‘I was going to San Francisco for Christmas,’ she continued. ‘So I left early and spent three days in Tokyo. I saw her family.’ Again, a long pause. ‘Then I went to San Francisco.’


Flavia came back from the kitchen, balancing a silver tray with three tall champagne flutes on one hand, the other wrapped around the neck of a bottle of Dom Perignon as if she were carrying a tennis racquet. No stinting here, not on the after-breakfast champagne.


She had heard Brett’s last words and asked, ‘Are you telling Guido about our happy Christmas?’ The use of his first name did not go unnoticed by any of them, nor did her emphasis on ‘happy’.


Brunetti took the tray and set it down on the table; Flavia poured champagne liberally into the glasses. Bubbles rushed over the rim of one of them, spilled down the side and over the edge of the tray, racing towards the book that still lay open on the table. Brett nipped it closed and placed it on the sofa beside her. Flavia handed Brunetti a glass, put one on the table in front of the place where she had been sitting, and passed the third to Brett.


‘Cin Cin,’ Flavia toasted with bright artificiality, and they raised their glasses to one another. ‘If we’re going to talk about San Francisco, then I think I need at least champagne.’ She sat down facing them and took something too big to be called a sip from her glass.


Brunetti gave her an inquiring glance, and she rushed to explain. ‘I was singing there. Tosca. God, what a disaster.’ In a gesture so consciously theatrical it mocked itself, she placed the back of her hand to her forehead, closed her eyes for a moment, then continued, ‘We had a German director who had a “concept”. Unfortunately, his concept was to update the opera to make it relevant,’ which word she pronounced with special contempt, ‘and stage it during the Romanian Revolution, and Searpia was supposed to be Ceaucescu, or however that terrible man pronounced his name. I was still supposed to be the reigning diva, but of Bucharest, not Rome.’ She draped the hand over her eyes at the memory but forged ahead. ‘I remember that there were tanks and machine guns, and at one point I had to hide a hand grenade in my cleavage.’


‘Don’t forget the telephone,’ Brett said, covering her mouth and pressing her lips closed so as not to laugh.


‘Oh, sweet heavens, the telephone. It tells you how much I’ve tried to put it out of my memory that I didn’t remember it.’ She turned to Brunetti, took a mouthful far more suited to mineral water than champagne, and continued, eyes alive at the memory. ‘In the middle of “Visse d’arte”, the director wanted me to try to telephone for help. So there I was, stretched across a sofa, trying to convince God that I didn’t deserve any of this, and I didn’t, when the Searpia — I think he was a real Romanian - I certainly never understood a word he said.’ She paused a moment and then added, ‘Or sang.’


Brett interrupted to correct her. ‘He was Bulgarian, Flavia.’


Flavia’s wave, even encumbered with the glass, was airily dismissive. ‘Same thing, cara. They all look like potatoes and stink of paprika. And they all shout so, especially the sopranos.’ She finished her champagne and paused long enough to refill her glass. ‘Where was I?’


‘On the sofa, I think, pleading with God,’ Brett suggested.


‘Ah, yes. And then the Scarpia, a great, lumbering clod of a man, he tripped over the telephone wire and pulled it out of the wall. So there I lay on the sofa, line to God cut off, and, beyond the baritone, I could see the director in the wings, waving at me like a madman. I think he wanted me to plug it back in and use it, put the call through any way I could.’ She sipped, smiled at Brunetti with a warmth that drove him to sip at his own champagne, and continued. ‘But an artist has to have some standards,’ glancing now at Brett, ‘or as you Americans say, has to draw a line in the sand.’


She stopped and Brunetti picked up his cue. He said it. ‘What did you do?’


‘I picked up the receiver and sang into it, just as if I had someone on the other end, just as if no one had seen it pulled from the wall.’ She set her glass down on the table, stood and stretched her arms out in agonized cruciform, then, utterly without warning, she began to sing the last phrases of the aria. ‘ “Nell’ora del dolor perch è , Signor, ah perch è me ne rimuneri cosi?” ‘ How did she do it? From a normal speaking voice, with no preparation, right up to those solidly floated notes?


Brunetti laughed outright, spilling some champagne down the front of his shirt. Brett set her glass on the table and clapped both hands to the sides of her mouth.


Flavia, as calmly as if she’d just gone into the kitchen to check on the roast and found it done, sat back down in her chair and continued her story. ‘Scarpia had to turn his back on the audience, he was laughing so hard. It was the first thing he’d done in a month that made me like him. I almost regretted having to kill him a few minutes later. The director was hysterical during the intermission, screaming at me that I’d ruined his production, swearing he’d never work with me again. Well, that’s certain, isn’t it? The reviews were terrible.’


‘Flavia,’ Brett chided, ‘it was the reviews of the production that were terrible; your reviews were wonderful.’


As if explaining something to a child, Flavia said, ‘My reviews are always wonderful, cara,’ Just like that. She turned her attention to Brunetti. ‘It was into this fiasco that she came,’ she said, pointing to Brett, ‘for Christmas with me and my children.’ She shook her head a few times. ‘She came in from taking that young woman’s body to Tokyo. No, it wasn’t a happy Christmas.’


Brunetti decided that, champagne or not, he still wanted to know more about the death of Brett’s assistant. ‘Was there any question at the time that it might not have been an accident?’


Brett shook her head, glass forgotten in front of her. ‘No. At one time or another, almost all of us had slipped when walking on the edge of the dig. One of the Chinese archaeologists had fallen and broken his ankle about a month before. So at the time we all believed that it was an accident. It might have been,’ she added with an absolute lack of conviction.


‘She worked on the exhibition here?’ he asked.


‘Not the opening. I came here alone for that. But Matsuko oversaw the packing, when the pieces left for China.’


‘Were you here?’ Brunetti asked.


Brett hesitated a long time, glanced across at Flavia, bowed her head, and answered, ‘No, I wasn’t.’


Flavia reached again for the bottle and poured more champagne into their glasses, though hers was the only glass that needed filling.


No one spoke for a while, and then Flavia asked Brett, making it a statement, not a question, ‘She didn’t speak Italian, did she?’


‘No, she didn’t,’ Brett answered.


‘But both she and Semenzato spoke English, as I remember.’


‘What difference does that make?’ Brett asked, her voice edged with an anger Brunetti sensed but couldn’t fathom.


Flavia made a tsking sound with her tongue and turned in feigned exasperation to Brunetti. ‘Maybe it’s true what people say about us Italians, and we do have a greater sympathy with dishonesty than other people. You see, don’t you?’


He nodded. ‘It means,’ he explained to Brett when he saw that Flavia would not, ‘that she couldn’t deal with people here except through Semenzato. They had a common language.’


‘Wait a minute,’ Brett said. She understood now what they meant, but that didn’t mean she liked it. ‘So now Semenzato is guilty, just like that, and Matsuko is, too? Just because they both spoke English?’


Neither Brunetti nor Flavia said a word.


‘I worked with Matsuko for three years,’ Brett insisted. ‘She was an archaeologist, a curator. You two can’t just decide she was a thief, you can’t sit there and play judge and jury and decide she’s guilty without any information, any proof.’ Brunetti noted that she seemed to have no problem with their equal assumption of Semenzato’s guilt.


Still, neither of them answered her. Almost a full minute passed. Finally, Brett sat back in the sofa, then reached forward and picked up her glass. But she didn’t drink, merely swirled the champagne around in the glass and then put it back down on the table. ‘Occam’s Razor,’ she finally said in English, voice resigned.


Brunetti waited for Flavia to speak, thinking this might make some sense to her, but Flavia said nothing. So he asked, ‘Whose razor?’


‘William of Occam,’ Brett repeated, though she kept her eyes on her glass. ‘He was a medieval philosopher. English, I think. He had a theory that said the correct explanation to any problem was usually the one that made the simplest use of the available information.’


Signor William, Brunetti caught himself thinking, was clearly not an Italian. He glanced across at Flavia and would have sworn that her raised eyebrow carried the same message.


‘Flavia, could I have something different to drink?’ Brett asked, holding out the half-full glass. Brunetti noticed Flavia’s initial hesitation, the suspicious glance she cast at him, then back at Brett, and he thought how very similar it was to the look Chiara gave him when she was told to do something that would take her out of the room where he and Paola were talking about something they wanted to keep secret from her. With a fluid motion, she got up from her chair, took Brett’s glass, and walked towards the kitchen. At the door, she paused long enough to call back over her shoulder, ‘I’ll get you some mineral water. I’ll see that it takes me a long time to open the bottle.’ The door slammed and she was gone.


What was that all about? Brunetti wondered.


When Flavia was gone, Brett told him. ‘Matsuko and I were lovers. I never told Flavia, but she knows anyway.’ A hard clang from the kitchen confirmed the truth of this.


‘It began in Xian, about a year after she got to the dig.’ Then, to make things clearer, ‘We worked on the exhibition together, and she wrote a chapter for the catalogue.’


‘Whose idea was it that she collaborate on the show?’ Brunetti asked.


Brett made no attempt to hide her embarrassment. ‘Mine? Hers? I don’t remember. It just happened. We were talking about it one night.’ Under the bruises, she blushed. ‘And, in the morning, it had been decided that she would write the article and come to New York to help set up the show.’


‘But you came to Venice alone?’ he asked.


She nodded. ‘We both went back to China after the New York opening. I went back to New York to close things down there and then Matsuko came to London to help me set up for the opening. We both went back to China right after that. Then I went back to pack it up for Venice. I thought she’d join me here for the opening, but she refused. She said she wanted . . .’ Brett’s voice dried up. She cleared her throat and repeated, ‘She said she wanted at least this part of the show to be all mine, so she wouldn’t come.’


‘But she came when it was over? When the pieces were sent back to China?’


‘She came from Xian for three weeks,’ Brett said. Brett stopped speaking and looked down at her clasped hands, muttering, ‘I don’t believe this. I don’t believe this,’ which, to Brunetti, suggested that she did.


‘Things were over between us by then, when she came here. I’d met Flavia at the opening. I told Matsuko when I got back to Xian about a month after the show opened here.’


‘How did she react when you told her?’


‘How would you expect her to react, Guido? She was gay, little more than a kid, caught between two cultures, raised in Japan and educated in America. When I went back to Xian after the Venice opening — I’d been away almost two months - she cried when I showed her the Italian catalogue with her article in it. She’d helped mount the most important show in our field in decades, and she was in love with her boss, and she thought her boss was in love with her. And there I was, breezing in from Venice to tell her everything was over, that I was in love with someone else, and when she asked why, I stupidly said something about culture, about the difficulty of ever really understanding someone from a different culture. I told her that she and I didn’t share it but that Flavia and I had a common culture.’ Another loud crash from the kitchen was enough to show this up as the lie it was.


‘How did she react?’ Brunetti asked.


‘If it had been Flavia, I suppose she would have killed me. But Matsuko was Japanese, no matter how long she had been in America. She bowed very deeply and left my room.’


‘And after that?’


‘After that, she was the perfect assistant. Very formal and distant and very efficient. She was gifted in what she did.’ She paused for a long time and then said, ‘I don’t like what I did to her, Guido,’ in a soft voice.


‘Why did she come here to send things back to China?’


‘I was in New York,’ Brett said, as if that explained things. To Brunetti, it didn’t, but he decided to leave that until later. ‘I called Matsuko and asked her if she would oversee the closing here and send things back to China.’


‘And she agreed?’


‘I told you, she was my assistant. The exhibition meant as much to her as it did to me.’ Hearing how that sounded, Brett added, ‘At least I thought it did.’


‘What about her family?’ he asked.


Obviously surprised by the question, Brett asked, ‘What about them?’


‘Are they rich?’


‘Ricca sfondata,’ she explained. Bottomless wealth. ‘Why do you ask that?’


‘To understand if she did it for money,’ he explained.


‘I don’t like the way you simply assume that she was involved in this,’ Brett protested, but weakly.


‘Is it safe to come back?’ Flavia asked in a loud voice from the kitchen.


‘Stop it, Flavia,’ Brett shot back angrily


Flavia came back, carrying a single glass of mineral water, bubbles swirling up happily from the bottom. She set it down in front of Brett, looked at her watch, and said, ‘It’s time for you to take your pills.’ Silence. ‘Do you want me to get them?’


With no warning, Brett slammed her fist down on the surface of the marble table, causing the tray to rattle and a jolt of bubbles to swirl up from the bottom of all the glasses. ‘I’ll get my own pills, damn it.’ She pushed herself up from the sofa and walked quickly across the room. Seconds later, the sharp crack of another slammed door echoed back into the living room.


Flavia sat back in her chair, picked up her champagne glass, and took a sip. ‘Warm,’ she remarked. The champagne? The temperature of the room? Brett’s temper? She poured the contents of her glass into Brett’s champagne glass and emptied the bottle into her own. She took a tentative sip, then smiled across at Brunetti. ‘Better.’ She set the glass on the table.


Not knowing if this was a piece of theatre or not, Brunetti decided to wait her out. Companionably, they sipped at their drinks for a while, until Flavia finally asked, ‘How necessary was the guard in the hospital?’


‘Until I have some clearer idea of what’s going on here, I won’t know how necessary anything is,’ he answered.


Her smile was broad. ‘How refreshing it is to hear a public official admit to ignorance,’ she said, reaching forward to place her empty glass on the table.


The champagne gone, her voice changed and grew more serious. ‘Matsuko?’ she asked.


‘Probably.’


‘But how would she know Semenzato? Or know enough about him to know he’d be the person to contact?’


Brunetti considered this. ‘It seems he had a reputation, at least here.’


‘The kind of reputation Matsuko would know about?’


‘Perhaps. She’d worked with antiquities for years, so she probably heard things. And Brett said her family was very rich. Maybe the very rich know about this sort of thing.’


‘Yes, we do,’ she agreed with an offhandedness he was sure was real. ‘It’s almost a private club, as if we’d taken a vow to keep one another’s secrets. And it’s always easy, very easy, to know where to find a crooked tax lawyer - not that there’s any other type, at least not in this country — or someone who can get drugs, or boys, or girls, or someone who’s willing to see that a painting gets from one country to another, and no questions asked. Of course, I’m not sure how these things work in Japan, but I don’t see why there should be any difference. Wealth carries its own passport.’


‘Had you heard anything about Semenzato?’


‘I told you, I met him only that one time, and I didn’t like him, so I wasn’t interested in anything that was said about him. And it’s too late to find out now, since everyone will be busy talking well of him.’ She reached forward and took Brett’s drink and sipped at it. ‘Of course, that will change in a few weeks, and people will go back to telling the truth about him. But now’s not the time to try to find that out.’ She set the glass back on the table.


Though he thought he knew what the answer would be, he still asked, ‘Has Brett said anything about Matsuko? That is, since Semenzato was killed?’


Flavia shook her head. ‘She hasn’t said much about anything. Not since this began.’ She leaned forward and shifted the glass a few millimetres to the left. ‘Brett is afraid of violence. That doesn’t make any sense to me because she’s very brave. We Italian women aren’t, you know. We’re brash and brazen, but we have little physical courage. She’s off in China, living in a tent half of the time, roaming around the country. She even went to Tibet on a bus. She told me that when the Chinese officials refused to give her a visa, she simply forged the papers and went. She’s not afraid of that sort of thing, of the things that most people are terrified of, of getting into official trouble or being arrested. But actual physical violence terrifies her. I think it’s because she lives in her mind so much, solving things there and working them out there. She hasn’t been the same since this happened. She doesn’t want to answer the door. She pretends she doesn’t hear or she waits for me to go and do it. But the reason is that she’s afraid.’


Brunetti wondered why Flavia was telling him all of this. ‘I’ve got to leave next week,’ she said, answering his question. ‘My children have been skiing with their father for two weeks, and they come home then. I’ve cancelled three performances, but I can’t cancel any more. And I don’t want to. I’ve asked her to come with me, but she refuses.’


‘Why?’


‘I don’t know. She won’t say. Or she can’t.’


‘Why are you telling me this?’


‘I think she’d listen to you.’


‘If I said what?’


‘If you asked her to go with me.’


‘To Milan?’


‘Yes. Then, in March, I have to go to Munich for a month. She could come with me.’


‘What about China? Isn’t she supposed to go back there?’


‘And end up with her neck broken on the floor of that pit?’ Even though he knew her anger wasn’t directed at him, he still winced at the sound of it.


‘Has she talked about going back?’ he asked.


‘She hasn’t talked about anything.’


‘Do you know when she was supposed to leave?’


‘I don’t think she had any plan. When she arrived, she said she didn’t have a return reservation.’ She met Brunetti’s inquisitive look. ‘That depended on what she learned from Semenzato.’ From her tone, it was clear that this was only part of the explanation. He waited for her to finish it. ‘But part of it depended on me, I suppose.’ She paused, looked away from Brunetti, then quickly back. ‘She’s managed to get me an invitation to teach master classes there, in Beijing. She wanted me to go back with her.’


‘And?’ Brunetti asked.


Flavia dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand but said only, ‘We hadn’t discussed it before this happened.’


‘And not since?’


She shook her head.


All of this talk of Brett made Brunetti suddenly realize that she had been gone from the room for a long time. ‘Is that the only door?’ he asked.


His question was so sudden that Flavia took a moment to understand it and then to understand everything it meant.


‘Yes. There’s no other way out. Or in. And the roof is separate. There’s no access to it.’ She got up. ‘I’ll go and see how she is.’


She was gone a long time, during which Brunetti picked up the book that Brett had left on the sofa and paged through it. He stared at the photo of the Ishtar Gate for a long time, trying to see which part of the figure appeared on the brick that had killed Semenzato. It was like a jigsaw puzzle, but he proved incapable of fitting the single missing piece that lay in the police laboratory at the Questura into the whole picture of the gate that lay in front of him.


It was almost five minutes before Flavia came back. She stood by the table while she spoke, letting Brunetti know that their conversation was over. ‘She’s asleep. The pain pills she’s taking are very strong, and I think there’s a tranquillizer, too. The champagne didn’t help things. She’ll sleep until the afternoon.’


‘I need to speak to her again,’ he said.


‘Can it wait until tomorrow?’ It was a simple question, not an imperious demand.


It really couldn’t, but he had no choice. ‘Yes. Is it all right if I come at about the same time?’


‘Of course. I’ll tell her you’re coming. And I’ll try to limit the champagne.’ The conversation might be over, but the truce apparently held.


Brunetti, who had decided that Dom Perignon was an excellent mid-morning drink, thought this an unnecessary precaution and hoped that Flavia might change her mind by the next day.


* * * *



Chapter Twelve



Was this the beginning of alcoholism, Brunetti wondered, as he found himself wanting to stop in a bar on the way back to the Questura and have another glass of champagne? Or was it merely the inescapable response to the certainty that he would have to speak to Patta that morning? The first explanation seemed preferable.


