Death in a Strange Country

‘Not this time,’ Brunetti said simply.

‘No, not this time. Since he was killed in Venice, he’s yours, it’s all yours. But they’ll want to keep their hand in.’

‘Why?’

‘Public relations,’ Ambrogiani said, using the English words. ‘And things are changing. They probably suspect they aren’t going to be here much longer, not here, and not anywhere in Europe, so they don’t want anything to happen that might make their stay even shorter. They don’t want any bad publicity.’

‘It looks like a mugging,’ Brunetti said.

Ambrogiani gave Brunetti a long, level stare. ‘When was the last time someone was killed in a mugging in Venice?’

If Ambrogiani could ask the question like that, he knew the answer.

‘Honour?’ Brunetti suggested as a motive.

Ambrogiani smiled again. ‘If you kill someone for honour, you don’t do it a hundred kilometres from home. You do it in the bedroom, or the bar, but you don’t go to Venice to do it. If it had happened here, it could have been sex or money. But it didn’t happen here, so it seems that the reason has to be something else.’

‘A murder out of place?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes, out of place,’ Ambrogiani repeated, obviously liking the phrase. ‘And therefore more interesting.’

* * * *

7

The Maggiore pushed the slim file towards Brunetti with the tip of his blunt finger and poured himself another glass of mineral water. ‘Here’s what they gave us. There’s a translation if you need it.’

Brunetti shook his head and opened the file. On the front cover, in red letters, was printed, ‘Foster, Michael b. 09/28/64, SSN 651341054’. He opened it and saw, clipped to the inside of the front cover, a Xerox copy of a photograph. The dead man was unrecognizable. These sharp contours of black and white had nothing to do with the yellowing face of death that Brunetti had seen on the bank of the canal yesterday. Inside the folder were two typewritten pages stating that Sergeant Foster worked for the Office of Public Health, that he had once been given a ticket for going through a STOP sign on the base, that he had been promoted to the rank of Sergeant one year ago, and that his family lived in Biddeford Pool, Maine.

The second page contained the summary of an interview conducted with an Italian civilian who worked in the Office of Public Health and who attested that Foster got on well with his colleagues, worked very hard at his job, and was polite and friendly with the Italian civilians who worked in the office.

‘Not very much, is there?’ Brunetti asked, closing the file and pushing it back towards the Maggiore. ‘The perfect soldier. Hardworking. Obedient. Friendly.’

‘But someone put a knife in his ribs.’

Brunetti remembered Doctor Peters and asked, ‘No woman?’

‘Not that we know of,’ Ambrogiani answered. ‘But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t. He was young, spoke passable Italian, so It’s possible.’ Ambrogiani paused for a moment and added, ‘Unless he used what’s for sale in front of the train station.’

‘Is that where they are?’

Ambrogiani nodded. ‘What about Venice?’

Brunetti shook his head. ‘Not since the government closed the brothels. There are a few, but they work the hotels and don’t cause us any trouble.’

‘Here we have them in front of the station, but I think times are bad for some of them. There are too many women today who are willing to give it away,’ Ambrogiani volunteered, then added, ‘for love.’

Brunetti’s daughter had just turned thirteen, so he didn’t want to think about what young women would give away for love. ‘Can I talk to the Americans?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I think so,’ Ambrogiani answered then reached for the phone. ‘We’ll tell them you’re the Chief of Police for Venice. They’ll like that rank, so they’ll talk to you.’ He dialled a number with easy familiarity and, while he waited for a response, pulled the file back towards him. Rather fussily, he lined up the few papers in the file and placed it squarely in front of him.

He spoke into the telephone in heavily-accented, but correct, English. ‘Good afternoon, Tiffany. This is Major Ambrogiani. Is the Major there? What? Yes, I’ll wait.’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece and held the phone away from his ear. ‘He’s in conference. Americans seem to live in conference.’

‘Could it be . . .’ Brunetti began but stopped when Ambrogiani pulled his hand away.

‘Yes, thank you. Good morning, Major Butterworth.’ The name had been in the file, but when Ambrogiani said it, it sounded like ‘Budderword’.

‘Yes, Major. I have the Chief of the Venice police here with me now. Yes, we brought him out by helicopter for the day.’ A long pause followed. ‘No, he can spare us only today.’ He looked down at his watch. ‘In twenty minutes? Yes, he’ll be there. No, I’m sorry, but I can’t, Major. I have to be in conference. Yes, thank you.’ He set the phone down, placed his pencil in a neat diagonal across the cover of the file, and said, ‘He’ll see you in twenty minutes.’

‘And your conference?’ Brunetti asked.

Ambrogiani dismissed the idea with a wave of the hand. ‘It’ll just be a waste of time. If they do know anything, they won’t tell you, and if they don’t know anything, then they can’t. So there’s no reason I should waste my time by going.’ Changing the topic, he asked, ‘How’s your English?’

‘All right.’

‘Good, that’ll make it much easier.’

‘Who is he, this major?’

Ambrogiani repeated the name, again gliding over all of the sharper consonants. ‘He’s their liaison officer. Or, as they say, he “liaises”‘ - he used the English word - ‘between them and us.’ Both grinned at the ease with which English allowed its speakers to turn a noun into a verb, a familiarity which Italian would certainly not permit.

‘Of what does this “liaising” consist?’

‘Oh, if we have problems, he comes to us, or he goes the other way, if they have problems.’

‘What sort of problems?’

‘If anyone tries to get in at the gate without the proper identification. Or if we break their traffic rules. Or if they ask a Carabiniere why he’s buying ten kilos of beef at their supermarket. Things like that.’

‘Supermarket?’ Brunetti asked with real surprise.

‘Yes, supermarket. And bowling alley’ - he used the English word - ‘and cinema, and even a Burger King’ - the name was said without a trace of an accent.

Fascinated, Brunetti repeated the words ‘Burger King’ with the same tone with which a child might say ‘pony’ if promised one.

Hearing him, Ambrogiani laughed. ‘It’s remarkable, isn’t it? There’s a whole little world here, one that has nothing to do with Italy.’ He gestured out of his window. ‘Out there lies America, Commissario. It’s what we’re all going to become, I think.’ After a short pause, he repeated, ‘America.’

That was precisely what awaited Brunetti a quarter of an hour later, when he opened the doors of the NATO command headquarters and walked up the three steps to the lobby. The walls held posters of unnamed cities which, because of the height and homogeneity of their skyscrapers, had to be American. That nation was loudly proclaimed, too, in the many signs which forbade smoking and in the notices which covered the bulletin boards along the walls. The marble floor was the only Italianate touch. As he had been directed, Brunetti climbed the steps in front of him, turned right at the top, and went into the second office on the left. The room into which he walked was divided by head-high partitions, and the walls, like those on the floor below, were covered with bulletin boards and printed notices. Backed up against one of them were two armchairs covered in what appeared to be thick grey plastic. At a desk just inside the door, to the right, sat a young woman who could only be American. She had blonde hair which was cut off in a short fringe above her blue eyes but hung down almost to her waist at the back. A rash of freckles ran across her nose, and her teeth had that perfection common to most Americans and to the wealthiest Italians. She turned to him with a bright smile; her mouth turned up at the corners, but her eyes remained curiously expressionless and flat.

‘Good morning,’ he said, smiling back. ‘My name’s Brunetti. I think the Major is expecting me.’

She came out from behind the desk, revealing a body as perfect as her teeth, and walked through an opening in the partition, though she could just as easily have phoned or called over the top. From the other side of the partition, he heard her voice answered by a deeper one. After a few seconds, she appeared at the opening and signalled to Brunetti, ‘In here, please, sir.’

Behind the desk sat a blond young man who appeared to be barely into his twenties. Brunetti looked at him and as quickly away, for the man seemed to glow, glisten. When he looked back, Brunetti saw that it was not radiance but only youth, health, and someone else to care for his uniforms.

‘Chief Brunetti?’ he said and rose to his feet behind his desk. To Brunetti, he looked like he had just come from a shower or bath: his skin was taut, shining, as though he had set down his razor in order to take Brunetti’s hand. While they shook hands, Brunetti noticed his eyes, a clear, translucent blue, the colour the laguna had been twenty years ago.

‘I’m very glad you could come out from Venice to speak to us, Chief Brunetti, or is it Questore?’

‘Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said, giving himself a promotion in the hopes that it would assure him greater access to information. He noticed that Major Butterworth’s desk held In and Out boxes; the In was empty, the Out full.

‘Please have a seat,’ Butterworth said and waited for Brunetti to sit before taking his own seat. The American pulled a file from his front drawer, this one just minimally thicker than the one Ambrogiani had. ‘You’re here about Sergeant Foster, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What is it you’d like to know?’

‘I’d like to know who killed him,’ Brunetti said impassively.

Butterworth hesitated a moment, not knowing how to take the remark, then decided to treat it as a joke. ‘Yes,’ he said, with a small laugh that barely passed his lips, ‘we’d all like to know that. But I’m not sure we have any information that might help us find out who it was.’

‘What information do you have?’

He slid the file towards Brunetti. Even though he knew it would contain the same material he had just seen, Brunetti opened it and read through the pages again. This file contained a different photograph from the one he had seen in the other. For the first time, though he had seen his dead face and naked body, Brunetti got a clear idea of what the young man looked like. More handsome in this photo, Foster here had a short moustache that he had shaved off sometime before he was killed.

‘When was ibis photo taken?’

‘Probably when he entered the service.’

‘How long ago was that?’

‘Seven years.’

‘How long has he been here in Italy?’

‘Four years. In fact, he just re-upped in order to stay here.’

‘Excuse me,’ Brunetti said.

‘Re-enlisted. For another three years.’

‘And he would have remained here?’

‘Yes.’

Remembering something he had read in the file, Brunetti asked, ‘How did he learn Italian?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Butterworth said.

‘If he had a full time job here, that wouldn’t leave him a lot of time to learn a new language,’ Brunetti explained.

‘Tanti di noi parliamo Italiano,’ Butterworth answered in heavily accented but understandable Italian.

‘Yes, of course,’ Brunetti said and smiled, as he guessed he was expected to do, at the Major’s ability to speak Italian. ‘Did he live here? There are barracks here, aren’t there?’

‘Yes, there are,’ Butterworth answered. ‘But Sergeant Foster had his own apartment in Vicenza.’

Brunetti knew the apartment would have been searched, so he didn’t bother to ask if it had been. ‘Did you find anything?’

‘No.’

‘Would it be possible for me to have a look at it?’

‘I’m not sure that’s necessary,’ Butterworth said quickly.

‘I’m not sure it’s necessary, either,’ Brunetti said with a small smile. ‘But I’d like to see where he lived.’

‘It’s not regular procedure, for you to see it.’

‘I didn’t realize there was a regular procedure here,’ Brunetti said. He knew that either the Carabinieri or the Vicenza police could easily authorize his inspection of the apartment, but he wanted, at least at this point of the investigation, to remain as agreeable as possible with all of the authorities concerned.

‘I suppose it could be arranged,’ Butterworth conceded. ‘When would you like to do it?’

‘There’s no hurry. This afternoon. Tomorrow.’

‘I didn’t realize you were planning to return tomorrow, Vice-Questore.’

‘Only if I don’t finish everything today, Major.’

‘What else was it you wanted to do?’

‘I’d like to talk to some of the people who knew him, who worked with him.’ Brunetti had noticed, among the papers in the file, that the dead man had attended university classes at the base. Like the Romans, these new empire builders carried their schools with them. ‘Perhaps to people he went to university with.’

‘I suppose something can be arranged, though I admit I don’t see the reason for it. We’ll handle this end of the investigation.’ He paused, as if waiting for Brunetti to challenge him. When Brunetti said nothing, Butterworth asked, ‘When would you prefer to see his apartment?’

Brunetti glanced down at his watch. It was almost noon. ‘Perhaps sometime this afternoon. If you could tell me where the apartment is, then I could have my driver take me mere on my way back to the railway station?’

‘Would you like me to go along with you, Vice-Questore?’

‘That’s very kind of you, Major, but I don’t think that will be necessary. If you’d just give me the address.’

Major Butterworth pulled a pad towards him and, without having to open the file to find it, wrote an address and handed it to Brunetti. ‘It’s not far from here. I’m sure your driver won’t have any trouble finding it.’

‘Thank you, Major,’ Brunetti said and stood. ‘Would you have any objection if I spent some time here on the base?’

‘Post,’ Butterworth responded immediately. ‘This is a post. The Air Force has bases. We have posts in me Army.’

‘Ah, I see. In Italian, they’re both bases. Would it be all right for me to remain here for a while?’

After no more than a moment’s hesitation, Butterworth said, ‘I don’t see any problem with that.’

‘And the apartment, Major? How will I get in?’

Major Butterworth got to his feet and started around his desk. ‘We’ve got two men there. I’ll call them and let them know you’re coming.’

‘Thank you, Major,’ Brunetti said, standing and extending his hand.

‘It’s nothing. Glad to be of help in this.’ Butterworth’s grip was strong, forceful. But, Brunetti noted as they shook hands, the American hadn’t asked to be told what he might discover about the dead man.

