Read Fatal Remedies for Free Online

current of raw fear running through her. Perhaps her exposure to real violence, even though it was no more than violence against property, would have been a sufficient gesture against injustice. And perhaps she would have time to realize that Brunetti’s career would be put at risk by her action. He glanced down at his watch and saw that he had just enough time to get to the station for the train to Treviso. At the thought of being able to deal with something as straightforward as a bank robbery, Brunetti felt himself filled with a sense of happy relief.
     
    * * * *
     
    5
     
     
    During the journey back from Treviso late in the afternoon, Brunetti felt no sense of success, even though the witness had identified a photo of the man the police believed was the one who appeared on the video and said he would be willing to testify against him. Feeling he had to do it, Brunetti explained who the suspect was, as well as the possible dangers of identifying and testifying against him. Much to his surprise, Signor Iacovantuono, who worked as a cook in a pizzeria, hadn’t been worried about that, indeed, did not seem to be at all interested. He had seen a crime committed. He recognized photos of the man accused of it. And so to him it was his duty as a citizen to testify against the criminal, regardless of the risk to himself or his family. He had seemed, if anything, puzzled at Brunetti’s continued assurances that they would be provided with police protection.
     
    More unsettling, Signor Iacovantuono was from Salerno and hence one of those criminally disposed southerners whose presence here in the north was said to be destroying the social fabric of the nation. ‘But, Commissario,’ he had insisted in his heavily accented voice, ‘if we don’t do something about these people, what life will our children have?’
     
    Brunetti was unable to free himself from the echo of these words and began to fear that his days were now to be haunted by the baying of the moral hounds that had been unleashed in his conscience by Paola’s actions of the night before. It had all seemed so simple to the dark-haired pizzaiolo from Salerno: wrong had been done; it was his duty to see that it was punished. Even when warned of the potential danger, he had remained adamant in his need to do what he thought to be right.
     
    As the sleeping fields on the outskirts of Venice swept past the window of the train, Brunetti wondered how it could seem so simple to Signor Iacovantuono and yet so complicated to him. Perhaps the fact that it was illegal to rob banks made it easier. After all, society was in general agreement about that. And no law said it was wrong to sell a ticket to Thailand or the Philippines; nor that it was illegal to buy one. Nor, for that matter, did the law concern itself with what a person chose to do when he got there, at least not laws that had ever been applied in Italy. Rather like those against blasphemy, they existed in a kind of juridical limbo for the existence of which no real proof had ever been seen.
     
    For the last few months, even longer than that, articles had been appearing in national newspapers and magazines in which various experts analyzed the international traffic in sex-tourism statistically, psychologically, sociologically - in any of those ways the press loved to chew up a hot topic. Brunetti could remember some of them, even recalled a photo of prepubescent girls, said to be working in a brothel in Cambodia, their budding breasts an offence to his eyes, their small faces blotted out by some sort of visual computer static.
     
    He had read the Interpol reports on the subject, seen how the estimates of the numbers involved, both as clients and as - he could find no other word - victims varied by as much as half a million. He had read the numbers and part of him had always chosen to believe the lowest numbers given: his humanity would be soiled were he to accept the highest.
     
    It was the most recent article