When he opened the door to his office, a wave of heat swept across him, so palpable that he turned to see if he could watch it roll down the corridor, perhaps to engulf some innocent soul unfamiliar with the vagaries of the heating system. Each year, on or about the feast day of Saint Agatha, 5 February, heat flared out of all the rooms on the north side of the fourth floor of the Questura at the same time as it disappeared from the corridors and the offices on the south side of the third floor. It remained this way for about three weeks, generally until the feast of Saint Leandro, whom most people in the building tended to thank for their deliverance. No one had ever been able to understand or correct this phenomenon, though it had gone on for five years or more. The main heating unit had, at various times and by various technicians, been worked on, inspected, adjusted, tinkered with, sworn at and kicked, but it had never been repaired. By now, people who worked on these two floors were resigned and took the necessary measures, some removing jackets while others wore gloves in the office.


So closely did Brunetti associate this phenomenon with the feast of Saint Agatha that he could never see an image of that martyr, invariably pictured holding her two severed breasts on a plate, but he imagined she was carrying thereon, instead, two matching pieces from the central heating unit: large washers, perhaps.


He walked across the room, stripping off coat and jacket as he went, and threw open both the tall windows. He was as suddenly chilled and went back to take his jacket from his desk, where he had tossed it. Over the course of the years, he had developed a rhythm for opening and closing the windows, one that not only effectively controlled the temperature in the room but also prevented him from concentrating on anything at all. Could the caretaker be in the pay of the Mafia? Each time he read the paper, it seemed that almost every other person who worked for the police was, so why not the caretaker?


On his desk lay the usual personnel reports and requests for information from police in other cities as well as letters from people in the city. There was one from a woman on the small island of Torcello, asking him personally to look for her son, whom she knew had been kidnapped by the Syrians. The woman was mad, and different members of the police received a letter from her each month: it was always the same non-existent son, but the kidnappers changed according to the winds of world politics.


If he went now, he could see Patta before lunch. With this beacon shining out its bright hope, he took the slim file of papers on the Semenzato and Lynch crimes and went down to Patta’s office.


Though fresh iris abounded, Signorina Elettra was not at her desk. Probably out at the landscaper’s. He knocked and was told to enter. Spared the vagaries of the heating system, Patta’s office was a perfect 22 degrees, the ideal temperature to allow him the luxury of removing his jacket, should the pace of work grow too frenetic. Having so far been spared that necessity, he sat behind his desk, his mohair jacket buttoned, diamond tie-pin neatly in place. As always, Patta looked as if he had just slipped off a Roman coin, his large brown eyes perfectly set among the other perfections of his face.


‘Good morning, sir,’ Brunetti said, taking the seat that Patta gestured him to.


‘Good morning, Brunetti.’ When Brunetti leaned forward to place the folder on Patta’s desk, his superior waved it away with his hand. ‘I’ve read it. Carefully. I take it you’re working on the assumption that the beating of Dottoressa Lynch and the murder of Dottor Semenzato are related?’


‘Yes, sir, I am. I don’t see how they can’t be.’


He thought for a moment that Patta, as was usual with him, would object to any expressed certainty that was not his own, but he surprised Brunetti by nodding his head and saying, ‘Yes, you’re probably right. What have you done so far?’


‘I’ve interviewed Dottoressa Lynch,’ he began, but Patta broke in.


‘I hope you were polite with her.’


Brunetti contented himself with a simple, ‘Yes, sir.’


‘Good, good. She’s an important benefactress of the city, and she’s to be treated accordingly.’


Brunetti allowed that to trickle away and then resumed. ‘There was a Japanese assistant who came here to close the exhibition and send the pieces back to China.’


‘Dottoressa Lynch’s assistant?’


‘Yes, sir.’


‘A woman?’ Patta asked sharply.


Patta’s tone so dirtied the word that Brunetti had to pause for a moment before he replied, ‘Yes, sir. A woman.’


‘Ah, I see.’


‘Shall I go on, sir?!


‘Yes, yes. Of course.’


‘Dottoressa Lynch told me that the woman was killed in an accident in China.’


‘What kind of accident?’ Patta asked, as if this would turn out to have been an inescapable consequence of her sexual proclivities.


‘In a fall at the archaeological site where they were working.’


‘When did this happen?’


‘Three months ago. It was after Dottoressa Lynch wrote to Semenzato to say that she thought some of the pieces that had been returned to China were false.’


‘And this woman who was killed was the one who packed them?’


‘It would seem so, sir.’


‘Did you ask Dottoressa Lynch what her relationship was to this woman?’


Well, he hadn’t, had he? ‘No, sir. I didn’t. The Dottoressa seemed troubled by her death and by the possibility of the young woman’s involvement in whatever is going on here, but there was no more than that.’


‘Are you sure of that, Brunetti?’ Patta’s eyes actually narrowed when he asked this.


‘Absolutely, sir. I’d stake my reputation on it.’ As he always did when he lied to Patta, he stared him directly in the eyes, careful to keep his own open fully, his gaze level. ‘Shall I go on, sir?’ As soon as he said it, Brunetti realized he didn’t have anything else to say — well, anything else he wanted to say to Patta. Surely not that the Japanese girl’s family was so wealthy that she would, presumably, have had no financial interest in the substitution of pieces. The thought of the way Patta would respond to the idea of sexual jealousy as a motive made Brunetti feel faintly queasy.


‘Do you think this Japanese woman knew that false pieces were sent back to China?’


‘It’s possible, sir.’


‘But it is not possible,’ Patta said with heavy emphasis, ‘that she could have organized it herself. She must have had help here, here in Venice.’


‘It would seem so, sir. That’s a possibility I’m pursuing.’


‘How?’


‘I’ve initiated an investigation of Dottor Semenzato’s finances.’


‘On whose authority?’ Patta snapped.


‘My own, sir.’


Patta let that stand as said. ‘What else?’


‘I’ve already spoken to some people about Semenzato, and I expect to get information about his real reputation.’


‘What do you mean, “real reputation”?’


Oh, so seldom does fate cast our enemy into our hands, to do with as we will. ‘Don’t you think, sir, that every bureaucrat has an official reputation, what people say about him publicly, and then the real reputation, what people know to be true and say about him in private?’


Patta turned his right palm upward on his desk and moved his pinkie ring around on his finger with his thumb, examining it to see that he got the motion right. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps.’ He looked up from his palm. ‘Go on, Brunetti.’


‘I thought I’d begin with these things and see where they lead me.’


‘Yes, that sounds fair enough to me,’ Patta said. ‘Remember, I want to know about anything you do or find out.’ He consulted his Rolex Oyster. ‘I don’t want to keep you from getting busy with this, Brunetti.’


Brunetti stood, recognizing Patta’s lunch hour when it struck. He started towards the door, curious only about the way Patta would remind him to handle Brett with kid gloves.


‘And Brunetti,’ Patta said as Brunetti reached the door.


‘Yes, sir?’ he said, really curious, something he very seldom was with Patta.


‘I want you to handle Dottoressa Lynch with kid gloves.’ Ah, so that’s how he’d say it.


* * * *


Chapter Thirteen



Back in his office, the first thing Brunetti did after he opened the window was call Lele. There was no answer at his house, so Brunetti tried the gallery, where the painter picked up the phone after six rings. ‘Pronto.’


‘Ciao, Lele, it’s Guido. I thought I’d call and see if you’d managed to find out anything.’


‘About that person?’ Lele answered, making it clear that he couldn’t talk freely.


‘Yes. Is someone there?’


‘Ah, yes, now that you mention it, I think that’s true. Are you going to be in your office for a while, Signor Scarpa?’


‘Yes, I will be. For another hour or so.’


‘Good, then, Signor Scarpa. I’ll call you there when I’m free.’


‘Thanks, Lele,’ Brunetti said and hung up.


Who was it that Lele didn’t want to know he was talking with a commissario of police?


He turned to the papers in the file, making a note here and there. He had been in contact with the special branch of police that dealt with art theft on several occasions in the past, but at this point all he had to give them was Semenzato’s name and no proof of anything at all. Semenzato might indeed have a reputation that did not appear in official reports, the sort that never got written down.


Four years ago, he had dealt with one of the captains of the art branch in Rome, about a Gothic altarpiece stolen from the church of San Giacomo dell’Orio. Giulio something or other, but Brunetti couldn’t remember his surname. He reached for the phone and dialled Signorina Elettra’s number.


‘Yes, Commissario?’ she asked when he identified himself.


‘Have you had any response from Heinegger or your friends at the bank?’


‘This afternoon, sir.’


‘Good. Until then, I’d like you to take a look in the files and see if you can find a name for me, a captain of the art theft bureau in Rome. Giulio something. He and I corresponded about a theft at San Giacomo dell’Orio. About four years ago. Perhaps five.’


‘Have you any idea how it would be filed, sir?’


‘Either under my name, since I wrote the original report, or under the name of the church, or perhaps under art theft.’ He thought for a moment and then added, ‘You might check the record of a certain Sandro — Alessandro, that is - Benelli, whose address used to be in San Lio. I think he’s still in prison, but there might be some mention of the captain’s name in there. I think he provided a deposition at the trial.’


‘Certainly, sir. Today?’


‘Yes, signorina, if you could.’


‘I’ll go down to the files and take a look now. Maybe I can find something before lunch.’


The optimism of youth. ‘Thank you, signorina,’ he said and hung up. As soon as he did, the phone rang, and it was Lele.


‘I couldn’t talk, Guido. I had someone in the gallery who I think might be useful to you in this.’


‘Who?’ When Lele didn’t answer, Brunetti apologized, remembering that he needed the information, not its source. ‘Sorry, Lele. Forget I asked that. What did he tell you?’


‘It seems that Dottor Semenzato was a man of many interests. Not only was he the director of the museum, but he was also a silent partner in two antique shops, one here and one in Milan. The man I was talking to works in one of the shops.’


Brunetti resisted the urge to ask which one. Instead, he remained silent, knowing that Lele would tell him what he thought necessary.


‘It seems that the owner of these shops — not Semenzato, the official owner — has access to pieces that never appear in the shops. The man I spoke to said that twice in the past certain pieces have been brought in and unpacked by mistake. As soon as the owner saw them, he had them repacked and taken away, said that they were for his private collection.’


‘Did he tell you what these pieces were?’


‘He said that one of them was a Chinese bronze, and the other was a piece of pre-Islamic ceramic. He also said, and I thought this might interest you, that he was fairly certain he had seen a photo of the ceramic in an article about the pieces taken from the Kuwait Museum.’


‘When did this happen?’ Brunetti asked.


‘The first time, about a year ago, and then three months ago,’ Lele answered.


‘Did he tell you anything else?’


‘He said that the owner has a number of clients who have access to this private collection.’


‘How did he know that?’


‘Sometimes, when he was talking to these clients, the owner would refer to pieces he had, but the pieces weren’t in the shop. Or he’d telephone one of these clients and tell him he was getting a particular item on a certain date, but then the piece would never come into the shop. But, later, it would sound like a sale had taken place.’


‘Why would he tell you this, Lele?’ Brunetti asked, though he knew he wasn’t supposed to.


‘We worked together in London, years ago, and I did him some favours then.’


‘And how did you know to ask him, of all people?’


Instead of being offended, Lele laughed. ‘Oh, I asked some questions about Semenzato, and someone told me to speak to my friend.’


‘Thanks, Lele.’ Brunetti understood, as do all Italians, how the whole delicate web of personal favours enwrapped the social system. It all seemed so casual: someone spoke to a friend, had a word with a cousin, and some information was exchanged. And with that information a new balance was struck between debit and credit. Sooner or later, everything was repaid, all debts called in.


‘Who’s the owner of these shops?’


‘Francesco Murino. He’s a Neapolitan. I did some business with him when he first opened his shop here, years ago, and he’s un vero figlio di puttana. If there’s anything crooked going on here, he’s in for his fair share.’


‘Is he the one who has the shop in Santa Maria Formosa?’


‘Yes, do you know him?’


‘Only by sight. He’s never been in any trouble, not that I know of.’


‘Guido, I told you he’s a Neapolitan. Of course he hasn’t been in any trouble, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t as crooked as a viper.’ The passion with which Lele spoke made Brunetti curious about the dealings he might have had with Murino in the past.


‘Did anyone say anything else about Semenzato?’


Lele made a noise of disgust, ‘You know how it is when a person dies. No one wants to tell the truth.’


‘Yes, someone else told me that, just this morning,’


‘What else did they tell you?’ Lele asked with what seemed like real curiosity.


‘That I should wait a couple of weeks, and then people will begin to tell the truth again.’


Lele laughed so loudly that Brunetti had to hold the phone away from his ear until he stopped. When he did, Lele said, ‘How right they are. But I don’t think it will take that long.’


‘Does that mean there’s more to tell about him?’


‘No, I don’t want to mislead you, Guido, but one or two people didn’t seem terribly surprised that he was killed like this.’ When Brunetti didn’t ask him what he meant, Lele added, ‘It would seem that he had connections with people from the South.’


‘Are they getting interested in art now?’ Brunetti asked.


‘Yes, it seems drugs and prostitutes aren’t enough anymore.’


‘I guess we’d better double the guards in the museums from now on.’


‘Guido, who do you think they buy the paintings from?’


Was this to be yet another consequence of upward mobility, Brunetti wondered, the Mafia in competition with Sotheby’s? ‘Lele, how trustworthy are these people you’ve spoken to?’


‘You can believe what they say, Guido.’


‘Thanks, Lele. If you hear anything more about him, please let me know.’


‘Of course. And Guido, if these gentlemen from the South are involved in this, then you’d better be very careful, all right?’ It was a sign of the power it had already garnered here in the North that people were reluctant to pronounce the name of the Mafia.


‘Of course, Lele, and thanks again.’


‘I’m serious,’ Lele said before he hung up.


Brunetti replaced his phone and, almost without thinking, went and opened the window to allow some cold air into the room. Work on the fa ç ade of the church of San Lorenzo opposite his office had stopped for the winter, and the scaffolding stood there deserted. One large piece of the plastic wrapping that encased it had been torn loose and, even at this distance, Brunetti could hear it snapping angrily in the wind. Above the church and rolling in from the south, Brunetti could see the dark clouds that would surely bring more rain by the end of the afternoon.


He glanced at his watch. There was no time to visit Signor Murino before lunch, but Brunetti decided to stop by his shop that afternoon and see how he reacted to having a commissario of police come in and announce himself. The Mafia. Stolen art. He knew that more than half of the museums in the country were more or less permanently closed, but he had never before stopped to consider what this could mean in terms of pilfering, theft or, in the case of the Chinese exhibits, substitution. Guards were badly paid, yet their unions were so strong that they prevented volunteers from being allowed to work as guards in the museums. He remembered hearing, years ago, a suggestion that young men who chose two years of social service in lieu of a year and a half of military service be allowed to serve as museum guards. The idea had not even made it to the floor of the Senate.


Assuming that the substitution of false pieces was something Semenzato had a part in, who better to dispose of the originals than an antique dealer? He would have not only the clientele and the expertise to make an accurate appraisal, but, if necessary, he would know how to make delivery without interference from either the police of the Finance Department or the Fine Arts Commission. Getting pieces into or out of the country was child’s play. A glance at the map of Italy showed how permeable the borders were. Thousands of kilometres of bays, coves, inlets, beaches. Or, for the well organized or well connected, there were the ports and the airports, through which anything could pass with impunity. It was not only those who guarded the museums who were badly paid.


His reverie was broken by a knock on the door. ‘Avanti,’ he shouted and closed the window. Time to resume roasting.


Signorina Elettra came into the room, a notebook in one hand, a file in the other. ‘I found the captain’s name in the file, sir. It’s Carrara, Giulio Carrara. He’s still in Rome, but he was promoted to maggiore last year.’


‘How did you find that out, signorina?’


‘I called his office in Rome and spoke to his secretary. I asked her to tell him to expect a call from you this afternoon. He’s already gone to lunch and won’t be back until three thirty.’ Brunetti knew what three thirty could mean in Rome.


He might as well have spoken the thought, for Signorina Elettra answered it. ‘I asked. She said he actually gets back then, so I’m sure you could call him.’


‘Thank you, signorina,’ he said and once again gave silent thanks that this marvel had managed to resist the daily assault of Patta’s reign. ‘If I might ask, how did you manage to find his name so quickly?’


‘Oh, I’ve been familiarizing myself with the files for months. I’ve made some changes because there doesn’t seem to be any inner logic to the system as it is now. I hope no one will mind.’


‘No, I don’t think so. No one’s ever able to find anything, so I don’t think you can do the system any harm. It’s all supposed to be put on computer.’


She gave him the look of one who had spent time among the accumulated records; he would not repeat the remark. She came up to his desk and placed the folder on it. He noticed that she was wearing a black woollen dress today, tied with a bold red belt pulled tight around a very narrow waist. She took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped at her forehead. ‘Is it always so hot in here, sir?’ she asked.


‘No, signorina, it’s something that happens for a few weeks in early February. It’s usually over by the end of the month. It doesn’t affect your office.’


‘Is it the scirocco?’ It was a sensible enough question. If the hot wind that blew up from Africa could bring acqua alta, there was certainly no reason it couldn’t raise the temperature in his office.


‘No, signorina. It’s something in the heating system. No one’s ever been able to figure it out. You’ll get used to it, and it really will be gone by the end of the month.’


‘I hope so,’ she said, wiping again at her brow. ‘If there’s nothing else, sir, I’ll go to lunch now.’


Brunetti looked at his watch and saw that it was almost one. ‘Take an umbrella with you when you go out,’ he said. ‘It looks like it’s going to rain again.’


* * * *


Brunetti went home for lunch with his family, and Paola kept her promise not to tell Raffi about the syringes and what his father had feared when he found them. She did, however, manage to use her silence to pry from Brunetti a firm promise that he would not only help her carry the table out on to the terrace at the first sign of sun but would also help her use the syringes to inject poison into each of the many holes made by the woodworms as they bored their way out of the legs where they spent their winter lethargy.


Raffi closed himself in his room after lunch, saying that he had to do his Greek homework, ten pages of Homer to translate for the next morning. Two years ago, when he had fancied himself an anarchist, he had closed himself in his room to think dark thoughts about capitalism, in the doing perhaps to hasten its fall. But this year he had not only found a girlfriend but, apparently, the desire to be accepted at the university. In either case, he disappeared into his room directly after meals, leaving Brunetti to conclude that his wish for solitude had something to do with adolescence, not political orientation.


