Wilful behaviour

'No, he'd made too many enemies, the bastard, so no one could help him, not in the end.'

'What had he done that was so bad?' Brunetti asked, still bemused by the ferocity of Lele's feelings and thinking of the enormities committed by so many men, most of whom had danced away from the war and from any trace of guilt.

'He stole what was most precious from a lot of people.'

Brunetti waited, hoping that Lele himself would hear just how weak this sounded. At last he asked, 'He's been dead, what, more than forty years?'

'So what? It doesn't change the fact that he was a bastard and deserved to die in a place where people ate their own shit.'

Once again taken aback by Lele's anger, Brunetti found it difficult to respond. The painter, however, spared him further awkwardness by saying. This has nothing to do with you, Guido. You can ask anything you want about him’ After a pause, he added, 'It's because he touched my family’

'I'm sorry that happened’ Brunetti said.

‘Yes, well’ Lele began but found no way to finish the sentence and so left it at that.

If you think of anything else about her, would you call me?'

'Of course. And I'll ask around, see what anyone else can remember.'

Thanks.'

It's nothing, Guido.' Briefly it seemed as if Lele were going to say something more, but he made an affectionate farewell and put down the phone.

Lunch, indeed, was something special. Perhaps it was talk of three hundred and sixty million lire that had driven Paola to excess, for she had bought an entire sea bass and baked it with fresh artichokes, lemon juice and rosemary. With it she served a platter the size of an inner tube filled with tiny roast potatoes, also lightly sprinkled with rosemary. Then, to clear the palate, a salad of rucola and radicchio. They finished with baked apples.

'It's a good thing you have to go to the university three mornings a week and can't do this to us every day’ Brunetti said as he declined a second helping of apples.

'Am I meant to take that as a compliment?' Paola asked.

Before Brunetti could answer, Chiara asked for another apple with sufficient enthusiasm to confirm that her father's remark had indeed been a compliment.

The children astonished their parents by offering to do the dishes. Paola went back to her study and Brunetti, taking with him a glass of grappa, followed her shortly after. 'We really ought to get a new sofa, don't you think?' he said, kicking off his shoes and stretching out on the endangered piece of furniture.

‘It’ I thought I'd ever find anything as comfortable as that one’ Paola said, 'I suppose I'd buy it.' She studied the sofa and her supine husband for some time then said, 'Perhaps I could just have it re-covered.'

‘Hmm’ Brunetti agreed, eyes closed, hands clasped around the stem of his glass.

'Have you found out anything?' Paola asked, not at all interested in the papers that awaited her.

'Only the money. And Rizzardi said she was a virgin.'

'In the third millennium’ Paola exclaimed, unable to hide her surprise. 'Mirabile dictu.' After a time, she amended this to, 'Well, perhaps not so astonishing.'

Eyes still closed, Brunetti asked, 'Why?'

There was a kind of simplicity about her, a complete lack of sophistication. Maybe you could call it artlessness, maybe innocence,' she said, then added, 'whatever that is.'

'That sounds very speculative’ Brunetti observed.

‘I know,' she admitted. 'It's just an impression.'

'Do you still have her papers?'

'The ones she wrote for me?'

'Yes.'

'Of course. They're all in the archive.'

'Would it make any sense to look through them?'

Paola considered this for a long time before answering. 'Probably not. If I read them now, or you did, we'd be looking for things that might not necessarily be there. I think it's enough to trust my general impression that she was a decent, generous girl who tended to believe in human goodness.'

'And who was consequently stabbed to death.' 'Consequently?'

'No, I just said that,' Brunetti admitted. 'I'd hate to think one was the consequence of the other.' Though both of them prided themselves in seeing these same qualities in their daughter, neither of them, perhaps out of modesty, though more likely out of superstitious fear, dared to say it. Instead, Brunetti placed his glass on the floor and drifted off to sleep, while Paola put on her glasses and drifted into the sort of trance state that the reading of student papers is bound to induce in the adult mind.

14

He stopped in Signorina Elettra's office when he got back to the Questura and found her on the phone, speaking French. She held up her hand to signal to him to wait, said something else, laughed, and hung up.

He refused to ask about the call and said, 'Has Bocchese brought up those papers?'

'Yes, sir. And I've got people working on it.'

'What does that mean?'

‘My friend is going to have a look’ she said, nodding in the direction of the phone, *but I doubt he'll have anything for me until after the banks close.'

'Geneva?' he asked.

'Oui'

Manfully, he resisted the temptation either to comment or to inquire further. 'I'll be in my office’ he said and went back upstairs.

He stood at the window, gazing at the two yellow cranes that rose above the church of San Lorenzo. They'd been there for so long that Brunetti had come to think of them almost as a pair of angel wings soaring up from either side of the church. He thought they'd been there when he first came to the Questura, but surely no restoration could possibly take that long. Had he, he wondered, ever seen them move, or were they ever in a position different from the one in which they were today? He devoted a great deal of time to these considerations, all the while letting the problem of Claudia Leonardo percolate in some other part of his mind.

The angel wings, he realized, reminded him of an angel that appeared in a painting that hung on the wall behind Signora Jacobs's chair, a painting of the Flemish school, the angel jaundiced and unhappy as if it had been appointed guardian of a person of limitless rectitude and found the assignment dull.

He dialled Lele's number again. When the painter answered, Brunetti said only, 'Has there ever been talk that the Austrian woman might have those paintings and drawings in her home?'

He thought Lele would ask him why he wanted to know, but the painter answered simply, 'Of course, there's always been talk. No one, so far as I know, has ever been inside, so it's only talk, and you know how those things are. People always talk, even if they don't know anything, and they always exaggerate.' There was a long pause, and Brunetti could almost hear Lele turning this over in his mind. 'And I expect,' he went on, 'that if anyone did get inside and see anything he wouldn't say so.'

'Why not?'

Lele laughed, the same old cynical snort Brunetti had heard for decades. 'Because they'd hope that if they kept quiet no one else would be curious about what she might have.'

‘I still don't understand.'

'She's not going to live for ever, you know, Guido.' 'And?'

'And if she's got things, she might want to sell some of them before she dies.'

'Do people talk about where they might have come from?' Brunetti asked.

'Ahhh.' Lele's long sigh could be read as satisfaction that Brunetti had finally thought to ask the right question or as a sign of his delight in human weakness.

'That can't be far to look, can it?' the painter finally asked by way of response.

'Guzzardi?'

'Of course.'

'From what you've said about her, she doesn't seem the kind of person who would have anything to do with that sort of thing.'

'Guido,' Lele said with unaccustomed severity, 'your years with the police should have taught you that people are far more willing to profit from a crime than to commit it.' Before Brunetti could object, Lele went on, 'Dare I mention the good Cardinal and Prince of the Church currently under investigation for collusion with the Mafia?'

Brunetti had spent decades listening to Lele in this vein, but he suddenly had no patience for it, and so he cut him off. 'See what you can find out, all right?'

Apparently feeling no ill will at having been so summarily interrupted, the painter asked only, Why are you so curious?'

Brunetti himself didn't know or couldn't see the reason clearly. 'Because there's nothing else I can think of,' he admitted.

That's not the sort of remark that would make me have much confidence in public officials,' Lele said.

'Is there anything that could ever make you have confidence in public officials?'

The very idea’ the painter said and was gone.

Brunetti sat and tried to think of a way to get back into

Signora Jacobs's apartment. He pictured her slumped in her chair, drawing the smoke into her lungs with desperate breaths. He summoned the scene up from memory, examining it as though it were part of the puzzle, 'What's Wrong with this Picture?' Ash-covered carpet, windows a long distance in time from their last cleaning, the Iznik tiles, what could only have been a celadon bowl on the table, the blue packet of Nazionali, the cheap lighter, one shoe with a hole worn through in front by her big toe, the drawing of a Degas dancer. What was wrong with this picture?

It was so obvious that he called himself an idiot for not having registered it sooner: the dissonance between wealth and poverty. Any one of those tiles, just one of those drawings, could have paid to have the entire place restructured, not just cleaned; and anyone in possession of one of those prints would certainly not have to content themselves with the cheapest cigarettes on the market. He searched his memory for other signs of poverty, tried to remember what she had been wearing, but no one pays much attention to old women. He had only the vaguest impression of something dark: grey, brown, black, a skirt or dress, at any rate something that had come down almost to her feet. He couldn't even, remember if her clothing had been clean or not, nor if she had worn jewellery. He hoped he would remember his own inability to remember details the next time he grew impatient with a witness to a crime who had difficulty in describing the perpetrator.

The phone startled him from this reverie.

'Yes,' he said.

‘You might like to come down here, sir’ Signorina Elettra said.

'Yes’ he repeated, without bothering to ask if she'd had an answer from her friend in Geneva. Geneve, that is.

When he reached her office, her smile was proof that she had. 'It came from a gallery in Lausanne called Patmos’ she said as he came in. ‘It was paid into an account in Geneva each month to be transferred here, to her account.' 'Any instructions?'

'No, only that it was to be sent to her account.' 'Have you spoken to them?' he asked. 'Who, the bank or the gallery?' she asked. The gallery.'

'No, sir. I thought you'd want to do that.'

'I'd rather it be done in French,' he said. 'People always feel safer in their own language.'

'Who shall I say I am, sir?' she asked as she reached for the phone and punched 9 to get the outside line.

'Tell them you're calling for the Questore,' Brunetti said.

This is exactly what she did, though it served no purpose. The Director of the gallery, to whom the call was eventually passed, refused to divulge any information about the payments until in possession of an order from a Swiss court to do so. From Signorina Elettra's expression, Brunetti inferred that the Director had not been at all polite in conveying this information.

'And now?' Brunetti asked when she explained what she had been told and the manner in which it had been said.

Signorina Elettra closed her eyes and raised her eyebrows for an instant, as if to remark upon the triviality of the problem that now confronted her. 'If s rather like what the police are always telling people in movies: either they can do it the easy way or the hard way. Monsieur Lablanche has chosen the hard way.'

‘For himself or for us?' Brunetti asked.

'For us, at the beginning’ she explained. 'But, depending on what we find, perhaps for himself, as well.'

'Should I ask what you're going to do?'

'Since some of it is illegal, sir, it might be better if you refrained from doing so.'

'Indeed. Will it take long?'

'No longer than it would take you to go down the fondamenta and have a coffee. In fact’ she said, glancing at her watch, 'I'll just do this and join you in a few minutes.'

Like Adam, he fell. 'Is it really that easy?'

Signorina Elettra appeared to be in a philosophical mood, for by way of answer she said, 'I once asked a plumber who came to fix my water heater, and who did it in three minutes, how he dared to charge me eighty thousand lire for turning a little knob. He told me it had taken him twenty years to learn which knob to turn. And so I suppose it's like that: it can take minutes, but I've spent years learning which knob to turn.'

'I see,' Brunetti said and went down to the bar at the Ponte dei Greci for a coffee. He was subsequently joined there by Signorina Elettra, though she was longer than twenty minutes.

When she had a coffee in front of her, she said, The gallery is run by two brothers, the grandsons of the founder. The Swiss police are very interested in some of their recent acquisitions, especially those from the Middle East, as three pieces in their catalogue were once in the possession of private owners in Kuwait. Or so the Kuwaitis claim; unfortunately, they don't have photos or bills of sale, which means they probably got them illegally in the first place themselves.' She sipped at the coffee, added a bit more sugar, sipped again and set the cup down.

The grandfather was in charge of the gallery during the war and seems to have received quite a number of paintings from Germany, France and Italy. All, of course, with impeccable pedigrees: bills of sale and Customs declarations. There was an investigation after the war, of course, but nothing came of it. The gallery is well known, successful and rumoured to be very discreet'

When it seemed likely that she had nothing more to say about the gallery, Brunetti asked, 'And the bank transfers?'

'As you said, every month, ten million lire. Ifs been going on since she was sixteen’

That, Brunetti thought, would make more than half a billion lire, with still only three million in the bank. 'How is it possible,' Brunetti began, 'for that much money to come into the country from a foreign source and for no investigation of it to be made?'

'But you don't know that, do you, sir?' she asked. 'Maybe she declared it and paid tax on it, incredible as that would be. Or perhaps the bank had a discreet arrangement and the money went unreported, or the report went unread.'

'But isn't it automatic that the Finanza learns when this much money is coming into the country?'

'Only if the bank wants them to know, sir’

That’s hard to believe,' Brunetti protested.

'Most of the things banks do are hard to believe.'

He recalled that, before coming to work at the Questura, Signorina Elettra had worked for Banca d'ltalia, and so must know whereof she spoke.

'How could someone find out where the money went after it was deposited into her account here?'

'If the bank explained it or if access to the account were possible.'

'Which is easier?'

'Did they volunteer the information when you spoke to them? Presumably, you told them that she was dead’

Brunetti thought back to the careful formality of the Director. 'No, he passed me to a teller, and she sent me a copy of the deposits and withdrawals to the account, though the large transfers weren't explained’

'Then I think it might be wise for us to check their records ourselves,' Signorina Elettra suggested.

There was no doubt in Brunetti's mind about the illegality of this. The fact didn't make him hesitate for an instant. 'Could we go back now and have a look?'

'Nothing easier, sir’ she said and finished her coffee.

Back at Signorina Elettra's office, they studied the new information she called up on her computer screen and discovered that Claudia Leonardo had, during the course of the last few years, transferred the bulk of her money to various places around the globe: Thailand, Brazil, Ecuador and Indonesia were but a few of the places the money had gone. There was no pattern to the transfers, and the sums varied from two million to twenty. The total, however, was well in excess of three hundred million lire. Other sums had gone in the form of assegni circolari to various recipients. There was no pattern here, either, but there was a similarity of purpose, for all were charitable organizations of one sort or another: an orphanage in Kerala, Medecins sans Frontieres, Greenpeace, an AIDS hospice in Nairobi.

‘Paola was right’ Brunetti said aloud. 'She gave it all away’

"That's a strange thing for someone her age to do, isn't it?' Signorina Elettra asked. 'If this is the right figure’ she said, pointing to a total she had calculated at the bottom of the page, 'it's close to half a billion lire’

He nodded.

