

‘Did you ever have trouble with her?’

‘No, not at all,’ Brusca said, looking genuinely surprised by the question. ‘As I told you, I just sit there in my tiny office at the Commune and I keep track of all of the employee records: when people get hired, how much they earn, when they retire. I do my job, and people talk to me and tell me things, and occasionally I have to make a phone call and ask a question. To clarify something. And sometimes the answers people give me prompt me to be surprised, and then they tell me more about it, or they tell me other things. And over the years they’ve come to think it’s my business to know about everything.’

‘And people trust you to take things like this,’ Brunetti said, ‘out of the Tribunale.’

Brusca nodded, but it was such a sober nod that Brunetti asked, ‘Because you are pure of heart and clean of limb?’