Paola threatened dark things to Chiara if she didn’t help with the dishes, and while they were busy there, Brunetti stuck his head into the kitchen and told them he was going back to work.


When he left the house, the threatened rain was falling, still light but with the promise of much worse to come. He raised his umbrella and turned right into Rugetta, making his way back towards the Rialto Bridge. Within a few minutes, he was glad he had remembered to wear his boots, for large puddles covered the pavement, tempting him to step heavily into them. By the time he got to the other side of the bridge, it was raining more heavily, and by the time he got to the Questura, his trousers were soaked from calf to knee above where they were protected by the boots.


In his office, he removed his jacket and wished for a moment that he could take off his trousers, too, and hang them to dry above the heater: they’d be dry in minutes. Instead, he held the window open long enough to cool off the office then sat behind his desk, dialled the operator and asked to be connected to the office of the art theft squad at police headquarters in Rome. When he was through, he gave his name and asked for Maggiore Carrara.


‘Buon giorno, Commissario.’


‘Congratulations, Maggiore.’


‘Thanks, and it was about time they did it.’


‘You’re still a kid. You’ve got plenty of time to become a general.’


‘By the time I’m a general, there won’t be a single painting left in any of the museums in this country,’ he said. Carrara’s laugh, when it came, was delayed just so long that Brunetti was unsure whether the remark was meant to be a joke or not.


‘That’s what I’m calling you about, Giulio.’


‘What? Paintings?’


‘I’m not sure about that, museums, at any rate.’


‘Yes, what is it?’ he asked with the sharp curiosity that Brunetti remembered he felt for his work.


‘We’ve had a murder here.’


‘Yes, I know, Semenzato, at the Palazzo Ducale.’ His voice was neutral.


‘You know anything about him, Giulio?’


‘Officially or unofficially?’


‘Officially.’


‘Absolutely not. Nothing. No. Not a thing.’ Before Brunetti could do it, Carrara broke into his own litany and asked, ‘Is that enough to make you ask the next question, Guido?’


Brunetti smiled into the phone. ‘All right. Unofficially?’


‘How strange of you to ask that. In fact, I have a note here on my desk to call you. I didn’t know you were handling the case until I read your name in the papers this morning, so I thought I’d give you a call and suggest a few things. And ask a few favours, as well. I think there are a number of things we might both be interested in.’


‘Like what?’


‘Like his bank statements.’


‘Semenzato’s?’


‘Isn’t that who we’re talking about?’


‘Sorry, Giulio, but I’ve had people telling me all day that I ought not to talk ill of the dead.’


‘If we can’t talk ill of the dead, who can we talk ill of?’ Carrara asked with surprising good sense.


‘I’ve already got someone working on them. I ought to have them by tomorrow. Anything else?’


‘I’d like to have a look at records of his longdistance calls, both from his home and from the office at the museum. Do you think you could get them?’


‘This still unofficial?’


‘Yes.’


‘I’ll have them.’


‘Good.’


‘What else?’


‘Have you spoken to his widow yet?’


‘No, I haven’t, not personally. One of my men has spoken to her. Why?’


‘She might have some idea of where he travelled to during the last few months.’


‘Why do you want to know that?’ Brunetti asked, honestly curious.


‘No special reason, Guido. But we like to know this sort of thing, once a person’s name has come under our noses more than once.’


‘And his had?’


‘Yes.’


‘Why?’


‘Nothing specific, if I have to tell the truth.’ Carrara sounded disappointed that he didn’t have a definite accusation to pass on to Brunetti. ‘Two men we arrested at the airport here, more than a year ago, with Chinese jade figurines, said only that they had heard him named in conversation. They were only carriers; they didn’t know much at all, didn’t even know the value of what they were carrying.’


‘And that was?’Brunetti asked.


‘Billions. The statues were traced back to the National Museum in Taiwan. They’d disappeared three years before; no one ever learned how.’


‘Were those the only things taken?’


‘No, but they’re the only things recovered. So far.’


‘When else did you hear his name?’


‘Oh, from one of the little people we keep on a string down here. We can get him for drugs or for breaking and entering any time we want him, so we let him run loose, and in return he brings us back a piece of information now and again. He said that he had overheard Semenzato’s name mentioned on the phone by one of the men he sells things to.’


‘Stolen things?’


‘Of course. He has nothing else to sell.’


‘Was the man speaking to Semenzato, or about him?’


‘About him.’


‘Did he tell you what he heard?’


‘The man who was speaking said only that the other person should try to speak to Semenzato. At first, we assumed the reference to him was innocent. After all, the man was a museum director. But then we caught the two men at the airport, and then Semenzato turned up dead in his office. So I thought it was time to call and tell you.’ Carrara paused long enough to signal that he was finished with what he had to give, and now it was time to see what he could get. ‘What have you found out about him there?’


‘Remember the Chinese exhibition a few years ago?’


Carrara grunted in assent.


‘Some of the pieces that were sent back to China were copies.’


Carrara’s whistle, either of surprise or admiration for such a feat, came clearly through the line.


‘And it seems he was silent partner in a pair of antique shops, one here and one in Milan,’ Brunetti continued.


‘Whose?’


‘Francesco Murino Do you know him?’


Carrara’s voice was slow, measured. ‘Only in the way we knew Semenzato, unofficially. But his name has turned up more than a few times.’


‘Anything definite?’


‘No, nothing. It looks like he covers himself very well.’ There was a long pause, and then Carrara added, in a voice suddenly grown more serious, ‘Or someone covers things for him.’


‘Like that, is it?’ Brunetti asked. It could mean anything: some branch of the government, Mafia, a foreign government, even the Church.


‘Yes. Every lead we get turns to nothing. We hear his name, and then we don’t. The finance police have checked him three times in the last two years, and he’s clean.’


‘Has his name ever been linked to Semenzato’s?’


‘Not by anyone here. What else have you got?’


‘Are you familiar with Dottoressa Lynch?’


‘L’americana?’ Carrara asked.


‘Yes.’


‘Of course I’m familiar with her. I have a degree in art history, Guido, after all.’


‘Is she that well known?’


‘Her book on Chinese art is the best one around. She’s still in China, isn’t she?’


‘No, she’s here.’


‘In Venice? What’s she doing there?’


Brunetti had asked himself the same question. Trying to decide whether to go back to China, whether to stay here because of her lover, or, now, waiting to see if her former lover had been murdered. ‘She came here to talk to Semenzato about the pieces that were sent back to China. Two toughs beat her up last week. Cracked her jaw and broke some ribs. It was in the papers here.’


Again, Carrara’s whistle came across the line from Rome, but this one somehow managed to convey compassion. ‘There was nothing here,’ he said.


‘Her assistant in China, a Japanese woman who came here to oversee the return of the exhibits to China, died in an accident out there.’


‘Freud says somewhere that there are no accidents, doesn’t he?’Carrara asked.


‘I don’t know if Freud meant to include China when he said that, but, no, it doesn’t sound like it was an accident.’


Carrara’s grunt could have meant anything. Brunetti chose to interpret it as assent and said, ‘I’m going to talk to Dottoressa Lynch tomorrow morning.’


‘Why?’


‘I want to try to convince her to leave the city for a while, and I want to learn more about the pieces that were substituted. What they were, whether they have a market value—’


Carrara interrupted him. ‘Of course they have a market value.’


‘Yes, I understand that, Giulio. But I want to get some idea of what the market would be, whether they could be sold openly.’


‘Sorry. I didn’t understand what you meant, Guido.’ His pause could have been read as an apology, and then he added, ‘If it’s coming out of a dig in China, you can pretty much put any price you want on it.’


‘That rare?’ Brunetti asked.


‘That rare. But what do you want to know about it?’


‘Chiefly, I want to know where or how the copies could have been made.’


Carrara interrupted again, ‘Italy is full of studios that make copies, Guido. Everything: Greek statues, Etruscan jewellery, Ming pottery, Renaissance paintings. You name it, and there’s an Italian artisan who can make you one that will fool the experts.’


‘But haven’t you people down there got all sorts of ways to detect them? Surely I’ve read that. Carbon-14 and things like that.’


Carrara laughed. ‘Talk to Dottoressa Lynch, Guido. She has a whole chapter on it in her book, so I’m sure she can tell you things that will keep you awake on long winter nights.’ Brunetti heard noise from the other end, then silence as Carrara covered the phone with his hand. In a moment, he was back. ‘Sorry, Guido, but I’ve got a call coming in from Vietnam; it’s taken two days to get it through. Call me if you hear anything, and I’ll call you if I do.’ Before Brunetti could agree, Carrara was gone and the line was dead.


* * * *


Chapter Fourteen



Entirely unconscious of how hot his office had become, Brunetti sat at his desk and considered what Carrara had told him. Take a museum director, add guards, labour unions, stir in a bit of the Mafia, and the result was a cocktail strong enough to give the art theft branch a bad hangover. He drew a piece of paper from his drawer and began to make a list of the information he needed to get from Brett. He wanted complete descriptions of the pieces she had discovered to be false. He needed more information about how the switch could have been done and where and how the false pieces could have been made. And he needed a complete account of her every conversation or exchange with Semenzato.


He stopped writing and allowed his thoughts to veer towards the personal: would she go back? As he thought of her, called up a picture of her as he had last seen her, slamming her hand down on the table and walking angrily from the room, he was struck by a discrepancy he had previously overlooked. Why had she received only a beating while Semenzato had been killed? He had no doubt that the men sent to her had been ordered only to deliver their violent warning that she not keep the meeting. But why would they have bothered with that if Semenzato was going to be killed anyway? Had Flavia’s interference upset the balance of things, or had Semenzato somehow precipitated the violence that led to his death?


Practical things first. He called down and asked Vianello to come up, and he told him to stop outside Patta’s office to request Signorina Elettra to come up with him. The Interpol report had not arrived, so he thought it was time to begin ferreting about on his own. He went and opened the window while he waited for them to arrive.


They came in together a few minutes later, Vianello holding the door open to allow her to pass in before him. As soon as they were inside, Brunetti closed the window, and the sergeant, ever gruff and bear-like Vianello, pulled a chair up to Brunetti’s desk and held it while Signorina Elettra took her place on it. Vianello?


As she sat down, Signorina Elettra slipped a single sheet of paper on to Brunetti’s desk. ‘This came in from Rome, sir.’ In response to his unspoken question, she added, ‘They’ve traced the fingerprints.’


Under the letterhead of the Carabinieri, the letter, bearing an indecipherable signature, stated that fingerprints taken from Semenzato s telephone corresponded to those of Salvatore La Capra, age twenty-three, resident in Palermo. Despite his youth, La Capra had amassed a significant number of arrests and charges: extortion, rape, assault, attempted murder, and association with known members of the Mafia. All of these charges, at various times during the long legal processes that led from arrest to trial, had been dropped. Three witnesses in the extortion case had disappeared; the woman who brought the charge of rape had retracted her denuncia. The only conviction that stood against La Capra s name was for speeding, for which infraction he had paid a four-hundred-and-twenty-thousand-lire fine. The report went on to state that La Capra, who was not employed, lived with his father.


When he finished reading the report, Brunetti looked up at Vianello. ‘Have you seen this?’


Vianello nodded.


‘Why does the name sound familiar?’ Brunetti asked, addressing them both with the question.


Signorina Elettra and Vianello started to speak at the same time, but Vianello, when he heard her, stopped and waved at her to proceed.


When she did not, Brunetti prodded, ‘Well?’ impatient for an answer in the midst of all of this chivalry.


‘The architect?’ Signorina Elettra asked, and Vianello nodded in agreement.


It was enough to remind Brunetti. Five months ago, the architect in charge of extensive restorations to a palazzo on the Grand Canal had sworn out a complaint against the son of the owner of the palazzo, claiming that the son had threatened him with violence if there were any more delays to the restoration project, already in its eighth month. The architects attempt to explain about the difficulty in obtaining building permits was brushed aside by the son, who warned him that his father was not a man who was accustomed to being kept waiting and that bad things often happened to people who displeased him or his father. The following day, and before there had been a chance for the police to act on the complaint, the architect was back in the Questura, claiming that the whole thing bad been a misunderstanding and no actual threats had been made. The charges had been withdrawn, but the report of the original denuncia had been made out and read by all three of them, and all of them now remembered that it had been made against Salvatore La Capra.


‘I think we should see if Signorino La Capra or his father is at home,’ Brunetti suggested. ‘And, signorina,’ he added, turning to her, ‘perhaps you could see what you can find out about his father, if you’re not busy with anything.’


‘Of course, Dottore,’ she said. ‘I’ve already made the Vice-Questore’s dinner reservation, so I’ll begin on this immediately.’ Smiling, she stood, and Vianello, shadow-like, drifted to the door in front of her. He held it for her while she left the office, then came back to his seat.


‘I’ve seen the wife, sir. The widow, that is.’


‘Yes. I read your report. It seemed very brief.’


‘It was brief, sir,’ Vianello said, voice level. ‘There wasn’t much to say. She was sick with grief for him, could barely talk. I asked her a few questions, but she cried through all of it, so I had to stop. I’m not sure she understood why I was there or why I was asking her the questions.’


‘Was it real grief?’ Brunetti asked. Both policemen for many years, they had seen more than enough of both kinds, real and feigned, to last many lifetimes.


‘I think so, sir.’


‘What was she like?’


‘She’s about forty, ten years younger than he was. There weren’t any children, so he was all she had. I don’t think she fitted in here very well.’


‘Why not?’ Brunetti asked.


‘Semenzato was Venetian, but she’s from the South. Sicily. And she’s never liked it here. She said she wanted to go home after all of this was over.’


How many threads in this were going to pull towards the South, Brunetti wondered. Surely, the place of the woman’s birth shouldn’t cause him to suspect her of criminal involvement. Telling himself this, he said, ‘I want to get a tap on her phone.’


‘On Signora Semenzato’s?’ Vianello’s surprise was audible.


‘Who else have we been talking about, Vianello?’


‘But I just talked to her, and she’s hardly capable of standing up by herself. She’s not faking that grief, sir. I’m sure of it.’


‘Her grief isn’t in question, Vianello. It’s her husband.’ Brunetti was also curious about what the widow might have known of her husband’s behaviour, but with Vianello in an uncharacteristically gallant mood, this was best left unsaid.


Vianello’s assent was grudging. ‘Even if that’s the reason—’


Brunetti cut him off. ‘What about the staff at the museum?’


Vianello allowed himself to be herded back into line. ‘They seemed to like Semenzato. He was efficient, dealt well with the unions, and he was apparently very good at delegating authority, at least to the extent that the Ministry would let him.’


‘What does that mean?’


‘He let the curators decide which paintings needed to go to restoration, let them decide what techniques to use, when to call in outside experts. From what I gathered from the people I talked to, the man who had the job before he did insisted on keeping everything under his control, and that meant things got slowed down, since he wanted to know all the details. Most of them preferred Semenzato.’


‘Anything eke?’


‘I went back up to the hallway where Semenzato’s office is and took another look around in the daylight. There’s a door that leads into that corridor from the left wing, but it’s nailed shut. And there’s no way anyone could have come across the roof. So they went up the stairs.’


‘Right past the guards’ office,’ Brunetti finished for him.


‘And past it again on the way down,’ Vianello added, not kindly.


‘What was on television that night?’


Vianello answered, ‘Reruns of Colpo Grosso,’ with an immediacy that forced Brunetti to wonder if the sergeant had been at home that night, with half of Italy, watching demi-celebrities remove their clothing piece by piece to the excited shrieks of a studio audience. If the breasts had been big enough, thieves could probably have gone into the Piazza and removed the Basilica, and no one would have noticed until the following morning.


This seemed a wise point to change the subject. ‘All right, Vianello, see what you can do about getting her phone taken care of.’ His tone couldn’t be described as dismissive, not quite.


By mutual assent, the conversation was over. Vianello stood, still not pleased with this further invasion of the grief of the widow Semenzato, but agreed to see that it was done. ‘Anything else, sir?’


‘No, I don’t think so.’ Ordinarily, Brunetti would ask to be informed when the tap was in place, but he left it to Vianello. The sergeant moved his chair a few centimetres forward and placed it squarely in front of Brunetti’s desk, waved a vague salute, and left the office without another word. Brunetti thought it was enough that he had one prima donna to deal with over in Cannaregio. He didn’t need another one here at the Questura.


* * * *


Chapter Fifteen



When Brunetti left the Questura fifteen minutes later, he wore his boots and carried his umbrella. He cut back to his left, heading in the general direction of Rialto, but then turned to the right, suddenly to the left, and soon found himself coming down off the bridge that led into Campo Santa Maria Formosa. Directly in front of him, on the other side of the campo, stood Palazzo Priuli, abandoned for as long as he could remember, the central prize of vicious litigation over a contested will. As the heirs and presumptive heirs fought over whose it was or should be, the palazzo went about its business of deteriorating with a single-mindedness that ignored heirs, claims and legality. Long smears of rust trickled down the stone walls from the iron gratings that tried to protect it from unlawful entry, and the roof pitched and sagged, opening up fissures here and there, allowing the curious sun to peek into the attic, closed up these many years. Brunetti the dreamer had often considered that Palazzo Priuli would be the ideal place to imprison a mad aunt, a recalcitrant wife or a reluctant heiress at the same time as his more sober and practical Venetian self viewed it as a prime piece of real estate and studied the windows, dividing the space beyond into apartments, offices and studios.


Murino’s shop, he had the vague semi-memory, stood on the north side, between a pizzeria and a mask shop. The pizzeria was closed for the season, awaiting the return of the tourists, but both the mask shop and the antique shop were open, their lights burning brightly through the late winter rain.


As Brunetti pushed open the door to the shop, a bell sounded in a room somewhere off behind a pair of damasked velvet curtains that hung in a doorway that led to the back. The room radiated the subdued glow of wealth, the wealth of ages and stability. There were, surprisingly, few pieces on display, yet each called for the complete attention of the viewer. At the back stood a walnut credenza with a row of five drawers down the leftside, the wood aglow with centuries of attentive care. Just beneath his hand stood a long oak table, probably taken from the refectory of some religious house. It, too, had been polished to a shimmering glow, but no attempt had been made to disguise or remove the chips and stains of long use. At his feet crouched a pair of marble lions, teeth bared in a threat which had perhaps once been terrifying. But age had worn away their teeth and softened their features until now they faced their enemies with a yawn rather than a growl.


‘C’ è qualcuno?’ Brunetti called towards the back. He looked down and noticed that his folded umbrella had already left a large puddle on the parquet floor of the shop. Signor Murino must surely be an optimist, as well as a non-Venetian, to have covered a floor in this part of the city with parquet, for the zone lay low, and the first serious acqua alta was sure to flow in here, destroying the wood and sweeping out both glue and varnish when the tide changed.