The blonde was no longer at her desk in the outer office. Her computer screen glimmered to one side of her desk, as blank as her expression had been.

‘Where to, sir?’ asked the driver when Brunetti got back into the car.

Brunetti gave him the sheet of paper with Foster’s address on it. ‘Do you know where that is?’

‘Borgo Casale? Yes, sir. It’s just behind the soccer stadium.’

‘Is that the way we came?’

‘Yes, sir. We passed right alongside it on the way. Would you like to go there now?’

‘No, not yet. I’d like to get something to eat first.’

‘Never been here before, sir?’

‘No, I haven’t. Have you been here long?’

‘Six years. But I’m lucky to have been posted here. My family’s from Schio,’ he explained, naming a town about half an hour away.

‘It’s very strange, isn’t it?’ Brunetti asked, waving a hand at the buildings around them.

The driver nodded.

‘What else is here, except for the offices? Maggiore Ambrogiani mentioned a supermarket.’

‘And a cinema and a swimming-pool, a library, schools. It’s a whole city. They even have their own hospital.’

‘How many Americans are here?’ Brunetti asked.

I’m not sure. About five thousand, but that would be with wives and children, I think.’

‘Do you like them?’Brunetti asked.

The driver shrugged. ‘What’s not to like? They’re friendly.’ It hardly sounded like an enthusiastic recommendation. Changing the subject, the driver asked, ‘What about lunch, sir? Would you like to eat here or off-base?’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘The Italian mensa is the best place. You can get food there. Hearing this, Brunetti wondered what the Americans served in their own dining-halls. Rivets? ‘But ifs closed today. Strike.’ Well, there was proof that it was really Italian, even on an American military installation.

‘Is there anywhere else?’

Without answering, the driver slipped the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. Suddenly, he swung around in a sharp U-turn and headed back towards the main road that bisected the post. He made a series of turns around buildings and behind cars, none of which made any sense to Brunetti, and soon pulled up in front of yet another low cement building.

Brunetti looked out of the back window of the car and saw that they were stopped diagonally in front of the right angle made by two shop fronts. Above one glass door, he saw ‘Food Mall’. Wasn’t that what lions did to their prey? The other sign read ‘Baskin Robbins’. Not at all optimistic, Brunetti asked, ‘Coffee?’

The driver nodded at the second door, clearly eager for Brunetti to get out. When he did, the driver leaned back across the seat and said, ‘I’ll be back in ten minutes,’ then shut the door and pulled away sharply, leaving Brunetti on the curb, feeling strangely abandoned and alien. To the right of the second door he could now see a sign which read, ‘Capucino Bar’, the sign-maker apparently an American.

Inside, he asked the woman behind the counter for a coffee then, knowing there would be no chance of lunch, asked for a brioche. It looked like pastry, felt like pastry, but tasted like cardboard. He placed three thousand-lire bills on the counter. The woman looked at the notes, looked up at him, took them, then placed on the counter the same coins he had found in the pockets of the dead man. For an instant, Brunetti wondered if she was attempting to give him some private signal, but a closer look at her face showed him that all she was doing was giving him the proper change.

He left the place and went to stand outside, content to get a sense of the post while waiting for his driver to return. He sat on a bench in front of the shops and watched the people walking past.

A few glanced at him as he sat there, dressed in suit and tie and clearly out of place among them. Many of the people who walked past him, men and women alike, wore uniform. Most of the others wore shorts and tennis shoes, and many of the women, too often those who shouldn’t have, wore halter tops. They appeared to be dressed either for war or for the beach. Most of the men were fit and powerful; many of the women were enormously, terrifyingly fat.

Cars drove by slowly, their drivers searching for parking spaces: big cars, Japanese cars, cars with that same AFI number plate. Most had the windows raised, while from the air-conditioned interiors blared rock music in varying degrees of loudness.

They strolled by, amiable and friendly, greeting one another and exchanging pleasant words, thoroughly at home in their little American village here in Italy.

Ten minutes later, the driver pulled up in front of him. Brunetti got into the back seat. ‘Would you like to go to that address now, sir?’ the driver asked.

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, a little tired of America.

Driving more quickly than the other cars on the base, they headed towards the front gate and passed through it. Outside, they turned right and headed back towards the city, again passing over the railway bridge. At the bottom, they turned left, then right, and pulled up in front of a five-storey building set back a few metres from the street. Parked opposite the gate they saw a dark-green Jeep, two soldiers in American uniform sitting in the front seat. Brunetti approached them. One of them climbed down from the Jeep.

‘I’m Commissario Brunetti, from Venice,’ he said, resuming his real rank, then added, ‘Major Butterworth sent me out to take a look at Foster’s apartment.’ Perhaps not the truth, but certainly related to it.

The soldier sketched out something that might have been a salute, reached into his pocket, and handed Brunetti a set of keys. ‘The red one is the front door, sir,’ the soldier said. ‘Apartment 3B, on the third floor. Elevator to your right as you go in.’ Inside this building, he took the elevator, feeling hemmed in and uncomfortable in its closeness. The door to 3B stood directly opposite the elevator and opened easily with the key.

He pushed open the door and noticed the usual marble floors. Doors opened off a central corridor at the end of which another door stood ajar. The room on the right was a bathroom, the one on the left a small kitchen. Both were clean, the objects in them well-ordered. He noticed, however, that the kitchen held an enormous refrigerator and a large four-ring stove, beside which stood an equally outsized washing-machine, both of the electrical appliances plugged into a transformer that broke down the 220 Italian current to the 110 of America. Did they bring these appliances all the way from America with them? Little space was left in the kitchen for a small square table, at which only two chairs stood. The wall held the gas-burning neater which seemed to provide both hot water and heat for the radiators in the apartment.

The next doors opened into two bedrooms. One held a double bed and a large cupboard. The other had been turned into a study and held a desk with a computer keyboard and screen attached to a printer. Shelves held books and some stereo equipment, under which was neatly lined a row of compact discs. He checked the books: most appeared to be textbooks, the rest books about travel and - could it be? - religion. He pulled down some of these and took a closer look. The Christian Life in an Age of Doubt, Spiritual Transcendence, and Jesus: the Ideal Life. The author of the last was Revd Michael Foster. His father?

The music was, he thought, rock. Some of the names he recognized from having heard Raffaele and Chiara mention them; he doubted that he would recognize the music.

He switched on the CD player and pushed the ‘Eject’ button on the control panel. Like a patient showing his tongue to a doctor, it opened and slid out the playing panel. Empty. He closed the panel and switched off the machine. He switched on the amplifier and tape deck. Panel lights glowed, showing they both worked. He turned them off. He switched the computer on, watched the letters appear on the screen, then switched it off.

The clothes in the closet were no more forthcoming. He found three complete uniforms, jackets still in the plastic laundry bags, each carefully lined up beside a pair of dark-green trousers. The rack also held a few pairs of jeans, neatly folded over hangers, three or four shirts, and a dark blue suit made out of some synthetic material. Almost absent-mindedly, Brunetti checked the pockets of the jacket and all the trousers, but there was nothing; no loose change, no papers, no comb. Either Sergeant Foster was a very neat young man, or the Americans had been here before him.

He went back into the bathroom, removed the lid from the top of the toilet, glanced into the empty tank, then replaced the lid. He opened the door to the mirror-fronted medicine chest, opened a bottle or two.

In the kitchen, he opened the top section of the outsized refrigerator. Ice. Nothing more. Below, a few apples, an open bottle of white wine, and some ageing cheese in a plastic wrapper. The oven held only three empty pans; the washing-machine was empty. He stood with his back against the worktop and looked slowly around the room. From the top drawer under the worktop he took a knife, then pulled one of the wooden chairs from the table and placed it under the water heater. He climbed up onto the chair and used the knife to loosen the screws that held the front panel to the heater. As they came loose, he dropped the screws into his jacket pocket. When he pulled the last one out, he slipped the knife into his pocket and shifted the panel from side to side until it came loose in his hands. He set it down on the chair, leaning it against his leg.

Two plastic bags were taped to the inside of the wall of the water heater. They contained fine white powder, about a kilo of it, he judged. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and, wrapping his hand in it, pulled first one bag loose, then the other. Just to be sure of what he already knew, he pulled open the ziplock top of one of the bags, wet the tip of his index finger and tapped it onto the powder. When he put his finger to his tongue, he tasted the slightly metallic, unmistakable tang of cocaine.

He leaned down and set the two bags on the counter. Then he lifted the front panel back into place, careful to line it up accurately with the holes in the body of the heater. Slowly, he fitted in the four screws and turned them back into place. Carefully, he turned the grooves in the top screws to perfect horizontals, the two below into equally precise verticals.

He glanced at his watch. He had been inside the apartment fifteen minutes. The Americans had had a day and a half to go through the apartment; the Italian police had had just as much time. Yet Brunetti had found the two packages in less than quarter of an hour.

He opened the door to one of the wall cabinets and saw only three or four dinner plates. He looked under the sink and found what he wanted, two plastic bags. Still covering his hand with his handkerchief, he placed a bag of cocaine inside each of the larger plastic bags and placed them in the two inner pockets of his jacket. He wiped the knife clean on the sleeve of his jacket and replaced it in the drawer, then used his handkerchief to wipe the surface of the heater clean of all prints.

He left the apartment, locking the door behind him. Outside, he approached tine American soldiers in the Jeep, smiling comfortably at them. ‘Thank you,’ he said and handed the key back to the man who had given it to him.

‘Well?’ the soldier asked.

‘Nothing. I just wanted to see how he lived.’ If the soldier was surprised by Brunetti’s answer, he gave no indication of it.

Brunetti walked back to his car, got in, and told the driver to take him to the train station. He caught the three-fifteen Intercity train from Milan and prepared to spend the trip back to Venice as he had spent the trip out, sitting and looking out of the window of the train while thinking about why a young American soldier would have been murdered. But now he had a new thought to add to that one: why would drugs have been planted in his apartment after his death? And who would have planted them?

* * * *

8

As his train pulled out of the Vicenza train station, Brunetti walked towards the front, searching for an empty compartment in the first-class section. The two plastic packages weighed down his inner pockets, and he hunched forward in an attempt to disguise their bulk. Finally, in the first car, he found an empty compartment and sat near the window, then got up to slide the door closed. He put his briefcase on the seat beside him and debated whether to transfer the packages or not. As he sat debating, the door to the compartment was abruptly pulled open by a man in uniform. For a hallucinogenic instant, Brunetti saw his career in ruins, himself in jail, but then the man asked for his ticket, and Brunetti was saved.

When the conductor left, Brunetti concentrated on keeping himself from reaching inside his jacket or from checking with his elbows to see that the two packages were still in place. He seldom had to deal with drugs in his work, but he knew enough to realize, that he was carrying at least a few hundred million lire in each pocket: a new apartment in one and early retirement in the other. The idea had little attraction for him. He would gladly have traded both packages to know who had put them where he found them. Though he had no idea of who, the reason why was pretty clear: what better motive for murder than drugs and drug dealing, and what better proof of drug dealing than the presence of a kilo of cocaine hidden in a man’s home? And who better to find it than the policeman from Venice, who, if only because of geography, could not possibly have had any involvement with the crime or the dead man? And what could that young soldier have been involved in that a kilo of cocaine would be used to call attention away from it?

At Padova, an elderly woman came into the compartment and sat, reading a magazine, until Mestre station, where she got out, without even having spoken to or looked at Brunetti. When the train pulled into Venice station, Brunetti picked up his briefcase and left the train, checking to see if any of the people who had got onto the train in Vicenza got down from the train with him. In front of the station, he walked to the right, towards the number one boat, got as far as the landing dock, then stopped and looked back at the clock that stood on tike other side of the station. Abruptly, he changed direction and walked towards the other side of tine piazza in front of the station, to the dock where the number two boat stopped. No one followed him.

A few minutes later, the boat came from the right, and he was the only person to get on. At four-thirty, there were few people on the boat. He walked down the steps and through the rear cabin, out to the aft deck, where he was alone. The boat pulled away from the embankment and under the Bridge of the Scalzi, up the Grand Canal towards the Rialto and its final stop.

Through the glass doors, Brunetti saw that the four people sitting in the inner cabin were all busy reading their newspapers. He set his briefcase on the chair beside him, propped the lid open, and reached into his inner pocket, pulling out one of the envelopes. Carefully, touching only its comers, he peeled it open. Turning sideways, the better to examine the façade of the Natural History Museum, he slid his hand under the railing and emptied the white powder into the waters of the canal. He slipped the empty bag into his briefcase and repeated the process with the second. During the golden age of the Most Serene Republic, the Doge used to perform an elaborate yearly ceremony, tossing a gold ring into the waters of the Grand Canal to solemnize the wedding of the city to the waters that gave it life, wealth, and power. But never, Brunetti thought, had such great wealth been deliberately offered to any waters.

From the Rialto, he walked back to the Questura and went directly to the lab. Bocchese was there, sharpening a pair of scissors at one of the many machines that only he seemed able to operate. He turned the machine off when he saw Brunetti and set the scissors on the counter in front of him.