'None of it went on taxes, did it?' she asked. 'Not if these amounts went to charities.'

They considered the figures for a moment, neither of them truly understanding anything beyond the total sum and the places it had been sent.

Was there any mention of a notary or a lawyer?' Brunetti suddenly asked.

‘In those, you mean?' she asked, gesturing at the girl's papers, still fanned out on the top of her desk.

‘Yes.'

'No. But I haven't checked all the numbers in her address book. Shall I?'

'How? By calling them all?' he said, picking up the book and opening it to the As.

Did he see her eyes close for the merest fraction of a second? He couldn't be sure. While he was still trying to decide, she took the book from him and said, 'No, sir. There's a way Telecom can find the name and address of any number that’ s listed. All they've got to do is punch in the phone number and the program gives them the name instantly.'

'Is this something I could do by calling them?' he asked.

'If s a public service in other countries, but here, the only ones who have access are Telecom, and I doubt they'd let you have access to the information without a court order.' After a moment, she added, 'But my friend Giorgio has given me a copy of the program.'

'Good. Then would you check all the numbers and see if any are lawyers or notaries?'

'And then?'

'And then I want to talk to them.'

'Would you like me to make appointments if I find them?' 'No, I prefer to appear unannounced.' like a mugger?' she asked.

' "Like a lion" might be a more flattering way to put it, Signorina, but perhaps your image is closer to the truth.'

15

It wasn't until after six that Signorina Elettra brought him the fruits of her labours with Giorgio's pirated program. Placing a sheet of paper on his desk, she couldn't prevent a smile from crossing her face. 'Here it is, sir. Only the number was written in her book; no name. But it's a notary.'

Brunetti glanced at the paper. 'Really?' he asked when he saw the name, one he remembered even from his childhood. 1 thought Filipetto had died, years ago.'

'No, sir, that was his son who died. Cancer of the pancreas. It

must be about six or seven years ago. He'd taken over from his father, but he had time before he died to transfer the practice to his nephew, his sister's son.'

The one who was in that boat accident a few years ago?' Brunetti asked.

'Yes. Massimo.'

'Is the old man still in practice?'

'He couldn't still work if he transferred the practice to his son; besides, the address listed is different from Sanpaolo's office.'

He got to his feet, folded the paper in four, and slipped it into the inner pocket of his jacket’

'Have you ever met him?' Signorina Elettra asked.

'Once, years ago, when he was still practising.' Then he asked her, 'Do you know him?'

'My father dealt with him, years ago. It went very badly.'

'For whom? Your father or Dottor Filipetto?'

‘I think it would be impossible to find anything that ever went badly for a Filipetto, either the son or the father’ she said, then added mordantly, 'aside from his pancreas, of course.'

'What was it about?'

She considered this for a while, then explained, 'My father had part ownership of a restaurant that had tables alongside a canal. Dottor Filipetto lived on the third floor, above the restaurant, and he claimed that the tables obstructed his view of the other side of the canal.'

'From the third floor?'

'Yes.'

'What happened?'

'Filipetto was an old friend of the judge who was assigned to the case. At first, my father and his partner didn't worry because the claim was so absurd. But then he learned that both the judge and Filipetto were Masons, members of the same lodge, and once he knew that, he knew he had no choice but to settle the case out of court.'

'What was the settlement?'

'My father had to pay him a million lire a month in return for his promise not to file another complaint.' 'When was this?' 'About twenty years ago.' That was a fortune then.'

'My father sold his share in the restaurant soon after that. He never mentions it now, but I remember, at the time, how he spoke Filipetto's name.'

For Brunetti this story recalled many he had heard, over the course of years, concerning Notaio Filipetto. 'I think I'll go along and see if he's at home.'

On the way out he stopped in the officers' room and found Vianello, who had been forced to remain at his desk there even after his promotion, Lieutenant Scarpa having refused to assign him a desk among the other ispettori.

'I'm going over to Castello to talk to someone. Would you like to come along?'

'About the girl?' Vianello asked.

'Yes.'

'Gladly,' he said, getting to his feet and grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair. 'Who is it?' Vianello asked as they emerged from the Questura.

'Notaio Gianpaolo Filipetto.'

Vianello did not stop in his tracks, but he did falter for an instant. 'Filipetto?' he asked. ‘Is he still alive?'

'It would seem so’ Brunetti answered. 'Claudia Leonardo had his phone number in her address book.' They reached the riva and turned right, heading for the Piazza, and as they walked Brunetti also explained the pattern of money transfers and, listing the charities, their final destinations.

'It hardly sounds like the sort of thing a Filipetto would be involved in’ Vianello observed.

'What, giving this much money to charity?'

'Giving anything to charity, I'd say’ Vianello answered.

'We don't know there's any connection between him and her money’ Brunetti said, though he didn't for an instant believe this.

'If ever there is a Filipetto and money, there is a connection’ Vianello said, pronouncing it as a truth Venetians had come to learn through many generations.

‘You have any idea how old he could be?' Brunetti asked.

'No. Close to ninety, I'd say.'

'Seems a strange age to be interested in money, doesn't it?'

'He's a Filipetto’ Vianello answered, effectively silencing any speculation Brunetti might have felt tempted to make.

The address was in Campo Bandiera e Moro, in a building just to the right of the church where Vivaldi had been baptized and from which, according to common belief, many of the paintings and statues had disappeared into private hands during the tenure of a previous pastor. They rang, then rang again until a woman's voice answered the speaker phone, asking them who it was. When Brunetti said it was the police, coming to call on Notaio Filipetto, the door snapped open and the voice told them to come to the first floor.

She met them at the door, a woman composed of strange angularities: jaws, elbows, the tilt of her eyes all seemed made of straight lines that sometimes met at odd angles. No arcs, no curves: even her mouth was a straight line. 'Yes?' she asked, standing in the equally rectangular doorway.

'I'd like to speak to Notaio Filipetto,' Brunetti said, extending his warrant card.

She didn't bother to look at it. 'What about?' she asked.

'Something that might concern the Notaio,' Brunetti said.

'What?'

This is a police matter, Signora,' Brunetti said, 'and so I'm afraid I can discuss it only with the Notaio.'

Either her emotions were easy to read, which Brunetti thought might not be the case, or she wanted them to see how greatly she disapproved of his intransigence. 'He's an old man. He can't be disturbed by questions from the police.'

From behind her, a high voice called out, 'Who is it, Eleonora?' When she did not answer, the voice repeated the question, then, as she remained silent, asked it again. 'Who is it, Eleonora?'

'You'd better come in. You've upset him now,' she said, backing into the apartment and holding the door for them. The voice continued from some inner place, repeating the same question; Brunetti was certain that it would not stop until the question was answered.

Brunetti saw her lips tighten and felt a faint sympathy for her. The scene reminded him of something, but the memory wouldn't come: something in a book.

Silently, she led them towards the back of the apartment. From behind, she was equally angular: her thin shoulders were parallel with the floor, and her hair, streaked heavily with grey, was cut off in a straight line just above the collar of her dress.

‘I’m coming, I'm coming,' she called ahead of them. Either in response to the sound of her voice or perhaps, like a clock running down, the other voice stopped.

They arrived at an enormous archway; two inlaid wooden doors stood open on either side. 'He's in here,' she said, preceding them into the room.

An old man sat at a broad wooden desk, a semicircle of papers spread out around him. A small lamp to his left threw a dim light on the papers and kept the upper half of his face in shadow.

His mouth was thin, his lips stretched back over a set of false teeth that had grown too large as the flesh of his face was worn away by age. Heavy dewlaps, so long as to remind Brunetti of those of a hound, hung from both sides of his mouth; the skin below hung in wattles, bunched loosely over his collar.

Brunetti was aware that the man was looking at them, but the light did not reach Filipetto's eyes, so it was impossible for him to read the man's expression. 'Si?' the old man asked in the same high-pitched tone.

'Notaio,' Brunetti began, stepping a bit closer so as to afford himself a better view of Filipetto's entire face, ‘I’m Commissario Guido Brunetti,' he began, but the old man cut him off.

'I recognize you. I knew your father.'

Brunetti was so surprised that it took him a moment to recover, and when he did he thought he saw a faint upturning of those thin lips. Filipetto's face was long and thin, the skin waxlike. Sparse tufts of white hair adhered to his speckled skull, like down on the body of a diseased chick. As Brunetti's eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that Filipetto's own were hooded and vulpine, the irises tinged the colour of parchment.

'He was a man who did his duty,' Filipetto said in what was clearly meant to be admiration. He said nothing more, but his lips kept moving as he sucked them repeatedly in and out against his false teeth.

The comment confirmed Brunetti's memory of the man and was all he needed. ‘Yes, he was, sir. It was one of the things he tried to teach us.'

‘You have a brother, don't you?' asked the old man.

'Yes, sir, I do.'

'Good. A man should have sons.' Before Brunetti could respond to this, though he had no idea what he could say, Filipetto asked, 'What else did he teach you?'

Brunetti was vaguely aware that the woman was still standing in the doorway and that Vianello had automatically pulled himself up straighter, as close to a stance of military attention as he could achieve while wearing a yellow tie.

'Duty, honour, devotion to the flag, discipline’ Brunetti recited, doing his best to remember all the things he had always found most risible in the pretensions of Fascism, but pronouncing them in earnest tones. At his side, he sensed Vianello growing even straighter, as if bolstered by the invigorating force of these ideas.

'Sit down, Commissario,' Filipetto said, ignoring Vianello. 'Eleonora, hold his chair’ he commanded. She came from the door and Brunetti forced himself to wait as would a man accustomed to the service of women. She pulled out a chair opposite the old man and Brunetti sat in it, not bothering to thank her.

'What is it you've come about?' Filipetto asked.

'Your name has come up, sir, in an investigation we're conducting. When I read it, I...' Brunetti began, coughed a nervous little laugh, then looked over at the old man and said, 'Well, I remembered the way my father always spoke of you, sir, and I, to tell the truth, I couldn't resist the opportunity finally to meet you.'

To the best of Brunetti's memory, the only time he had ever heard his father mention Filipetto's name was when he raged against the men who had been most guilty of plundering the state's coffers during the war. Filipetto's name had not been at the top of the list, a place always reserved for the man who had sold the Army the cardboard boots that had cost Brunetti's father six toes, but it had been there, his name among those others who had made the effortless passage from wartime profiteering to post-war prominence.

The old man glanced idly at Vianello and, observing the smile of approval with which he greeted his superior's last remark, Filipetto said, 'You can sit down, too.'

Thank you, sir,' Vianello said and did as he was told, though he was careful to sit up straight, as if attentive and respectful to whatever further truths would be revealed during this conversation between men who so closely mirrored his own political ideals.

Brunetti used the momentary distraction caused by Filipetto's remark to Vianello to look at the papers in front of the old man. One was a magazine containing photos of Il Duce in various, but equally fierce, postures. The rest were documents of some sort, but before he could adjust his eyes to try to read them, Filipetto demanded his attention.

'What investigation is this?' he asked.

'Your name,' Brunetti began, assuming that a phone number was as good as a name, 'was found among the papers of a person who died recently, and I wanted to ask you if you had any dealings with her.'

'Who?' he asked.

'Claudia Leonardo’ Brunetti said.

Filipetto made no sign that the name meant anything to him and once again looked at the papers, but the radar of long experience told Brunetti that it was not unfamiliar to him. Given the coverage the murder had had in the papers, it was unlikely that anyone in the city would be unfamiliar with her name.

‘Who?^’ the Notary asked, head bowed.

'Claudia Leonardo, sir. She died - she was murdered -here in the city.'

'And how did my name come to be among her effects?' he asked, looking again at Brunetti but not bothering to inquire how or why Claudia had been killed.

'It doesn't matter, sir. If you've never heard of her, then there's no need to continue with this.'

'Do you want me to sign something to that effect?' Filipetto asked.

'Sir’ Brunetti answered hotly, as if unable to disguise his surprise, 'your word is more than enough.'

Filipetto looked up then, his teeth bared in a smile of open satisfaction 'Your mother?' he asked. 'Is she still with us?'

Brunetti had no idea what Filipetto meant by this: whether his mother was alive, which she was; whether she was still sane, which she was not; or whether she still held true to the political ideas that had cost her husband his youth and his peace. As she had never held those ideas in anything but contempt, Brunetti felt secure in answering the first question, "Yes, sir, she is.'

'Good, good. Though there are many people now who are beginning to realize the value of what we tried to do, it's comforting to know that there are still people who are faithful to the old values.'

'I'm sure there will always be,' Brunetti said, without a trace of the disgust he felt at the idea. He stood, leaving the chair where it was, and leaned across the table to shake the old man's hand, cold and fragile in his own. Ifs been an honour, sir,' he said. Vianello nodded deeply, unable to convey his complete agreement in any other way.

The old man raised a hand and waved towards the woman, who was still standing at the doorway. 'Eleonora, make yourself useful. See the Commissario out.' He gave Brunetti a valedictory smile and again bent his head over his papers.

Eleonora, her connection to the old man still unexplained, turned and led them to the front door of the apartment. Brunetti made no attempt to penetrate the veil of silent resentment she had wrapped so tightly about herself during this interview and at the door did no more than mutter his thanks before preceding Vianello down the stairs and out into the campo.

16

'Enough to choke a pig’ was Vianello's only comment as they walked out into the cool evening air.

'Well he did make the trains run on time’ Brunetti offered.

‘Yes, of course. And, in the end, what’s a couple million dead and a country in ruins if the trains run on time?'

'Exactly.'

'God, you think they're all dead and then you turn over a rock and you find one's still under there.' Brunetti grunted in assent.

‘You can understand young people believing all that shit. After all, the schools don't teach them anything about what really happened. But you'd think people who lived it, who were adults all during it and who saw what happened, you'd think they'd realize.'

'I'm afraid it costs people too much to abandon what they believe’ Brunetti offered by way of explanation. 'If you give your loyalty and, I suppose, your love to ideas like that then it's all but impossible to admit what madness they are.'

'I suppose so’ Vianello conceded, though it sounded as if he weren't fully persuaded. They walked side by side, reached the riva and turned up toward the Piazza.