‘Buon giorno?’ he called again, taking a few steps towards the doorway and leaving a trail of raindrops on the floor behind him.


A hand appeared at the curtain and pushed it aside. The man who stepped into the room was the same one Brunetti remembered having seen in the city and who had been pointed out to him — he could no longer remember by whom — as the antique dealer from Santa Maria Formosa. Murino was short, as were many Southerners, with lustrous black hair which he wore in a crown of loose ringlets hanging down to his collar. His colouring was dark, his skin smooth, his features small and well proportioned. What was disconcerting, in the midst of this cliché of Mediterranean good looks, were the eyes, a clear opaline green. Though they gazed out at the world from behind round gold-framed glasses which partially obscured them and were shadowed by lashes as long as they were black, they remained the dominant feature of his face. The French, Brunetti knew, had conquered Naples centuries ago, but the usual genetic souvenir of their long occupation was the red hair sometimes seen in the city, not these clear, Nordic eyes.


‘Signor Murino?’ he asked, extending his hand.


‘Si,’ the antique dealer answered, taking Brunetti’s hand and returning his grip firmly.


‘I’m Guido Brunetti, Commissario of Police. I’d like to have a few words with you.’


Murino’s expression remained one of polite curiosity.


‘I’d like to ask you some questions about your partner. Or should I say, your late partner?’


Brunetti watched as Murino absorbed this information, then waited as the other man began to consider what his visible response should be. All of this took only seconds, but Brunetti had been observing the process for decades and was familiar with it. The people to whom he presented himself had a drawer of responses which they thought appropriate, and part of his job was to watch them as they sifted through them one at a time, seeking the right fit. Surprise? Fear? Innocence? Curiosity? He watched Murino flip through them, studied his face as he considered, then discarded, various possibilities. He decided, apparently, on the last.


‘Yes? And what would you like to know, Commissario?’ His smile was polite, his tone friendly. He looked down and noticed Brunetti’s umbrella. ‘Here, let me take that, please,’ he said, managing to sound more concerned with Brunetti’s inconvenience than with any damage the dripping water might be doing to his floor. He carried the umbrella over to a flower-painted porcelain umbrella stand that stood next to the door. He slipped it in and turned back to Brunetti. ‘May I take your coat?’


Brunetti realized that Murino was attempting to set the tone of their interview, and the tone he aimed for was friendly and relaxed, the verbal manifestation of his own innocence. ‘Thank you, don’t bother,’ Brunetti answered, and with his response grabbed the tone back into his own command. ‘Could you tell me how long he was a partner in your business?’


Murino gave no sign that he had registered the struggle for dominance of the conversation. ‘Five years,’ he answered, ‘from when I opened this shop.’


‘And what about your shop in Milan? Did his partnership extend to that?’


‘Oh, no. They’re kept as separate businesses. His partnership pertained only to this one.’


‘And how is it that he became a partner?’


‘You know how it is. Word travels.’


‘No, I’m afraid I don’t know how it is, Signor Murino. How did he become your partner?’


Murino’s smile was consistently relaxed; he was willing to ignore Brunetti’s rudeness. ‘When I was given the opportunity to rent this space, I contacted some friends of mine here in the city and tried to borrow money from them. I had most of my capital tied up in the stock in the Milan shop, and the market for antiques was very slow at that time.’


‘But still you wanted to open a second shop?’


Murino’s smile was cherubic. ‘I had hope in the future. People might stop buying for a period, but that always comes to an end, and people will always return to buying beautiful things.’


If Murino had been a woman, Brunetti would have said he was fishing for a compliment and nudging Brunetti to admire the pieces in the shop and, with that, relax the tension created by the questions.


‘And was your optimism rewarded, Signor Murino?’


‘Oh, I can’t complain.’


‘And your partner? How was it that he found out about your interest in borrowing money?’


‘Oh, voices travel. Word spreads.’ That, apparently, was as much of an explanation as Signor Murino was prepared to give.


‘And so he appeared, money in hand, asking to become a partner?’


Murino walked over to a Renaissance wedding chest and wiped at a fingerprint with his handkerchief. He bent down to get his eyes horizontal with the surface of the chest and wiped repeatedly at the smear until it was gone. He folded his handkerchief into a neat rectangle, put it back into the pocket of his jacket, and leaned back against the edge of the chest. ‘Yes, I suppose you could say that.’


‘And what did he get in return for his investment?’


‘Fifty per cent of the profits for ten years.’


‘And who kept the books?’


‘We have un contabile who takes care of all that for us.’


‘Who does the buying for the shop?’


‘I do.’


‘And the selling?’


‘I. Or my daughter. She works here two days a week.’


‘So it’s you and your daughter who know what gets bought, and at what price, and what gets sold, and at what price?’


‘I have receipts for all purchases and sales, Dottor Brunetti,’ Murino said, voice just short of indignation.


Brunetti considered for a moment the option of telling Murino that everyone in Italy had receipts for everything and that all of those receipts were utterly meaningless as anything other than evidence faked to avoid paying taxes. But one did not point out that rain fell from the sky to the earth below or that it was in the spring that trees blossomed. Just so, one did not have to point out the existence of tax fraud, especially not to an antique dealer, and most especially not to a Neapolitan antique dealer.


‘Yes, I’m sure you have, Signor Murino,’ Brunetti said, and changed the subject. ‘When was the last time you saw him?’


Murino had apparently been expecting this question, for his answer was immediate. ‘Two weeks ago. We met for a drink, and I told him I was planning a buying trip up into Lombardy at the end of the month. I told him I wanted to close the shop for a week and asked him if he had any objection if I did so.’


‘And did he?’


‘No, none at all.’


‘What about your daughter?’


‘She’s busy studying for her exams. She’s studying law. And whole days pass when no one comes into the shop. So I thought this was a good time to close for a while. We also needed to get some work done.’


‘What sort of work?’


‘We’ve got a door that opens to the canal, and it’s come off its hinges. So if we want to use it, a whole new frame has to be built,’ he said, gesturing towards the velvet curtains. ‘Would you like to see?’ Murino asked.


‘No, thank you,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Signor Murino, did it ever occur to you that there might be a certain conflict of interest for your partner?’


Murino smiled inquisitively, ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’


‘Then let me try to make it clearer. His other position might have served to, let us say, work to the advantage of your joint investment here.’


‘I must apologize, but I still don’t understand what you mean.’ Murino’s smile would not have seemed out of place on the face of an angel.


Brunetti gave examples. ‘Using you, perhaps, as a consultant or learning that certain pieces or collections were going to come up for sale. Perhaps recommending the shop to people who expressed an interest in a particular sort of item.’


‘No, that never occurred to me.’


‘Did it occur to your partner?’


Murino took his handkerchief and leaned over to wipe at another smudge. When he was satisfied that the surface was clean, he said, ‘I was his business partner, Commissario, not his confessor. I’m afraid that’s a question only he could answer.’


‘But that, alas, is not to be.’


Murino shook his head sadly. ‘No, that is not to be.’


‘What will happen to his share of the shop now?’


Murino’s face was all astonished innocence. ‘Oh, I’ll continue dividing the profits with his widow.’


‘And you and your daughter will continue to do the buying and selling?’


Murino’s answer was slow in coming, but when it came, it was no more than an acknowledgement of the self-evident. ‘Yes, of course.’


‘Of course,’ Brunetti echoed, though the words neither sounded the same nor conveyed the same idea when he said them.


Murino’s face suffused with sudden anger, but before he could speak, Brunetti said, ‘Thank you for your time, Signor Murino I hope you have a successful trip to Lombardy.’


Murino pushed himself away from the chest and went over to the door to retrieve Brunetti’s umbrella. He held it by the still-wet cloth and offered it, handle first, to Brunetti. He opened the door and held it politely for Brunetti, then closed it softly behind him. Brunetti stood in the rain and raised his umbrella. As he did, a sudden gust of wind tried to pull it from his hands, but he tightened his grip and turned towards home. During the entire conversation, neither of them had once used Semenzato’s name.


* * * *


Chapter Sixteen



As he made his way across the rain-swept campo, Brunetti found himself wondering if Semenzato would have trusted a man like Murino to keep the records of all purchaser and sales. Brunetti had certainly known odder business arrangements, and he kept in mind the fact that he knew Semenzato, as it were, only in retrospect, a vision that seldom encouraged clarity. But still, who would be so dull as to believe the word of an antiquarian, as slippery a bunch as he could imagine? Here a voice stronger than his attempt to suppress it asked, ‘And a Neapolitan, to boot?’ No one would accept what they said as face value, without question. But if the major business of their partnership was in stolen or false pieces, then the earnings from the legitimate business of the shop wouldn’t matter. In that case, Semenzato would never have had to question Murino’s receipts or his word that an armadio or a table had been purchased for a certain price, sold for so much more. When he thought of the idea of profit, loss, price, he realized he had no base figures here, no idea whatsoever of the market value of the pieces Brett said were missing. For that matter, he didn’t even know what those pieces were. Tomorrow.


Because of the ever-increasing rain and the threat of acqua alta, the streets were strangely deserted, even though this was the time when most people would be hurrying home from work or out to do some last-minute shopping before the stores closed. Instead, Brunetti found that he could pass easily through the narrow streets without the repeated bother of turning his umbrella sideways to allow shorter people to pass under it with theirs. Even the broad top of the Rialto Bridge was strangely deserted, something he could not remember ever having seen before. Many of the stalls were empty, boxes of fruit and vegetables whisked away before closing time, owners escaped from the grinding cold and the rain that continued to pound down.


He slammed the door of his building behind him: in wet weather, the lock tended to stick, and only violence would get the massive door to close or open. He shook his umbrella a few times, then furled it and stuck it under his arm. With his right hand, he grabbed the handrail and began the long climb to their apartment. On the first floor, Signora Bussola, the deaf widow of a lawyer, was watching the telegiornale, which meant that everyone on the floor got to listen to the news. Predictably, she watched the news on RAI Uno; not for her those radical leftists and communist scum on RAI Due. On the second floor, the Rossis were quiet: that meant their argument was over and they were in the back of the house, in the bedroom. The third floor was silent. A young couple had moved in there two years ago and bought the entire floor, but Brunetti could count on one hand the times he had met either one of them on the stairs. He was said to work for the city, though no one was sure what he did. The wife left every morning and came home at five thirty every afternoon, but no one knew where she went or what she did, a fact which Brunetti thought miraculous. On the fourth floor, there were only scents. The Amabiles seldom emerged, but the stairwell was always awash with the glorious, tempting smells of food. Tonight it appeared to be capriolo and, if he wasn’t wrong, artichokes, though it might be fried aubergine.


And then there was his own door and the promise of peace. Which lasted only as long as it took him to open the door and step inside. From the back of the apartment, he could hear Chiara sobbing. This was his little Spartan, the child who almost never cried, the girl who could be punished by being deprived of the things she most desired and who would never shed a tear, this the child who had once broken her wrist but had sat tearless, however pale, while it was being set. And she was not merely crying; she was sobbing.


He walked quickly down the hall and into her room. Paola sat on the side of the bed, cradling Chiara in her arms. ‘But, baby, I don’t think there’s anything we can do. I’ve got the ice on it, but you’re just going to have to wait until it stops hurting.’


‘But, Mamma, it hurts. It hurts so much. Can’t you make it stop?’


‘I can give you more aspirin, Chiara. Maybe that will help.’


Chiara gulped back her tears and repeated, her voice gone strangely high, ‘Mamma, please do something.’


‘Paola, what is it?’ he asked, keeping his voice very calm, very level.


‘Oh, Guido,’ Paola said, turning to him but keeping firm hold of Chiara. ‘Chiara dropped the table on her toe.’


‘What table?’ he asked, rather than what toe.


‘The one in the kitchen.’ That was the one with the woodworm. What had they done, tried to move it themselves? But why do that when it was raining? They couldn’t take it out on to the terrace; it was too heavy for them.


‘What happened?’


‘She didn’t believe me that there were so many holes, so she turned it on its side to look, and it slipped out of her hands and landed on her toe.’


‘Let me see,’ he said and, as soon as he spoke, saw that her right foot lay on top of the coverlet, wrapped in a bath towel that held a plastic bag of ice against the injured toe to work against the swelling.


It proved to be just as he imagined, and the toe proved to be worse. It was the big toe of her right foot, swollen, the entire nail red with the promise of the blue that would emerge with time.


‘Is it broken?’ he asked.


‘No, Papà, I can bend it and that doesn’t hurt. But it throbs and throbs,’ Chiara said. She had stopped sobbing, but he could see from her face that the pain was still strong. ‘Papà, please do something.’


‘There’s nothing Papà can do, Chiara,’ Paola said, pushing the foot a bit to the side and placing the bag of ice back on top of it.


‘When did it happen?’ he asked.


‘This afternoon, right after you left,’ Paola answered.


‘And she’s been like that all day?’


‘No, Papà,’ Chiara said, defending herself from the unspoken accusation that she had spent the entire afternoon in tears. ‘It hurt at the beginning, and then it was all right for a while, but now it hurts a lot.’ She had already asked once if he could do something; Chiara was not the sort of person who repeated a request.


He remembered something he had learned years ago, when he was doing his military service and one of the men in his unit had dropped a manhole cover on his toe. Somehow, he had managed not to break it because it had caught his toe just at the end, but it had, like Chiara’s, gone red and swollen.


‘There is one thing,’ he began. Paola and Chiara swung their heads to look at him.


‘What?’ they asked in unison.


‘It’s disgusting,’ he said, ‘but it will help.’


‘What is it, Papà?’ Chiara asked through lips that were beginning to tremble again with pain.


‘I have to stick a needle through the nail and let the blood out.’


‘No,’ Paola shouted, tightening her grip around Chiara’s shoulder.


‘Does it work, Papà?’


‘It worked the one time I saw it done, but that was years ago. I’ve never done it, but I watched the doctor do it.’


‘Do you think you could do it, Papà?


He removed his coat and laid it across the foot of her bed. ‘I think so, angel. Do you want me to try?’


‘Will it make it stop hurting?’


‘I think so.’


‘All right, Papà.’


He glanced across at Paola, asking her opinion. She bent and kissed the top of Chiara’s head, wrapped her in an even tighter embrace, then nodded to Brunetti and tried to smile.


He went down the hall and took a candle from the third drawer to the right of the kitchen sink. He jammed it down into a ceramic candle-holder, grabbed a box of matches and went back into the bedroom. He set the candle down on Chiara’s desk, lit it and went down the hall into Paola’s study. From her top drawer he took a paper clip and bent it open into a straight rod as he went back towards Chiara’s room. He’d said ‘needle’, but then he’d remembered that the doctor had used a paper clip, saying a needle was too thin to burn through the nail quickly.


Back in Chiara’s room, he took the candle and set it at the foot of the bed, behind Paola’s back. ‘I think it might be better if you didn’t watch, angel,’ he told Chiara. To assure that, he sat on the edge of the bed, next to Paola, his back turned to hers, and uncovered Chiara’s foot.


When he touched it, she pulled it away instinctively, said ‘Sorry’ into her mother’s shoulder, and pushed her foot back near him. He took it with his left hand and moved the ice bag away from it. He had to change his position on the bed, careful not to let the candle spill over, until he was sitting facing the two of them. He took her heel and wedged it between his knees, pressing them together to hold it steady.


‘It’s all right, baby. It’s just going to take a second,’ he said, reaching for the candle with one hand and holding the end of the paper clip in the other. When the heat seared his fingers, he dropped the paper clip and spilled wax over the coverlet. Both his wife and his daughter winced away from his sudden motion.


‘One moment, one moment,’ he said and went back into the kitchen, muttering darkly under his breath. He took a pair of pliers from the bottom drawer and went back into the bedroom. When the candle was relit and everything was as it had been before, he grasped one end of the paper clip in the pliers and stuck the other into the flame. He waited until it glowed red and then, so quickly that he would not have time to think about what he was doing, he pressed the glowing end of the paper clip into the centre of the nail on Chiara’s toe. He held it there while the toenail began to smoke, grabbed her ankle with his left hand to prevent her from pulling her foot back.


Suddenly, the resistance disappeared from under the paper clip, and dark blood flooded up out of her toe and across his fingers. He pulled the paper clip out and, acting more from instinct than from anything he might have remembered, he pressed at the bottom of her toe, forcing the dark blood to flow out of the hole in the nail.


Through all of this, Chiara had wrapped herself around Paola, and she, in her turn, had kept her eyes turned away from what Brunetti was doing. When he glanced up, however, he saw that Chiara was looking at him over her mothers shoulder and then down at her foot. ‘Is that all?’ she asked.


‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘How does it feel?’


‘It’s better already, Papà. All the pressure’s gone, and it doesn’t throb anymore.’ She studied the tools of his trade: candle, pliers, paper clips. ‘That’s all you need to do it?’ she asked with real curiosity, tears forgotten.


‘That’s all,’ he said, giving her ankle a squeeze.


‘Do you think I could do it?’ she asked.


‘Do you mean on yourself or on someone else?’ he asked.


‘Either.’


‘I don’t see why not.’


Paola, whose daughter seemed to have forgotten about her in the fascination of this new scientific discovery, removed her arms from that no-longer-suffering daughter and picked up the ice bag and towel from the bed. She stood, looked down at the two of them for a moment, as if studying some alien life form, and went down die hall towards the kitchen.


* * * *



Chapter Seventeen



The following morning, Chiara’s foot felt good enough for her to go to school, though she opted to wear three pairs of woollen socks and her high rubber boots, not only because of the still-pounding rain and threatened acqua alta, but because the boots were wide and large enough to allow her healing toe plenty of room. She was gone by the time he was dressed and ready to leave for work, but at his place on the kitchen table he found a large sheet of paper with an immense red heart drawn on it and, under it, in her precise block print, ‘Grazie, Papà.’ He folded the drawing into a neat rectangle and sipped it into his wallet.


He hadn’t bothered to phone to tell Flavia and Brett — he assumed both of them were there — he was coming, but it was almost ten when he rang the bell, and he believed that was a sufficiently respectable hour to arrive to speak of murder.


He told the voice on the intercom who he was and pushed the heavy door open when the switch from upstairs released the lock. He propped his umbrella in a corner of the entrance, shook himself much in the manner of a dog, and began to climb the steps.


Today it was Brett who stood by the open door, she who let him into the apartment. She smiled when she saw him, and he saw again only the white flash of her teeth.


‘Where’s Signora Petrelli?’ he asked as she led him into the living room.


‘Flavia is seldom presentable before eleven. Never human before ten.’ As she led the way across the living room, he noticed that she walked more easily and seemed to be less concerned about causing pain to her body by some entirely natural movement or gesture.