Brunetti put his briefcase beside the scissors, opened it, and pulled out, careful to touch them only at the corners, the two plastic bags. He set them beside the scissors. ‘Could you see if the American’s prints are on these?’ he asked. Bocchese nodded. ‘I’ll come down and you can tell me, all right?’ Brunetti said.

The technician nodded again. ‘It’s like that, huh?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you like me to lose the bags after I get the prints off them?’ Bocchese asked.

‘What bags?’

Bocchese reached for the scissors. ‘As soon as I finish this,’ he said. He flipped a switch, and the wheel of the machine spun into life again. Brunetti’s muttered thanks were drowned out by the high-pitched rasp of metal against metal as Bocchese went back to sharpening the scissors.

Deciding that it would be better to go and speak to Patta than be told to do so, Brunetti took the front steps and stopped outside his superior’s door. He knocked, heard a noise, and opened the door. As he did so, he realized, belatedly, that the sound he had heard had not been an invitation to enter.

The scene was a blending of cartoon cliché and every bureaucrat’s worst nightmare: in front of the window, the top two buttons of her blouse open, stood Anita, from the Ufficio Stranieri; a single step from her, and moving backward, stood a red-faced Vice-Questore Patta. Brunetti caught this in a glance and dropped his briefcase in an attempt to give Anita time to turn her back on the two men and button her blouse. As she did this, Brunetti knelt to retrieve the papers that had spilled from the briefcase, and Patta went to sit behind his desk: It took Anita as long to button her blouse as it did Brunetti to stuff the papers back into his briefcase.

When everything was back where it should be, Patta said, using the formal ‘lei’, ‘Thank you, Signorina. I’ll have these papers taken down to you as soon as I sign them.’

She nodded and made towards the door. As she walked past Brunetti, she gave him a wink and an enormous smile, both of which he ignored.

When she was gone, Brunetti walked over to Patta’s desk. ‘I’ve just got back from Vicenza, sir. From the American base.’

‘Yes? What did you find?’ Patta asked, face still suffused with a residual blush that Brunetti had to force himself to ignore.

‘Nothing much. I took a look at his apartment.’

‘Did you find anything?’

‘No, sir. Nothing. I’d like to go back there tomorrow.’

‘Why?’

‘To speak to some of the people who knew him.’

‘What difference will that make? It’s clear that this is a simple case of a mugging that went too far. Who cares who knew him or what they have to say about him?’

Brunetti recognized the signs of Patta’s growing indignation. If left unleashed, he would work himself up to forbidding Brunetti to continue the investigation at Vicenza. Since a simple mugging was the most convenient explanation, it would be the one towards which Patta would direct his hopes and, consequently, the investigation.

‘I’m sure you’re right, sir. But I thought that, until we could find the person who did it, it wouldn’t hurt if we could give the impression that the source of the crime lay outside the city. You know how tourists are. Just the least little thing will frighten them and keep them away.’

Did Patta’s rosy blush diminish discernibly at that, or was it just his imagination? ‘I’m glad to see you agree with me, Commissario.’ After a pause that could only be called pregnant, Patta added, ‘For once.’ He extended a well-manicured hand and straightened the folder at the centre of his desk. ‘Do you think there’s any connection with Vicenza?’

Brunetti paused before he answered, delighted at the ease with which Patta was transferring the responsibility of the decision to him. ‘I don’t know, sir. But I don’t think it could hurt us here if we gave the impression that there was.’

The pause with which his superior greeted this was artistic, his hesitation against any irregularity of procedure perfectly balanced against his desire to leave no stone unturned in the search for truth. He pulled his Mont Blanc Meisterstück from his breast pocket, opened the folder, and signed the three papers there, managing to make each repetition of the name more thoughtful and, at the same time, more decisive. ‘All right, Brunetti, if you think this is the best way to handle it, go to Vicenza again. We can’t have people afraid to come to Venice, can we?’

‘No, sir,’ Brunetti answered, his voice the very pattern of earnestness, ‘we certainly can’t.’ Maintaining the same level voice, Brunetti asked, ‘Will there be anything else, sir?’

‘No, that’s all, Brunetti. Give me a full report on what you find.’

‘Of course, sir,’ Brunetti said and turned towards the door, wondering what bromide Patta would find to hurl at his departing back.

‘We’ll bring the man to justice.’ Patta said.

‘We certainly will, sir,’ Brunetti said, only too eager to abet his superior’s use of the plural.

He went back up to his office, leafed through the issue of Panorama that had been in the briefcase, and gave Bocchese about half an hour to check the prints. At the end of that time, he went back down to the lab, this time to find Bocchese holding the blade of a bread-knife up against the whirling disc of the machine. When he saw Brunetti, he switched off the machine but kept the knife in his hand, testing the blade against his thumb.

‘Is this an extra job you’ve got?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No. My wife asks me to sharpen things every few months, and this is the best way to do it. If your wife would like me to sharpen anything for her, I’d be glad to.’

Brunetti nodded his thanks. ‘Find anything?’

‘Yes. There’s a good set of prints on one of the bags.’

‘His?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anyone else’s?’

‘There are one or two other prints, probably a woman’s.’

‘What about the second bag?’

‘Nothing. Clean. Wiped clean or handled only with gloves.’ Bocchese picked up a piece of paper and shaved a slice from it with the bread-knife. Satisfied, he set it down on the desk and turned to Brunetti. ‘I think the first bag had been used for something else before the . . .’ Bocchese stopped himself, not sure what could be said here. ‘... before the other substance was put in it.’

‘Used for what, originally?’

‘I can’t be sure, but it might have been cheese. There was a trace of some sort of oily residue on the inside. And that bag had clearly been handled more than the other, had creases in it, so I’d say it had been used for something else, then had the, uh, powder put in it.’

When Brunetti said nothing, Bocchese asked, ‘Aren’t you surprised?’

‘No, I’m not.’

Bocchese pulled a wooden-handled steak-knife from a paper bag to the left of the machine and felt its blade with his thumb. ‘Well, if there’s anything else I can do, just let me know. And tell your wife about the knives.’

‘Yes, thanks, Bocchese,’ Brunetti said. ‘What did you do with the bags?’

Bocchese switched on the machine, raised the knife towards it, and looked up at Brunetti. ‘What bags?’

* * * *

9

He saw no reason to remain in the Questura since there was little chance that he would get any new information until he returned to Vicenza, so he put his briefcase back in the bottom of the cupboard and left his office. As he walked from the front door, he quickly glanced both ways, searching for someone who seemed out of place. He cut to the left, heading towards Campo Maria Formosa and then to Rialto, using narrow back streets that would allow him to evade anyone who might be following him as well as the battalions of ravening tourists who invariably centred their attacks on the area around San Marco. Each year, it grew harder to have patience with them, to put up with their stop-and-go walking, with their insistence on walking three abreast, even in the narrowest calle. There were times when he wanted to scream at them, even push them aside, but he contented himself by taking out all of his aggression through the single expedient of refusing to stop or in any way alter his walking in order to allow them a photo opportunity. Because of this, he was sure his body, back, face, elbow appeared in hundreds of photos and videos; he sometimes contemplated the disappointed Germans, looking at their summer videos during the violence of a North Sea storm, as they watched a purposeful, dark-suited Italian walk in front of Tante Gerda or Onkel Fritz, blurring, if only for an instant, the vision of sunburned, Lederhosen-clad, sturdy thighs as they posed upon the Rialto Bridge, in front of the doors of the Basilica of San Marco, or beside a particularly charming cat. He lived here, damn it, so they could wait for their stupid pictures until he got past them, or they could take home a picture of a real Venetian, probably the closest any of them would come to making contact with the city in any significant way. And, oh yes, wasn’t he a happy man to take home to Paola? Especially during her first week of classes.

To avoid this, he stopped in at Do Mori, his favourite bar, just a few steps from Rialto, and said hello to Roberto, the grey-haired proprietor. They exchanged a few words, and Brunetti asked for a glass of Cabernet, the only thing he felt like drinking. With it, he ate a few of the fried shrimp that were always available at the bar, then decided to have a tramezzino, thick with ham and artichoke. He had another glass of wine and, after it, he began to feel human, for the first time that day. Paola always accused him of becoming foul-tempered when he didn’t eat for a long time, and he was beginning to believe she might be right. He paid and left, cut back to Rugetta and continued towards his home.

In front of Biancat, he stopped to study the flowers in the window. Signor Biancat saw him through the immense glass window, smiled arid nodded, so Brunetti went inside and asked for ten blue irises. As he wrapped them, Biancat talked about Thailand, from which he had just returned after a week-long conference of orchid breeders and growers. It seemed to Brunetti a strange way to spend a week, but then he reflected that he had, in the past, gone to both Dallas and Los Angeles for police seminars. Who was he to say that it was stranger to spend a week talking about orchids than about the incidence of sodomy among serial killers or the various objects used in rapes?

The stairs to his apartment generally served as an accurate gauge of the state of his being. When he felt good, they hardly seemed to be there; when he felt tired, his legs counted out each of the ninety-four. Tonight, someone had clearly slipped in an extra flight or two.

He opened the door, anticipating the smell of home, of food, of the varied odours he had come to attribute to this place where they lived. Instead, upon entering, he smelled only the odour of freshly-made coffee, hardly the thing longed for by a man who had just spent the whole day working in - yes - America.

‘Paola?’ he called and glanced down the corridor towards the kitchen. Her voice answered him from the other direction, from the bathroom, and then he smelled the sweet scent of bath salts that was carried down the hall towards him on a sea of moist, warm air. Almost eight at night, and she was taking a bath?

He walked down the hall and stood outside the partly-open door. ‘You in there?’ he asked. The question was so stupid that she didn’t bother to answer it. Instead, she asked, ‘You going to wearyour grey suit?’

‘Grey suit?’ he repeated, stepping into the steam-filled room. He saw her towel-wrapped head, floating disembodied on a cloud of suds, as though it had been carefully placed there by the person who had decapitated her. ‘Grey suit?’ he repeated, thinking what an odd couple they would appear, he in his grey suit and she in her suds.

Her eyes opened, the head turned towards him, and she gave him The Look, the one that always made him wonder if she was looking through him to where his suitcase lay in the attic, estimating how long it would take her to pack it for him. It was enough to remind him that tonight was the night when they were to go to the Casinò, invited there, with her parents, by an old friend of her family. It meant a late dinner, hideously expensive, made worse, or better - he could never decide which - by the fact that the family friend paid for it with his golden, or was it platinum, credit card. And then there always followed an hour or so of gambling or, worse, watching other people gamble.

Having been the investigating officer both times that the staff of the Casinò had been discovered at various sorts of peculation and having been, in both cases, the arresting officer, Brunetti hated the unctuous politeness with which he was treated by the Director and the staff. If he gambled and won, he wondered if the game had been fixed in his favour; if he lost, he had to consider the possibility that vengeance had been taken. In neither scenario did Brunetti bother to speculate on the nature of luck.

‘I thought I’d wear the dark blue one,’ he said, holding out the flowers and bending over the tub. ‘I brought you these.’

The Look changed into The Smile, which could still, even after twenty years with her, occasionally reduce his knees to jelly. A hand, then an arm, lifted out of the water. She touched the back of his wrist, leaving it wet and warm, then pulled her arm back under the surface of bubbles. ‘I’ll be out in five minutes.’ Her eyes caught his and held. ‘If you’d been earlier, then you could have had a bath, too.’

He laughed and broke the mood. ‘But then we would have been late for dinner.’ True enough. True enough. But he cursed the time he had lost by stopping for a drink. He left the bathroom and went down the long hall to the kitchen and placed the flowers in the sink, plugged it, and added enough water to cover their stems.

In their bedroom, he saw that she had placed a long red dress across the bed. He didn’t remember the dress, but he seldom did remember them, and he thought it best not to mention it. If it turned out to be a new dress and he remarked on it, he would sound like he thought she was buying too many clothes, and if it was something she had worn before, he would sound like he paid no attention to her and hadn’t bothered to notice it before. He sighed at the eternal inequality of marriage, opened the closet, and decided that the grey suit would be better. He removed his trousers and jacket, took off his tie, and studied his shirt in the mirror, wondering if he could wear it that evening. Deciding against it, he took it off and draped it across the back of a chair, then began dressing himself anew, vaguely bothered with having to do it but too much an Italian to consider the possibility of not doing so.

A few minutes later, Paola came into the bedroom, golden hair free, the towel now wrapped around her body, and walked to the dresser where she kept her underwear and sweaters. Casually, carelessly, she tossed the towel onto the bed and bent to open a drawer. Slipping a new tie under his collar and beginning to knot it, he studied her as she stepped into a pair of black panties, then pulled a bra around herself and hooked it. To distract himself, he thought of physics, which he had studied at the university. He doubted that he would ever understand the dynamics and stress forces of female undergarments: so many things to hold, support, keep in place. He finished knotting his tie and pulled his jacket from the closet. By the time he had it on, she was zipping the side of her dress and stepping into a pair of black shoes. His friends often complained of waiting eternities while their wives dressed or put on make-up; Paola always beat him to the door.