It's strange, sir,' Vianello began, ‘But for the last few years - and I think it's happening more and more often -I meet someone and they say things, and I come away from talking to them thinking that they're crazy. I mean really crazy.'

Brunetti, who had had much the same experience, asked only, 'What sort of things?'

Vianello paused over this for a long time, suggesting that he had perhaps never before revealed this to anyone. Well, I talk to people who say they're worried about the hole in the ozone layer and what will happen to their kids and future generations, and then they tell me that they've just bought one of those monster cars, you know, the ones like the Americans drive.' He walked on, in step with Brunetti, considered a moment, then continued. This isn't even to mention religion, with Padre Pio being cured by a statue they flew over his monastery in a plane.'

What?' Brunetti asked, having thought this was something Fellini invented for a film.

What I'm trying to say is that it doesn't matter which story they tell about him. He was a nut, and they want to make him a saint. Yes,' Vianello said, his ideas clarified, 'it's things like that, that people can believe all of that, that makes me wonder if the whole world isn't mad.'

'My wife maintains that she finds it easier to accept human behaviour if she thinks of us as savages with telefonini,' Brunetti said.

'Is she serious?' Vianello asked, his tone one of curiosity, not scepticism.

Thaf s always a very difficult thing to judge, with my wife,' Brunetti admitted, then, turning the conversation back to their recent visit, he asked, What did you think?'

'He recognized the name, that's for sure’ Vianello said.

Brunetti was glad to see his own intuition confirmed. 'Any ideas about the woman?'

'I was paying more attention to the old man.'

'How old do you think she is?' Brunetti asked him.

‘Fifty? Sixty? Why do you ask?'

'It might help in figuring out how she's related to him.'

'Related, as in relative?'

'Yes. He didn't treat her like a servant.'

'He told her to pull out your chair,' Vianello reminded him.

'I know; that's what I thought at first. But it's not the way people treat servants: they're politer with them than with their families.' Brunetti knew this because, for decades, he had observed the way Paola's family treated their servants, but he didn't want to explain this to Vianello.

'His name wasn't listed in her address book, was it?' Vianello asked.

'No, only the phone number.'

'Has Signorina Elettra checked the phone records to see how often the girl call him?' 'She's doing that now.'

'Be interesting to know why she called him, wouldn't it?'

'Especially as he said he didn't know her’ Brunetti agreed.

They found themselves in the Piazza, and it was only then that Brunetti realized that he had been leading Vianello away from his house. He stopped and said, I'm going to go up and take the Number One. Would you like a drink?'

'Not around here’ Vianello said, his eyes taking in the Piazza and its hosts of pigeons and tourists, one as annoying as the other. 'Next thing, you'll be suggesting we go to Harry's Bar.'

‘I don't think they let anyone in who isn't a tourist’ Brunetti said.

Vianello guffawed, as Venetians often do at the thought of going to Harry's Bar, and said he'd walk home.

Brunetti, with farther to go, walked up to the vaporetto stop and took the Number One towards San Silvestro. He used the trip to gaze inattentively at the facades of the palazzi they passed, thinking back over his visit to Filipetto. The room had been so dim that he had not observed much, but nothing he had seen there suggested wealth. Notaries were believed to be among the richest people in the country, and the Filipettos had been notaries for generations, each one succeeding to the studio and practice of the one before him, but no sign of wealth had been evident in the room or what Brunetti could see of its furnishings.

The old man's jacket had been worn bald at the ends of the cuffs; the woman's clothing was undistinguished by any quality other than drabness. Because he had been taken directly to see Filipetto, he had not gained any idea of the total size of the apartment, but he had had a glimpse down the central corridor, and it suggested the existence of many rooms. Besides, a poor notaio was as inconceivable as a celibate priest.

At home, though Paola did not ask if there had been any progress, he could sense her curiosity, so he told her about Filipetto while she was dropping the pasta into boiling water. To the left of the pot simmered a pan of tomatoes with, as far as he could identify, black olives and capers. Before she could comment, he asked, 'Where'd you get such big capers?'

'Sara's parents were on Salina for a week, and her mother brought me back half a kilo.'

'Half a kilo of capers?' he asked, astonished, 'It'll take us years to eat them.'

They're salted, so they'll keep,' Paola responded and then said, 'You might like to ask my father about him.'

'Filipetto?'

‘Yes.'

'What does he know?' 'Ask him.'

'How long will the pasta . . .' Brunetti began, but she cut him off saying, 'Wait to call him until after dinner. It might take some time’

Because of Brunetti's eagerness to make the call, the capers, to make no mention of the pasta, went less appreciated than they might ordinarily have been. The instant he finished his barely tasted dessert, Brunetti returned to the living room and made the call.

At the mention of Filipetto, the Count surprised Brunetti by saying, 'Perhaps we could talk about this in person, Guido.'

Without hesitation, Brunetti asked, 'When?'

'I'm leaving for Berlin tomorrow morning and I won't be back until the end of the week.'

Before the Count could suggest a later date, Brunetti asked, 'Have you time now?'

'It's after nine,' the Count said, but only as an observation, not as a complaint.

'I could be there in fifteen minutes,' Brunetti insisted.

'All right. If you like,' the Count said and put down the phone.

It took Brunetti less than that, even including the time he spent explaining to Paola where he was going and then listening to her greetings and best wishes to her parents, given as though she didn't speak to them at least once a day.

The Count was in his study, wearing a dark grey suit and a sober tie. Brunetti sometimes wondered if the midwife who had delivered the heir to the Falier title had been taken aback by the emergence of a tiny baby already wearing a dark suit and tie, a thought he had never dared voice to Paola.

Brunetti accepted the grappa the Count offered him, nodded in appreciation of its quality, settled himself on one of the sofas, and asked directly, 'Filipetto?'

'What do you want to know about him?'

'His phone number was listed in the address book of the young woman who was murdered last week. I'm sure you've read about it.'

The Count nodded. 'But surely you don't suspect Notaio Filipetto of having murdered her’ he said with a small smile.

'Hardly. I doubt that he's able to leave his apartment. I spoke to him earlier this evening and told him about the number, but he denied knowing her.' When the Count made no response, Brunetti added, 'My instinct is that he did know her.'

'That's very like the Filipettos’ the Count said. They lie by impulse and inclination, all of them, the whole family, and always have.'

'That’s a sweeping condemnation, to say the least’ Brunetti commented. 'But none the less true.'

'How long have you known them?' Brunetti asked, interested in fact as well as opinion.

'All my life, probably, at least by reputation. I don't think I had anything to do with them directly until I was back here after the war, when they served as notary, occasionally, when my family bought property.'

Working for you?'

'No.' The Count was emphatic. 'For the sellers.' 'Did they ever work for you?'

'Once’ the Count said tersely. 'At the very beginning.' What happened?'

The Count waited a long time before answering, sipped at his grappa, savoured it, and went on. 'You'll understand if I don't explain in detail’ he said, a genuflection to their mutual belief that only the most minimal explanation of any financial dealing should ever be given to anyone. Brunetti thought of Lele's refusal to discuss anything of importance on the phone and wondered if suspicion were now a genetic trait peculiar to Italians. 'Our purchase of a particular property was based on Filipetto's examination of the records of ownership, and he assured us that it belonged to one of the heirs. My father went ahead and paid a certain amount to the heir’ The Count paused here, allowing Brunetti time to conclude that the payment had been in cash, not recorded, most probably illegal, and hence the reason for his refusal to discuss the matter on the phone. 'And then, when the case had to be decided in court, it turned out that, not only did this person have no legal right to the property, but Filipetto was fully aware of that fact and had probably always been. I never learned whose idea the payment was, his or the heir's, but I'm certain it was divided equally between them.' Brunetti was surprised at how calm the Count's voice and expression remained. Perhaps after a lifetime spent swimming in the shoals of business, a shark was just another sort of fish. 'Since that time,' the Count went on, ‘I have had no dealings with him’

Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was after ten. What time do you have to leave tomorrow?' he asked.

'It doesn't matter. I don't need much sleep any more. That need, like so many desires, seems to decrease with age’

The Count's reference to age sent Brunetti's thoughts to Signora Jacobs. There's an old Austrian woman mixed up in this somehow,' he said. 'Hedwig Jacobs. Do you know her?'

The name's familiar,' the Count said, 'but I can't remember how it is I might have known her. How is she involved?'

'She was Guzzardi's lover.'

'Poor woman, even if she is an Austrian’

'Austrian or not, she remained loyal to him,' Brunetti said, surprised at his speed in leaping to the old woman's defence. When the Count didn't respond, Brunetti added, 'It was fifty years ago.'

The Count considered that for some time and then sighed and said, 'Yes.' He got up, went to the drinks cabinet and came back with the bottle of grappa. He poured them both another glass, set the bottle on the table between them and returned to his seat. 'Fifty years,' the Count repeated, and Brunetti was struck by the sadness with which he spoke.

Perhaps it was the hour, the strange intimacy of their sitting together in the silent palazzo, perhaps it was nothing more than the grappa, but Brunetti felt himself filled almost to overflowing with affection for this man he had known for decades, yet never really known.

'Are you proud of what you did during the war?' Brunetti asked impulsively, as surprised at the question as was the Count.

If he thought his father-in-law would have to consider before he answered, Brunetti was mistaken, for the answer came instantly. 'No, I'm not proud - I was at the beginning, I suppose. But I was young, little more than a boy. When the war finished I wasn't even eighteen yet, but I'd been living and acting like a man, or like I thought a man was supposed to act, for more than two years. But I had the moral age,' the Count began, paused for a moment and gave Brunetti a smile that seemed strangely sweet, 'of a boy, or the ethical age of a boy, if you will.'

He looked down and studied the carpet at his feet and flicked one errant strand of the fringe back into place; Brunetti was reminded of Claudia Leonardo and the circumstances of her death. The Count's voice summoned him back. 'No one should ever be proud of killing a man, especially men like the ones we killed toward the end.' He looked up at Brunetti, willing him to understand. ‘I suppose everyone has an image of the typical German soldier: a blond giant with the death's head insignia of the SS on his shoulder, wiping the blood from his bayonet after putting it through the throat of, oh, I don't know, a nun or someone's mother. The men I was with said they saw some of those at the beginning, but at the end, they were just terrified boys dressed in mismatched jackets and trousers and calling them a uniform, and carrying guns and hoping they were a real army because they did.

'But they were just boys, frightened out of their wits at the thought of death, just like we were.' He sipped at his grappa, then cradled the glass between his hands. 'I remember one of the last ones we killed.' His voice was calm, dispassionate, as if far removed from the events he was describing. 'He might have been sixteen at the most. We had a trial, or what we called a trial. But it was just like what they say in American movies: "Give him a fair trial and then hang him." Only we shot him. Oh, we thought we were important, such heroes, playing at being lawyers and judges. He was a kid, absolutely helpless, and there was no reason we couldn't have kept him as a prisoner. They surrendered a week later. But by then he was dead.'

The Count turned away and glanced toward the window. Lights were visible on the other side of the Canal, and he looked at them while he continued. ‘I wasn't part of the squad that shot him, but I had to lead him up to the wall and give him the handkerchief to tie around his eyes. I'm sure someone had read about that in some book or seen it in a movie. It always seemed to me, even then, that it would be better to let them see the men who were going to kill them. They deserved that much. Or that little. But maybe that's why we did it, so that they couldn't see us.'

He paused for a long time, perhaps considering the explanation he'd just given, then went on. 'He was terrified. Just as I reached up to cover his eyes, he wet his pants. I felt no pity for him then; I suppose I even felt good about it, that we had so reduced this German to such shameful terror. It would have been kinder to ignore it, but there was no kindness in me then, nor in any of us. I looked down at the stain on his pants and he saw me looking. Then he started to cry, and I understood enough German to understand what he said. "I want my mother. I want my mother," and then he couldn't stop sobbing. His chin was down on his chest, and I couldn't tie the handkerchief around his eyes, so I moved away from him, and they shot him. I suppose I could have used the handkerchief to wipe away his tears but, as I said, I was a young man then, and there was no pity in me.'

The Count turned away from the lights and back towards Brunetti. ‘I looked down at him after they shot him, and I saw his face covered with snot, and his chest with blood, and the war ended for me then, in that instant. I didn't think about it, not in big terms, I suppose not in anything I could call ethical terms, but I knew that what we had done was wrong and that we'd murdered him, just as much as if we'd found him sleeping in his bed, in his mother's house, and cut his throat. There was no glory in what we were doing, and no purpose whatsoever was served by it. The next day, we shot three more. With the first one I was party to it and I still thought it was right, but after that, even when I realized what we were doing, I still didn't have the courage to try to stop the others from doing it because I was afraid of what would happen to me if I did. So, to answer your question again, no, I'm not proud of what I did in the war.'

The Count emptied his glass and set it on a table. He stood. ‘I don't think there's anything more I want to say about this.'

Brunetti stood and, compelled by an impulse that surprised him, walked over to the Count and embraced him, held him in his arms for a long moment, then turned and left the study.

17

Paola was asleep when he got home, and though she swam up long enough to ask him how it had gone with her father, she was so dull that Brunetti simply said that they'd talked. He kissed her and went to see if the kids were home and in bed. He opened Raffi's door after knocking lightly and found his son lying face down, sprawled in a giant X, one arm and one foot hanging off the edge of the bed. Brunetti thought of the boy's heritage: one grandfather come back from Russia with only four toes and half a spirit, the other willing executioner of unarmed boys. He closed the door and checked on Chiara, who was neatly asleep under unwrinkled covers. In bed he lay for some time thinking about his family, and then he slept deeply.

The next day he went first to Signorina Elettra's office, where he found her besieged by regiments of paper advancing across her desk.

'Am I meant to find all of that promising?' he asked as he came in.

'What was it Harold Carter said when he could finally see into the tomb, "I see things, marvellous things"?'

'Presumably you don't see golden masks and mummies, Signorina,' Brunetti responded.

Like a croupier raking in cards, she swept up some of the papers on her right and tapped them into a pile. 'Here, take a look: I've printed out the files in her computer.'