She motioned him to a seat and took her place on the sofa; what little light came into the room entered behind her and partially shadowed her face. When they were seated, he pulled from his pocket the paper on which he had made notes the day before, though he was fairly clear about what he needed to know.


‘I’d like you to tell me about the pieces you found in China, the ones you think are false,’ he began with no introduction.


‘What do you want to know?’


‘Everything.’


‘That’s rather a lot.’


‘I need to know about the pieces you think have been stolen. And then I need to know something about how it could have been done.’


She began to answer immediately. ‘I’m sure now about four, but the other is genuine.’ Here her expression changed and the look she gave him was a confused one. ‘But I have no idea how it was done.’


It was his turn not to understand. ‘But someone told me yesterday that you have a whole chapter on it in a book you wrote.’


‘Oh,’ she said with audible relief, ‘that’s what you mean, how they were made. I thought you meant how they were stolen. I have no idea about that, but I can tell you how the false pieces were manufactured.’


Brunetti didn’t want to bring up the idea of Matsuko’s involvement, at least not yet, and so he merely asked, ‘How?’


‘It’s a simple enough process.’ Her voice changed, taking on the quick certainty of the expert. ‘Do you know anything about pottery or ceramics?’


‘Very little,’ he admitted.


‘The pieces that were stolen were all from the second century before Christ,’ she began by way of explanation, but he interrupted her.


‘Over two thousand years ago?’ Brunetti asked.


‘Yes. The Chinese had very beautiful pottery, even then, and very sophisticated means of making it. But the pieces that were taken were simple things, at least then, when they were made. They’re unglazed, hand-painted, and they usually have the figures of animals. Primary colours: red and white, often on a black background.’ She pushed herself up from the sofa and walked over to the bookcase, where she stood for a few minutes, considering, turning her head rhythmically as she studied the titles in front of her. Finally she took a book from a shelf directly in front of her and brought it back to Brunetti. She turned to the index, then opened it and flipped through the pages until she found the one she wanted. She passed the open book to Brunetti.


He saw a photo of a gourd-shaped, squat, covered jar, no idea given of its scale. The decoration on the jar was divided up into three horizontal bands: the neck and cover, a broad centre field, and a third band that ran to the bottom. In the broad central field, placed just on the widest part of the vase, he saw a wide view of an open-mouthed animal figure that might have been a stylized wolf, or a fox, even a dog, his white body standing upright and lurching to the left, back legs spread wide and raised forelegs stretched out on either side, The sense of motion created by his limbs was reflected in a series of geometric curves and swirls sketched in a repeated pattern across the front of the vase and, presumably, around to its unpictured back. The rim, he could see, was pitted and chipped, but the central image was intact, and it was very beautiful. The inscription said only that it was Han Dynasty, which meant nothing to Brunetti.


‘Is this the sort of thing you find in Xian?’ he asked.


‘It’s from Western China, yes, but not from Xian. It’s a rare piece; I doubt we’ll find anything like it.’


‘Why?’


‘Because two thousand years have passed.’ That, she seemed to believe, was more than sufficient explanation.


‘Tell me about how you’d copy it,’ he said, keeping his eyes on the photo.


‘First, you’d need an expert potter, someone who had actually had time and opportunity to study the ones that have been found, seen them close up, worked with them, perhaps worked at finding them, or worked at displaying them. That would allow him to have seen actual fragments, so he would have a clear idea of the thickness of the different parts. Then you’d need a very good painter, someone who could copy a style, catch the mood in a vase like this, and then reproduce it so closely that it would appear to be the same piece that had been in the exhibition.’


‘How hard would that be to do?’


‘Very hard. But there are men, and women, who are trained for it and who do it superbly well.’


Brunetti placed the point of his finger just above the central figure. ‘This one looks worn; it looks really old. How do they copy that?’


‘Oh, that’s relatively easy. They bury the piece in the ground; some of them use raw sewage and bury it there.’ Seeing Brunetti’s instinctive disgust, she explained. ‘It corrodes the paint and wears it away faster. Then they chip tiny pieces away, usually from the edges or from the bottom.’ To explain, she pointed to a small chip on the top rim of the vase in the photo, just where it met the cylindrical cover, and on the bottom, where the vase touched the ground.


‘Is it difficult?’ Brunetti asked.


‘No, not to make a piece that will fool the layman. It’s much harder to make something that will fool an expert.’


‘Like you?’ he asked.’


‘Yes,’ she said, not bothering with the pretence of false modesty.


‘How can you tell?’ he asked, then expanded the question. ‘What are some of the things that tell you it’s a fake? Things that other people wouldn’t see?’


Before she answered, she flipped through a few pages of the book, pausing now and again to look at a photo. Finally she snapped it closed and looked across at him. ‘There’s the paint, whether the colour is right for the period when the vase was supposed to have been made. And the line, if it shows hesitation in the execution. That suggests that the painter was trying to copy something and had to think about it, pause while drawing to get it right. The original artists didn’t have to meet a standard; they just painted what they pleased, so their line is always fluid. If they didn’t like it, they probably broke the pot.’


He picked up immediately on the use of the casual word. ‘Pot or vase?’


She laughed outright at his question. ‘They’re vases now, two thousand years later, but I think they were just pots to the people who made them and used them.’


‘What did they use them for?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Originally.’


She shrugged. ‘For whatever people ever used pots for: storing rice, carrying water, storing grain. That one with the animal has a top, so they wanted whatever they kept in it to be safe, probably from mice. That suggests rice or wheat.’


‘How valuable are they?’ Brunetti asked.


She sat back in the sofa and crossed her legs. ‘I don’t know how to answer that.’


‘Why not?’


‘Because you have to have a market to have a price.’


‘And?’


‘And there’s no market in these pieces.’


‘Why not?’


‘Because there are so few of them. The one in the book is at the Metropolitan in New York. There might be three or four in other museums in different parts of the world.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, and Brunetti could picture her running through lists and catalogues. When she opened them, she said, ‘I can think of three: two in Taiwan, and one in a private collection.’


‘No others?’ Brunetti asked.


She shook her head. ‘None.’ But then she added, ‘At least none that are on display or in a collection that is known about.’


‘And private collections?’ he asked.


‘Perhaps, but one of us would probably have heard about it, and there’s nothing in the literature that mentions any others. So I think it’s a pretty safe guess there are no more than those.’


‘What would one of the museum pieces be worth?’ he asked, then explained when he saw her begin to shake her head, ‘I know, I know, from what you’ve said, it would be impossible to put an exact price on it, but can you give me some idea of what the value would be?’


It took her a while to think of an answer. When she did, she said, ‘The price would be whatever the seller asked or whatever the buyer was willing to pay. The market prices are in dollars - a hundred thousand? Two? More? But there really are no prices because there are so few pieces of this quality. It would depend entirely on how much the buyer wanted to have the piece, and on how much money he had.’


Brunetti translated her prices into millions of lire: two hundred million, three? Before he could complete this speculation, she continued.


‘But that’s only for the pottery, the vases. To the best of my knowledge, none of the statues of the soldiers has disappeared, but if that were to happen, there really is no price that could be put on it.’


‘But there’s also no way the owner could show it publicly, is there?’ Brunetti asked.


She smiled. ‘I’m afraid there are people who don’t care about showing things publicly. They just want to possess, be sure that a certain piece is theirs. I’ve no idea if they’re prompted by love of beauty or the desire of ownership, but, believe me, there are people who simply want to have a piece in their collection, even if no one ever sees it. Aside from themselves, that is.’ She saw how sceptical he looked at this, so she added, ‘Remember that Japanese billionaire, the one who wanted to be buried with his Van Gogh?’


Brunetti remembered having read something about it, last year. The man was said to have bought the painting at auction and then had it written in his will that he was to be buried with the painting, or, to put things in the proper order of importance, the painting was to be buried with him. He remembered something about a storm in the art world over this. ‘In the end, he gave up and said he wouldn’t do it, didn’t he?’


‘Well, that’s what was reported,’ she agreed. ‘I never believed the story, but I mention him to give you an idea of how some people feel about their possessions, how they believe that their right of ownership is the absolute measure or the chief purpose of collecting, not the beauty of the object.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I’m not explaining this very well, but, as I said, it doesn’t make any sense to me.’


Brunetti realized he still didn’t have a sufficient answer to his original question. ‘But I still don’t understand how you know that something is an original or a copy.’ Before she could answer, he added, ‘A friend of mine told me about that sixth sense you get, that something just looks right or wrong to you. But that’s very subjective. What I mean is this: if two experts disagree, one saying the piece is original and another saying it isn’t, how do you resolve the difference? Call in a third expert and take a vote?’ He smiled to show he was joking, but he could think of no other way out of the situation.


Her answering smile showed she got the joke. ‘No, we call in the technicians. There are a number of tests we can perform to prove the age of an object.’ With a change of voice, she asked, ‘Are you sure you want to listen to all of this?’


‘Yes, I do.’


‘I’ll try not to be too pedantic about it,’ she said, pulling her feet up under her on the sofa. ‘There are all sorts of tests that we can do on paintings: analysis of the chemical composition of paints to see if they’re right for the time when the picture is said to have been painted, X-rays to see what’s underneath the surface layer of a painting, even Carbon-14 dating.’ He nodded to show that he was familiar with all of these.


‘But we’re not talking about paintings,’ he said.


‘No, we’re not. The Chinese never worked in oils, at least not in the periods covered in the show. Most of the objects were ceramic or metal. I’ve never been interested in the metal pieces, well, not very much, but I do know it’s almost impossible to cheek them scientifically. For them, you need the eye.’


‘But not for ceramic?’


‘Of course you need the expert eye, but, luckily, the techniques for checking authenticity are as sophisticated as they are for painting.’ She paused a moment and asked again, ‘Do you want me to be technical?’


‘Yes, I do,’ he said, finding his pen and, in the doing, feeling very much like a student.


‘The chief technique we use — and the most reliable - is called thermoluminescence. All we have to do is extract about thirty miligrams of ceramic from any piece we want to test.’ She anticipated his question by explaining, ‘It’s easy. We take it from the back of a plate or from the underside of a vase or a statue. The amount we need is barely noticeable, just enough to get a sample. Then a photo multiplier will tell us, with an accuracy of about ten to fifteen per cent, the age of the material.’


‘How does it work?’ Brunetti asked. ‘I mean, on what principle?’


‘When clay is fired, well, if it’s fired above about 300 degrees centigrade, then all the electrons in the material it’s made out of will be - I suppose there’s no better word for it — they’ll be erased. The heat destroys their electric charges. Then, from that point on, they begin to pick up new electrical charges. That’s what the photo multiplier measures, how much energy they’ve absorbed. The older the material is, the brighter it glows.’


‘And this is accurate?’


‘As I said, to about fifteen per cent. That means, with a piece that’s supposed to be two thousand years old, we can get a reading that will tell us, to within about three hundred years, when it was made - well, when it was last fired.’


‘And did you do this test on the pieces while you were in China?’


She shook her head. ‘No, there’s no equipment like that in Xian.’


‘So how can you be sure?’


She smiled when she answered him. ‘The eye. I looked at them, and I was fairly sure they were fake.’


‘But to be sure? Did you ask anyone else?’


‘I told you. I wrote to Semenzato. And when I didn’t get an answer, I came back here.’ She saved him the question. ‘Yes, I brought samples with me, samples from the three pieces I was most suspicious of and from the other two that I think might be false.’


‘Did Semenzato know you had these samples?’


‘No. I never mentioned it to him.’


‘Where are they?’


‘I stopped in California on the way here and left one set with a friend of mine who’s a curator at the Getty. They have the equipment, so I asked him to run them through for me.’


‘And did he?’


‘Yes.’


‘And?’


‘I called him when I got home from the hospital. All three of the pieces that I thought were fake were made within the last few years.’


‘And the other two?’


‘One of them is genuine. The other is a fake.’


‘Is one test enough?’ Brunetti asked.


‘Yes.’


Even if it weren’t sufficient proof, Brunetti realized, what had happened to her and Semenzato was.


After a moment, Brett asked, ‘Now what?’


‘We try to find out who killed Semenzato and who the two men who came here were.’


Her look was level and very sceptical. Finally, she asked, ‘And what are the chances of that?’


He pulled from his inner pocket the police photos of Salvatore La Capra and passed them over to Brett. ‘Was this one of them?’


She took the photos and studied them for a minute. ‘No,’ she said simply and handed them back to Brunetti.


‘They’re Sicilian,’ she said. ‘They’re probably back home now, paid off and happy with the wife and kids. Their trip was a success; they did both things they were sent to do, scare me and kill Semenzato.’


‘That doesn’t make any sense, does it?’ he asked.


‘What doesn’t make any sense?’


‘I’ve been talking to people who knew him and knew about him, and it seems that Semenzato was mixed up in a number of things that a museum director shouldn’t have had anything to do with.’


‘Like what?’


‘He was a silent partner in an antique business. Other people have told me his professional opinion was for sale.’ Brett apparently needed no explanation of what the second meant.


‘Why is that important?’


‘If their intention had been to kill him, they would have done that first, then warned you to keep quiet or the same thing would happen to you. But they didn’t do that; they went to you first. And if that had worked, then Semenzato would never have known, at least not officially, about the substitution.’


‘You’re still assuming that he was part of this,’ Brett said. When Brunetti nodded his agreement, she added, ‘I think that’s a big assumption.’


‘It doesn’t make sense any other way,’ Brunetti explained. ‘How else would they have known to come to you, known about the appointment?’


‘And if I had still told him, even after they did this to me?’ He was surprised that she wouldn’t have seen this and was reluctant to explain it to her now. He didn’t answer.


‘Well?’ she insisted.


‘If Semenzato was a part of this, it’s pretty clear what would have happened if you spoke to him,’ Brunetti said, still reluctant to be the one to give it voice.


‘I still don’t understand.’


‘They would have killed you, not him,’ he said simply.


He watched her face as he spoke, saw it reach her eyes, first as shock and disbelief. After a moment, she understood, and her expression stiffened, her lips compressing and drawing her mouth tight.


Luckily, Flavia chose that time to come into the living room, bringing with her the flowery scent of soap or shampoo or one of those things women use to make themselves smell wonderful at the wrong time of the day. Why the morning and not the night?


She was wearing a simple brown woollen dress tied by a bright orange scarf wrapped around her waist a few times and knotted at her side, its end hanging below her knees and swinging as she walked. She wore no make-up and, seeing her without it, Brunetti wondered why she ever bothered with it.


‘Buon giorno,’ she said, smiling and offering him her hand,


He stood to take it. Glancing at Brett, she included her in her next remark. ‘I’m going to make coffee. Would either of you like some?’ Then with a smile, ‘A bit early for champagne.’


Brunetti nodded but Brett shook her head. Flavia turned and disappeared into the kitchen. Her arrival and departure had, however momentarily, deflected his last remark, but now they had no choice but to return to it.


‘Why did they kill him?’ Brett asked.


‘I don’t know. An argument with the other people involved with him? A disagreement about what to do, perhaps what to do about you?’


‘Are you sure he was killed because of all of this?’


‘I think it’s best to work on that assumption,’ he answered blandly, not surprised at her reluctance to see it this way. To do so, obviously, would be to admit her own peril: with Matsuko and Semenzato both dead, she was the only one who knew about the theft. Whoever had killed Semenzato could have no idea that she had brought proof, as well as suspicions, back from China with her, and so they would have to believe that his death would effectively end the trail. If the fraud should ever be detected sometime in the future, it was not likely that the government of the People’s Republic of China could be moved to interest itself in the murderous greed of Western capitalists; it would probably search for the thieves nearer to home.


‘While they were still in China, who was in charge of the pieces selected for the show?’


‘We dealt with a man from the Beijing Museum, Xu Lin. He’s one of their leading archaeologists and a very good art historian.’


‘Did he accompany the exhibits out of China?’


She shook her head. ‘No, his political past prevented that.’


‘Why?’


‘His grandfather was a landlord, so he was considered politically undesirable or, at least, suspect.’ She saw Brunetti’s open look of surprise and explained. ‘I know it sounds irrational.’ Then, after a pause, she added, ‘It is irrational, but that’s the way it is. He spent ten years during the Cultural Revolution herding pigs and spreading dung on cabbage fields. But as soon as the Revolution was over, he returned to the university, and since he was a brilliant student, he couldn’t be kept from winning the job in Beijing. But they wouldn’t let him leave the country. The only people who travelled with the exhibition were party hacks who wanted to go abroad to go shopping.’


‘And you.’


‘Yes, and me.’ After a moment, she added in a low voice, ‘And Matsuko.’


‘So you’re the one who will be held responsible for the theft?’


‘Of course, I’m responsible. They clearly aren’t going to accuse the party cadres who came along for the ride, not when they have a Westerner to take the blame for the whole thing.’


‘What do you think happened?’


She shook her head. ‘Nothing makes sense. Or I can’t believe what does make sense.’


‘Which is?’ He was interrupted by Flavia, who came back into the room carrying a tray. She walked past him, went to sit beside Brett on the sofa, and placed the tray on the table in front of them. On it were two cups of coffee. She handed one of the cups to Brunetti, took the other, and sat back in the sofa. ‘There are two sugars in it. I think that’s what you take.’


Ignoring this interruption, Brett continued. ‘One of the party cadres must have been approached by someone here.’ Though Flavia had missed the question that prompted this explanation, she made no attempt to disguise her response to the answer. She turned and stared at Brett in stony silence, then glared over at Brunetti and met his eyes. When neither of them said anything, Brett continued, ‘All right. All right. Or Matsuko. Maybe it was Matsuko.’


Sooner or later, Brunetti was sure, she would be forced to remove that ‘maybe’.


‘And Semenzato?’ Brunetti asked.


‘Possibly. At any rate, someone at the museum.’


He interrupted her. ‘Did these people, the ones you call cadres, did any of them speak Italian?’


‘Yes, two or three of them.’


‘Two or three?’ he repeated. ‘How many of them were there?’


‘Six,’ Brett answered. ‘The party takes care of its own.’


Flavia sniffed.


‘How well did they speak Italian? Do you remember?’ Brunetti asked.


‘Well enough,’ was her terse reply. She paused and then admitted, ‘No, not well enough for that. I was the only one who was able to speak to the Italians. If it was done, it would have to have been done in English.’ Matsuko, Brunetti recalled, had taken her degree at Berkeley.


Exasperated, Flavia snapped out, ‘Brett, when are you going to stop being stupid about this and take a look at what happened? I don’t care about you and the Japanese girl, but you’ve got to look at this clearly. This is your life you’re playing with.’ As suddenly as she had started, she stopped, sipped at her coffee but, finding the cup empty set it roughly down on the table in front of her.