She reached into her side of the closet and drew out a floor-length coat that looked like it was made of fish scales. For a moment, he caught her looking at the mink that hung at the end of a row of clothing, but she ignored it and closed the door. Her father had given her the mink for Christmas a few years ago, but she had not worn it for the last two years. Brunetti didn’t know if this was because it was already out of style - he assumed that furs did go out of style; certainly everything else his wife or daughter wore did - or because of the growing anti-fur sentiment expressed both in the Press and at his dinner-table.

Two months ago, a quiet family dinner had exploded into a heated confrontation about the rights of animals, his children insisting that it was wrong to wear furs, that animals had the same rights as humans, and to deny this was to engage in ‘speciescentricity’, a term Brunetti was sure they had made up just to use against him in the argument. He had listened for ten minutes as the argument went back and forth between them and Paola, they demanding equal rights for all the species on the planet, she attempting to make a distinction between animals capable of reason and those which were not. Finally, out of patience with Paola for attempting rational opposition to an argument that seemed to him idiotic, he had reached over the table and poked with his fork at the chicken bones that lay at the side of his daughter’s plate. ‘We can’t wear them, but we can eat them, eh?’ he asked, got up, and went inside to read the paper and drink a grappa.

In any case, the mink remained in the closet and they set out for the Casinò.

They got off the vaporetto at the San Marcuola stop and walked down the narrow streets and over the hump-backed bridge that led to the iron gates of the Casinò, open now and extending a welcoming embrace to all who chose to enter. On the outer walls, the ones visible from the Grand Canal, were inscribed the words ‘Noh Nobis’, Not For Us, which, during the ages of the Republic, had declared the Casinò off-limits to Venetians. Only foreigners were to be fleeced; Venetians were to invest their money wisely and not squander it on dice and gaming. How he wished, this endless evening yawning out before him, that the rules of the Republic still pertained and could free him of the next few hours. They entered the marble-paved lobby, and immediately a tuxedoed assistant manager came from the entrance desk and greeted him by name. ‘Dottor Brunetti. Signora,’ - this with a bow that put a neat horizontal pleat in his red cummerbund. ‘We are honoured to have you here. Your party is in the restaurant.’ With a wave as graceful as the bow, he pointed to the right, to the single elevator that stood there, open and waiting. ‘If you’d come this way, I’ll take you to them.’

Paola’s hand grabbed at his, squeezing it hard, cutting him off from saying that they knew the way. Instead, all three crowded into the tiny box of the elevator and smiled pleasant smiles at one another as it inched itself towards the top floor of the building.

The elevator racketed to a halt, the assistant manager opened the twin doors and held them while Brunetti and Paola got off, then led them into the brightly lit restaurant. Brunetti looked around as he walked in, checking for the nearest exit and for anyone who looked capable of violence, a survey which he gave, entirely automatically, to any public room he entered. In a corner near a window that gave over the Grand Canal, he saw his parents-in-law and their friends, the Pastores, an elderly couple from Milan who were Paola’s Godparents and the oldest friends of her parents and who were, because of that, placed utterly beyond reproach or criticism.

As he and Paola drew near the round table, both of the older men, dressed in dark suits which were identical in quality, however different in colour, rose to their feet. Paola’s father kissed her on the cheek, then shook Brunetti’s hand, while Doctor Pastore bent to kiss Paola’s hand and then embraced Brunetti and kissed him on both cheeks. Because he never felt fully at ease with the man, this display of intimacy always made Brunetti uncomfortable.

One of the things that spoiled these dinners, this yearly ritual that he had inherited upon marrying Paola, was that he always arrived to find that dinner had been ordered by Doctor Pastore. The Doctor was, of course, solicitous, insisting that he hoped no one minded if he took the liberty of ordering, but it was the season for this, the season for that, truffles were at their best, the first mushrooms were just beginning to come in. And he was always right, and the meal was always delicious, but Brunetti disliked not being able to order what he wanted to eat, even if what he wanted turned out to be less good than what they ended up eating. And, each year, he chided himself for being stupid and pigheaded, yet he could not conquer the flash of irritation he felt when he arrived to find that the meal was already planned and ordered, and he had not been consulted in the ordering of it. Male ego against male ego? Surely, it was nothing more than that. Questions of palate and cuisine had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

There were the usual compliments, then the matter of where to sit. Brunetti ended up with his back to the window, Doctor Pastore to his left and Paola’s father directly opposite him.

‘How nice to see you again, Guido,’ Doctor Pastore said. ‘Orazio and I were just talking about you.’

‘Badly, I hope,’ Paola said and laughed, but then she turned her attention to her mother, who was fingering the material of her dress, a sign that it must be a new one, and to Signora Pastore, who sat with one of Paola’s hands still in hers.

He gave the Doctor a polite, inquisitive glance. ‘We were talking about this American. You’re in charge of it, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Dottore, I am.’

‘Why would someone want to kill an American? He was a soldier, wasn’t he? Robbery? Revenge? Jealousy?’ Because the Doctor was Italian, nothing else came to his mind.

‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti said, answering all five questions with one word. He paused as two waiters approached the table with two large platters of seafood antipasto. They offered the platters, serving each person in turn. Idly, more interested in murder than the meal, the Doctor waited until everyone had been served and the food complimented and then returned to the initial subject.

‘Have you any ideas?’

‘Nothing definite,’ Brunetti answered and ate a shrimp.

‘Drugs?’ asked Paola’s father, displaying a worldliness superior to his friend’s.

Brunetti repeated his ‘Perhaps’, and ate a few more shrimp, delighted to find them fresh and sweet.

At the sound of the word ‘drugs’, Paola’s mother turned to them and asked them what they were talking about.

‘Guido’s latest murder,’ her husband said, making it sound, somehow, as though it were one he had committed rather than one he had been sent to solve. ‘I’m sure it will turn out to have been a street crime. What do they call them in America - a “mugging”?’ He sounded surprisingly like Patta.

Because Signora Pastore had heard nothing about the murder, her husband had to repeat the whole story, turning to Brunetti occasionally to ask about details or for confirmation of fact. Brunetti didn’t mind this at all, for it made the meal pass more quickly than it usually did. And so, with talk of murder and mayhem, they ate their way through risotto, mixed grilled fish, four vegetables, salad, tiramisù, and coffee.

While the men sipped at their grappa, Doctor Pastore, as he did each year, asked the ladies if they cared to join him in the Casinò below. When they agreed, he responded with a delight new-minted each year and pulled from the inner pocket of his jacket three small suede bags, which he placed in front of them.

As she did each year, Paola protested, ‘Oh, Dottore, you shouldn’t,’ which, as usual, she said while busily opening the bag to reveal the Casinò chips which the bags always contained. Brunetti noticed the same combination he did each year and knew that the total would be two hundred thousand lire for each woman, enough to divert them while Doctor Pastore spent an hour or two playing blackjack and usually winning back far more than he had provided for the ladies’ amusement.

The three men rose from the table, held the chairs of the women, and the six of them started for the Casinò gaming rooms on the floor below.

Because they couldn’t all fit into the elevator, the women were put inside while the men decided to use the main staircase to go down to the main gambling hall. Brunetti found Count Orazio on his right and tried to think of something to say to his father-in-law.

‘Did you know that Richard Wagner died here?’ he asked, forgetting now how it was that he knew this, since Wagner was hardly a composer he liked.

‘Yes,’ the Count answered. ‘Hardly soon enough.’

And then, luckily, they were in the main gaming room, and Count Orazio joined his wife to watch as she played roulette, taking leave of Brunetti with a friendly smile and something that flirted with being a bow.

Brunetti had first been to a Casinò not in his native Venice, where no one but compulsive or professional gamblers paid any attention to the tables, but in Las Vegas, where he had stopped while driving across America many years ago. Because his first experience of gambling had been there, he always associated the practice with bright lights, loud music, and the high whoops of those who won or lost. He remembered a stage show, helium-filled balloons bouncing against the ceilings, people dressed in T-shirts, jeans, shorts. Consequently, though he came here to the Casinò each year, he was always surprised to find the atmosphere somewhere between that of an art museum and, worse, a church. Few people smiled, voices were never raised above a whisper, and no one ever appeared to be having any fun. In the midst of this solemnity, he missed the honest shouts of victory or defeat, the wild shrieks of joy that came with changes of fortune.

None of that here, no indeed. Men and women, all well-dressed, hushed to reverent silence, ringed the roulette table, putting down chips across the felt board. Silence, pause, then the croupier gave the wheel a sharp turn, dropped the ball in, and all eyes riveted themselves upon the whirl of metal and colour, stuck there as it slowed, slowed, slowed to a halt. Snake-like, the croupier’s rake crept up and down the board, sweeping in the losers’ chips and nudging a few to the winner. And then again the same motions, the flurry, the spin, and those eyes, fixed, nailed to the spinning wheel. Why, he wondered, did so many of these men wear rings on their little fingers?

He drifted into the next room, vaguely aware that he had become separated from his party, curious to observe. In an inner room, he came upon the blackjack tables and saw Doctor Pastore already seated there, a middling pile of chips stacked with surgical neatness in front of him. As Brunetti watched, he called for a card, drew a six, stopped, waited while the other players drew, then flipped his cards over to display a seven and an eight to accompany the six. His pile of chips grew; Brunetti turned away.

Everyone seemed to be smoking. One player at the baccarat table had two cigarettes burning in an ashtray in front of him, a third hanging from his lower lip. Smoke was everywhere: in his eyes, his hair, his clothing; it floated in a cloud that could be cut and stirred by a hand. He moved to the bar and bought himself a grappa, not really wanting it, but bored with watching the play.

He sat on a plush velvet sofa and watched the players in the room, occasionally sipping at the glass in his hand. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift for a few minutes. He felt the sofa move beside him and, without opening his eyes or moving his head from where it rested against the back of the sofa, he knew it was Paola. She took his glass, sipped at it, then gave it back to him.

‘Tired?’ she asked.

He nodded, suddenly too tired to speak.

‘All right. Come with me and we’ll have one more round at roulette, and then we can go home.’

He turned his head, opened his eyes, and smiled at her. ‘I love you, Paola,’ he said, then bowed his head and sipped at his grappa. How many years had it been since he had said that? He glanced up at her, almost shyly. She grinned and leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. ‘Come on,’ she said, getting to her feet and reaching down to pull him up. ‘Let’s lose this money, and then we’ll go home.’ She had five chips in her hand, each worth fifty thousand lire, which meant she had been winning. She handed him two, keeping the others for herself.

Back in the main gaming room, they had to wait a few minutes before they could worm themselves up beside the roulette table and, when they were there, he waited two turns until, for no reason he could name, it seemed the right time to play. Stacking the two chips one on top of the other in his hand, he placed them blindly on the board, then looked down and saw that they rested on number 28, a number that had no significance whatsoever for him. Paola placed hers on the black.

Spin, watch, wait, and, as he knew it would, the ball slipped into its rightful place in number 28, and he won more than three million lire. Almost a month’s salary, a vacation for them this summer, a computer for Chiara. He watched as the croupier’s rake came sliding towards him, chugging those chips across the felt until they stopped in front of him. He scooped them up, smiled at Paola, and, in the loudest voice heard in the Casinò in years, shouted, in English, ‘Hot damn.’

* * * *

10

He saw no sense in bothering to go to the Questura the next morning and, instead, stayed at home until it was time to get the train to Vicenza. He did, however, call Maggiore Ambrogiani and ask that the driver be sent to get him at the station.

As the train crossed over the causeway and away from the city, he looked off into the distance and saw, visible only rarely these days, the mountains, not yet snow-covered but, he hoped, soon to be. This was the third dry year, with little rain in the spring, none in the summer, and bad harvests in the autumn. The farmers had their hopes pinned on winter snows this year, and he recalled the saying of the peasants of the Friuli, a grim, hard-working people: ‘Sotto la neve, pane; sotto la pioggia, fame.’ Yes, the winter snows would bring bread, releasing their trapped waters slowly during the growing season, while rain, which ran off quickly, brought only hunger.

He hadn’t bothered with a briefcase today; it was unlikely he would find bags of cocaine two days in a row, but he had bought a paper at the train station, and he read through it as the train took him across the flat plain towards Vicenza. There was no mention of the dead American today, his place taken by a crime of passion in Modena, a dentist who had strangled a woman who refused to marry him and then shot himself. He spent the rest of the trip reading the political news, knowing as much when he arrived in Vicenza as when he left Venice.

The same driver was waiting for him in front of the station, but this time he got out to open the door for Brunetti. At the gate, he stopped without being told to do so and waited while the Carabiniere wrote out a pass for Brunetti. ‘Where would you like to go, sir?’

‘Where’s the Office of Public Health?’ he asked.

‘In the hospital.’

‘Then let’s go there.’

The driver took him up the long main street of the base, and Brunetti felt himself to be in a foreign country. Pine trees lined the street on both sides. The car rode past men and women in shorts, riding bicycles or pushing babies in pushchairs. Joggers loped by; they even drove past a swimming-pool, still filled with water but empty of swimmers.

The driver pulled up in front of yet another undistinguished cement building. ‘Vicenza Field Hospital’, Brunetti read. ‘In there, sir,’ the driver said, pulling into a parking space designated for the handicapped and cutting the engine.