'And the bank records?' he asked, pulling a chair up to her desk and sitting beside her.

She waved disdainfully at a pile of papers on the far side of her desk. 'Oh, it was as I suspected’ she said with the lack of interest with which one mentions the obvious. The bank never called the attention of the Finanza to the deposits, and it seems they never troubled to ask the bank.'

'Which means what?' he asked, though he had a fair idea.

'The most likely possibility is that the Finanza simply never bothered to cross-check her statements with the reports on money transfers arriving in the country.'

'And that means?' he asked.

'Negligence or bribery, I'd say.'

'Is that possible?'

'As I have told you upon more than one occasion, sir, when you are dealing with banks, anything at all is possible.'

Brunetti deferred to her greater wisdom and asked, 'Was this difficult for you to get?'

'Considering the laudable reticence of the Swiss banks and the instinctive mendacity of our own, I suppose it was more difficult than usual.'

Brunetti knew the extent of her friendships, and so let it go at that, always uneasy at the thought of the information she might some day be asked to provide in return, and whether she would.

These are her letters’ Signorina Elettra said, handing him the pile of papers. The dates and the sums mentioned correspond to bank transfers made from her account.'

He read the first, to the orphanage in India, saying that she hoped her contribution would help the children have better lives, and then one to a home for battered women in Pavia, saying much the same thing. Each letter explained that the money was being given in memory of her grandfather, though it did not give his name nor, for that matter, her own.

'Are they all like this?' he asked, looking up from the page.

"Yes, pretty much. She never gives her name or his, and in each case she expresses the hope that the enclosed cheque will help people have a better life.'

Brunetti hefted the pile of papers. 'How many are there?'

'More than forty. All the same.'

'Is the amount always the same?'

'No, they vary, though she seemed to like ten million lire. The total is close to the amount that went into her account.'

He considered what a fortune one of these transfers would be to an Indian orphanage or for a shelter for battered women.

'Are there any repeated donations?'

'To the orphanage in Kerala and the AIDS hospice. Those seemed to be her favourites but, so far as I can see, all of the others are different.'

'What else?' he asked.

She pointed to the closest pile. 'There are the papers she wrote for her literature classes. I haven't had time to read through all of them, though I must say her dislike of Gilbert Osmond is quite ferocious.'

It was a name he'd heard Paola use; she shared Claudia's dislike. 'What else?' he asked.

Indicating a thick pile to the left of her computer. Signorina Elettra said, ‘Personal correspondence, none of it very interesting.'

'And that?' he asked, pointing to the single remaining sheet. ‘It would cause a stone to weep’ she said, handing it to him.

'I, Claudia Leonardo’ he read, 'declare that all of the worldly goods of which I am in possession should, at my death, be sold and the profits distributed to the charities listed below. This is hardly enough to make up for a life of rapacious acquisition, but it is, if nothing else, an attempt to do so.' Below were listed the names and addresses of sixteen charities, among them the Indian orphanages and the women's home in Pavia.

'"Rapacious acquisition"?' he asked.

'She had three million, six hundred thousand lire in the bank when she died’ was Signorina Elettra's only reply.

Brunetti read through the will again, pausing at 'rapacious acquisition'. 'She means her grandfather’ he said, finally perceiving the obvious.

Signorina Elettra, who had heard from Vianello some of the history of Claudia's family, agreed instantly.

He noticed that there was no signature on the paper. 'Is this your print-out?' he asked.

'Yes.' Before he could ask, she said, There was no copy among her papers.'

That makes sense. People that young don't think they're going to die.'

'And they usually don't’ Signorina Elettra added.

Brunetti put the will down on the desk. 'What was in the personal correspondence?'

'Letters to friends and former classmates, letters to an aunt in England. These were in English, and she usually talked about what she was doing, her studies, and asked about her aunt’s children and the animals on her farm. I really don't think there's anything in them, but you can take a look if you want.'

'No, no, that's all right. I trust you. Any other correspondence?'

'Just the usual business things: the university, the rough draft of what looks like a letter of application for a job, but there's no address on it.'

'A job?⁷ Brunetti interrupted. 'She was being sent more than a hundred million lire a year: why would she want a job?'

'Money isn't the only reason people work, sir,' Signorina Elettra reminded him with sudden force. 'She was a university student,' Brunetti said. 'What does that mean?'

'She wouldn't have had time to work, at least not during the academic year.'

'Perhaps,' Signorina Elettra conceded with a scepticism suggesting a certain measure of familiarity with the academic demands made by the university. 'Certainly there was no change in her finances that would indicate she had another source of income,' she said, pushing some of the papers aside until she found Claudia Leonardo's bank account. 'Look, she was still drawing out the same amounts every month when she died. So she didn't have any other income.'

'Of course she might have been working for nothing, as a volunteer or an apprentice,' Brunetti said. 'If s a possibility.'

'You just said she was a university student, sir, and wouldn't have had the time.'

'It could have been part time,' Brunetti insisted. 'Do you remember anything in the letters that suggests she might have been working?'

Signorina Elettra considered this for a while and finally said, 'No, nothing, but I wasn't looking for anything specific when I read the letters.' Without asking, she picked up the copies of Claudia Leonardo's letters, divided the pile in two, and handed half to Brunetti.

He moved his chair back from her desk, stretched out his legs and began to read. As he read his way through these records of Claudia's truncated life, he recalled a present an aunt of his had once, decades ago, given him for Christmas. He had been disappointed when he opened the matchbox and found nothing more than what looked like a bean made out of paper. Unable to disguise his disappointment, he had asked his aunt, 'But what’s this for?' and in answer she had filled a pan with water and told him to put the bean into it.

When he did, it swam magically on the surface of the water and then, under his marvelling eyes, gradually began to move and twist around, as the water unfurled what seemed like hundreds of tiny folds, each one pulling another one open after it. When it was finally still, he found himself gazing down at a perfect white carnation, the size of an apple. Before the water could soak and ruin it, his aunt plucked it out and set it on the windowsill, in the pale winter sun, where it stood for days. Each time Brunetti looked at it, he recalled the magic that had turned one thing into such a wonderfully different other.

Much the same process took place as he read Claudia's words and heard her natural voice. These poor Albanians. People hate them as soon as they learn where they're from, as though their passports (if the poor devils even have passports) were pairs of horns.' 1 can't stand to hear my friends complain about how little they have. We five, all of us, better than the Emperors of Rome.' 'How I long to have a dog, but who could make a dog live in this city? Perhaps we should all keep a pet tourist, instead.' Nothing she said was particularly insightful, nor was the language distinguished, but then that pale dollop of compressed paper had hardly merited a second glance; yet how it had blossomed.

After about ten minutes he looked up and asked, 'Found anything?'

She shook her head and kept reading.

After another few minutes he observed, 'She seemed to spend a great deal of time in the library, didn't she?'

'She was a student,' Signorina Elettra said, looking up from the papers. Then she added, 'But, yes, she did, didn't she?'

'And it never sounds like she's doing research there, I'd say.' Brunetti asked, turning back a page and reading out,

' "I had to be at the library at nine this morning, and you know what a horror I am that early, enough to frighten anyone away’"

Brunetti set the page down. 'Seems a strange concern, doesn't it? Turning people away?'

'Especially if she's going there to read or study. Why would it matter?' Though Signorina Elettra's question was rhetorical, both of them considered it.

'How many libraries are there in the city?' Brunetti asked.

There's the Marciana, the Querini Stampalia, the one at the university itself and then those in the quartieri and maybe another five’

'Let's try them,' Brunetti said, reaching for the phone.

Just as quickly, Signorina Elettra opened the bottom drawer of her desk, pulled out the phone book and flipped to 'Comune di Venezia'. One after the other, Brunetti called the city libraries in Castello, Canareggio, San Polo and Giudecca, but none of them had an employee or a volunteer working there called Claudia Leonardo nor, when he called them, did the Marciana, the Querini Stampalia, or the library of the university.

'Now what?' she asked, slapping the directory shut. Brunetti took it from her and looked under the B's. 'You ever heard of the Biblioteca della Patria?' he asked.

'Of the what?' she asked.

'Patria’ he repeated and read out the address, saying, 'Sounds like it might be down at the end of Castello.' She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

He dialled the number and, when a man answered, asked if someone named Claudia Leonardo worked there. The man, speaking with a slight accent, asked him to repeat the name, told him to hold on a moment, and set the phone down. A moment later he was back and asked, 'Who's calling, please?'

'Commissario Guido Brunetti,' he answered, then asked, 'And Claudia Leonardo?'

'Yes, she worked here’ the man said, making no reference to her death.

'And you are?' Brunetti asked.

'Maxwell Ford’ he answered, all the Italianate softness of his voice slipping away to reveal the Anglo-Saxon bedrock. In response to Brunetti's demanding silence, he explained, 'I'm co-director of the Library.'

'And where, exactly, is this library?'

'It's at the very end of Via Garibaldi, across the canal from Sant’ Anna.'

Brunetti knew where it must be, but he had no memory of ever having been conscious of the existence of a library in that area. I'd like to talk to you’ Brunetti said.

'Of course’ the man answered, his voice suddenly much warmer. 'Is it about her death?'

'Yes.'

'A terrible thing. We were shocked.' 'We?' Brunetti asked.

A brief pause, and then the man explained, 'The staff here at the library.' When Ford spoke Italian his accent was so slight as almost not to be there.

'It should take me about twenty minutes to get there’ Brunetti said and put the phone down.

'And?' Signorina Elettra asked.

'Signor Ford is the co-director of the Biblioteca, but seemed uncertain at first about whether she worked there or not.'

'Anyone would be nervous, being asked about someone who was murdered.'

'Possibly’ Brunetti said. I'll go and talk to him. What about Guzzardi?' he asked.

'A few things. I'm trying to check on some houses he owned when he died.'

Brunetti had been moving towards the door, but he stopped and turned back.

'Were there many?'

'Three or four’

What happened to them?'

‘I don't know yet’

'How did you learn about them?'

‘I asked my father’ She waited to see what Brunetti would say in response, but he had no time to talk to her about this now: he was reluctant to keep Signor Ford waiting. In fact, he already regretted having called and told the library director he was coming: people's response to the unexpected arrival of the police on their doorstep was often as illuminating as anything they subsequently said.

Brunetti walked back towards the Arsenale, turning and choosing bridges by instinct as he allowed the tangled story of Claudia*Leonardo and her grandfather to take shape, evaporate, and then reform in his mind. Facts, dates, pieces of information, fragments of rumour swirled around, blinding him so that it wasn't until he found himself at the entrance to the Arsenale, the goofy lions lined up on his left, that he came back to the present. At the top of the wooden bridge he allowed himself a moment to gaze through the gateway into what had once been the womb of Venice's power and the ultimate source of her wealth and dominion. With only manpower and hammers and saws and all those other tools with strange names that carpenters and boat builders use, they had managed to build a ship a day and fill the seas with the terrible power of their fleet. And today, with cranes and drills and endless sources of power, there was still no sign that the burnt-out Fenice would ever be rebuilt.

He turned both from these reflections and the gateway and continued, weaving back towards Via Garibaldi and then, keeping the canal on his left, down towards Sant’ Anna. When he saw the facade of the church, he realized he had no memory of ever having been inside; perhaps, like so many others in the city, it didn't function any longer as a church. He wondered how much longer they could continue to serve as places of worship, now that there were so few worshippers and young people were bored, as were his own children, by the irrelevance of what the Church had to say to them. Brunetti would not much regret its passing, but the thought of what little there was to replace it unsettled him. Again, he had to summon himself back from these thoughts.

He crossed the small bridge on his left and saw, on his right, a single long building the back of which faced the church. He turned into Calle Sant'Anna and found himself in front of an immense green portone. To the right were two bells: 'Ford', and 'Biblioteca della Patria'. He rang the one for the library.

The door snapped open and he walked into an entrance hall that must have been five metres high. Enough light filtered in from the five barred windows on the canal to illuminate the enormous beams, almost as thick as those of the Palazzo Ducale, that spanned the ceiling. The floor was of brick, set in a simple herringbone pattern. He noticed that, towards the back door and particularly around the stairs that ran down to the water gate, the bricks glistened slickly with a thin coat of dark moss.

There was only one set of steps. At the first landing a short, thickset man dressed in a very expensive dark grey suit waited at the door. A bit younger than Brunetti, he had thinning reddish hair the curious dappled colour such hair turns on its way to white. 'Commissario Brunetti?' he asked and extended his hand.

‘Yes. Signor Ford?' Brunetti asked in return, shaking hands.

'Please come in.' Ford stepped back and stood just inside the door, holding it open for Brunetti.

He entered and glanced around. A row of windows looked out over the canal, towards the opposing flank of the church. To his left, at the far end, more windows looked out over what Brunetti knew must be the Isola di San Pietro.

Four or five long tables, each of them bearing green-shaded reading lamps, were placed around the room, and glass-fronted bookcases lined the walls between the windows. The other walls were covered with framed photos and documents, and in a glass case in one corner objects Brunetti could not identify lay exposed on three shelves.

The room had ceilings as high as those in the entrance hall, and from many of the beams hung flags and standards which Brunetti did not recognize. To his left a long, glass-topped case, like the ones used in museums, contained a number of notebooks, all of them spread open so that the exposed pages could be read.

‘I’m glad you came’ Ford said, making towards a door on the right. ‘Please come into my office. We can talk there.'

As no one was in the reading room, Brunetti didn't understand why this was necessary, but he followed Ford as requested. His office, carved into the angle of the building farthest from the Isola di San Pietro, had windows on two sides, though those on the shorter wall looked across at the shutters of the house across the calle.

Here, too, the walls between the windows were filled to the height of a man with bookshelves; half contained box files, rather than books.

Taking the seat offered him, Brunetti began by asking, 'You said Claudia Leonardo worked here?'

'Yes, she did’ Ford answered. He sat opposite Brunetti, declining the opportunity to place himself behind his desk and thus in some sort of position of authority. He had light brown eyes and a straight nose and was, at least by English standards, a handsome man.

'For how long?'

'About three months, perhaps a bit less than that.' 'What did she do here?'