No One spoke for a long time until Brunetti finally asked, ‘When would the switch have been done?’


‘After the closing of the exhibition,’ Brett answered in a shaky voice.


Brunetti shifted his glance to Flavia. She remained silent, glancing down at her hands, clasped loosely in her lap.


Brett sighed deeply and whispered, ‘All right. All right.’ She sat back in the sofa and watched the rain drive down against the glass of the skylights. Finally, she said, ‘She was here for the packing. She had to verify each object before the Italian customs police sealed the package and then sealed the crate that the boxes were put into.’


‘Would she have recognized a fake?’ Brunetti asked.


Brett’s answer was a long time coming. ‘Yes, she would have seen the difference.’ For a moment, he thought she was going to add something to that, but she didn’t. She watched the rain.


‘How long would it have taken them to pack everything?’


Brett considered for a moment and then answered, ‘Four days? Five?’


‘And then what? Where did the crates go from here?’


‘They were flown to Rome on Alitalia, but then they were held up there for more than a week by a strike at the airport. From there, they went to New York, and they were held up there by American customs. Finally, they were put on the Chinese airline and taken back to Beijing. The seals on the crates were checked every time they were put on or taken off a plane, and guards stayed with them while they were in the foreign airports.’


‘How long was it from the time they left Venice until they got to Beijing?’


‘More than a month.’


‘How long was it before you saw them?’


She shifted around on the sofa before she answered him, but she still didn’t look at him. ‘I told you, not until this winter.’


‘Where were you when they were being packed?’


‘I told you. In New York.’


Flavia interrupted. ‘With me. I was making my debut at the Met. Opening night was two days before the exhibition closed here. I asked Brett to go with me, and she did.’


Brett finally looked away from the rain and across at Flavia. ‘And I left Matsuko in charge of the shipment.’ She put her head back on the sofa and looked up at the skylights. ‘I went to New York for a week, and I stayed three. Then I went back to Beijing to wait for the shipment. When it didn’t arrive, I went back to New York and got it through US customs. But then,’ she continued, ‘I decided to stay in New York. I called Matsuko and told her I was delayed, and she offered to go to Beijing to check the collection when it finally got back to China.’


‘Was it her job to verify the objects in the shipment?’ Brunetti asked.


Brett nodded.


‘If you had been in China,’ Brunetti asked, ‘then you would have unpacked the collection yourself?’


‘I’ve just told you that,’ Brett snapped.


‘And you would have noticed the substitution then?’


‘Of course.’


‘Did you see any of the pieces before this winter?’


‘No. When they first got back to China, they disappeared into some sort of bureaucratic limbo for six months, then they were put on display in a warehouse, and then they were finally sent back to the museums they had originally been borrowed from.’


‘And that’s when you saw that they had been changed?’


‘Yes, and that’s when I wrote to Semenzato. About three months ago.’ With no warning, she raised her hand and slammed it down on the arm of the sofa. ‘The bastards,’ she said, voice guttural with rage. ‘The filthy bastards.’


Flavia put a calming hand on her knee. ‘Brett, there’s nothing you can do about it.’


With no change in her voice, Brett turned to her. ‘It’s not your career that’s over, Flavia. People will come and hear you sing no matter what you do, but they’ve just destroyed the last ten years of my life.’ She stopped for a moment and then added, voice softer, ‘And all of Matsuko’s.’


When Flavia tried to object, she continued, ‘It’s over. Once the Chinese find out about this, they’ll never let me go back. I’m responsible for those pieces. Matsuko brought the papers back from Beijing with her, and I signed them when I got back to Xian. I verified that they were all there, in the same condition as when they left the country. I should have been there, should have checked them all, but I let her go instead because I was in New York with you, listening to you sing. And it’s cost me my career.’


Brunetti looked at Flavia, saw the flush that had come into her face at the sound of Brett’s growing anger. He saw the graceful line her shoulder and arm made as she sat turned towards Brett, studied the curve of her neck and jaw. Perhaps she was worth a career.


‘The Chinese don’t have to find out about it,’ he said.


‘What?’ both of them asked.


‘Did you tell your friends who did the tests what the samples were?’ he asked Brett.


‘No, I didn’t. Why?’


‘Then we seem to be the only people who know about it. Of course, unless you told anyone in China.’


She shook her head from side to side. ‘No, I told no one. Only Semenzato.’


Flavia interrupted here and said, ‘And I doubt we have to worry he told anyone, aside from the person he sold them to.’


‘But I have to tell them,’ Brett insisted.


Instead of looking at her, Flavia and Brunetti glanced across the table at each other, understanding instantly what could be done, and it was only with the exercise of great force of will that each of them resisted the impulse to mutter, ‘Americans.’


Flavia decided to explain things to her. ‘So long as the Chinese don’t know, then nothing has happened to your career.’


To Brett, it was as if Flavia hadn’t spoken. ‘They can’t keep those pieces on display. They’re fakes.’


‘Brett,’ Flavia asked, ‘how long have they been back in China?’


‘Almost three years.’


‘And no one has noticed they aren’t genuine?’


‘No,’ Brett conceded.


Brunetti picked it up here. ‘Then it’s not likely that anyone will. Besides, the substitution could have happened any time during the last four years, couldn’t it?’


‘But we know it didn’t,’ Brett insisted.


‘That’s just it, cara.’ Flavia decided to try to explain it to her again. ‘Aside from the people who stole the vases, we’re the only people who know about it.’


‘That doesn’t make any difference,’ Brett said, her voice once more rising towards anger. ‘Besides, sooner or later, someone is going to realize they’re fake.’


‘And the later it is,’ Flavia explained with a broad smile, ‘the less likely it is that anyone will link you to it.’ She paused to let this sink in, then added, ‘Unless, of course, you want to toss away ten years’ work.’


For a long time, Brett didn’t say anything, just sat while the others watched her consider what had been said. Brunetti studied her face, feeling that he could read the play of emotion and idea. When she was about to speak, he suddenly said, ‘Of course, if we find out who killed Semenzato it’s likely that we’ll get the original vases back.’ He had no way of knowing if this was true, but he had seen Brett’s face and knew she had been about to refuse the idea of remaining silent.


‘But they’d still have to get back to China, and that’s impossible.’


‘Hardly,’ Flavia interrupted and laughed outright. Realizing that Brunetti would be more receptive, she turned to him to explain. ‘The master classes.’


Brett’s response was instant. ‘But you said no, you turned them down.’


‘That was last month. What’s the good of my being a prima donna if I can’t change my mind? You told me yourself that they’d give me royal treatment if I accepted. They’d hardly go through my bags when I got to the Beijing airport, not with the Minister of Culture there to meet me. I’m a diva, so they’ll be expecting me to travel with eleven suitcases. I’d hate to disappoint them.’


‘And what if they open your bags?’ Brett asked, but there was no fear in her voice.


Flavia’s response was immediate, ‘If memory serves, one of our cabinet ministers was caught with drugs at some airport in Africa, and nothing came of it. Certainly, in China, a diva ought to be far more important than a cabinet minister. Besides, it’s your reputation we’re worrying about, not mine.’


‘Be serious, Flavia,’ Brett said.


‘I am serious. There is absolutely no chance that they’d search my luggage, at least not when I’m going in. You’ve told me they’ve never searched yours, and you’ve been going in and out of China for years.’


‘There’s always the chance, Flavia,’ Brett said, but it was audible to Brunetti that she didn’t believe it.


‘There’s more of a chance, from what you’ve told me about their ideas of maintenance, that my plane will crash, but that’s no reason not to go. Besides, it might be interesting to go. It might give me some ideas about Turandot.’ Brunetti thought she was finished, but then she added, ‘But why are we wasting time talking about this?’ She looked at Brunetti, as if she held him responsible for the missing vases.


It surprised Brunetti to realize he had no idea if she was serious or not about trying to take the pieces back to China. He spoke to Brett. ‘In any case, you can’t say anything now. Whoever killed Semenzato doesn’t know what you told us, doesn’t even know if we’ve managed to come up with a reason for his murder. And I want to keep it that way.’


‘But you’ve been here, and you came to the hospital,’ Brett said.


‘Brett, you said they weren’t Venetian. I could be anyone: a friend, a relative. And I haven’t been followed.’ It was true. Only a native could successfully follow another person through the narrow streets of the city; only a native would know the sudden stops, the hidden turns, the dead ends.


‘So what should I do?’ Brett asked.


‘Nothing,’ he answered.


‘And what does that mean?’


‘Just that. Nothing. In fact, it would be wise if you were to leave the city for a while,’


‘I’m not sure I want to take this face anywhere,’ she said, but she said it with humour, a good sign.


Turning to Brunetti, Flavia said, ‘I’ve tried to get her to come to Milan with me.’


A team player, Brunetti asked her, ‘When are you going?’


‘Monday. I’ve already told them I’ll sing Thursday night. They’ve scheduled a piano rehearsal for Tuesday afternoon.’


He turned back to Brett. ‘Are you going to go?’ When she didn’t answer, he added, ‘I think it’s a good idea.’


‘I’ll think about it,’ was as much as Brett would say, and he decided to leave it at that. If she was going to be convinced, it was Flavia who could do it, not he.


‘If you decide to go, please let me know.’


‘Do you think there’s any danger?’ Flavia asked.


Brett answered the question before he could. ‘There’s probably less danger if they think I’ve spoken to the police. Then they don’t have to stop me from doing so.’ Then, to Brunetti, ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’


He was not in the habit of lying, even to women. ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is. Once the Chinese are notified about the fakes, whoever killed Semenzato will no longer have a reason to try to silence you. They’ll know the warning failed to stop you.’ Or, he realized, they could try to silence her permanently, but he chose to say nothing of this.


‘Wonderful,’ Brett said. ‘I can tell the Chinese and save my neck, but I ruin my career. Or I keep quiet, save my career, and then all I have to worry about is my neck.’


Flavia leaned across the table and placed her hand on Brett’s knee. ‘That’s the first time you’ve sounded like yourself since this began.’


Brett smiled in response and said, ‘Nothing like the fear of death to wake a person up, is there?’


Flavia sat back in her chair again and asked Brunetti, ‘Do you think the Chinese are involved in this?’


Brunetti was no more inclined than any other Italian to believe in conspiracy theories, which meant he often saw them even in the most innocent of coincidences. ‘I don’t believe your friend’s death was accidental,’ he said to Brett. ‘That means they have someone in China.’


‘Whoever “they” are,’ Flavia interrupted with heavy emphasis.


‘Because I don’t know who they are doesn’t mean they don’t exist,’ Brunetti said, turning to her.


‘Precisely,’ agreed Flavia and smiled.


To Brett, he said, ‘That’s why I think it might be better if you were to leave the city for a while.’


She nodded vaguely, surely not in agreement. ‘If I do go, I’ll let you know.’ Hardly a pledge of good faith. She leaned back again and rested her head on the back of the sofa. From above them all, the sound of the rain pounded down.


He turned his attention to Flavia, who signalled towards the door with her eyes, then made a small gesture with her chin, telling him it was time to leave.


He realized that there was little more to say, so he got to his feet. Brett, seeing him, pulled her feet out from beneath her and started to rise.


‘No, don’t bother,’ Flavia said, standing and moving off towards the entrance hall. ‘I’ll see him out.’


He leaned down and shook Brett’s hand. Neither said anything.


At the door, Flavia took his hand and pressed it with real warmth. ‘Thank you,’ was all she said, and then she held the door while he passed in front of her and started down the steps. The closing door cut off the sound of the falling rain.


* * * *


Chapter Eighteen



Even though he had assured Brett that he had not been followed, when he left her apartment, Brunetti paused before turning into Calle della Testa and looked both ways, searching for anyone he might remember having seen when he entered. No one looked familiar. He started to turn right, but then he recalled something he had been told when he came to the area some years ago, searching for Brett’s apartment.


He turned left and walked down to the first large cross street, Calle Giacinto Gallina, and there he found, just as he remembered from his first visit, the news stand that stood at the corner, in front of die grammar school, facing on to the street that was the main artery of this neighbourhood. And, as though she hadn’t moved from where he had seen her last, he found Signora Maria, seated on a high stool inside the newsstand, her upper body wrapped in a hand-knitted scarf that made at least three passes around her neck. Her face was red, either with cold or an early morning brandy, perhaps both, and her short hair seemed even whiter by the contrast.


‘Buon giorno, Signora Maria,’ he said, smiling up at her ensconced behind the papers and magazines.


‘Buon giorno, Commissario,’ she answered, as casually as if he were an old customer.


‘Signora, since you know who I am, you probably know why I’m here.’


‘L’americana?’ she asked, but it really wasn’t a question.


He sensed motion behind him; suddenly a hand shot forward and took a newspaper from one of the stacks in front of Maria, extending a ten-thousand-lire note. ‘Tell your mother the plumber will come at four this afternoon,’ Maria said, handing back change.


‘Grazie, Maria,’ the young woman said and was gone.


‘How can I help you?’ Maria asked him.


‘You must see whoever passes this way, signora.’ She nodded. ‘If you see anyone lingering in the neighbourhood who shouldn’t be here, would you call the Questura?’


‘Of course, Commissario. I’ve been keeping an eye on things since she got home, but there’s been no one.’


Once again a hand, this one clearly male, shot in front of Brunetti and pulled down a copy of La Nuova. It disappeared for a moment, then returned with a thousand-lire note and some small change, which Maria took with--a muttered ‘Grazie’.


‘Maria, have you seen Piero?’ the man asked.


‘He’s down at your sister’s house. He said he’d wait for you there.’


‘Grazie,’ the man said and was gone.


He had come to the right person. ‘If you call, just ask for me,’ he said, reaching for his wallet to give her one of his cards.


‘That’s all right, Dottor Brunetti,’ she said. ‘I’ve got the number. I’ll call if I see anything.’ She raised a hand in a friendly gesture, and he noticed that the tips of her woollen gloves were cut off, leaving her fingers free to handle change.


‘Can I offer you something, signora?’ he asked, nodding with his head to the bar that stood on the opposite corner.


‘A coffee would help against the cold,’ she answered. ‘Un caffè corretto,’ she suggested, and he nodded. If he spent the entire morning sitting motionless in this damp cold, he’d want a shot of grappa in his coffee, too. He thanked her again and went into the bar, where he paid for the caffè corretto and asked that it be taken out to Signora Maria. It was clear from the barman’s response that this was standard procedure in the neighbourhood. Brunetti couldn’t remember if there was a Minister of Information in the current government; if so, Signora Maria was a natural for the job.


At the Questura, he went quickly up to his office and found it, surprisingly, neither tropical nor arctic. For a moment he entertained the fantasy that the heating system had finally been fixed, but then a shriek of escaping steam from the radiator under his window put an end to it. The explanation, he realized lay in the thick sheaf of papers on his desk. Signorina Elettra must have put them there recently, opened the window for a moment, then closed it before she left.


He hung his overcoat behind the door and walked over to his desk. He sat, picked up the papers and began to read through them. The first was a copy of Semenzato’s bank statements, going back four years. Brunetti had no idea how much the museum director had been paid and made a note to find out, but he did know the bank statement of a rich man when he saw one. Large deposits had been made with no apparent regularity; just so, amounts of fifty million and more had been taken out, again, with no apparent pattern. At his death, Semenzato’s balance had been two hundred million lire, an enormous amount to keep in a savings account. The second page of the statement noted that he also had double that amount invested in government bonds. A wealthy wife? Good luck on the stock market? Or something else?


The next pages listed foreign calls made from his office number. There were scores of them, but, again, no pattern that Brunetti could discern.


The last three pages were copies of Semenzato’s credit card receipts for the last two years, and from them Brunetti got an idea of the airline tickets he had paid for. He ran his eye quickly down the list, amazed at the frequency and distance of the trips. The museum director, it seemed, would spend a weekend in Bangkok as casually as another man might go to his beach house, would go to Taipei for three days and stop in London for the night on his way back to Venice. A copy of the statements from his two charge cards accompanied the itinerary and gave proof that Semenzato did not stint himself in any way when he travelled.


Beneath these, he found a sheaf of fax papers, clipped together at the top. All of these related to Carmello La Capra. On the first sheet, Signorina Elettra had pencilled the observation, ‘Interesting man, this one.’ Salvatore’s father, it appeared, had no visible means of support; that is, he appeared to have no job or fixed employment. Instead, on his tax return for the last three years, he listed his profession as ‘consultant’, a term which, when added to the fact that he was from Palermo, sounded alarm bells in Brunetti’s mind. His bank statement showed that large transfers had been made to his various accounts in interesting, one might even say suspicious, currencies: Colombian pesos, Ecuadorean escudos, and Pakistani rupees. Brunetti found copies of the bill of sale of the palazzo La Capra had bought two years ago; he must have paid in cash, for there was no corresponding withdrawal from any of his accounts.


Not only had Signorina Elettra succeeded in getting copies of La Capra’s bank statements, but she had also managed to provide copies of his credit card receipts as complete as those she had obtained for Semenzato. Well aware of how long it took to obtain this information through legal channels, Brunetti had no choice but to accept the fact that she must be doing it unofficially, which probably meant illegally. He admitted this, and he read on. Sotheby’s and the Metropolitan Opera box office while in New York, Christie’s and Covent Garden in London, and the Sydney Opera House, apparently while on the way back from a weekend in Taipei. La Capra had stayed, of course, at the Oriental in Bangkok, where he had gone, it seemed, for a weekend. Seeing that, Brunetti shuffled back through the papers until he found the list of Semenzato’s travels and his credit card receipts. He put the papers side by side: La Capra and Semenzato had spent the same two nights at the Oriental. Brunetti separated the papers and laid the separate sheets in two vertical columns on his desk. On at least five occasions, Semenzato and La Capra had been in a foreign city on the same dates, often staying in the same hotel.


Did hunters feel this rush of excitement when they saw the first prints in the snow or when they heard a rustling in the trees behind them and turned to see the bright rush of wings? La Capra and his new palazzo, La Capra and his purchases at Sotheby’s, La Capra and his trips to the Orient and the Middle East. The trajectory of his life crossed repeatedly with that of Semenzato, and Brunetti suspected the reason lay in their shared interest in things of great beauty and even greater price. And Murino? How many objects had his shop provided for Signor La Capra’s new home?


He decided to go down and thank her in person, telling himself that he would make no inquiries about the source of her information. The door to her office was open, and she sat behind her desk, typing into her computer, head turned aside to watch the screen. He noticed that today’s flowers were red roses, at least two dozen of them, flowers which proclaimed love and longing.


She sensed his presence and glanced up at him, smiled, and stopped typing. ‘Buon giorno, Commissario,’ she said. ‘How can I help you?’