Inside, he found himself in front of a low, curved reception desk. A young woman looked up, smiled, and asked, ‘Yes, sir, may I help you?’

‘I’m looking for the Office of Public Health.’

‘Take the corridor behind me, turn right, then it’s the third door on the left,’ she said, then turned to a pregnant woman in uniform who had come in and stood beside him. Brunetti walked away from the desk in the direction given and did not, he thought proudly to himself, did not turn to look at the woman in uniform, the pregnant woman in uniform.

He stopped in front of the third door, clearly marked ‘Public Health’, and knocked. No one answered, so he knocked again. Still no one answered, so he tried the knob, and, noting that it was a knob and not a handle, opened the door and went in. The small room held three metal desks, each with a chair drawn up in front of it, and two filing cabinets, from the top of both of which straggled long, tired-looking plants much in need of both water and dusting. On the wall hung the now predictable bulletin board, this one covered with notices and charts. Two of the desks were covered with the normal detritus of office work: papers, forms, folders, pens, pencils. The third held a computer terminal and keyboard but, for the rest, was conspicuously bare. Brunetti seated himself in the chair that was clearly intended for visitors. One of the phones - each desk had one - rang and went on ringing seven times, then stopped. Brunetti waited a few minutes then went to the door and stepped back out into the corridor. A nurse was walking by, and Brunetti asked her if she knew where the people from the office were.

‘Should be right back, sir,’ she answered in the internationally recognized code by which fellow workers cover for one another with strangers who might or might not have been sent there to find out who was at work and who was not. He stepped back inside and closed the door.

As in any office, there were the usual cartoons, postcards, and handwritten notes interspersed with official notices. The cartoons all seemed to have soldiers or doctors, and many of the postcards had either minarets or archaeological sites. He unpinned the first and found that Bob said hello from the Blue Mosque. The second told him that Bob liked the Colosseum. But the third, which showed a camel in front of the Pyramids, revealed, far more interestingly, that M and T were finished with the inspection of the kitchens and would be back on Tuesday. He pinned this one back and stepped away from the board.

‘May I help you?’ a voice said behind him.

He recognized her voice, turned, and she recognized him. ‘Mr Brunetti, what are you doing here?’ Her surprise was both genuine and strong.

‘Good morning, Doctor Peters. I told you I’d come out to see if I could learn more about Sergeant Foster. I was told this was the Office of Public Health, so I came down here in the hopes of meeting someone who worked with him. But, as you can see,’ he said, gesturing around the empty office and taking two steps that further distanced him from the board, ‘no one is here.’

‘They’re all at a meeting,’ she explained. ‘Trying to figure out a way to divide up the work until we get a replacement for Mike.’

‘Aren’t you at the meeting?’ he asked.

In response, she pulled a stethoscope out of the breast pocket of her white lab coat and said, ‘Remember, I’m a paediatrician.’

‘I see.’

‘They ought to be back here very soon,’ she volunteered. ‘Who did you want to speak to?’

‘I don’t know. Whoever worked most closely with him.’

‘I told you, Mike pretty much had charge of the office himself.’

‘So it wouldn’t help me to talk to anyone?’

‘I can’t answer that for you, Mr Brunetti, since I don’t know what it is you want to find out.’

Brunetti assumed her irritation was the result of nervousness, so he dropped the subject and asked, instead, ‘Do you know if sergeant Foster drank?’

‘Drank?’

‘Alcohol.’

‘Very little.’

‘And drugs?’

‘What sort of drugs?’

‘Illegal drugs.’

‘No.’ Her voice was firm, her conviction absolute.

‘You sound very certain.’

‘I’m certain because I knew him, and I’m also certain because I’m his commanding officer, and I see his medical record.’

‘Is that something that would normally appear in a medical report?’ Brunetti asked.

She nodded. ‘We can be tested, any of us in the Army, at any time, for drug use. Most of us get a urine test once a year.’

‘Even officers?’

‘Even officers.’

‘Even doctors?’

‘Even doctors.’

‘And you saw the results of his?’

‘Yes.’

‘When was the last one?’

‘I don’t remember. Sometime this summer, I think.’ She shifted some folders from one hand to the other. ‘I don’t know why you’re asking this. Mike never used drugs. Just the opposite. He was dead set against them. We used to argue about it.’

‘How? Why?’

‘I see no problem with them. I’m not interested in them myself, but if people want to use them, then I think they ought to be allowed to.’ When Brunetti said nothing, she continued, ‘Look, I’m supposed to be taking care of little kids, but we’re short-staffed here, so I see a lot of their mothers as well, and a lot of them ask me to renew their prescription for Valium and Librium. If I refuse because I think they’re taking too much of them, they just wait a day or two and go down the hall and have an appointment with a different doctor, and sooner or later, someone’s going to give them what they want. A lot of them would be better off if they could just smoke a joint now and then.’

Brunetti wondered how well these opinions were received by both medical and military authorities, but he thought it best to keep the question to himself. After all, it was not Doctor Peters’ opinion about the use of drugs that he was interested in; it was whether Sergeant Foster had used them or not. And, not at all incidentally, why she had lied about going on a trip with him.

Behind her, the door opened and a stocky middle-aged man in a green uniform came in. He seemed to be surprised to see Brunetti there, but he clearly recognized the doctor.

‘Is the meeting over, Ron?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, paused, looked up at Brunetti and, not sure who he might be, added, ‘m’am.’

Doctor Peters turned to Brunetti. ‘This is First Sergeant Wolf,’ she said. ‘Sergeant, this is Commissario Brunetti, from the Venice police. He’s come out to ask some questions about Mike.’

After the two men had shaken hands and exchanged pleasantries, Doctor Peters said, ‘Perhaps Sergeant Wolf can give you a clearer idea of what Sergeant Foster did, Mr Brunetti. He’s in charge of all of the contacts that the hospital has off-post.’ She turned towards the door. ‘I’ll leave you with him and get back to my patients.’ Brunetti nodded in her direction, but she had turned away from them and left the office quickly.

‘What is it you wanted to know, Commissario?’ Sergeant Wolf asked, then added, less formally, ‘Would you like to come back to my office?’

‘Don’t you work here?’

‘No. I’m part of the administrative staff of the hospital. Our offices are on the other side of the building.’

‘Then who else works here?’ he asked, pointing to the three desks.

‘This desk is Mike’s. Was Mike’s,’ he corrected himself. ‘The other desk is Sergeant Dostie’s, but he’s in Warsaw. They shared the computer.’

How wide this American eagle spread its wings. ‘When will he be back?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Sometime next week, I think,’ Wolf answered.

‘And how long has he been away?’ Brunetti thought this less direct than asking when he had left.

‘Since before this happened,’ Wolf responded, effectively answering Brunetti’s question and eliminating Sergeant Dostie as a suspect.

‘Would you like to come down to my office?’

Brunetti followed him from the room and down the halls of the hospital, trying to remember the way they went. They passed through a set of swinging double doors, down a spotlessly clean corridor, through another set of doors, and then Wolf stopped in front of an open door.

‘Not much, but I call it home,’ he said with surprising warmth. He stepped back to let Brunetti. go into the office first, then came in and pulled the door closed behind them. ‘Don’t want us to be disturbed,’ he said and smiled. He walked behind his desk and sat in an imitation-leather swivel chair. Most of the surface was covered with an enormous desk calendar, and on that rested files, an In- and Out-tray, and a telephone. To the right, in a brass frame, was a photo of an Oriental woman and three young children, apparently the children of this mixed marriage.

‘Your wife?’ Brunetti asked, taking a seat in front of the desk.

‘Yes, beautiful, isn’t she?’

‘Very,’ Brunetti answered.

‘And those are our three kids. Joshua’s ten, Melissa’s six, and Jessica is only one.’

‘It’s a very handsome family,’ Brunetti volunteered.

‘Yes, they are. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have them. I often told Mike that’s what he needed, to marry and settle down.’

‘Did he need to settle down?’ Brunetti asked, interested in the fact that it was always married men with numerous children who wished this on single men.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Wolf said, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his desk. ‘He was twenty-five, after all. Time to start a family.’

‘Did he have a girlfriend to start it with?’ Brunetti asked cordially.

Wolf looked across at him, then down at his desk. ‘Not that I knew about.’

‘Did he like women?’ If Wolf understood that the corollary of this was whether he liked men, he gave no sign.

‘I suppose so. I really didn’t know him all that well Just here at work.’

‘Was anyone here a special friend?’ When Wolf shook his head, Brunetti added, ‘Doctor Peters was very upset when she saw the body.’

‘Well, they’d worked together for a half a year or so. Don’t you think it’s normal she’d be upset to see him?’

‘Yes, I suppose,’ Brunetti answered, offering no explanation. ‘Anyone else?’

‘No, not that I can think of.’

‘Perhaps I could ask Mr Dostie when he gets back.’

‘Sergeant Dostie,’ Wolf corrected automatically.

‘Did he know Sergeant Foster well?’

‘I really don’t know, Commissario.’ It seemed to Brunetti that this man didn’t know very much at all, not about a man who had worked for him for . . . ‘How long did Sergeant Foster work for you?’ he asked.

Wolf pushed himself back in his chair, glanced at the picture, as if his wife would tell him, then answered, ‘Three years, ever since he got here.’

‘I see. And how long has Sergeant Dostie been here?’

‘About four years.’

‘What kind of man was he, Sergeant Wolf?’ Brunetti asked, turning the conversation back to the dead man.

This time, Wolf checked with his children before he answered, ‘He was an excellent troop. His record will tell you that. He tended pretty much to keep to himself, but that might be because he was going to school, and he was very serious about that.’ Wolf paused, as if looking for something more profound to say. ‘He was a very caring individual.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Brunetti asked, utterly lost. Caring? What did Foster care about? ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

Wolf was glad to explain. ‘You know, what you Italians call “simpatico”‘.’

‘Oh,’ Brunetti muttered. What a strange language these people spoke. More directly, he asked, ‘Did you like him?’

The soldier was clearly surprised by the question. ‘Well, yes, I suppose I did. I mean, like, we weren’t friends or anything, but he was a nice guy.’

‘What were his exact duties?’ Brunetti asked, taking his notebook from his pocket.

‘Well,’ Sergeant Wolf began, latching his hands behind his head and sitting back more comfortably in his chair, ‘he had to see about housing, that landlords kept up standards. You know, enough hot water, enough heat in the winter. And he had to see that, when we were tenants, we didn’t do any damage to the apartments or the houses. If a landlord calls us and tells us his tenants are creating a health hazard, we go out and investigate it.’

‘What sort of a health hazard?’ Brunetti asked, honestly curious. ‘Oh, lots of things. Not taking the garbage out, or putting the garbage too near the house. Or not cleaning up after their animals. There’s a lot of that.’

‘What do you do?’

‘We have permission to, no, we have the right to go into their houses.’

‘Even if they object?’

‘Especially if they object,’ Wolf said with an easy laugh. That’s generally a sure sign the place will be a mess.’

‘Then what do you do?’

‘We inspect the house to see if there’s any danger to health.’

‘Does this happen often?’

Wolf started to answer, then checked himself, and Brunetti realized that the man was weighing up how much of this he could tell an Italian, what his response would be to such tales regarding Americans. ‘We get a few,’ he said neutrally.

‘And then?’

‘We tell them to clean it up, and we report it to their commander, and they’re given a certain time to clean it up.’

‘And if they don’t?’

‘They get an Article Fifteen.’

Brunetti smiled that bland old smile again. ‘An Article Fifteen?’

‘It’s a sort of official reprimand. It goes into the permanent file, and it can cause someone a lot of trouble.’

‘Such as?’

‘It can cost them salary, or demotion, or sometimes it can get them thrown out of the Army.’

‘For having a dirty house?’ Brunetti asked, unable to restrain his surprise.

‘Mr Brunetti, if you saw some of these houses, you’d want to throw them out of the country.’ He paused for a moment, then began again, ‘And he had to go and check out the kitchens in the embassies, especially if someone got sick there, or, worse, if a lot of people started getting sick. We had hepatitis in Belgrade last year, and he had to go and check it out.’

‘Anything else?’Brunetti asked.

‘No, nothing important.’

Brunetti smiled. ‘I’m not sure now what is and isn’t important at this point, Sergeant Wolf, but I’d like to have a clear idea of his duties.’

Sergeant Wolf returned his smile. ‘Of course. I understand. He also had to see that the kids at the school all had the proper vaccinations. You know, against things like measles and chickenpox. And he had to see that the rays got disposed of, them and some other stuff that we can’t dispose of in the normal way. And there was a certain amount of public health information that he was in charge of.’ He looked up, finished. ‘That’s about it, I think.’

‘Rays?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes, the X-rays from the dental clinic, and even some of them from here in the hospital. They have to be disposed of specially. We can’t put them in the trash.’

‘How is that done?’

‘Oh, we’ve got a contract with an Italian haulier who comes in once a month and takes them away. Mike had to see to that, check to see that the containers got picked up.’ Wolf smiled. ‘That’s about it.’

Brunetti returned his smile and stood. ‘Thank you, Sergeant Wolf. You’ve been very helpful.’