'She catalogued entries, helped readers with research questions ... all the jobs it's normal for a librarian to do.'

Ford's voice was level as he answered Brunetti's questions, as if to suggest he found them understandable and expected.

'Presumably, as a student at the university, she hadn't been trained as a librarian. How did she know how to do all of this?'

'She was very bright, Claudia,' Ford said with his first smile. His eyes grew sad as he heard himself praising the young girl. 'And, really, once a person knows the basic principles of research, if s all pretty much the same.'

Doesn't the Internet change all of that?' Brunetti asked.

'Of course, in some fields. But the information we have here at the Library and the sort of things our borrowers are interested in, well, I'm afraid most of it isn't available on the Internet.'

'What sort of things?'

'Personal accounts of the men who served in the war or in the Resistance. Names of people who were killed. Places where small battles or skirmishes were fought. That sort of thing.'

'And who is interested in this information?'

Ford's voice grew more animated as the subject turned to material he was familiar with, the death of young men more than fifty years ago, and away from the recent death of a young girl. 'Very often we get requests from the relatives of men who were reported as lost or who were listed as having been captured. Sometimes, in the journals or letters of men who fought in the same place or who were perhaps captured at the same time, some mention is made of the missing men. Because most of the information we have is unpublished, this is the only place people can find it. And find out what happened to their relatives.'

'But doesn't the Archivio di Stato provide this sort of information?' Brunetti asked.

'I'm afraid the Archives provide very little information of this sort. And I choose the verb intentionally: provide. Of course, they have the information, but they seem reluctant to provide it. Or, if they do, it’s only after heartbreaking delays.' 'Why?' Brunetti asked.

'Only God knows why,' Ford answered, making no attempt to disguise his exasperation. 1 can tell you only how it works or, more accurately, doesn't work.' As with any historian warming to his subject, Ford's voice grew more animated. 'The process of making a request is unnecessarily complicated and, to be fair, the Archive functions at its own pace.' When Brunetti did not ask for illumination of this last, Ford offered it anyway. 'I've had people come here who made official requests as long ago as thirty years. One man even brought me a folder of correspondence concerning his attempt to discover the fate of his brother, who was last heard from in 1945. The file was filled with standard letters from the Archive, saying that the request was being processed through the proper channels.' Brunetti made a noise that displayed interest, and the Englishman continued. "The worst part of this one was that the original letters asking for information, the ones from the family, were all signed by his father. But he died abut fifteen years ago without hearing anything, so the son took over.'

'Why did he come to you?'

Ford looked uncomfortable. 'I don't think it’s right to boast about what we do and so I try not to, but we have found records for many people who failed to get information from the Archive, and so the word has got round that we might be able to help.'

'Is there a charge for your services?'

Ford seemed genuinely surprised by the question. 'Absolutely not. The Library receives a small grant from the state, but the bulk of our money comes from private contributions and from a private foundation.' He hesitated, then continued. The question is offensive, Commissario. Excuse me for saying that, but it is.'

'I understand, Signore’ said Brunetti with a small bow in his direction, 'but I ask you to understand that I am here, in a sense, as a researcher myself, and so I have to ask everything that occurs to me. But I assure you I meant no offence.'

Ford accepted this with a small bow of his own, and the atmosphere between them grew warmer.

'And Claudia Leonardo?' Brunetti asked. 'How is it that she came to work here?'

'She came, originally, to do research, and then when she learned what we were doing here she asked if she could work as a volunteer. It really wasn't more than a few hours a week. I could check my records if you want,' Ford said, starting, to get to his feet. Brunetti waved him back with a motion of his hand.

'She quickly became familiar with our resources,' the Englishman continued, 'and just as quickly she became very popular with many of our borrowers.' Ford looked down at his hands, searching for a way to say what he wanted to say. 'Many of them are very old, you see, and I think it did them a lot of good to have someone around who was not only helpful, but who was very...' he trailed away.

‘I think I understand,' Brunetti said, himself unable to use any of the words which might do justice to Claudia's youth and spirit without causing himself pain. 'Do you have any idea how she came to learn of the Library in the first place?'

'No, not at all. She showed up here, asking if she could consult our records, and as she was interested in our material she came back often and then, as I said, she asked if there were any way she could be of help.' He cast his memory back to the young girl and her request. We do not have a large grant from the state, and many of our borrowers are poor, so we were very happy to accept her offer.'

‘We?' Brunetti inquired. 'You said you were co-director. May I inquire who the other director is?'

'Of course’ Ford said, with a smile at his own forgetfulness. 'My wife. It was she, in fact, who established the Library. When we married, she suggested I take over half of her duties’

1 see’ said Brunetti. To get back to Claudia, did she ever talk of her friends, perhaps a boyfriend?'

Ford considered this. 'No, nothing I can remember exactly. She might have talked of a boy - I like to think that young girls do - but I can't honestly say that I have a memory of anyone specific.'

'Her family, perhaps? Other friends?'

'No, nothing at all. I'm very sorry, Commissario. But she was much younger, and I have to confess that, unless they're talking about history or some other subject I find interesting, I don't pay too much attention to what young people say.' His grin was embarrassed, almost self-effacing, but Brunetti, who shared his opinion of the conversation of the young, saw no reason for him to feel embarrassed.

He could think of nothing else to ask and so got to his feet and extended his hand. Thank you for your time and your help, Signor Ford’ Brunetti said.

‘Do you have any idea...?' the other man asked, unable to phrase the question.

'We're continuing the investigation’ came Brunetti's formulaic response.

'Good. It's a terrible thing. She was a lovely girl. We were all very fond of her.'

There seemed nothing Brunetti could add to that, so he followed Ford from the office and through the empty reading room. Ford offered to see him to the entrance, but Brunetti politely said he would go downstairs alone. He let himself out into the pale light of a late autumn day with little to do save go home for lunch, taking with him only the feeling of the senseless loss of a young life which his time with Ford had brought so forcefully back to him.

18

At home, Paola greeted him with the news that he'd had two calls from Marco Erizzo, asking that he call back as soon as possible. Beside the phone she had written the number of Marco's telefonino,

and Brunetti called it immediately, though he could see through the door that his family was already seated at the table, steam rising from their tagliatelle.

On the second ring, Marco answered with his name.

'It's me, Guido. What is it?'

‘Your men are looking for me,' Marco said in an agitated voice. 'But I'd rather you came and got me and took me in.'

Thinking that Marco had perhaps been watching too much television, Brunetti asked, 'What are you talking about, Marco? What men? What have you done?'

‘I told you what was happening, didn't I?'

'About the permits? Yes, you told me. Is that what this is about?'

‘Yes.' There were noises in the background, a blast of static on the line. Brunetti asked when the line cleared, What happened?'

'It was the architect’ Marco said. That bastard. He was the one. The permits were ready three months ago, but he kept telling me they weren't and that if we made some minor changes to the plans, maybe they'd finally approve them. And then, like I told you, he said someone in the Commune wanted thirty million lire. And all this time I was paying him for every new set of plans he drew up and for all the time he said he spent working for me.' His voice stopped, cut off by rage.

'How did you find out?'

‘I was having a drink with Angelo Costantini yesterday, and a friend of his came in, and when he introduced us, this guy recognized my name and said he works in the planning office and asked me when I was going to come in and pick up the permissions.' He paused to allow Brunetti to express shock or disapproval, but Brunetti's attention was devoted to his tagliatelle, now covered with an upended plate in what he hoped would be a successful attempt to keep them warm.

'What did you do, Marco?' he asked, his attention still distracted by his quickly cooling lunch.

‘I asked him what he was talking about, and he said that the architect told them - it must have been two months ago -that I wanted him to make some more changes to the plans so he needed to discuss them with me before he submitted the final drawings.'

'But if they were already approved, why didn't they just call you?'

They called the architect. He's lucky I didn't kill him.'

Brunetti suddenly understood the reason for the call. 'What happened?'

‘I went to his office this morning’ Marco said, then stopped.

'And what did you do?'

'I told him* what I'd heard, what the guy at the planning office told me.'

'And then?'

Then he told me I must have misunderstood what he meant and that he'd go over there and straighten things out this morning.' He heard Marco breathe deeply in an attempt to control his anger. 'But I told him I knew what was going on and that he was fired.'

'And?'

'And he said I couldn't fire him until the job was finished and if I did he'd sue me for breach of contract.' 'And?'

The pause was one Brunetti had often heard from his children, so he knew to wait it out. 'So I hit him,' Marco finally said. Another pause, and then he said, 'He sat there, behind his big desk, with plans and projects laid out on it, and he told me he'd sue me if I tried to fire him. And I lost my temper.'

'What happened?'

‘I went around his desk; I just wanted to get my hands on him .’

Brunetti imagined Marco saying this before a judge and cringed. 'He stood up and came towards me.'

When it seemed that this was the only explanation Marco was going to give, Brunetti said, Tell me exactly what you did, Marco,' using the same tone he used with the kids when they came home from school with bad reports.

‘I told you. I hit him.' Before Brunetti could speak, Marco went on, 'It wasn't very hard. I didn't even knock him down, just sort of shoved him away from me.'

'Did you hit him with a fist?' Brunetti asked, thinking it necessary to determine just what 'shove' might mean.

After a long pause, Marco said, 'Sort of.'

Brunetti left that and asked, 'Where?'

'On his jaw, or his nose.'

'And?'

'He just sort of fell back in his chair.' 'Was there any blood?'

‘I don't know’ 'Why not?'

‘I left. I watched him sit back down and then I left.'

'Why do you think my men are after you, then?'

'Because that’ s the sort of man he is. He'd call the police and say I tried to kill him. But I wanted you to know what really happened.'

'Is this what really happened, Marco?'

'Yes, I swear it on my mother's head’

'All right. What do you want me to do?'

There was real surprise in Marco's voice when he said, 'Nothing. Why should I want you to do anything? I just wanted you to know’

'Where are you now?'

'In the restaurant’

The one near Rialto?' Brunetti asked. ‘Yes. Why?'

‘I’ll be there in five minutes. Wait for me. Don't do anything and don't talk to anyone. Do you understand me, Marco? Not to anyone. And don't call your lawyer’

'All right,' Marco said sulkily.

'I'll be there,' Brunetti said and put the phone down. He went back to the table, lifted the cover from his plate and breathed in the savoury aroma of grated smoked ricotta and eggplant. He set the cover gently back in place, kissed Paola on the top of her head and said, ‘I’ve got to go and see Marco’

As he let himself out of the door, he heard Chiara saying, 'OK, Raffi, you can have half’

The restaurant was full, tables covered with things, marvellous things: one couple sat with lobsters the size of dachshunds in front of them, while to the left a group of businessmen were eating their way through a platter of seafood that would have fed a Sri Lankan village for a week. Brunetti went straight into the kitchen, where he found Marco talking to Signora Maria, the cook. Marco came over to Brunetti. 'Do you want to eat?' he asked.

This was one of the best restaurants in the city, and Signora Maria was a woman whose genius had provided Brunetti with endless pleasure. Thanks, Marco, but I had lunch at home’ he said. He took Marco by the arm and pulled him away from the disappointment in Maria's eyes and out of the way of a waiter who scrambled past, a loaded tray held at shoulder height. They stood just inside the door to the storeroom that held clean linens and cans of tomatoes.

'Whaf s the architect's name?' Brunetti asked.

'Why do you want to know?' Marco demanded in the same sulky tone he'd used before.

Brunetti toyed with the idea of not explaining, but then he thought he would, if only to stop Marco from using that tone. 'Because I am going to go back to the Questura and see what I can find out about him, and if he has ever been in trouble or if there is any sort of case outstanding against him, I am going to endanger my job by threatening him with the abuse of my power until he agrees not to bring charges against you.' His voice had risen as he spoke, and he realized how similar his anger towards Marco was to that he sometimes felt towards the children. 'Does that answer your question? And now give me his name.'

‘Piero Sbrissa’ Marco said. 'His studio is in San Marco.'

Thanks’ Brunetti said, slipping around Marco and back into the restaurant, from where he called back, 'I'll call you. Don't talk to anyone’ and left.

At the Questura, Vianello spent an hour on the computer and Brunetti two on the phone, and by the end of that time, each had found sufficient indication that there might be some hope of persuading Architetto Sbrissa to see the wisdom of refraining from making any formal charge against his client, Marco Erizzo. The architect, it seemed, had more than once experienced unaccountably long delays in obtaining building permits, or so three of his former clients told Brunetti. In each case, they had agreed to Sbrissa's suggestion that they use a less than legal - though more than common - method of resolving their problems, though none of the men was willing to name the sum involved. Vianello, for his part, discovered that Sbrissa reported having earned only sixteen million lire from Marco Erizzo the previous year, though Marco's secretary, when the inspector called her, said that their records contained signed receipts for more than forty.

Brunetti called a friend of his at the Carabinieri station in San Zaccaria and learned that Sbrissa had called them that morning to report an attack and had agreed to go in later that day, after he'd seen a doctor, to make a formal denuncia. It was the work of a moment for Brunetti to pass on the information about Sbrissa's tax records and to ask his friend if Architetto Sbrissa might be persuaded to reconsider filing his complaint; the carabiniere said he'd discuss it with the architect himself but had no doubt whatsoever that Signor Sbrissa would see the path of greater wisdom.

Marco, when Brunetti phoned to tell him that the situation was being taken care of, at first refused to believe him. He wanted to know what Brunetti had done, and when Brunetti refused to tell him, Marco went silent, then blurted out that he had been disonorato by having had to ask the police for help.

With some effort, Brunetti restrained himself from commenting and, instead, said only, 'You're my friend, Marco, and that's the end of it.'

'But you have to let me do something for you.'

'All right, you can,' Brunetti said immediately.

'Good. What? Anything.'

'The next time we eat at the restaurant, ask Signora Maria to give Paola the recipe for the filling she makes for the mussels.'

There was a long pause, but finally Marco said, as much in sorrow as in earnest. That's blackmail. She'd never do it.'

If s too bad Signora Maria didn't hit Sbrissa, then’

'No, you wouldn't get it, even then,' Marco said, resigned.