‘I’ve come to thank you, bravissima Elettra,’ he said. ‘For the papers you left on my desk.’


She smiled at the use of her first name, as if she saw it as a tribute, not a liberty. ‘Ah, you’re welcome. Interesting coincidences, aren’t they?’ she asked, making no attempt to disguise her satisfaction at having noticed them.


‘Yes. How about the phone records? Did you get them?’


‘They’re cross-checking them now to see if they called one another. They’ve got the records on Signor La Capra’s phone in Palermo as well as the phone and fax lines he had installed here. I told them to check for any that might have come from Semenzato’s home or office, but that will take a bit longer and probably won’t be ready until tomorrow.’


‘Do we owe all of this to your friend Giorgio?’ Brunetti asked.


‘No, he’s in Rome on some sort of training programme. So I called and said Vice-Questore Patta needed the information immediately.’


‘Did they ask you what it was for?’


‘Of course they did, sir. You wouldn’t want them to give this sort of information out without the proper authorization, would you?’


‘No, of course not. And what did you tell them?’


‘That it was classified. A government matter. That will make them work faster.’


‘And what if the Vice-Questore finds out about this? What if they mention this to him, say you used his name?’


Her smile grew even warmer. ‘Oh, I told them that he would have to deny all knowledge of it, so he wouldn’t like their mentioning it to him. Besides, I’m afraid they’re rather used to doing things like this, checking on private phones and keeping records of the calls that people make.’


‘Yes, so am I,’ Brunetti agreed. He was afraid that a record was also kept of what some people said during those phone calls, a flight of paranoia in which he was probably joined by a large part of the population, but he didn’t bother to mention this to Signorina Elettra. Instead, he asked, ‘Any chance we could get them today?’


‘I’ll give them a call. Perhaps this afternoon.’


‘Would you bring them up to me if they come in, signorina?’


‘Of course,’ she answered and turned back to her keyboard.


He went to the door but before reaching it, he turned, hoping to capitalize on the intimacy of the last minutes. ‘Signorina, excuse me if I ask, but I’ve always been curious about why you decided to come to work for us. Not everyone gives up a job at Banca d’ltalia.’


She stopped typing but kept her fingers poised over the keys. ‘Oh, I wanted a change,’ she answered casually and turned her attention back to her typing.


And fish flew, Brunetti thought to himself as he left her office and went back up to his own. The heat had become tropical in his absence, so he opened the windows for a few minutes, holding them only partially open to prevent the rain from driving in, then closed them and went back to his desk.


La Capra and Semenzato, the mysterious man from the South and the museum director. The man with expensive taste and the money to indulge it, and the museum director with the contacts that might be necessary to indulge that taste to its fullest. They were an interesting pair. What other objects would Signor La Capra have in his possession, and were they to be found in his palazzo? Was the restoration completed, and, if so, what sort of changes had been made? That was easily discovered; all he had to do was go down to city hall and ask to see the plans. Of course, what was to be read in the plans and the work that had actually been done might not bear too close a resemblance to each other, but to discover the truth of that, all he had to do was learn which of the city inspectors had signed off on the final papers, and he would have a fairly good idea of how close the relationship was likely to be.


There remained the question of what objects might be contained in the newly restored palazzo, but that demanded a different sort of answer. The magistrate who would issue a search warrant on the basis of hotel receipts for the same dates didn’t exist in Venice, a city where palazzi such as La Capra’s sold for seven million lire per square metre.


He decided to try official means first, which meant a call to the other side of the city and the offices of the catasto, where all plans, projects and transfers of ownership had to be registered. It took him a long time to get through to the proper office, as his call was shunted back and forth between uninterested civil servants who were sure, even before Brunetti had a chance to explain what he wanted, that it was another office which could give him the information. A few times, he tried speaking in Veneziano, sure that the use of dialect would ease things by assuring the person on the other end of the line that he was not only a police official but, more importantly, a native Venetian. The first three people he spoke to answered his every question in Italian, apparently not themselves Venetian, and the fourth slipped into thoroughly incomprehensible Sardinian until Brunetti relented and spoke in Italian. That, however, didn’t get him what he wanted, but it did get him, finally, transferred to the correct office.


He felt a surge of joy when the woman who answered the phone spoke in purest veneziano — what’s more, with the strongest of Castello accents. Forget what Dante said about Tuscan being sweet in the mouth. No, this was the language to bring delight.


During the long wait for officialdom to make up its mind to speak to him, he had abandoned all hope of getting a copy of the plans and so asked, instead, for the name of the firm that had done the restorations. Brunetti recognized the name, Scattalon, and knew that they were among the best and most expensive companies in the city. In fact, it was they who had the more-or-less eternal contract to maintain his father-in-law’s palazzo against the equally eternal ravages of time and tide.


* * * *


Arturo, the oldest Scattalon son, was in the office but was unwilling to discuss a client’s affairs with the police. ‘I’m sorry, Commissario, but that is privileged information.’


‘All I’d like is a general idea of how much the work cost, perhaps rounded out to the nearest ten million,’ Brunetti explained, failing to see how such information could be privileged or in any way private.


‘I’m sorry, but that’s absolutely impossible.’ The sound from the other end of the line disappeared, and Brunetti imagined Scattalon was covering the mouthpiece with his hand in order to speak to someone there with him. In a moment he was back. ‘You’d have to give us an official request from a judge before we would reveal information like that.’


‘Would it help if I had my father-in-law call and ask your father about this?’ Brunetti asked.


‘And who is your father-in-law?’ Scattalon asked.


‘Count Orazio Falier,’ Brunetti said, savouring, for the first time in his life, the rich sound of each syllable as it fell trippingly from his tongue.


Again, the sound at the other end grew muffled, but Brunetti could still make out the deep rumble of male voices. The phone was set down on a hard surface, he heard noises in the background, and then another voice spoke, ‘Buon giorno, Dottor Brunetti. You must excuse my son. He’s new to the business. A university graduate, so perhaps he isn’t familiar with the trade, not yet.’


‘Of course, Signor Scattalon. I understand completely.’


‘What information was it you said you needed, Dottor Brunetti?’ Scattalon asked.


‘I’d like a rough estimate of how much Signor La Capra has spent on the restoration of his palazzo.’


‘Of course, Dottore, of course. Let me just get the file.’ The phone was set down again, but Scattalon was quickly back. He said he didn’t know how much the original purchase price had been, but he estimated that, during the last year, his company had charged La Capra at least five hundred million, including both labour and materials. Brunetti assumed that this was the price ‘in bianco’, the official price that would be reported to the government as what had been spent and earned. He didn’t know Scattalon well enough to feel himself free to ask about this, but it was a safe conclusion that a great deal, perhaps the major part, of the work had been paid for ‘in nero’, unofficially and at a cheaper rate, the better for Scattalon to avoid having to declare it as income and hence be forced to pay taxes on it. Brunetti considered it a safe assumption that he could factor in another five hundred million lire, if not for Scattalon, then for other workers and expenses that would have been paid ‘in nero’.


As to what had actually been done in the palazzo, Scattalon was more than forthcoming. New roof and ceilings, structural reinforcement with steel beams (and the fine paid for that), all walls stripped down to the original brick and re-plastered, new plumbing and wiring, a complete heating system, central air conditioning, three new stairways, parquet floors in the central salons, and double-glazed windows throughout. No expert, Brunetti could still calculate that this work would cost enormously more than the sum Scattalon had quoted. Well, that was between Scattalon and the tax people.


‘I thought he was planning a room where he could put his collection,’ Brunetti fabricated. ‘Did you work on that, a room for paintings or,’ and here he hoped as he paused, ‘ceramics?’


After a brief hesitation during which Scattalon must have been weighing his obligation to La Capra against that to the Count, he said, ‘There was one room on the third floor that might have served as a kind of gallery. We put bullet-proof glass and iron gratings on all the windows,’ Scattalon continued. ‘It’s at the back of the palazzo, and the windows face north, so it gets indirect light, but the windows are large enough to allow a fair amount to come in.’


‘A gallery?’


‘Well, he never said that, but it would certainly seem that’s what it is. Only one door, reinforced with steel, and he had us cut a number of indentations in the wall. They would be perfect for showing statues, so long as they were small, or perhaps for ceramics.’


‘What about an alarm system? Did you install one?’


‘No, we didn’t, but that’s not work we’re prepared to do. If he had it done, he would have had to hire a different company.’


‘Do you know if he did?’


‘I’ve no idea.’


‘What sort of man did he seem to you, Signor Scattalon?’


‘A wonderful man to work for. Very reasonable. And very inventive. He has excellent taste.’


Brunetti understood this to mean that La Capra was extravagant, probably given to the sort of extravagance that did not quibble over bills or examine them too closely.


‘Do you know if Signor La Capra is living in the palazzo now?’


‘Yes, he is. In fact, he’s called us in a few times to take care of details that were overlooked in the last weeks of work.’ Ah, Brunetti thought, the ever-useful passive voice: the details had been ‘overlooked’; Scattalon’s workmen had not overlooked them. What a wondrous thing was language.


‘And do you know if any details were overlooked in the room you call the gallery?’


Scattalon’s answer was immediate. ‘I didn’t call it that, Dottor Brunetti. I said it might serve that function. And, no, there were no details overlooked there.’


‘Do you know if your workmen had reason to go into that room when they went back to the palazzo for the last pieces of work?’


‘If there was no work to be done in the room, then there would be no reason for my men to enter it, so I’m sure they would not.’


‘Of course, of course, Signor Scattalon. I’m sure that’s true.’ His sense of the conversation suggested that Scattalon had patience for one more question, no more. ‘Is the door the only means of access to that room?’


‘Yes. That, and the air-conditioning duct.’


‘And do the gratings open?’


‘No.’ Simple, monosyllabic, and quite audibly terminal.


‘Thank you for your help, Signor Scattalon. I’ll be sure to mention it to my father-in-law.’ Brunetti concluded, giving no more explanation at the end of the conversation than he had at the beginning but reasonably certain that Scattalon, like most Italians, would be sufficiently suspicious of anything having to do with a police investigation not to mention it to anyone, most assuredly not to a client who might not yet have paid him in full.


* * * *



Chapter Nineteen



Would signor La Capra, he wondered, turn out to be yet another of those well-protected men who were appearing on the scene with unsettling frequency? Rich, but with a wealth that had no roots, at least none that were traceable, they seemed to be moving north, coming up from Sicily and Calabria, immigrants in their own land. For years, people in Lombardy and the Veneto, the wealthiest parts of the country, had thought themselves free from la piovra, the many-tentacled octopus that the Mafia had become. It was all roba dal Sud, stuff from the South, those killings, the bombings of bars and restaurants whose owners refused to pay protection money, the shoot-outs in city centres. And, he had to admit, as long as it had remained, all that violence and blood, down in the South, no one had felt much concern with it; the government had shrugged it off as just another quaint custom of the meridione. But in the last few years, just like an agricultural blight that couldn’t be stopped, the violence had moved north: Florence, Bologna, and now the heartland of industrialized Italy found themselves infected and looked in vain for a way to contain the disease.


Along with the violence, along with the hired killers who shot twelve-year-olds as messages to their parents, had come the men with the briefcases, the soft-spoken patrons of the opera and the arts, with their university-educated children, their wine cellars and their fierce desire to be perceived as patrons, epicures and gentlemen, not as the thugs they were, prating and posturing with their talk of omerta and loyalty.


For a moment, he had to stop himself and accept the fact that Signor La Capra might well be no more than what he appeared to be: a man of wealth who had bought and restored a palazzo on the Grand Canal. But even as he thought this, he thought of the presence of Salvatore La Capra’s fingerprints in Semenzato’s office and saw again the names of those cities and the identical dates when La Capra and Semenzato had visited them. Coincidence? Absurd.


Scattalon had said La Capra was living in the palazzo; perhaps it was time for a representative of one of the official arms of the city to greet the new resident and have a word with him about the need for security in these sadly criminal times.


Since the palazzo was on the same side of the Grand Canal as his home, he had lunch there but had no coffee after it, thinking that Signor La Capra might be polite enough to offer it to him.


* * * *


The palazzo stood at the end of Calle Dilera, a small street that dead-ended into the Grand Canal. As he approached, Brunetti could see the sure signs of newness. The exterior layer of intonaco plastered over the bricks from which the walls were constructed was still virgin and free of graffiti. Only near the bottom did it show the first signs of wear: the recent acqua alta, had left its mark at about the height of Brunetti’s knee, lightening the dull orange of the plaster, some of which had already begun to crumble away and now lay kicked or swept to the side of the narrow calle. Iron gratings were cemented into place on the four ground-level windows and thus prevented all chance of entry. Behind them, he saw new wooden shutters, tightly closed. He moved to the other side of the narrow calle and put his head back to study the upper floors. All of them had the same dark green wooden shutters, these thrown back, and windows of double-glazed glass. The gutters that hung under the new terracotta tiles of the roof were copper, as were the pipes that carried the run-off water from them. At the second floor, however, the pipes changed to far less tempting tin and ran down to the ground.


The nameplate by the single bell was taste itself: a simple italic script with only the name, ‘La Capra’. He rang the bell and stood near the intercom.


‘Si, chi è ?’ a male voice asked.


‘Polizia,’ he answered, having decided not to waste time with subtlety.


‘Si. Arrivo,’ the voice said, and then Brunetti heard only a mechanical click. He waited.


After a few minutes, the door was opened by a young man in a dark blue suit. Clean-shaven and dark-eyed, he was handsome enough to be a model but perhaps a bit too stocky to photograph well. ‘Si?’ he asked, not smiling but not seeming any more unfriendly than the average citizen would be if asked to come to the door by the police.


‘Buon giorno,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’m Commissario Brunetti; I’d like to speak to Signor La Capra.’


‘About what?’


‘About crime in the city.’


The young man remained where he was, standing a bit outside the door, and made no move to open it or allow Brunetti to enter. He waited for Brunetti to explain more fully, and when it became obvious this was not about to happen, he said, ‘I thought there wasn’t supposed to be any crime in Venice.’ His Sicilian accent became audible in the longer sentence, his belligerence in the tone.


‘Is Signor La Capra at home?’ Brunetti asked, tired of sparring and beginning to feel the cold.


‘Yes.’ The young man stepped back inside the door and held it open for Brunetti. He found himself in a large courtyard with a circular well in the centre. Off to the left, marble pillars supported a flight of steps that led up to the first floor of the building that enclosed the courtyard on all sides. At the top, the stairs turned back upon themselves, still hugging the exterior wall of the building, and climbed to the second and then the third floor. The carved heads of stone lions stood at equal distances on the marble banister that ran along the stairs. Tucked below the stairs were the signs of recent work: a wheelbarrow filled with paper bags of cement, a roll of heavy-duty plastic sheeting, and large tins dripping different colours of paint down their sides.


At the top of the first flight of steps, the young man opened a door and stepped back to allow Brunetti to pass into the palazzo. The moment he stepped inside, Brunetti heard music filtering down from the floors above. As he followed the young man up the steps, the sound grew louder, until he could distinguish the presence of a single soprano voice in the midst of it. The accompaniment, it seemed, was strings, but the sound was muffled, coming from another part of the house. The young man opened another door, and just at that moment the voice soared up above the instruments and hung suspended in beauty for the space of five heartbeats, then dropped back to the lesser world of the instruments.


They passed down a marble hallway and started up an inner stairway, and as they went, the music grew louder and louder, the voice clearer and brighter, the nearer they came to its source. The young man seemed not to hear, though the world in which they moved was filled only with that sound, nothing more. At the top of the second flight of stairs, the young man opened another door and stood back again, nodding Brunetti into a long corridor. He could only nod; there was no way Brunetti could have heard him.


Brunetti walked in front of him and along the corridor. The young man caught up with him and opened a door on the right; this time he bowed as Brunetti passed in front of him and closed the door behind him, leaving Brunetti inside, all but deafened by the music.


Robbed of every sense but sight, Brunetti saw in four corners wide cloth-covered panels that reached from the floor to the height of a man, all turned to face the centre of the room. And there in the centre, a man lay on a chaise-longue covered with pale brown leather. His attention entirely given to a small square booklet in his hands, he gave no sign that he had noticed Brunetti’s entrance. Brunetti stopped just inside the door and watched him. And he listened to the music.


The soprano’s tone was absolutely pure, a sound that was generated in the heart and warmed there until it came swelling out with the apparent effortlessness that was achieved only by the greatest singers and then only with the greatest skill. Her voice paused upon a note, soared off from it, swelled, flirted with what he now realized was a harpsichord, and then rested for a moment while the strings spoke with the harpsichord. And then, as if it had always been there, the voice returned and swept the strings up with it, higher and higher still. Brunetti could make out words and phrases here and there, ‘disprezzo’, ‘perch è ’, ‘per pietade’, ‘fugge il mio bene’, all of which spoke of love and longing and loss. Opera, then, though he had no idea which one it was.


The man on the chaise-longue looked to be in his late fifties and wore around his middle proof of good eating and soft living. His face was dominated by his nose, large and fleshy — the same nose Brunetti had seen on the mug shot of the accused rapist, his son — on which sat a pair of half-lens reading glasses. His eyes were large, limpid and dark enough to seem almost black. He was cleanshaven, but his beard was so heavy that a dark shadow was evident on his cheeks, though it was still early afternoon.


The music came to a chilling diminuendo and died away. It was only in the silence that radiated out to him that Brunetti became aware of just how perfect the quality of sound had been, the volume disguised by that perfection.


The man leaned back limply on his chaise-longue, and the booklet fell from his hand to the floor beside him. He closed his eyes, head back, his entire body slack. Though he had in no way acknowledged Brunetti’s arrival, Brunetti had no doubt the man was very much aware of his presence in the room; moreover, he had the feeling that this display of aesthetic ravishment was being put on specifically for his edification.


Gently, much in the manner his mother-in-law used to applaud an aria she hadn’t liked but had been told was very well sung, he patted the tips of his fingers together a few times, very lightly.


As if called back from realms where lesser mortals dared not enter, the man on the chaise-longue opened his eyes, shook his head in feigned astonishment, and turned to look at the source of the lukewarm response.


‘Didn’t you like the voice?’ La Capra asked with real surprise.


‘Oh, I liked the voice a great deal,’ Brunetti answered, then added, ‘but the performance seemed a bit forced.’


If La Capra caught the absence of possessive pronoun, he chose to ignore it. He picked up the libretto and waved it in the air. ‘That was the best voice of our age, the only great singer,’ he said, waving the small libretto for emphasis.


‘Signora Petrelli?’ Brunetti inquired.


The man’s mouth twisted up as if he’d bitten into something unpleasant. ‘Sing Handel? La Petrelli?’ he asked with tired surprise. ‘All she can sing is Verdi and Puccini.’ He pronounced the names as a nun would say “sex” and “passion”.