‘Well, I hope it does some good. We all liked Mike here, and we certainly want to see you get the person who did this.’

‘Yes. Certainly,’ Brunetti said, extending his hand. ‘I don’t want to keep you from your work, Sergeant.’

The American stood to shake Brunetti’s hand. His grasp was firm, confident. ‘Glad to be of help, sir. If you have any more questions, please come and ask.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant. I just might.’

When he was back in the corridor, he traced his way back to the Public Health Office and knocked on the door again. He waited a few seconds and, hearing nothing, let himself into the office. As he had expected, the Blue Mosque and the Colosseum were still there. The Pyramids were gone.

* * * *

11

Back in the hall, he asked the first person passing by, a young black woman in a nurse’s uniform, where he might find Doctor Peters. She told him that she was going to Ward B, where Doctor Peters worked, and said she would take him there. This time, they branched off in the opposite direction, through still another set of double doors, but this time the people coming towards him wore white uniforms or light-green scrub suits, not the darker green of military uniforms. They passed a room with a sign that said it was a recovery room, then off to his right he heard the squalling of babies. He glanced down at the nurse, who smiled and nodded her head. ‘Three, all born this week.’

It seemed to Brunetti that babies had no business being born here, on a military installation, surrounded by guns, uniforms, and the business of killing. But then he remembered that, so far, he had seen a library, chapel, swimming-pool, and Baskin Robbins ice-cream parlour on this same military installation, so maybe it did make sense that babies were born here, too. How little of what he had seen here, in fact, had anything to do with the business of war or killing or being an army. Did the Americans realize, he wondered, where their money went? Did they realize the profligacy with which it was spent? Because he was an Italian, he assumed that his government was serious only about the business of tossing money away, usually in the general direction of the friends of those in government, but it had never occurred to him that the American government might be equally intent upon doing the same thing.

‘This is Doctor Peters’ office, sir. I think she’s with a patient now, but she ought to be back soon.’ She smiled and left him standing there, never having bothered to ask who he was or what he wanted.

The office looked like any doctor’s office he had ever been in. One wall was covered with thick books with thicker titles; there was a scale in one corner with a sliding metal pole for measuring height. He stepped on the scale and slid the metal weight back and forth on the horizontal pole until it clicked into place at 193. He did the arithmetic in his head, dividing by 2.2, and sighed at the result. He measured his height, 5 feet, 10 inches, but he had never been able to do that conversion without pencil and paper. Besides, he assumed that his height would be less likely to betray him, the way his weight had.

There were some posters on the wall: one of Fulvio Roiter’s predictable photos of Carnevale; a reproduction of the mosaics in San Vitale in Ravenna; an enlarged photo of mountains that looked like the jagged-toothed Dolomites. The wall to the right, as was the case in so many doctors’ offices, was covered with framed diplomas, as if doctors were afraid no one would believe them unless tangible proof of their training were plastered up on the wall for all to see. ‘Emory University.’ That meant nothing to him. ‘Phi Beta Kappa.’ Not did that. ‘Summa Cum Laude.’ Well, that certainly did.

A magazine lay closed on the desk. Family Practice Journal. He picked it up and leafed through, then stopped at an article that carried coloured photos of what he thought were human feet, but feet distorted beyond all recognition, with toes that grew every which way, toes that curled up and back towards the top of the foot, or, worse, toes that curved down towards the soles. He stared at the photos for a while, then, just as he began to read the article, he sensed motion beside him and looked up to see Doctor Peters standing just inside the door. With no preamble, she took the magazine from his hands, slapped it closed, and placed it on the other side of the desk from him.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, hiding neither surprise nor anger.

He stood. ‘I apologize for touching your things, Doctor. I came here to talk to you, if you have time. I saw the magazine there and looked through it while I was waiting. I hope you don’t mind.’

Clearly, she realized that her reaction had been too strong. He watched while she tried to gain control of herself. Finally, she sat in the chair in front of her desk and said, trying to smile, ‘Well, better that than my mail.’ That said, her smile seemed to become genuine. She pointed to the now closed magazine. ‘It happens in old people. They get too stiff to bend down and cut their toenails, but they continue to grow, and, as you saw, the feet become horribly distorted.’

‘Better paediatrics,’ he said.

She smiled again. ‘Yes, far better. I think it’s better to invest your time in children.’ She placed her stethoscope on top of the magazine and said, ‘I don’t think you came here to discuss my career choices, Commissario. What is it you’d like to know?’

‘I’d like to know why you lied about your trip to Cairo with Sergeant Foster.’

He saw that she wasn’t surprised, had perhaps been expecting it. She crossed her legs, her knees just visible under the hem of the uniform skirt she wore beneath the white jacket. ‘So you do read my mail?’ she asked. When he didn’t say anything, she continued, ‘I didn’t want anyone here to know what happened.’

‘Doctor, you sent the postcard here, with both your names, well, initials, on it. It would hardly be a secret to anyone here that you went to Cairo together.’

‘Please, you know what I mean. I didn’t want anyone here to know what happened,’ she repeated. ‘You were there when I saw his body. So you know.’

‘Why don’t you want anyone here to know? Are you married to someone else?’

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head tiredly at his failure to understand. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if it were only that. But I’m an officer, and Mike was an enlisted man.’ She saw his confusion. ‘That’s fraternization, and it’s one of the things we are forbidden to do.’ She paused for a long time. ‘One of many things.’

‘What would happen to you if they found out?’ he asked, not thinking it necessary to define ‘they’.

She shrugged. ‘I have no idea. One of us would have been spoken to, perhaps disciplined. Maybe even transferred to some other place. But that’s hardly a concern now, is it?’ she asked, looking at him directly.

‘No, I’m afraid it isn’t. Could it still hurt your career?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be out of the Army in six months, Mr Brunetti. They wouldn’t bother with it now, and if they did, I don’t mink I’d much care. I don’t want a career, not with the Army, but I still don’t want them to know. I just want to get out and go back to my life,’ She paused for a moment, gave him a diagnostic glance, then continued. ‘The Army sent me to medical school. I could never have afforded it myself and neither could my family. So they gave me six years of school, and now I’ve given them four years of work. That’s ten years, Mr Brunetti, ten years. So I guess I shouldn’t even say I want to go back to my life. I want to start to have one.’

‘What are you going to do? With that life, I mean.’

She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t know. I’ve applied to some hospitals. There’s always private practice. Or I could go back to school. I don’t think about that much.’

‘Is that because of Sergeant Foster’s death?’

She prodded the stethoscope with one finger, looked at him, then back down at her hand.

‘Doctor Peters,’ he began, feeling awkward about how speech-like this was going to sound in English. ‘I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I know that Sergeant Foster wasn’t killed by a mugger or in some bungled robbery attempt He was murdered, and whoever murdered him has something to do with the American military, or with the Italian police. And I believe that you know something about whatever it was that caused him to be killed. I’d like you to tell me what it is you know, or what it is you suspect. Or what you’re afraid of.’ The words sounded leaden and artificial in his ears.

She looked over at him when he said that, and he saw a phantom of what he had seen in her eyes that night on the island of San Michele. She started to speak, stopped, and looked back down at the stethoscope. After a long time, she shook her head and said, ‘I think you’re exaggerating my reaction, Mr Brunetti. I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say I’m afraid of something.’ And then, to convince them both, ‘I don’t know anything about why Mike would have been killed or who might have wanted to kill him.’

He glanced at her hand and saw that she had bent the black rubber tube that led down to the flat disc at the end of the instrument until the rubber was grey with tension. She caught the direction of his eyes, looked down at her own hand, and slowly released it, until the tube was again straight, the rubber black. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another patient to see.’

‘Certainly, Doctor,’ he said, knowing that he had lost. ‘If you think of anything you want to tell me or if you want to talk to me, you can reach me at the Questura in Venice.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, stood and went to the door. ‘Do you want to finish the article?’

‘No,’ he said, scrambling to his feet and going to the door. He put out his hand. ‘If you think of anything, Doctor.’

She took his hand, smiled, but said nothing. He watched as she went down the corridor to the left and into the next room, from which he could hear the voice of a woman talking in a low, crooning voice, probably to a sick child.

Outside, the driver was waiting, busy with a magazine. He looked up when Brunetti opened the back door of the car. ‘Where to, sir?’

‘Is that dining-hall open today?’ He was very hungry, realized only now that it was after one.

‘Yes, sir. Strike’s been settled.’

‘Who was on strike?’

‘CGL,’ he explained, naming the biggest of the Communist labour unions.

‘CGL?’ Brunetti repeated in amazement. ‘On an American military base?’

‘Yes, sir,’ the driver said and laughed. ‘After the war, they hired people who spoke some English, and they let the unions form without paying any attention to them. But once they realized that CGL was Communist, they refused to hire anyone else who was a member. But they can’t get rid of the people who still are. Lots of them work in the dining-hall. Food’s good.’

‘All right, take me there. How far?’

‘Oh, about two minutes,’ he said, pulling away from the kerb and cutting the car into another tight U-turn that took them back up what Brunetti was sure was a one-way street.

On their left, they passed two larger-man-life Statues that he hadn’t noticed before. ‘Who are those two?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know who the angel with the sword is, but the other one is Saint Barbara.’

‘Saint Barbara? What’s she doing here?’

‘She’s the patron saint of the artillery, sir. Remember, her father was struck by lightning when he tried to cut her head off?’

Although he had been raised a Catholic, Brunetti had never felt much interest in religion and found it difficult to keep the different saints straight, rather, he believed, in the manner the pagans must have found it hard to remember which god was in charge of what. Besides, it had always seemed to him that the saints spent entirely too much time misplacing various body parts: eyes, breasts, arms, and now, with Saint Barbara, her head. ‘I don’t know the legend. What happened?’

The driver swerved through a STOP sign and around a corner, looked back at Brunetti, and explained. ‘Her father was a pagan, and she was a Christian. Her father wanted her to marry a pagan, but she wanted to stay a virgin.’ He added, under his breath, ‘Silly girl.’ He looked back at the road, just in time to brake sharply to avoid running into a truck. ‘So the father decided to punish her by cutting off her head. He raised his sword over her, giving her one last chance to obey him, and zacketay! lightning struck the sword and killed him.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘Oh, they never tell you that part of the story. In any case, because of the explosion of the lightning, she’s the patron saint of the artillery.’ He pulled up in front of another low building. ‘Here we are, sir.’ Then he added, puzzled. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t know that, sir. About Saint Barbara.’

‘I wasn’t assigned the case,’ Brunetti said.

After lunch, he had the driver take him back to Foster’s apartment. The same two soldiers were sitting in their Jeep in front of the apartment. They both got out when Brunetti approached them and waited for him to draw up to them. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said, smiling pleasantry. ‘I’d like to have another look inside the apartment if that’s possible.’

‘Have you spoken to Major Butterworth about this, sir?’ the one with more stripes asked.

‘No, not today. But he gave me permission yesterday.’

‘Could you tell me why you want to go back, sir?’

‘My notebook. I was jotting down the names of his books yesterday, and I must have set it down on the bookcase inside. I didn’t have it when I got on the train, and this was the last place I’d been.’ He saw that the soldier was about to refuse, so he added, ‘You’re welcome to come inside with me if you’d like. All I want to do is pickup the notebook if it’s there. I don’t think the apartment is going to be any help to me, but I have notes on other things in there, and they’re important to me.’ He was talking too much, he realized.

The two soldiers exchanged glances, and apparently one of them decided that it would be all right. The one he had spoken to handed his rifle to his companion and said, ‘If you’ll come along with me, sir, I’ll let you into the apartment.’

Smiling his gratitude, Brunetti followed him towards the front entrance and into the elevator. Neither of them spoke during the short ride to the third floor nor while the soldier opened the door. He stepped back and allowed Brunetti to walk past him into the apartment, then closed the door behind them.

Brunetti went into the living room and up to the bookcase. He made a show of looking for the notebook, which was in his jacket pocket, even stooped down and looked behind a chair that stood beside the bookcase. ‘That’s strange. I’m sure I had it here.’ He pulled a few books forward and looked behind them. Nothing. He paused, reflecting on where else he might have set it down. ‘I got myself a drink of water in the kitchen,’ he said to the soldier. ‘I might have set it down in there.’ Then, as if he had just thought of it, ‘Is there any chance that someone might have come in and found it?’

‘No, sir. No one’s been in here since you left.’

‘Good,’ Brunetti answered with his friendliest smile, ‘then it’s got to be here.’ He preceded the soldier into the kitchen and went to the worktop beside the sink. He looked around him, bent down to look under the kitchen table, then stood. As he did, he placed himself directly in front of the water heater. The screws on the front panel which he had replaced yesterday, careful to leave them at exact verticals and horizontals, had all been moved and were all slightly out of true. So someone had checked and found that the bags were missing.

‘It doesn’t seem to be here, sir.’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Brunetti agreed in a voice into which he put real confusion. ‘Very strange. I’m sure I had it while I was here.’

‘Could you have dropped it in your car, sir?’ the soldier suggested.

‘The driver would have told me,’ Brunetti said, then, as if the idea had just come to him, ‘if he found it.’

‘Better check your vehicle, sir.’