'She'd go to jail before she'd tell you about the mussels.' ‘I was afraid of that,' Brunetti said, assured Marco that he'd

think of some way he could pay his debt, and hung up.

Rewarding as this was at a personal level, it did little to advance Brunetti's understanding of what he had come to think of as the Leonardo, Guzzardi, Filipetto triangle. He went down to Signorina Elettra's office but found that she had left for the day: not surprising, really, as it was almost five, and she often complained of the tedium of the last two hours in the office. Just as he was turning to leave, the door to Vice-Questore Patta's office opened and the man himself emerged, his dove grey overcoat folded over one arm and a new briefcase Brunetti identified instantly as Bottega Veneta in his left hand.

'Ah, Brunetti,' Patta said at once, 'I've got a meeting with the Praetore in twenty minutes.' Brunetti, who cared nothing about whether Patta chose to come to work or not or how long he chose to remain there, thought it interesting that the man's response was always a kind of Pavlovian mendacity: he wondered if Patta planned a career in politics after retiring from the police.

'Then I won't keep you, sir,' Brunetti said and moved aside to allow his superior to pass.

'Has there been any progress on . . .' Patta began but, obviously unable to recall Claudia's surname, continued, 'the murder of that young girl?'

'I'm gathering information, sir,' Brunetti said.

Patta, with a hurried glance at his watch, gave him a distracted, 'Good, good,' said goodbye, and was gone.

Brunetti was curious as to whether Signorina Elettra had discovered anything, but he hesitated to approach her computer: if she had found anything important, she would surely have told him; and the information in her computer, given the suspicion with which she regarded some of the men who worked at the Questura, would surely be hedged round by moats and mazes more than sufficient to defeat any attempt he might make to penetrate them.

He went back upstairs to his own office and leafed through the file on Claudia's murder until he found the home phone number of her flatmate. He dialled the Milano prefix, then the number, and was soon talking to her mother, who agreed to call the girl to the phone; she warned Brunetti that her daughter was not to be upset, and said she'd be listening on the extension.

The call proved futile, however, for Lucia had no memory of hearing Claudia use Filipetto's name, nor did she remember hearing her speak of a notary. His sense of the mother's silent presence prevented Brunetti from asking the girl how she was, and when Lucia asked if there had been any progress, he could tell her nothing more than that they were investigating all possible leads and were optimistic that there would be progress soon. It distressed Brunetti to have to listen to himself coming out with such platitudes.

He was unable to set himself to anything after that, the echo of futility ringing clear in his ears, and so he left the Questura and headed back towards Rialto and. home. At Piero's cheese stand, where he should have turned left, he continued straight on and allowed himself to head deeper into Santa Croce, toward Campo San Boldo. He didn't stop until he was in front of Signora Jacobs's home and ringing her doorbell.

He had to wait a long time before her deep voice asked who it was.

'Commissario Brunetti,' he answered.

'I told you I don't want to talk to you’ she said, sounding weary rather than angry.

'But I need to talk to you, Signora.'

‘What about?'

'Notaio Filipetto’

‘Who?^’ she asked after a long time.

'Notaio Filipetto’ Brunetti repeated, offering no further clarification.

The door clicked open, surprising Brunetti. He went in and quickly up to her floor, where he found her propped against the door jamb as though drunk.

Thank you, Signora’ he said, slipping his hand under her elbow and accompanying her back inside. He forced himself to pay no attention to the things in the room this time and took her slowly over to her chair, noting the lightness of her body. The instant she was seated, she reached beside her for a cigarette, but her hand was shaking so much that three of them jumped out of the packet and fell at her feet before she managed to get one lit. Just as he often wondered where all the food his children ate could possibly go, so too did he wonder, as he watched her inhale greedily, into what empty spaces in her lungs all of that smoke could possibly disappear.

He thought she would ask him something, but she remained silent until the cigarette was reduced to a tiny stub and dropped into a blue ceramic bowl already half filled with butts.

'Signora’ he began, 'the name of Dottor Filipetto has come up in our investigation.' He paused, waiting to see if she would question him or refer to the notary's name, but she did not. 'And so I've come to you’ he went on, 'to see if you can tell me why Claudia might have wanted to talk to him.'

'Claudia, is it, now?' she asked.

‘I beg your pardon’ Brunetti said, genuinely taken aback.

'You speak of her as though she were a friend’ she said angrily. 'Claudia’ she repeated, and his thoughts fled to her.

Which was more intimate, Brunetti wondered, to startle a person soon after sex or soon after death? Probably the latter, as they had been stripped of all pretence or opportunity to deceive. They lie there, exhausted and seeming painfully vulnerable, though they have been removed from all vulnerability and from all pain. To be helpless implies that help might be of some service: the dead were beyond that, beyond help and beyond hope.

‘I wish that had been possible’ Brunetti said.

'Why?' she demanded, 'so you could ask her questions and pick at her secrets?'

'No, Signora, so that I could have talked to her about the books we both read.'

Signora Jacobs snorted in mingled disgust and disbelief.

Offended, though also intrigued by the idea that Claudia had secrets, Brunetti defended himself. 'She was one of my wife's students. We'd already talked about books.'

'Books’ she said, this time the disgust triumphant. Her anger caused her to catch her breath, and that in its turn provoked an explosion of coughing. It was a deep, humid smoker's cough, and she went on for so long that Brunetti finally went into the kitchen and brought her a glass of water. He held it out until she took it and waited as she forced it down in tiny sips and finally stopped coughing.

Thank you,' she said quite naturally and handed him the glass.

'You're welcome’ he said, with equal ease, set the glass on the desk to her left and pulled his chair across so that he could sit facing her.

'Signora’ he began, 1 don't know what you think of the police, or what you think of me, but you must believe that all I want is to find the person who killed her. I don't want to know anything that she might have wanted to remain secret, not unless it will help me do that. If such a thing is possible, I want her to rest in peace.' He looked at her all the time he was speaking, willing her to believe him.

Signora Jacobs reached for another cigarette and lit it. Again she inhaled deeply and Brunetti felt himself grow tense, waiting for another explosion of coughing. But none came. When the butt was smouldering in the blue bowl she said, 'Her family hasn't the knack.'

Confused, he asked, 'Of what?'

'Resting in peace. Doing anything in peace.'

I'm sorry, but I don't know anyone in her family, only Claudia.' He considered how to phrase the next question, then abandoned caution and asked simply, 'Would you tell me about them?'

She pulled her hands to her face and made a steeple of them, touching her mouth with her forefingers. It was an attitude usually associated with prayer, though Brunetti suspected it had been a long time since this woman had prayed for, or to, anything.

'You know who her grandfather was,' she said. Brunetti nodded. 'And her father?' This time he shook his head.

'He was born during the war, so of course his father named him Benito.' She looked at him and smiled, as though she had just told a joke, but Brunetti did not return her smile. He waited for her to continue.

'He was that kind of man, Luca.'

To Brunetti, Luca Guzzardi was a political opportunist who had died in a madhouse, so he thought it best to remain silent.

'He really believed in it all. The marching and the uniforms and the return to the glory of the Roman Empire.' She shook her head at this but did not smile. 'At least he believed it at the beginning.'

Brunetti had never known, nor had either of his parents ever told him, if his father believed in all this. He didn't know if it made a difference or, if it did, what kind. He bided his time silently, knowing that the old will always return to their subject.

'He was a beautiful man.' Signora Jacobs turned towards the sideboard that stood against the wall, gesturing with one hand to a ragged row of bleached photographs. Sensing that it was expected of him, Brunetti got to his feet and went over to examine the pictures. The first was a half-portrait of a young man, his head all but obscured by the plume-crested helmet of the Bersaglieri, an element of uniform the adult Brunetti had always found especially ludicrous. In another, the same young man held a rifle, in the one next to it, a sword, his body half draped in a long dark cloak. In each photo the pose was self-consciously belligerent, the chin thrust out, the gaze unyielding in response to the need to immortalize this moment of high patriotism. Brunetti found the poses as silly as the plumes and ribbons and epaulettes with which the young man's uniform was bedecked. So resistant was Brunetti to the lure of the military that he could rarely resist the temptation to superimpose upon men in uniform the template of New Guinean tribesmen with bones stuck through their noses, their naked bodies painted white, their penises safeguarded by metre-long bamboo sheaths. Official ceremonies and parades thus caused him a certain amount of difficulty.

He continued to look at the photographs until he judged the necessary period of time had passed, and then he returned to his seat opposite Signora Jacobs. Tell me more about him, Signora.'

Her glance was direct, its keenness touched by the faint clouding of age. 'What’s to tell? We were young, I was in love, and the future was ours.'

Brunetti permitted himself to respond to the intimacy of her remark. 'Only you were in love?'

Her smile was that of an old person, one who had left almost everything behind. ‘I told you: he was beautiful. Men like that, in the end, love only themselves.' Before he could comment, she added, ‘I didn't know that then. Or didn't want to.' She reached for another cigarette and lit it. Blowing out a long trail of smoke, she said, 'It comes to the same thing, though, doesn't it?' She turned the burning tip of the cigarette towards herself, looked at it for a moment, then said, 'The strange thing is that, even knowing this about him, it doesn't change the way I loved him. And still do’ She glanced up at him, then down at her lap. Softly, she said, 'That's why I want to give him back his good name.'

Brunetti remained silent, not wanting to interrupt her. Sensing this, she went on, 'It was all so exciting, the sense or the hope that everything would be made new. Austria had been full of it for years, and so it never occurred to me to question it. And when I saw it again here, in men like Luca and his friends, I couldn't see what it really was or what they were really like or that all it would bring us, all of us, was death and suffering.' She sighed and then added, 'Neither could Luca.'

When it began to seem as if she would not speak again, Brunetti asked, 'How long did you know him?'

She considered this, then answered, 'Six years, all through the last years of the war and his trial and then .. ‘ her voice trailed off, leaving Brunetti curious as to how she would put it. 'And then what came after,' was all she said.

'Did you see him on San Servolo?'

She cleared her throat, a tearing, wet sound that set Brunetti's teeth on edge, so deeply did it speak of illness and dark liquids. 'Yes. I went out once a week until they wouldn't let me see him any more.'

'Why was that?'

‘I think it was because they didn't want anyone to know how they were kept.'

'But why the change? If they'd let you go in the beginning, that is’ Brunetti explained.

'Because he got much worse after he was there. And after he realized he wasn't going to leave.'

'Should he have?' Brunetti asked, then clarified his question. That is, when he first went in, did he or did you think he was going to be able to leave?'

That was the agreement,' she said.

'With whom?' Brunetti asked.

'Why are you asking all of this?' she asked him.

'Because I want to understand things. About him, and about the past.'

‘Why?'

He thought that should be obvious to her. 'Because it might help.'

'About Claudia?' she asked. He wished there had been some trace of hope in her voice, but he knew she was too old to find hope in anything that followed death.

He decided to tell her the truth, rather than what he wanted to say. 'Perhaps.' Then he led her back to his original question. 'What was the agreement?'

She lit another cigarette and smoked half of it before she decided to answer. 'With the judges. That he would confess to everything and, when he had his collapse, they'd send him to San Servolo, where he could stay a year or two and when everyone had forgotten about him, he'd be released.' She finished the cigarette and stuffed it among the others in the ashtray. 'And come back to me’ she added. After a long pause, she said, That was all I wanted.'

'But what happened?'

She studied Brunetti's face, then answered, 'You're too young to know about San Servolo, about what really happened there.'

He nodded.

'I was never told. I went there one Saturday morning. I went out every week, even when all they did was tell me I couldn't see him and send me home. But that time they told me he had died.' Her voice ground to a halt, and she looked down at her lap, where her hands lay, inert. She turned them over and looked down at the smooth palms, rubbing at the left with the tips of the first three fingers of the right in what seemed to Brunetti an attempt to erase the lifeline. That's all they told me’ she went on. 'No explanation. But it could have been anything. One of the other patients could have killed him. That was always covered up, when it happened. Or it could have been one of the guards. Or it could have been typhus, for all I know. They were kept like animals, once people stopped coming to see them.' She drew her hands into tight fists and pressed them on her thighs.

'But what about the agreement with the judges?' Brunetti asked.

She smiled and laughed, almost as if she really found his question amusing. 'You, of all people, Commissario, should know better than to believe anything a judge promises you.' When Brunetti didn't argue the point, she continued. Two of the judges were Communists, so they wanted someone to be punished, and the third was the son of the Fascist Party chief in Mestre, so he had to prove that he was the purest of the pure and not at all influenced by his father's politics.'

'What about the Amnesty?' Brunetti asked, thinking of the general slate-cleaning Togliatti had orchestrated just after the end of the war, pardoning all crimes committed by either side during the Fascist era. He didn't understand how Guzzardi could have been convicted when thousands went free for having done the same things, or far worse.

The judges declared that the crime took place on Swiss territory’ she said simply. 'No amnesty would cover that.'

‘I don't understand’ Brunetti protested.

The home of the Swiss Consul. They said it was Swiss territory.'

'But that’ s absurd’ Brunetti said.

That’s not what the judges said’ she insisted. 'And the appeal court confirmed it. Legally, I did everything I could.' Her voice was truculent and had taken on that hard edge voices acquire when they are used to defend a belief rather than a fact.

Brunetti had heard enough stories from his father's friends about what went on just after the end of the war to believe that Guzzardi had been convicted because of this invented technicality. Many grudges and injuries had been racked up during the war, and many of them were paid back after the German surrender. The judges could easily have persuaded Guzzardi, or his lawyer, to accept their offer, only to renege on it once the convicted man had been taken to San Servolo.

He glanced at the old woman and saw that she sat with one fist pressed against her lips. 'When Claudia came to me,' he said, 'she wanted to know if it were possible to reverse a judgment for someone who was convicted just after the war, and when I asked her about it, she said only that it was for her grandfather, but she didn't give me much information.' He paused to see if she would respond; when she did not, he went on. 'Now after what you've said, I have a clearer understanding. If s been a long time since I studied law, Signora, but I don't think the case is very complicated. I think it's likely that a formal request to reverse this decision would be granted, but I don't think that would lead to an official proclamation of innocence.'

