Beastly Things

11

‘WHAT DO YOU mean, “Another one”?’ he asked, though what he really wanted to know was whom she included among them.

‘As I have told you at least twelve thousand times in the last decades: don’t be smart with me, Guido Brunetti,’ she said with exaggerated severity. ‘You know exactly who they are: Chiara, Signorina Elettra, and Vianello. And from what you’ve said, I suspect those last two will soon have the Questura declared a no-meat zone.’

After what he had read that afternoon, Brunetti thought this might not be such a bad thing. ‘They’re just the lunatic fringe, though other people there are beginning to think about it, too,’ he offered.

‘If you ever set foot in a supermarket and saw what people are buying, you wouldn’t say that, believe me.’

The few times he had had that experience, Brunetti had – he confessed to himself – been fascinated by what he saw people buying, given the probability that they intended to eat those things. So rarely did he shop for groceries that Brunetti had been uncertain as to the nature of some of the products he saw and could not work out whether they were meant for consumption or for some other domestic purpose; scouring sinks, perhaps.

He remembered, as a boy, being sent to the store to get, for example, a half-kilo of limon beans. He had come home carrying them in the cylinder of newspaper in which the shopkeeper had wrapped them. But now they came in a clear plastic package bound with a bow of golden ribbon, and it was impossible to buy less than a kilo. His mother had lit the fire in the kitchen with the newspaper: the plastic and the bow went into the garbage after their fifteen minutes of freedom from the shelves.

‘We don’t eat as much meat as we used to,’ he said.

‘That’s only because Chiara’s too young to leave home.’

‘Is that what she’d do?’

‘Or stop eating,’ Paola declared.

‘She’s really that convinced?’

‘Yes.’

‘How about you?’ he asked. It was Paola, after all, who decided what they would eat every day.

She finished her champagne and twirled the glass between her palms, as though hoping to start a fire with it.

‘I like it less and less,’ she finally said.

‘Because of how it tastes or because of what you read about it?’

‘Both.’

‘You’re not going to stop cooking it, are you?’

‘Oh course not, silly.’ Then, reaching to hand him her glass, ‘Especially if you go and get us more champagne.’

Visions of lamb chops, veal cooked in marsala, and roast chicken dancing in his head, he went into the kitchen to obey her.

On the way to the Questura the following morning, Brunetti stopped in a bar for a coffee and read the Gazzettino’s account of the discovery of the body in the canal, followed by a brief description of the man and his probable age. In his office, he learned that there had been no report filed of a missing man, in the city or in the surrounding area. Within minutes of his arrival, Pucetti was at his door. Either the young man had managed to place a computer chip in Brunetti’s ear or, more likely, the man at the door had phoned Pucetti when his superior arrived.

When Brunetti signalled him to enter, Pucetti came in and placed a photo of the dead man on his desk. Brunetti had no idea how he had managed to isolate just one frame, but the photo was entirely natural and showed the man gazing ahead of him with a completely relaxed expression on his face. He appeared a different man from the one now lying in a cold room at the Ospedale Civile.

Brunetti gave a broad smile and nodded in approval. ‘Good work, Pucetti. It’s him, the man I saw.’

‘I’ve made copies, sir.’

‘Good. See that one’s scanned and sent to the Gazzettino. The other papers, too. And see if anyone downstairs recognizes him.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Pucetti said, left the photo on Brunetti’s desk, and was gone.

In her office, Signorina Elettra had today decided to wear yellow, a colour very few women could get away with. It was Tuesday, flower day at the market, and so her office – and presumably Patta’s – was filled with them, a civilizing touch she had brought to the Questura. ‘They’re lovely, the daffodils, aren’t they?’ she asked as Brunetti came in, waving in the direction of a quadruple bouquet on the windowsill.

The first stirrings of springtime would once have urged an unmarried Brunetti to say that they were not as lovely as the person who had brought them there, but this Brunetti limited himself to responding, ‘Yes, they are,’ and then asking, ‘And what excess of colour has transformed the Vice-Questore’s office?’

‘Pink. I love it and he dislikes it. But he’s afraid to complain.’ She looked away for a moment, back at Brunetti, and said, ‘I read once that pink is the navy blue of India.’

It took Brunetti a moment, and then he laughed out loud. ‘That’s wonderful,’ he said, thinking how Paola would love it.

‘Are you here about the dead man?’ she asked, suddenly serious.

‘Yes.’

‘Nothing from my friend. Maybe Rizzardi will have better luck.’

‘He could be from some other province,’ Brunetti suggested.

‘Possible,’ she said. ‘I’ve sent out the usual request to hotels, asking if they have a guest who’s missing.’

‘No luck?’

‘Only a Hungarian who ended up in the hospital with a heart attack.’

Brunetti thought of the vast net of rental apartments and bed and breakfasts in which the city was enmeshed. Many of them operated beyond all official recognition or control, paying no taxes and making no report to the police of the people who stayed there. In the event of the non-return of a guest, how likely were the owners to report his absence to the police and bring their illegal operations to the attention of the authorities? How much easier simply to wait a few days and then claim whatever the decamping client might have left behind in lieu of unpaid rent, and that’s the end of it.

Earlier in his career, Brunetti would have assumed that any self-respecting, law-abiding citizen would contact the police, certainly as soon as they read of the discovery of a murdered man whose description sounded so very much like the man staying in room three, over the garden. But decades spent amidst the prevarications and half-truths to which law-abiding citizens were all too prone had cured him of such illusions.

‘Pucetti has a photo from one of the videos. He’s sending it to the papers, and he’s asking if anyone recognizes him,’ Brunetti said. ‘But I agree with you, Signorina: people don’t disappear.’