They left the apartment together, the soldier careful to lock the door behind him. As they descended in the elevator, Brunetti decided that it would be far too coincidental for him to find the notebook hidden behind the back seat of the car. Consequently, when they emerged from the building, he thanked the soldier for his help and went back to his own car.

Not sure if the American was within hearing distance and not certain about whether he understood Italian, he played it straight and asked his driver if he had found a notebook in the car. Obviously, he had not. Brunetti opened the back door, stuck his hand behind the back seat, and felt around in the empty space. He found, not at all to his surprise, nothing. He pulled himself from the car and turned back towards the Jeep. He opened his hands in an empty, significant gesture, and then got into the back seat and asked the driver to take him to the station.

* * * *

12

The only train leaving Vicenza at that hour was a local that stopped at all of the stations between Vicenza and Venice, but, since the Intercity from Milan was not due for another forty minutes, Brunetti opted for the local, though he hated the stop-and-go trip, with the continual change of passengers and the great tide of students who invariably surged on and off at Padova.

In the dining-hall, he had picked up a copy of an English-language newspaper that lay abandoned on the table where he sat He took it now from his inner pocket and began to read. The Stars and Stripes, it announced itself in red letters, apparently a paper published by the American military in Europe. The front page carried a story about a hurricane that had swept its way through a place called Biloxi, a city he believed to be in Bangladesh. No, in America, but how could that name be explained? There was a large picture of houses and cars overturned, trees shoved over onto one another. He turned a page and read that a pit bull had bitten off the hand of a sleeping child in Detroit, a city he was certain was in America. There was no picture. The Secretary of Defense had assured Congress that all those contractors who had defrauded the government would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Remarkable, the similarity between the rhetoric of American politics and Italian. He had no doubt that the illusory nature of that promise would be the same in both countries.

There were three pages of cartoons, none of which made the least bit of sense to him, and six of sports news, which made even less. In one of the cartoons, a caveman swung a club, and on one of the sports pages, a man in a striped uniform did the same. Beyond that, all was arcana to Brunetti. The last page carried a continuation of the report on the hurricane, but then the train pulled into Venice station and he abandoned the story. He left the paper on the seat beside him; perhaps someone else could profit from it better than he.

It was after seven when they arrived, but the sky was still light. That would end this weekend; he thought, when the clocks were set back an hour, and it got dark earlier. Or was it the other way, and it stayed bright longer? He hoped that it took most people as long to figure this out each year as it did him. He crossed the Bridge of the Scalzi and entered the rabbit warren of streets that wove their way back towards his apartment. Few people, even at this hour, passed him, since most went to the station or to the bus depot at Piazzale Roma by boat. Usually as he walked, he glanced at the fronts of buildings, up at their windows, down narrow streets, always alert to something he might not have noticed before. Like many of his townsmen, Brunetti never tired of studying the city, every so often delighting himself by discovering something he had never noticed before. Over the course of the years, he had worked out a system that allowed him to reward himself for each discovery: a new window earned him a coffee; a new statue of a saint, however small, got him a glass of wine; and once, years ago, he had noticed on a wall he must have passed five times a week since he was a child a lapidary stone that commemorated the site of the Aldine Publishing House, the oldest in Italy, founded in the fourteenth century. He had gone right around the corner and into a bar in Campo San Luca and ordered himself a Brandy Alexander, though it was ten in the morning and the barman had given Brunetti a strange look when he placed the glass in front of him.

Tonight, however, the streets failed to capture his interest; he was still back in Vicenza, still seeing the grooves in the four screws that held the front panel of the water heater in Foster’s apartment, each of them slightly moved from the careful straight lines in which Brunetti had left them the day before, each giving the lie to the soldier’s assertion that no one had been in the apartment after Brunetti. So now they - whoever ‘they’ were - knew that Brunetti had taken the drugs from the apartment and had said nothing about it.

He let himself into the building and had unlocked their mailbox before he remembered that Paola would have been home hours ago and would have checked the post. He began the ascent to his home, grateful for the first flight, low and gentle, a remnant of the original fifteenth-century palazzo. At the top, the stairs jogged off to the left and rose up, in two steep flights, to the next floor. A door awaited him there, which he unlocked and closed behind him. Another flight, these dangerous and steep. They doubled back above themselves and carried him up the last twenty-five steps to the door of his apartment. He unlocked the door and let himself in, finally home.

There was the smell of cooking to welcome him, one scent mingling with another. Tonight he could make out the faint odour of squash, which meant that Paola was making risotto con zucca, available only in this season, when the dark green, squat barucca squash were brought from Chioggia, across the laguna. And after that? Shank of veal? Roasted with olives and white wine?

He hung his jacket in the cupboard and went down the hall to the kitchen. The room was hotter than usual, which meant the oven was on. The large frying pan on the stove revealed, when he lifted the lid, bright orange chunks of zucca, frying slowly with minced onions. He took a glass from the rack beside the sink and pulled a bottle of Ribolla from the refrigerator. He poured a little more than a mouthful, tasted, drank it down, then filled the glass and replaced the bottle. The warmth of the kitchen swept up about him. He loosened his tie and went back down the corridor. ‘Paola?’

‘I’m here, in the back,’ he heard her answering call.

He didn’t answer but went into the long living room and then out onto the balcony. This was the best time of day for Brunetti, for he could see, from their terrace, the sunset off in the West. On the clearest of days, he could see the Dolomites from the small window in the kitchen, but it was so late in the day now that they would be hazed over and invisible. He stayed where he was, forearms propped on the railing, studying the rooftops and towers that never ceased to please him. He heard Paola move down the hall, back into the kitchen, heard the clang of shifted pots, but he stayed where he was, listening to the eight o’clock bells ring out from San Polo, then to the answering resonance of San Marco, a few seconds late, as always, come booming across the city. When all the bells were silent, he went back into the house, closing the door against the growing evening chill.

In the kitchen, Paola stood at the stove, stirring the risotto, pausing now and again to add more boiling broth. ‘Glass of wine?’ he asked. She shook her head, still stirring. He passed behind her, paused long enough to kiss her on the back of the neck, and poured himself another glass of wine.

‘How was Vicenza?’ she asked.

‘Better to ask me how was America.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘It’s incredible, isn’t it?’

‘Were you ever there?’

‘Years ago. With the Alvises.’ Seeing his puzzled look, she explained. ‘The Colonel, when he was stationed in Padova. There was some sort of party at the officers’ club, for Italian and American officers. About ten years ago.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘No, you didn’t go. It was when you were in Naples. I think. Is it still the same?’

‘Depends on what it was like then,’ he said, smiling.

‘Don’t be smart with me, Guido. What was it like?’

‘It was very clean, and everyone smiled a great deal.’

‘Good,’ she said, stirring again. ‘Then it hasn’t changed.’

‘I wonder why it is, that they always smile so much.’ He had noticed the same thing, each time he was in America.

She turned away from the risotto and stared at him. ‘Why shouldn’t they smile, Guido? Think about it. They’re the richest people in the world. Everyone has to defer to them in politics, and they have convinced themselves, somehow, that everything they have ever done in their very brief history has been done for no purpose other than to further the general good of mankind. Why shouldn’t they smile?’ She turned back to the pan and muttered darkly as she felt the rice sticking to the bottom. She poured more broth into it and stirred quickly for a moment.

‘Is this going to turn into a cell meeting?’ he asked blandly. Though they generally agreed about politics, Brunetti had always voted Socialist, while Paola voted, fiercely, Communist. But now, with the demise of the system and the death of the party, he had begun to take tentative shots at her.

She didn’t bother to grace him with an answer.

He started to pull down plates in order to set the table. ‘Where are the kids?’

‘Both with friends.’ Then, before he could ask, she added, ‘Yes, they both called and asked permission.’ She turned off the flame under the risotto, added a substantial chunk of butter that stood on the worktop, and poured in a small dish of finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano. She stirred it around until both were dissolved into the rice, poured the risotto into a serving bowl, and set it on the table. She pulled out her chair, sat down, and turned the spoon towards him, saying, ‘Mangia, ti fa bene,’ a command that had filled Brunetti with joy for as long as he could remember.

He filled his dish, abundantly. He’d worked hard, spent the day in a foreign country, so who cared how much risotto he ate? Starting from the centre, he worked his fork in a neat concentric circle and pushed the risotto to the edge of his dish to help it cool faster. He took two forkfuls, sighed in appreciation, and continued to eat.

When Paola saw that he had passed beyond the point of hunger and was eating for the pleasure of the act, she said, ‘You haven’t told me how your trip to America was.’

He spoke through the risotto. ‘Confusing. The Americans are very polite and say they want to help, but no one seems to know anything that might help me.’

‘And the doctor?’

‘The pretty one?’ he asked, grinning.

‘Yes, Guido, the pretty one.’

Seeing he had run that one into the ground, he answered simply, ‘I still think she’s the person who knows what I want to know. But she’s not saying anything. She gets out of the Army in six months, so she’ll go back to America and all of this will be behind her.’

‘And he was her lover?’ Paola asked with a snort to show that she refused to believe the doctor wouldn’t help if she could.

‘It would seem so.’

‘Then I’m not so sure she’ll just pack up and forget about him.’

‘Maybe it’s something she doesn’t want to know.’

‘Like what?’

‘Nothing. Well, nothing I can explain.’ He had decided not to tell her about the two plastic bags he had found in Foster’s apartment; that was something no one was to know. Except for the person who had opened the water heater, seen that the bags were gone, and then tightened those screws. He pulled the bowl of risotto towards him. ‘Should I finish this?’ he asked, not having to be a detective to know the answer.

‘Go ahead. I don’t like it left over, and neither do you.’

While he finished the risotto, she took the bowl from the table and placed it in the sink. He shifted two wicker mats about on the table to make a place for the roasting pan Paola took from the oven.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. See what Patta does,’ he said, cutting a piece of meat from the shank and placing it on her plate. With a motion of her hand, she signalled that she didn’t want any more. He cut himself two large pieces, reached for some bread, and started to eat again.

‘What difference does it make what Patta does?’ she asked.

‘Ah, my sweet innocent,’ he replied, ‘If he tries to shift me away from this, then I’ll be sure that someone wants it covered up. And since our Vice-Questore responds only to voices that come from high places - the higher the place, the faster he moves - then I’ll know that whoever wants this thing shut down has a certain amount of power.’

‘Like who?’

He took another piece of bread and wiped at the gravy on his plate. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, but it makes me very uncomfortable, thinking about who it might be.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know, not exactly. But if the American military is involved, then you can be sure it’s political, and that means the government. Theirs. And that means ours, as well.’

‘And hence a phone call to Patta?’

‘Yes.’

‘And hence trouble?’

Brunetti was not given to remarking upon the self-evident.

‘And if Patta doesn’t try to stop you?’

Brunetti shrugged. He’d wait and see.

Paola removed the plates. ‘Dessert?’

He shook his head. ‘What time will the kids be home?’

Moving about the kitchen, she answered, ‘Chiara will be here by nine. I told Raffaele to be home by ten.’ The difference in the way she expressed it told the whole story.

‘You speak to his teachers?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No. It’s too soon in the year.’

‘When’s the first meeting for the parents?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve got the letter from the school around here somewhere. In October, I think.’

‘How is he?’ Even as he asked it, he hoped Paola would just answer the question, not ask him what he meant, because he didn’t know what he meant.

‘I don’t know, Guido. He never talks to me, not about school or about his friends or what he’s doing. Were you like that when you were his age?’

He thought about being sixteen and what it had been like. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I was. But then I discovered girls, and I forgot all about being angry or lost, or whatever I was. I just wanted them to like me. That’s the only thing that was important to me.’

‘Were there a lot of them?’ she asked.

He shrugged.

‘And did they like you?’

He grinned.

‘Oh, go away, Guido, and find yourself something to do. Watch television.’

‘I hate television.’

‘Then help me do the dishes.’

‘I love television.’

‘Guido,’ she repeated, not exasperated, but on the way, ‘just get up and go away from me.’

Both of them heard the sound of a key in the lock. It was Chiara, banging the door open and dropping a school book as she came into the apartment. She came down the hall to the kitchen, kissed both of her parents, and went to stand next to Brunetti, arm draped on his shoulder. ‘Is there anything to eat, Mamma?’ she asked.

‘Didn’t Luisa’s mother feed you?’

‘Yes, but that was hours ago. I’m starved.’

Brunetti wrapped his arm around her and pulled her onto his lap. In his bad cop voice he said, harshly, ‘All right, I’ve got you. Confess. Where do you put it?’

‘Oh, Papà, stop it,’ she said, squirming with delight. ‘I just eat it. But then I get hungry again. Don’t you?’

‘Your father usually waits at least an hour, Chiara.’ Then, more kindly, Paola asked, ‘Fruit? A sandwich?’

‘Both?’ she pleaded.

By the time Chiara had eaten a sandwich, a massive thing filled with prosciutto, tomato, and mayonnaise, then devoured two apples, it was time for all of them to go to bed. Raffaele had not returned by eleven-thirty, but Brunetti, waking in the night, heard the door open and close and his son’s footsteps in the hall. After that, he slept deeply.