She watched him as he said these last sentences, and he watched her making other calculations or recalling other words. A very long time passed before she spoke. 'Are you sure of this? That there would be no official declaration, some sort of ceremony that would restore his honour and his good name?'

From what Brunetti had heard of Guzzardi, it seemed unlikely that he had ever had much honour worth saving, but Signora Jacobs was too old and too frail to be told that. 'Signora, to the best of my knowledge, there is no legal mechanism or process for that. Whoever might have told you that the possibility of such a thing exists is either misinformed or is intentionally telling you something that isn't true’ Brunetti stopped here, not willing to consider, or mention, how long the reversal of a judgment made a half a century ago would be likely to take, as it would not be achieved in this woman's lifetime. If the redemption of her grandfather's good name had been something Claudia wanted to offer to her grandmother, then her trip to Brunetti's office had been a fool's errand, but the old woman hardly needed to hear this.

She turned her head and looked over at the line of photos, and for a long time she ignored Brunetti and stared at them. She pressed her thin hps together and closed her eyes, letting her head fall forward wearily. As they sat, Brunetti decided to ask her about the events that had precipitated Guzzardi's Luciferian fall from high estate to the dark horror of San Servolo. As she raised a hand from her lap, Brunetti asked, 'What happened to the drawings?'

She had been reaching for another cigarette when he spoke, and he saw her hand hesitate in mid-air. She gave him a surprised glance, then looked back at her hand, followed through on the gesture, and took a cigarette. 'What drawings?' she asked; her look had prepared Brunetti for her protestation of ignorance.

'Someone told me that the Swiss Consul had given some drawings to the Guzzardis.'

'Sold some, you mean’ she said with a heavy emphasis on the first word.

'As you like’ Brunetti conceded and left it at that.

That was something else that happened after the war’ she said, sounding tired. 'People who had sold things tried to get them back by saying they'd been forced to sell them. Whole collections had to be given back by people who had bought them in good faith’ She managed to sound indignant.

Brunetti had no doubt that things like this had happened, but he had read enough to know that most of the injustice had been suffered by those who, from timidity or outright menace, had been led to sell or sign away their possession. He saw no point, however, in disputing this with Signora Jacobs. 'Certo, certo’ Brunetti mumbled.

Suddenly he felt his wrist imprisoned by her thin fingers. ‘It’s the truth’ she whispered, her voice tight and passionate. 'When he was on trial they all got in touch with the judges, saying he had cheated them out of this or that, demanding their things back’ She yanked savagely on his hand, pulling him closer until his face was a hand's breath from hers. 'It was all lies. Then and now. All of the things are his, legally his. No one can trick me.' Brunetti breathed in the raw stench of tobacco and bad teeth, saw something fierce flare up in her eyes. 'Luca could never have done something like that. He could never have done anything dishonourable.' Her voice had the measured cadence of one who had said the same thing many times, as if repetition would force it to be true.

There was nothing to be said here, so he waited, though he moved slowly back from her, waiting to hear what her next defence would be.

It seemed, however, that Signora Jacobs had said all she was going to, for she reached over for another cigarette, lit it, and puffed at it as though it were the only thing of interest in the room. At last, when the cigarette was finished and she had dropped it on top of the pile of butts, she said, without bothering to turn to him, 'You can go now.'

19

Walking home, Brunetti played back in his mind the conversation with Signora Jacobs. He was puzzled by the paradox between her bleak observation that Guzzardi was capable of loving only himself and the profundity of the love she still felt for him. Love rendered people foolish, he knew, sometimes more than that, but it usually provided them with the anaesthesia necessary to blind them to the contradictions in their own behaviour. Not so Signora Jacobs, who seemed utterly devoid of illusions about her former lover. How sad, to be as clear-eyed about your weakness as helpless to resist it. Guzzardi had been handsome, but it was a kind of slick-haired, matinee idol beauty that was today usually associated with pimps and hairdressers rather than with those men which current taste defined as handsome, most of whom looked to Brunetti like nonentities in suits or little blond boys bent on keeping puberty at bay.

But the signs of long-term love were there. She had been eager to speak to Guzzardi, had certainly wanted Brunetti to admire his photo, a strange thing to expect one man to do of another. She had spoken of his trial and of his time - it must have been a terrible time - in San Servolo with visible pain, and there was no disguising the effect it had upon her, even now, after so much time, to speak of his death.

She had said the Guzzardis had no knack of resting in peace. Recalling that remark, he remembered that she had made it in reference to Luca Guzzardi's son, Benito, but then the conversation had sheered away from him, and so Brunetti had never learned in what way he had failed to find peace. And if there had been a son, and there had been Claudia, then there was a mother. Claudia had said her mother's mother was German, and had referred to her own in the past tense; Lucia told him Claudia had said her father was dead; Signora Gallante said that, although Claudia spoke of her mother as gone, the old woman did not have the sense that this meant she was dead. She could, Claudia's mother, be anywhere from her late thirties to her fifties and anywhere in the world, but all he knew was that her name was Leonardo, hardly a German surname.

He allowed his mind to run over the available sources of information. With Claudia's date of birth, they could find out where in the city her mother had been resident when she was born. But Claudia had no Venetian accent, so she could have been born on the mainland, indeed, even in some other country. His thoughts keeping pace with his steps, he realized that all of this information would be easily available either at the university or in the Ufficio Anagrafe, where she would have to be registered. She was so young that all of the information would be computerized and thus readily available to Signorina Elettra. He glanced up and smiled to himself, pleased te have found something else with which to engage Signorina Elettra and thus remind her of how essential she was to the successful running of the Questura.

Claudia's grandmother had gone off with a British soldier after the war, taking Claudia's father with her. How, then, had the girl ended up in Venice, speaking Italian with no trace of accent, and how had it happened that she had come to think of Signora Jacobs as her adoptive grandmother? Much as he told himself that all speculation on these matters was futile, Brunetti could not keep his imagination from worrying at them.

These thoughts accompanied him home, but as he turned into the final flight of steps leading up to the apartment, he made a conscious effort to leave them on the stairway until the following morning took him back into the world of death.

This decision proved a wise one, for there would have been no room for the people who filled his thoughts at a table that already held not only his family but Sara Paganuzzi, Raffi's girlfriend, and Michela Fabris, a schoolfriend of Chiara's, come to spend the night.

Because Marco had caused him to miss his lunch, Brunetti felt justified in accepting a second portion of the spinach and ricotta crepes that Paola had made as a first course. He was too busy sating his hunger to say much as he ate them, and so talk broke into two sections, like the chorus in a Scarlatti oratorio: Paola talked with Chiara and Michela about a movie actor whose name Brunetti didn't recognize but with whom his only daughter seemed to be hopelessly besotted; while Raffi and Sara conversed in the impenetrable code of young love. Brunetti remembered having once been able to speak it.

As his hunger diminished, he found himself better able to pay attention to what was going on around him, as though tuning in to a radio station. ‘I think he's wonderful,' Michela sighed, encouraging Brunetti to change stations and tune in to Sara, but listening was no easier on that channel, save that the object of her adoration was his only son.

It was Paola who saved him by bringing to the table an enormous frying pan filled with stewed rabbit with what looked to him, as she set it down in the centre of the table, like olives. 'And walnuts?' he asked, pointing to some small tan chunks that lay on the top.

'Yes,' Paola said, reaching for Michela's plate.

The girl passed it to her but asked, sounding rather nervous, 'Is that rabbit, Signora Brunetti?'

'No, it's chicken, Michela,' she said with an easy smile, placing a thigh on the girl's plate.

Chiara started to say something, but Brunetti surprised her into silence by reaching over to pick up her plate, which he passed to Paola. 'And what else is in it?' Brunetti asked.

'Oh, some celery for taste, and the usual spices.'

Passing the plate to Chiara, Brunetti asked Michela, 'What movie were you and Chiara talking about?'

As she told him, not forgetting to extol the charms of the young actor who held her in thrall, Brunetti ate his rabbit, smiling and nodding at Michela as he tried to determine whether Paola had put a bay leaf in, as well as rosemary. Raffi and Sara ate quietly, and Paola came back to the table with a platter of small roasted potatoes and zucchini cooked with thin slices of almonds. Michela turned to the two previous films which had catapulted her actor to stardom, and Brunetti served himself another piece of rabbit.

As she spoke, Michela ate her way through everything, pausing only when Paola slipped another spoonful of meat and gravy on to her plate, at which point she said, 'The chicken is delicious, Signora.'

Paola smiled her thanks.

After dinner, when Chiara and Michela were back in her room, giggling at a volume achievable only by teenage girls, Brunetti kept Paola company as she did the dishes. He sipped at nothing more than a drop of plum liquor while Paola slipped the dishes into the drying rack above the sink.

'Why wouldn't she eat rabbit?' he finally asked.

'Kids are like that. They don't like to eat animals they can be sentimental about’ Paola explained with every indication of sympathy for the idea.

‘It doesn't stop Chiara from eating veal’ Brunetti said.

'Or lamb, for that matter’ Paola agreed.

Then why wouldn't Michela want to eat rabbit?' Brunetti asked doggedly.

'Because a rabbit is cuddly and something every city child can see or touch, even if if s only in a pet shop. To touch the other ones you have to go to a farm, so they aren't really real.'

'You think that's why we don't eat dogs and cats?' Brunetti asked. 'Because we have them around all the time and they become our friends?'

'We don't eat snake, either’ Paola said.

‘Yes, but that's because of Adam and Eve. Lots of people have no trouble eating them. The Chinese, for example.'

'And we eat eel’ she agreed. She came and stood beside him, reached down for his glass, and took a sip.

'Why did you lie to her?' he finally asked.

'Because she's a nice girl, and I didn't want her to have to eat something she didn't want to eat or to embarrass herself by saying she didn't want to eat it.'

'But it was delicious’ he insisted.

'If that was a compliment, thank you’ Paola said, handing him back the glass. 'Besides, she'll get over it, or she'll forget about it as she gets older.'

'And eat rabbit?'

'Probably.'

‘I don't think I have much of a feeling for young girls’ he finally said.

'For which I suppose I should be very grateful’ she answered.

The next morning he went directly to Signorina Elettra's office, where he found her engaged in conversation with Lieutenant Scarpa. As the lieutenant never failed to bring out the venom in his superior's secretary, Brunetti said a general good morning intended for both of them and moved over to stand by the window, waiting for them to finish their conversation.

'I'm not sure you're authorized to take files from the archives,' the lieutenant said.

Would you like me to come and ask for your authorization each time I want to consult a file, Lieutenant?' she asked with her most dangerous smile.

'Of course not. But you have to follow procedures.'

Which procedures would those be, Lieutenant?' she asked, picking up a pen and moving a notepad closer to her.

'You have to ask for authorization.'

‘Yes, and from whom?'

'From the person who is authorized to give it,' he said, his voice no longer pleasant.

'Yes, but can you tell me who that person is?'

'It's whoever is listed on the personnel directive that details the chain of command and responsibility.'

'And where might I find a copy of the directive?' she asked, tapping the point of her pen on the pad, but lightly and only once.

'In the file of directives,' the lieutenant said, voice even closer to the edge of his control.

'Ah,' Signorina Elettra said with a happy smile. 'And who can authorize me to consult that file?'

Scarpa turned and walked from her office, pausing at the door as if eager to slam it but then, aware of Brunetti's bland presence, resisting the temptation.

Brunetti moved over to her desk. 'I've warned you about him, Signorina’ he said, managing to keep any hint of disapproval out of his voice.

‘I know, I know,' she said, pursing her lips and letting out an exasperated sigh. 'But the temptation is too strong. Every time he comes in here telling me what I have to do, I can't resist the impulse to go right for his jugular.'

It will only cause you trouble’ he admonished.

She shrugged this away. 'It's like having a second dessert, I suppose. You know you shouldn't, but it just tastes so good you can't resist.'

Brunetti, who had had his own fair share of trouble with the lieutenant, would hardly have chosen that simile, but his nature was not as combative as Signorina Elettra's and so he let it pass. Besides, any sign of aggressiveness on Signorina Elettra's part was to be welcomed as evidence of her general return to good spirits, however paradoxical that might seem to anyone who didn't know her, so Brunetti asked, 'What have you learned about Guzzardi?'

'I told you I was looking into his ownership of houses when he died, didn't I?'

He nodded.

'Only he didn't own them at the time of his death. Ownership was transferred to Hedi Jacobs when he was in jail, awaiting trial.'

'Interestinger and interestinger’ Brunetti said in English. Transferred how?'

'Sold to her. It was all perfectly legal; the papers are all in order.'

‘What about his will?'

'I found a copy at the College of Notaries.'

'How did you know where to look?'

She gave her most seraphic smile. There's only one notary who's been named in all of this’ she said, but she said it modestly.

'Filipetto?' Brunetti asked.

The smile returned.

'He was Guzzardi's notary?'

'The will was recorded in his register soon after Guzzardi's death’ she said, no longer able to keep the glow of pride from her voice. 'And when Filipetto retired, all of his records were sent to the college, where I found it.' She opened her top drawer and drew out a photocopy of a document typed in the now archaic letters of a manual typewriter.

Brunetti took it from her and went over to the light of the window to read. Guzzardi declared that all of his possessions were to pass directly to his son, Benito and, in the event that his son should predecease him, to his son's heirs. It could not have been more simple. No mention was made of Hedi Jacobs, and no indication was given as to what his estate might consist of. 'His wife? Is there any sign she contested this?' he asked, holding up the document.

There's no record in Filipetto's files that she did.' Before Brunetti could ask, she added, 'And that probably means that she divorced him before he died or didn't know or didn't care that he did die.'

Brunetti went back to her desk. The son?'

The only mention of him is what you were told, sir, that his mother took him to England after the war.'

'Nothing more?' Brunetti couldn't disguise his irritation that a person could so easily disappear.

'I've sent a request to Rome, but all I have to give them is his name, not even an exact date of birth.' They shared a moment's despair at the likelihood of getting any sort of a response from Rome. 'I've also contacted a friend in London,' she went on, 'and asked him to check the records there. It seems the British have a system that works.'

'When can you expect an answer?' Brunetti asked.