Brunetti began to offer that Flavia also sang Mozart, but instead he asked, ‘Signor La Capra?’


At the sound of his name, the man pushed himself to his feet, suddenly recalled from aesthetic pronouncements to his duty as a host, and approached Brunetti, extending his hand. ‘Yes. And whom do I have the honour of meeting?’


Brunetti took his hand and returned the very formal smile. ‘Commissario Guido Brunetti.’


‘Commissario?’ One would think La Capra had never heard the word.


Brunetti nodded. ‘Of the police.’


Momentary confusion crossed the other man’s face, but this time Brunetti thought it might be a real emotion, not one manufactured for an audience. La Capra quickly recovered and asked, very politely, ‘And what is it, if I might ask, that brings you to visit me, Commissario?’


Brunetti didn’t want La Capra to suspect that the police connected him with Semenzato’s death, so he had decided to say nothing about his son’s fingerprints having been found at the scene of Semenzato’s murder. And until he had a better sense of the man, he didn’t want La Capra to know the police were curious about any link that might exist between him and Brett. ‘Theft, Signor La Capra,’ Brunetti said and then repeated, ‘Theft.’


Signor La Capra was, in an instant, all polite attention. ‘Yes, Commissario?’


Brunetti smiled his most friendly smile. ‘I came to speak to you about the city, Signor La Capra, since you’re a new resident, and about some of the risks of living here.’


‘That’s very kind of you, Dottore,’ returned La Capra, matching him smile for smile. ‘But, please, we can’t stand here like two statues. Could I offer you a coffee? You’ve had lunch, haven’t you?’


‘Yes, I have. But a coffee would be welcome.’


‘Ah, then come along with me. We’ll go down to my study and I’ll have us brought some.’ Saying that, he led Brunetti from the room and back down the stairway. On the second floor, he opened a door and stood back politely to allow Brunetti to enter before him. Books lined two walls; paintings much in need of cleaning — and looking all the more expensive because of that - filled the third. Three ceiling-high windows looked out over the Grand Canal, where boats went about their boaty business. La Capra waved Brunetti to a satin-covered divan and went himself to a long oak desk, where he picked up the phone, pushed a button, and asked that coffee be brought to the study.


He came back across the room and sat down opposite Brunetti, careful first to pull gently at his trousers above the knees so as not to stretch them out when he sat. ‘As I said, it’s very thoughtful of you to come to speak to me, Dottor Brunetti. I’ll be sure to thank Dottor Patta when I see him.’


‘Are you a friend of the Vice-Questore’s?’ Brunetti asked.


La Capra raised his hands in a self-deprecating gesture, pushing away the possibility of such glory. ‘No, I have no such honour. But we are both members of the Lions’ Club, and so we have occasion to meet socially.’ He paused a moment and then added, ‘I’ll be sure to thank him for your thoughtfulness.’


Brunetti nodded his gratitude, knowing just how thoughtful Patta would find it.


‘But, tell me, Dottor Brunetti, what is it you wanted to warn me about?’


‘There’s no specific warning I can give you, Signor La Capra. It’s more that I want to tell you that the appearances of this city are deceiving.’


‘Yes?’


‘It seems that we have a peaceful city here,’ Brunetti began and then interrupted himself to ask, ‘You know that there are only seventy thousand inhabitants?’


La Capra nodded.


‘So it would seem, at first glance, that it is a sleepy little provincial town, that the streets are safe.’ Here Brunetti hastened to add, ‘And they are; people are still safe at all times of the day or night.’ He paused a moment and then added, as if it had just come to him, ‘And they are generally safe in their homes, as well.’


‘If I might interrupt you here, Commissario, that’s one of the reasons I chose to move here, to enjoy that safety, the tranquillity that seems to remain only in this city.’


‘You are from.. .?’ Brunetti asked, though the accent that bubbled up, no matter how La Capra fought to keep it down, left that in no doubt.


‘Palermo,’ La Capra responded.


Brunetti paused to allow that name to sink in and then continued, ‘There is still, however, and it is this I came to speak to you about, there is still a risk of theft. There are many wealthy people in the city, and some of them, lulled, perhaps, by the apparent peacefulness of the city, are not as careful as they should be about the security they maintain within their homes.’ He glanced around him and then followed with a graceful gesture of the hand. ‘I can see that you have many beautiful things here.’ Signor La Capra smiled but then quickly bowed his head in the appearance of modesty. ‘I hope only that you have been provident enough to see to their best protection,’ Brunetti concluded.


The door opened behind him and the same young man came into the room carrying a tray on which sat two cups of coffee and a silver sugar bowl resting on three delicate clawed feet. He stood silently beside Brunetti and waited while he took a cup and spooned two sugars into it. He repeated the process with Signor La Capra and left the room without having said a word, taking the tray with him.


As he stirred his coffee, Brunetti noticed that it was covered with the thin layer of froth that came only from the standard electric espresso machines: no screw-top Moka Espresso pot placed hurriedly on the back burner in Signor La Capra’s kitchen.


‘It’s very thoughtful of you to come to tell me this, Commissario. I’m afraid it’s true that many of us do see Venice as an oasis of peace in what is an increasingly criminal society.’ Here, Signor La Capra shook his head from side to side. ‘But I assure you that I have taken every precaution to see that my possessions remain safe.’


‘I’m glad to learn that, Signor La Capra,’ Brunetti said, placing his cup and saucer on top of a small marble-topped table that stood beside the divan. ‘I’m sure you would want to be most prudent with the beautiful things you have here. After all, I’m sure you’ve gone to considerable trouble to acquire some of them.’


This time, Signor La Capra’s smile, when it came, was in a lower key. He finished his coffee and leaned forward to place his cup and saucer beside Brunetti’s. He said nothing.


‘Would it be intrusive if I were to ask you what sort of protection you’ve provided, Signor La Capra?’


‘Intrusive?’ La Capra asked, opening his eyes wide in surprise. ‘But how could that be? I’m sure you ask only out of consideration for the citizens of the city.’ He let that rest a moment and then explained, ‘I had a burglar alarm installed. But more importantly, I have round-the-clock staff. One of them is always here. I tend to place greater trust in the loyalty of my staff than in any mechanical protection I might buy.’ Here, Signor La Capra turned up the temperature of his smile. ‘Perhaps this makes me old-fashioned, but I believe in these values — loyalty, honour.’


‘Certainly,’ Brunetti said blandly, but he smiled to show that he understood. ‘Do you allow people to see the other pieces in your collection? If these,’ Brunetti said, waving a hand lightly in a gesture that encompassed the entire room, ‘are any indication, then it must be very impressive.’


‘Ah, Commissario, I’m sorry.’ La Capra said with a small shake of his head, ‘but I’m afraid that would be impossible just now.’


‘Yes?’ Brunetti inquired politely


‘You see, the room where I plan to display them isn’t finished to my satisfaction yet. The lighting, the tiles for the floor, even the ceiling panels — none of them makes me happy, so I would be embarrassed, yes, actually embarrassed, to allow anyone to see it now. But I’d be very happy to invite you back to see my collection when the room is finished and,’ he paused, searching for the proper final word, and finding it, ‘presentable.’


‘That’s very kind of you, signore. I’ll plan, then, on seeing you again?’


La Capra nodded, but he did not smile.


‘I’m sure you’re a very busy man,’ Brunetti said and got to his feet. How strange, he thought, for a lover of art to feel the least reluctance to show his collection to someone who displayed curiosity or enthusiasm for beautiful things. Brunetti had never known it to happen before. And even stranger that, during all this talk of crime in the city, La Capra had not seen fit to mention either of the two incidents which had, this very week, shattered the calm of Venice and the lives of people who, like himself, were lovers of beauty.


When he saw Brunetti stand, La Capra got up and accompanied him to the door. In fact, he went down the steps with him, across die open courtyard, and to the front door of the palazzo. He opened it himself and held it while Brunetti stepped outside. They shook hands cordially and Signor La Capra stood quietly at the open door while Brunetti made his way back up the narrow calle towards Campo San Polo.


* * * *


Chapter Twenty



The half hour spent with La Capra made Brunetti reluctant to risk having to speak to Patta on the same afternoon, but he decided to go back to the Questura anyway, to see what messages had come in for him. Two people had called: Giulio Carrara, asking that Brunetti call him in Rome, and Flavia Petrelli, saying she would call again later in the afternoon.


He had the operator put a call through to Rome and was soon speaking to the maggiore. Carrara wasted no time with personal conversation but began immediately with Semenzato. ‘Guido, we’ve got something here that makes it look like he was involved in more than we thought.’


‘What is it?’


‘Two days ago, we stopped a shipment of alabaster ashtrays coming into Livorno from Hong Kong, on their way to a wholesaler in Verona. The usual thing — he gets the ashtrays, attaches labels to them, and sells them, “Made in Italy”.’


‘Why did you stop the shipment? That hardly sounds like the sort of thing you people are interested in.’


‘One of the little people in our stable told us that it might be a good idea to take a closer look at the shipment.’


‘For labelling?’ Brunetti asked, still not understanding. ‘Isn’t that the sort of thing the finance boys take care of?’


‘Oh, they’d been paid off,’ Carrara said dismissively, ‘so the shipment would have been safe until it got to Verona. But it’s what we found in with the ashtrays that made him call us.’


Brunetti knew a hint when he heard one. ‘What did you find?’


‘You know what Angkor Wat is, don’t you?’


‘In Cambodia?’


‘If you ask that, then you know. Four of the crates had statues that had been taken from the temples there.’


‘Are you sure?’ As soon as he spoke, Brunetti wished he had phrased the question differently.


‘It’s our business to be sure,’ Carrara said, but only in simple explanation. ‘Three of the pieces were spotted in Bangkok a few years ago, but they disappeared from the market before the police there could confiscate them.’


‘Giulio, I don’t understand how you can be sure they come from Angkor Wat.’


‘The French made pretty extensive drawings of the temple grounds when Cambodia was still a colony and since then much of it has been photographed. Two of the statues we found had been, so we were sure.’


‘When were the photographs taken?’ Brunetti asked.


‘In 1985. An archaeological team from some university in America spent a few months there, sketching and photographing, but then the fighting moved too close and they had to get out. But we’ve got copies of all the work they did. So we’re sure, absolutely sure, about two of the pieces, and the other two are likely to have come from the same source.’


‘Any idea where they’re going?’


‘No. The best we have is the address of the wholesaler in Verona.’


‘Have you moved on this yet?’


‘We’ve got two men watching the warehouse in Livorno. We’ve got a tap on the phone there and in the office in Verona.’


Though Brunetti thought this an extraordinary response to the finding of a mere four statues, he kept the idea to himself. ‘What about the wholesaler? Do you know anything about him?’


‘No, he’s new to us. Nothing on him at all. Even the finance people don’t have a file on him.’


‘What do you think, then?’


Carrara considered for a moment before he answered. ‘I’d say he was clean. And that probably means that someone will remove the statues before the shipment’s delivered.’


‘Where? How?’ Brunetti asked. And then he added, ‘Does anyone know you opened the crates?’


‘I don’t think so. We had the finance police close off the warehouse and make a big show of opening a shipment of lace that was coming in from the Philippines. While they were doing that, we took a look at the ashtrays, but we closed up the crates and left everything there.’


‘What about the lace?’


‘Oh, it was the usual stuff. Twice as much there as declared on the papers, so they confiscated the whole shipment, and they’re trying to figure out how much the fines should be.’


‘And the ashtrays?’


‘They’re still in the warehouse.’


‘What are you going to do?’


‘I’m not in charge of it, Guido. The Milan office gets to handle this. I spoke to the man in charge, and he said he wants to step in the minute the crates with the statues are picked up.’


‘And you?’


‘I’d let them pick up the shipment and then try to follow them.’


‘If they take the crates,’ Brunetti said.


‘Even if they don’t, we’ve got around-the-clock teams in the warehouse, so we’ll know when they make their move. Besides, whoever gets sent to pick up the statues won’t be important, and they probably won’t know much, except where to take them, so there’s no sense in stepping in and arresting them.’


Finally Brunetti asked, ‘Giulio, isn’t this an awfully complicated manoeuvre for four statues? And you still haven’t said how Semenzato was involved in any of this.’


‘We don’t have a clear idea of that, either, but the man who made the original phone call told us that the people — he meant police, Guido — in Venice might be interested in this.’ Even before Brunetti could interrupt him, Carrara went on, ‘He wouldn’t explain what that meant, but he did say that there were more shipments. This was only one of many.’


‘All coming from the Orient?’ Brunetti asked.


‘He didn’t say.’


‘Is there a big market here for things like this?’


‘Not here in Italy, but certainly in Germany, and it’s easy enough to get the things there once they’ve arrived in Italy.’


No Italian would bother to ask why the shipments were not made directly to Germany. The Germans, it was rumoured, saw the law as something to be obeyed, unlike the Italians, who saw it as something first to be fathomed and then evaded.


‘What about value, price?’ Brunetti asked, feeling very much the stereotypical Venetian as he did so.


‘Tremendous, not because of the beauty of the statues themselves but because of the fact that they come from Angkor Wat.’


‘Could they be sold on the open market?’ Brunetti asked, thinking of the room Signor La Capra had built on the third floor of his palazzo and wondering how many more Signor La Capras there might be.


Again, Carrara paused while he considered how to answer the question. ‘No, probably not. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for them.’


‘I understand.’ It was only a possibility, but he asked, ‘Giulio, do you have a file on a man named La Capra, Carmello La Capra? From Palermo.’ He explained the coincidence of the foreign trips taken to the same places and on the same days as Semenzato.


After a short pause, Carrara replied, ‘The name sounds faintly familiar, but nothing comes directly to mind. Give me an hour or so, and I’ll tap into the computer and see what we have on him.’


Brunetti’s question was prompted by the purest of professional curiosity. ‘How much have you got in your computer down there?’


‘Lots,’ Carrara responded with audible pride. ‘We’ve got listings by name, by city, by century, art form, artist, technique of reproduction. You name it, if it’s been stolen or faked, we’ve got a breakdown in the computer. He’d be listed under his name or any aliases or nicknames he has.’


‘Signor La Capra is not the sort of man who would permit a nickname,’ Brunetti explained.


‘Oh, one of them, huh? Well, we’d have him under “Palermo”, in any case,’ and then Carrara added, quite unnecessarily, ‘Rather full, that file.’ He paused a moment to allow Brunetti time to appreciate the remark and then asked, ‘Is there any special sort of art he’s interested in, any technique?’


‘Chinese ceramics,’ Brunetti supplied.


‘Ah,’ Carrara said on a long rising tone. ‘That’s where the name came from. I still can’t remember exactly what it was, but if the connection sticks in my mind, it’s in the computer. Can I call you back, Guido?’


‘I’d appreciate it, Giulio.’ Then, prompted by real curiosity, he asked, ‘Is there any chance you’ll be sent up to Verona?’


‘No, I don’t think so. The people in Milan are about the best we have. I’d come only if it turned out to be connected in some way to any of the cases I’m working on down here.’


‘All right, then. Give me a call if you have anything on La Capra. I should be here all afternoon. And thanks, Giulio.’


‘Don’t thank me until you know what I have to tell you,’ Carrara said but hung up before Brunetti could respond.


He rang down and asked Signorina Elettra if. she had received the records of the phone calls of La Capra and Semenzato and was glad to learn that not only had the Telecom office sent over copies, but as well as between their homes and offices in Italy she had also found a number of calls between those phones and the hotels in foreign countries when the other was staying there. ‘Would you like me to bring them up to you, sir?’


‘Yes, thank you, signorina.’


While he was waiting for her, he opened the file on Brett and dialled the number that was given there. He let the phone ring seven times, but there was no answer. Did this mean that she had taken his advice and left the city to go and stay in Milan? Perhaps that was what Flavia had called to tell him.


His musing was cut off by the arrival of Signorina Elettra, in sombre grey today; sombre, at least, until he glanced down and saw wildly patterned black stockings — were those flowers? — and red shoes with heels higher than any Paola had ever dared to wear. She came up to his desk and placed a brown folder in front of him. ‘I’ve circled the phone calls that correspond,’ she explained.


‘Thank you, signorina. Did you keep a copy of this?’


She nodded.


‘Good. I’d like you to get the phone listing for the antique shop of Francesco Murino, in Campo Santa Maria Formosa, and see if there’s a record that either Semenzato or La Capra made calls to him. I’d also like to know if he called either one of them.’


‘I took the liberty of calling AT&T in New York,’ Signorina Elettra said, ‘and asked if they would check to see if either of them has one of their international dialling cards. La Capra does. The man I spoke to said he’d fax us a list of his calls for the last two years. I might have it later this afternoon.’


‘Signorina, did you speak to him yourself?’ Brunetti asked, marvelling to himself. ‘English? A friend in Banca d’ltalia, and English, too?’


‘Of course. He didn’t speak Italian, even though he was working in the international section.’ Was Brunetti meant to be shocked by this lapse? If so, then he would be shocked, for, surely, Signorina Elettra was.


‘And how is it that you come to speak English?’


‘That’s what I did at Banca d’ltalia, Dottore. I was in charge of translation from English and French.’


He spoke before he could stop himself. ‘And you left?’


‘I had no choice, sir,’ she said, then, seeing his confusion, explained, ‘The man I worked for asked me to translate a letter to a bank in Johannesburg into English.’ She stopped speaking and bent down to pull out another paper. And was that all the explanation he was going to get?


‘I’m sorry, signorina, but I’m afraid I don’t understand. He asked you to translate a letter to Johannesburg?’ She nodded. ‘And you had to leave because of that?’


Her eyes opened wide. ‘Well, of course, sir.’


He smiled. ‘I’m afraid I still don’t understand. Why did you have to leave?’


She looked at him very closely, as if she’d suddenly realized he didn’t really understand Italian after all. Very clearly, she pronounced, ‘The sanctions.’


‘Sanctions?’ he repeated.


‘Against South Africa, sir. They were still in effect then, so I had no choice but to refuse to translate the letter.’


‘Do you mean the sanctions against their government?’ he asked.


‘Of course, sir. They were declared by the UN, weren’t they?’


‘Yes, I think they were. And because of that, you wouldn’t do the letter?’


‘Well, there’s no sense in declaring sanctions unless people are going to impose them, is there?’ she asked with perfect logic.


‘No, I imagine there isn’t. And then what happened?’


‘Oh, he became very unpleasant about it. Wrote a letter of reprimand. Complained to the union. And none of them defended me. Everyone seemed to believe that I should have translated the letter. So I had no choice but to resign. I didn’t think I could continue to work for such people.’

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