* * * *

13

Ordinarily, Brunetti would not bother to go to the Questura on a Saturday, but this morning he did, more to see who else turned up than for any other reason. He made no attempt to get there on time, ambled through Campo San Luca and had a cappuccino at Rosa Salva, the bar Paola insisted had the best coffee in the city.

He continued towards the Questura, cutting parallel to San Marco but avoiding the Piazza itself. When he arrived, he went to the second floor, where he found Rossi talking to Riverre, an officer he thought was out on sick leave. When he walked in, Rossi signalled for him to come over to his desk.

‘I’m glad you’re here, sir. We’ve got something new.’

‘What?’

‘A break-in. On the Grand Canal. That big palazzo that’s just been restored, over by San Stae.’

‘The one that belongs to the Milanese?’

‘Yes, sir. When he got there last night, he found two men, maybe there were three, he wasn’t sure, in the place.’

‘What happened?’

‘Vianello’s over at the hospital, talking to him now. What I’ve got, I got from the men who answered the call and took him to the hospital.’

‘What did they say?’

‘He tried to get out, but they grabbed him and gave him a going over. He had to be taken to the hospital, but it’s nothing too bad. Cuts and bruises.’

‘And the three men? Two men?’

‘No sign of them. The men who answered the call went back to the place after they took him to the hospital. It looks like they got away with a couple of paintings and some of his wife’s jewellery.’

‘Any description of the men who did it?’

‘He didn’t see them clearly, couldn’t say much, except that one of them was very tall, and he thought one of them might have a beard. But,’ Rossi added, looking up and smiling, ‘there was a pair of tourists sitting on the edge of the canal, and they saw three men come out of the palazzo. One of them was carrying a suitcase. These kids were still there when our men arrived, and they gave us a description.’ He paused and smiled as if sure Brunetti would enjoy what was coming next. ‘One of them sounds like Ruffolo.’

Brunetti’s response was immediate. ‘I thought he was in prison.’

‘He was, sir, until two weeks ago.’

‘Have you shown them photos?’

‘Yes, sir. And they think it’s him. They noticed the big ears.’

‘What about the owner? Have you shown him the photo?’

‘Not yet, sir. I just got back from talking to these Belgian kids. Sounds like Ruffolo to me.’

‘And what about the other two men? Are the descriptions these Belgian kids gave you the same as his?’

‘Well, sir, it was dark, and they weren’t really paying attention.’

‘But?’

‘But they’re pretty sure neither one of them had a beard.’

Brunetti thought about this for a moment, then told Rossi, ‘Take the photo over to the hospital and see if he recognizes him. Can he talk, the Milanese?’

‘Oh, yes, sir. He’s all right. A couple of bruises, a black eye, but he’s all right. Place is fully insured.’

Why was it that it always seemed less a crime if the place was insured?

‘If he gives you a positive identification of Ruffolo, let me know, and I’ll go over to his mother’s place and see if she knows where he is.’

Rossi snorted at this.

‘I know, I know. She’d lie to the Pope if it would save her little Peppino. Well, who’s to blame her? He is her only son. Besides, I’d like to see the old battle-axe again; I don’t think I’ve seen her more than twice since the last time I arrested him.’

‘She tried to get you with scissors then, didn’t she, sir?’ Rossi asked.

‘Well, her heart really wasn’t in it, and Peppino was there to stop her.’ He grinned outright at the memory, certainly one of the most absurd moments in his career. ‘Besides, they were only pinking shears.’

‘She’s a piece of work, Signora Concetta.’

‘Indeed,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘And get someone to keep an eye on that girlfriend of his. What’s her name?’

‘Ivana Something-or-Other.’

‘Yes, her.’

‘You want us to talk to her, sir?’

‘No, she’d just say she hasn’t seen him. Speak to those people who live under her. They turned Ruffolo in last time. Maybe they’d let us put someone in the apartment until he shows up. Ask them.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘I’ll be in my office for an hour or so. Let me know what happens in the hospital, if It’s Ruffolo.’ He started to leave the office, but Rossi called out after him.

‘One thing, sir, a phone call came for you last night.’

‘Who was it?’

‘I don’t know, sir. The operator said the call came at about eleven. A woman. She asked for you by name, but she didn’t speak Italian, or very little. He said something else, but I don’t remember what it was.’

‘I’ll stop and talk to him on the way up,’ Brunetti said and left the office. Instead of taking the stairs, he stopped at the end of the corridor and went into the cubicle where the telephone operator sat. He was a young police recruit, fresh-faced and probably all of eighteen. Brunetti couldn’t remember his name.

When he saw Brunetti, he leaped to his feet, dragging with him the wire that attached his headphones to the switchboard. ‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Good morning. Please sit down.’

The young man did, poised nervously on the edge of his chair.

‘Rossi tells me a phone call came for me last night.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the recruit said, fighting the urge to jump to his feet when addressing a superior.

‘Did you take the call?’

‘Yes sir.’ Then, to prevent Brunetti from asking why he was still there twelve hours later, the young man explained, ‘I was taking Monico’s shift, sir. He’s sick/ .’

Uninterested in this detail, Brunetti asked, ‘What did she say?’

‘She asked for you by name, sir. But she didn’t speak more than a little bit of Italian.’

‘Do you remember exactly what she said?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, fumbling at some papers on the desk in front of the switchboard. ‘I have it written down here.’ He pushed papers aside and came up with a single sheet, from which he read, ‘She asked for you, but she didn’t give her name or anything. I asked her for her name, but she didn’t answer me, or she didn’t understand. I told her that you weren’t here, but then she asked for you again.’

‘Was she speaking English?’

‘I think so, sir, but she only spoke a few words and I couldn’t understand her. I told her to speak in Italian.’

‘What else did she say?’

‘She said something that sounded like “basta”, or it could have been “pasta”, or “posta”.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No, sir. Just that. And then she hung up.’

‘How did she sound?’

The boy thought about this for a while and finally answered, ‘She didn’t sound anything in particular, sir. Just disappointed that you weren’t here, I’d say.’

‘All right. If she calls back, put her call through to me or to Rossi. He speaks English.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the young man said. When Brunetti turned to leave the room, the temptation proved irresistible, and the young man jumped to his feet to salute Brunetti’s retreating back.

A woman, one who spoke very little Italian. ‘Molto poco’, he remembered the doctor saying. He also remembered something his father had once told him about fishing, when it had been possible to fish in the laguna, that it was bad to flick the bait, that it scared the fish away. So he would wait. She was there for six months, at any rate, and he wasn’t going anywhere. If she didn’t call again, he’d call the hospital on Monday and ask to speak to her.

And now Ruffolo was out and back in business. A petty thief and burglar, Ruffolo had been in and out of jail for the last ten years, twice put there by Brunetti. His parents had moved up from Naples years ago, bringing with them this delinquent child. His father had drunk himself to death, but not before instilling in his only son the principle that the Ruffolos were not meant for things as ordinary as work, or trade, not even study. True fruit of his father’s loins, Giuseppe had never worked, the only trade he had ever practised was in stolen objects, and all he had ever studied was how best to open a lock or break into a house. If he was back at work so soon after being released, two years in prison had apparently not been wasted on him.

Brunetti, however, couldn’t keep himself from liking both the mother and the son. Peppino seemed not to hold Brunetti personally responsible for having arrested him, and Signora Concetta, once the pinking shears incident was forgotten, had been grateful for Brunetti’s testimony at Ruffolo’s trial that he had avoided the use of any force or threat of violence in the commission of his crimes. It was probably that testimony that had helped limit the sentence for burglary to only two years.

He didn’t have to send down to the record office for Ruffolo’s file. Sooner or later, he would turn up at his mother’s apartment, or at Ivana’s, and Giuseppe would soon be back inside, there to become more practised in crime, more fully confirmed in his doom.

As soon as he got to his office, he began to look for Rizzardi’s report on the autopsy of the young American. When they spoke, the pathologist had said nothing about the presence of drugs in the blood, and Brunetti had not asked that question specifically at the time of the autopsy. He found the report on his desk, opened it, and began to page through. Just as Rizzardi had threatened, its language was virtually impenetrable. On the second page, he found what he thought might be the answer, though it was hard to tell in the midst of the long Latin terms and tortured syntax. He read it through three times and, by then, was reasonably sure that it meant that there had been no traces of drugs of any sort in his blood. He would have been surprised if the autopsy had discovered anything different.

The intercom buzzer on his phone sounded. He answered with a prompt, ‘Yes, sir.’

Patta didn’t bother asking him how he knew who was calling, a sure sign that the call was important. ‘I’d like to speak to you, Commissario.’ The use of the title, rather than his name, emphasized the importance of the call.

Brunetti said that he would go immediately down to the Vice-Questore’s office. Patta was a man of limited moods, each one clearly legible, and this was one that Brunetti needed to read carefully.

When he went into Patta’s office Brunetti found his superior sitting behind his empty desk, hands folded in front of him. Usually, Patta made the attempt to create the appearance of diligence, even if it was no more than an empty file in front of him. Today there was nothing, just a serious, one might even say solemn, face and a pair of folded hands. The spicy odour of some omnisexual cologne wafted out from Patta, whose face, this morning, appeared to have been oiled rather than shaved. Brunetti walked over to the desk and stood in front of it, wondering how long Patta would remain silent, a technique he frequently employed when he wanted to stress the importance of what he had to say.

At least a full minute passed before Patta said, ‘Sit down, Commissario.’ The repeated use of the title told Brunetti that what he was going to hear would be unpleasant in some way and that Patta knew it.

‘I’d like to talk to you about this robbery,’ Patta said with no preamble as soon as Brunetti was seated.

Brunetti suspected he did not mean this most recent one, on the Grand Canal, even though the victim was an industrialist from Milan. An assault on a person of that importance would usually be enough to drive Patta to almost any excess in the appearance of diligence.

‘Yes, sir,’ Brunetti said.

‘I learned today that you made another trip out to Vicenza.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Why was that necessary? Don’t you have enough to do here in Venice?’

Brunetti steeled himself, knowing that, despite their previous conversation, he would have to explain everything all over again. ‘I wanted to speak to some of the people who knew him, sir.’

‘Didn’t you do that the first day you were there?’

‘No, sir, there wasn’t time.’

‘You didn’t say anything about that when you came back that afternoon.’ When Brunetti didn’t respond, Patta asked, ‘Why didn’t you do that the first day?’

‘There wasn’t time, sir.’

‘You were back here by six. There would have been plenty of time to stay out there and finish things up that afternoon.’

Only with difficulty did Brunetti stop himself from displaying his astonishment that Patta would recall a detail such as the time Brunetti had returned from Vicenza. This was the man, after all, who could not be depended upon to name more than two or three of the uniformed police.

‘I didn’t get to it, sir.’

‘What happened when you went back?’

‘I spoke to Foster’s commanding officer and to one of the men who worked with him.’

‘And what did you learn?’

‘Nothing substantial, sir.’

Patta glared across the desk at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I didn’t learn anything about why a person would want to kill him.’

Patta threw his hands up in the air and let out a great sigh of exasperation. ‘That’s exactly the point, Brunetti. There is no reason why anyone would want to kill him, which is why you didn’t find it. And, I might add, why you aren’t going to find it. Because it isn’t there. He was killed for his money, and the proof of that is the fact that his wallet wasn’t found on him.’ One of his shoes wasn’t found with him, either. Did that mean he was killed for a size 11 Reebok?

Patta opened his top drawer and pulled out a few sheets of paper. ‘I think you’ve wasted more than enough time chasing out to Vicenza, Brunetti. I don’t like the idea of your bothering the Americans about this. The crime happened here, and the killer will be found here.’ Patta made that last sound firmly terminal. He picked up one of the papers and glanced at it. ‘I’d like you to make better use of your time from now on.’

‘And how might I do that, sir?’

Patta peered at him, then back at the paper. ‘I’m assigning you to the investigation of this break-in on the Grand Canal.’ Brunetti was certain that the location of that crime, and the suggestion it made about the wealth of the victim, was more than enough to make it seem, to Patta, far more important in real terms than mere murder, especially when that victim was not even an officer.

‘And what about the American, sir?’

‘We’ll go through the usual procedures. We’ll see if any of our bad boys talk about if or suddenly seem to have more money than they should.’

‘And if they don’t?’

‘The Americans are looking into it, as well,’ Patta said, as if that put an end to it.

‘I beg your pardon, sir. How can the Americans look into something here in Venice?’

Patta narrowed his eyes. ‘They have their ways, Brunetti. They have their ways.’

Brunetti was in no doubt as to that, but he was in some doubt as to whether those ways would necessarily be directed towards finding the murderer. ‘I’d prefer to continue with this, sir. I don’t believe it was a mugging.’

‘I’ve decided it was, Commissario, and that’s how we’re going to treat it.’

‘What does that mean, sir?’

Patta tried astonishment. ‘It means, Commissario, and I want you to pay attention to this, it means precisely what I said, that we are going to treat it as a murder that happened during a robbery attempt.’

‘Officially?’

‘Officially,’ Patta repeated, then added, with heavy emphasis, ‘and unofficially.’

There was no need for Brunetti to ask what that meant