'Long before I can expect anything from Rome, certainly.'

'I'd like you to contact the university and the Ufficio Anagrafe and see what information they have about Claudia Leonardo. Her parents' names should be listed, perhaps their dates of birth, which you might send to London to see if that will help.' He thought of the German grandmother, but before he asked Signorina Elettra to begin to investigate the possibilities that created, he would see what there was to find here in the city and in London.

As he went back upstairs he remembered a passage from an ancient poem Paola had insisted on reading to him years ago. The lines described, if he recalled correctly, a dragon that sat on top of what the poet described as treasure trove, breathing fire and destruction at all who came near. He wasn't sure why it came to him, but he had a strange vision of Signora Jacobs nesting upon her treasures, willing destruction upon anyone who tried to extract anything from her hoard.

Even before he got to his office, he changed his mind and went back downstairs and out of the Questura. It was rash, he knew, and he shouldn't go back to Signora Jacobs's so soon after being dismissed, but she was the only person who could answer his questions about the treasures that surrounded her. He should have left word where he was going; he should have sat at his desk and answered the phone and initialled papers; no doubt he should also have reprimanded Signorina Elettra for her lack of deference to Lieutenant Scarpa.

Given the hour and the crowds of tourists who flooded the boats, he decided to walk, sure that he could avoid the worst gaggles of them until he neared Rialto and equally certain that their numbers would decrease again once he got past the pescheria. So it proved, but the brief period he spent pushing and evading his way through the streets between San Lio and the fish market soured his humour and brought his ever-simmering dislike of tourists to the boil. Why were they so slow and fat and lethargic? Why did they all have to get in his way? Why couldn't they, for God's sake, learn to walk properly in a city and not moon about like people at a country fair asked to judge the fattest pig?

His mood lifted as soon as he was free of them and moving through empty streets toward Campo San Boldo. He rang the bell, but there was no answer. Remembering a technique Vianello had employed to awaken people who fell asleep with the television on too loud, he pressed his thumb against the bell and left it there while he counted to a hundred. He counted slowly. There was still no answer.

The man in the tobacco shop had said he took the cigarettes up to her, so Brunetti went back, showed his warrant card and asked if the man had a key to the apartment.

The man behind the counter seemed not at all interested that the police wanted to speak to Signora Jacobs. He reached into his cash drawer and pulled out a single key. 'All I have is the key to the portone downstairs. She always let me into the apartment.'

Brunetti thanked him and said he'd bring the key back. He used it to open the heavy ground floor door and went up the steps that led to her apartment. He rang the bell, but there was no answer. He knocked on the door, but still there was no sound from inside. He employed Vianello's technique again.

Later, he realized that he knew, in the silence that expanded across the landing when he took his thumb off the bell: knew that the door would be unlocked and would open when he turned the handle. And he supposed he also knew that he would find her dead, fallen or thrown from her chair, a thin thread of blood trailing from her nose. If anything surprised him, it was to discover that he had been right, and when he realized he felt nothing stronger than that, he tried to trace the cause. He accepted then that he hadn't liked this woman, though the habit of compassion for old people had been strong enough to disguise his dislike and convince him that what he felt was the usual pity and sympathy.

He pulled himself from these reflections and called the Questura, asking to speak to Vianello: he explained what had happened and asked him to organize a crew to come to the apartment.

When Vianello hung up, Brunetti clasped his hands behind his back, embarrassed at having got this idea from a television crime show, and began to walk through the apartment.

He moved towards the back and found that, aside from the room in which she had received him, there was only a bedroom, plus a kitchen and a bath. Both of these surprised him by being spotless, a fact which spoke of the existence of someone who came to clean.

The bedroom walls held what looked like celestial maps, scores of them of all sizes, framed in black and looking as if they came from the same collection or the hand of the same framer. Some were coloured in pastels, some in the original black and white. He flicked on the light to study them better. From knee height to a metre below the very tall ceiling, they hung in disorderly rows. He recognized what had to be a Cellarius, counted the ones above and below it and realized there were two complete sets. Only an expert could put a price on them, but Brunetti knew they would be worth hundreds of millions. There was a single, monk-like bed, a tall armadio against the wall, and a nightstand beside the bed that held a reading lamp, a few bottles of pills and a glass of water on a tray and, when Brunetti moved close enough to read the title, a German bible. A threadbare silk carpet stood beside the bed, a pair of slippers neatly tucked under the hem of the bedspread. There was no sign or scent that she smoked in this room. The wardrobe held only two long skirts and another woollen shawl.

Back in the living room he used a credit card to slide open the bottom drawer of the desk. Then, working up from the bottom, he slid them all open and looked at, but did not touch, the contents. One drawer held neat piles of bills, another what looked like photograph albums, stacked on one another in diminishing order of size; the top one held more bills and a few newspaper clippings.

Brunetti, staring around the room, didn't know whether to call it spartan or monastic.

He went back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. A litre of milk, a piece of butter inside a covered glass dish, the heel of a loaf of bread. The cabinets held just as little: a jar of honey, some salt, butter, tea bags and a tin of ground coffee. Either the woman didn't eat or her meals were brought to her in the same way as were her cigarettes.

In the bathroom there was a plastic container for false teeth, a flannel nightgown hanging on the back of the door, some toiletries, and four bottles of pills in the cabinet. Returning to the living room, he chose not to look at the dead woman, knowing he would have too much of that once the scene of crime team arrived.

He moved to the window and stood with his back against it and tried to make some sense out of what he saw. The room contained, he was sure, billions of lire in art works: the Cezanne that stood to the left of the door opposite him might be worth that just by itself. He studied the walls, looking for a paler rectangle that would speak of a newly empty space. No thief, no matter how ignorant a thief, could fail to see the value of the things in this room; yet there was no sign that anything had been removed, nor was there any indication that Signora Jacobs had died of anything other than a heart attack.

He knew, from long experience, the danger of imposing preconceived notions on to an investigation; it was one of the first things he warned new inspectors to guard against. Yet here he was, prepared to reject any evidence, no matter how persuasive, that suggested accidental or natural death. His bones, his radar, his very soul suspected that Signora Jacobs had been murdered, and though there was no sign of violence, he had little doubt that the killer was the same person who had murdered her adoptive granddaughter. He remembered Galileo and his response to the threats marshalled against him. 'Eppur si muove,' he whispered and went to the door to meet Vianello and the other officers.

Logic dictates that a task should become easier, and its execution faster, the more often it is performed. Thus the examination of the locus of death should be performed with greater speed each time it is necessary, especially in a case such as this, where an old woman lies dead beside her easy chair, with no sign of violence and no sign of forced entry. Or perhaps, Brunetti reflected, the passing of time is a completely subjective experience, and the photographers and fingerprint technicians were moving with great alacrity. Certainly, as he asked them to photograph and dust, he was aware of their unspoken scepticism at his treating this as a crime scene. What could be easier and more self-explanatory: an old woman, sprawled on the floor, a bottle of pills rolled halfway across the room from her?

Rizzardi, when he showed up, appeared puzzled that he, and not the woman's doctor, had been called, but he was too good a friend of Brunetti's to question this. Instead, he pronounced her dead, examined her superficially, said it looked as though she had died the night before, and gave no further sign that he found Brunetti's request for an autopsy strange.

'If I'm asked to justify it?' the doctor asked, getting to his feet.

.'I'll get a magistrate to order it, don't worry,' Brunetti answered.

'I'll let you know,' the doctor said, bending to brush ash off the knees of his trousers.

Thanks,' Brunetti replied, glad to be spared even the doctor's passive curiosity. He knew he could not find the words with which to describe what he felt about Signora Jacobs's death, and he realized how weak any attempt to explain would be.

It could have been hours later that Brunetti found himself alone in the apartment with Vianello, but the light that came in from the windows was still late morning light. He looked at his watch, astonished to see that it was not yet one o'clock and that all of this interior time had passed, and all of these things had happened.

'Do you want to go for lunch?' Brunetti asked, conscious as he addressed Vianello in the more familiar 'tu' of how comfortable it felt. There were few people on the force with whom he would more like to make this grammatical declaration of equality.

'Well, we're not going to eat what's in the kitchen, are we?' Vianello asked with a smile then added, serious, 'Let’s have a look around here first, if you like.'

Brunetti grunted his agreement but stayed where he was, studying the room and thinking.

'What are we looking for?' Vianello asked him.

'I've no idea. Something about the paintings and the other things,' he said, with a broad wave that took in all the objects in the room. 'A copy of her will or an indication of where it might be. Name of a notary or a receipt from one.'

'Papers, then?' Vianello asked, switching on the light in the corridor and placing himself with his back to one of the shelves of books. At Brunetti's muttered agreement, Vianello reached up to the first book on the top shelf and pulled it down. Holding it in his right hand, he flipped it open with the left and leafed through all of the pages from the back to the front, then switched it to the other hand and leafed through it the other way. Satisfied that nothing lurked between its pages, he stooped and placed it on the floor to the right of the bookcase and pulled down the next book.

Brunetti took the papers from the top drawer of the desk through to the kitchen and set them on the table. He pulled out a chair, sat, and drew the stack of papers towards him.

Some time later - Brunetti didn't even bother to look at his watch to see how long it had been - Vianello came into the kitchen, went to the sink and washed a film of dust from his hands, then ran the water until it was cold and drank two glasses.

Neither man spoke. Later, Brunetti heard Vianello go into the bathroom and use the toilet. Mechanically, he read through every receipt and piece of paper, placing them to one side after he had done so. When he was finished, he went back to the desk and took the papers from the bottom drawer and sat down to read. Arranged in precise chronological order, they told the story of the occasional sale of one of the apartments owned by Signora Jacobs, the first more than forty years ago. Every twelve years or so, she sold an apartment. There was no bank book, so Brunetti could assume only that payment had been made in cash and kept in the apartment. He took a letter from the gas company and turned it over. Assuming that the declared price of a house, as was usual, was something approximating half of the real price, Brunetti quickly calculated that the money from the sale of each house should have lasted from eight to ten years, given what he could see of her bills for utilities and rent. He found it strange that a woman who had once owned several apartments would live in a rented one, but he had the rent receipts to prove it.

He came upon a small stack of receipts, all from the Patmos Gallery in Lausanne, all initialled 'EL', and all written for the sale of what was described as 'objects of value'.

He got to his feet then and went back to the corridor, where he found Vianello almost finished with the second bookshelf. Hillocks of books drifted up the walls to both sides of each bookcase; in one place, an avalanche had fallen across the corridor.

Vianello saw him when he came in. 'Nothing,' he said. 'Not even a used vaporetto ticket or a matchbook cover.'

'I've found the source of Claudia's Leonardo's allowance,' Brunetti said.

Vianello's glance was sharp, curious.

'Receipts from the Patmos Gallery for "objects of value"‘ he explained.

'Are you sure?' Vianello asked, already familiar with the name of the gallery.

'The first receipt is dated one month before the first deposit in the girl's account.'

Vianello gave a nod of approval.

'Here, let me help,' Brunetti said, clambering over a low mound of books and reaching down to the bottom shelf. Side by side, they flicked through the remaining books until the bookcase was empty, but they found nothing in the books other than what had been placed there by the authors.

Brunetti closed the last one and set it down on its side on the shelf at his elbow. 'That's enough. Let's get something to eat.'

Vianello was not at all inclined to disagree. They left the apartment, Brunetti using the tobacconist's key to lock the door behind them.

20

After a disappointing lunch, the two men walked back to the Questura, occasionally suggesting to one another some connection that had yet to be explored or some question that remained unanswered. No matter how conscientiously Rizzardi might seek evidence that Signor Jacobs had been the victim of violence, in the absence of concrete evidence, no judge would authorize an investigation of her death; much less would Patta, who was reluctant to authorize anything unless the last words of the dying victim had been the name of the killer.

They separated when they entered the Questura, and Brunetti went up to Signorina Elettra's office. As he walked in, she looked up and said, 'I heard.'

'Rizzardi said it might have been a heart attack.'

‘I don't believe it, either’ she said, not even bothering to ask his opinion. 'What now?'

'We wait to see the results of the autopsy, and then we wait to see who inherits the things in her apartment.'

'Are they really that wonderful?' she asked, having heard him talk of them.

'Not to be believed. If they're real, then it was one of the best collections in the city.'

It doesn't make any sense, does it? To live like that, in the midst of all that wealth.'

The place was clean, and someone brought her cigarettes and food,' Brunetti answered. 'It's not as if she was living in a pit.'

'No, I suppose not. But we tend to think that, well, we tend to think that people will live differently if they have the money.'

'Maybe that's how she wanted to live,' Brunetti said. 'Possibly,' Signorina Elettra conceded reluctantly. 'Perhaps it was enough for her to be able to look at those things,' he suggested.

'Would it be? For you?' she asked.

'I'm not eighty-three’ Brunetti said, then, changing the subject, he asked, 'What about London?'

She handed him a single sheet of paper. 'As I said, the British are much better at these things.'

Reading quickly, Brunetti learned that Benito Guzzardi, born in Venice in 1942, had died of lung cancer in Manchester in 1995. Claudia's birth had been registered in London twenty-one years ago, but only her mother's name, Petra Leonhard, was listed. There was no listing for her mother's marriage or death. That explains the last name, doesn't it?' he asked.

Signorina Elettra handed him a copy of Claudia's application to the university. 'It was easy enough. She simply presented documents with the name Leonhard and wrote it down as Leonardo.'

Before Brunetti could inquire, Signorina Elettra said, 'The name of her aunt was listed on her passport as the person to contact in case of accident.'

The one in England?'

‘Yes. I called her. She hadn't been notified of Claudia's death. No one here had thought to do it.' 'How did she take it?'

'Very badly. She said Claudia had spent summers with her since she was a little girl.'

'Is she the mother's sister or the father's?'

'No’ she said with a confused shake of her head at such things, 'it's like the grandmother. She's not really an aunt at all, but Claudia always called her that. She was the mother's best friend.'

'Was? Is she dead?'

'No. She's disappeared.' Before Brunetti could ask, she explained, 'But not in the sense we'd usually use. Nothing bad's happened to her. The woman said she's just one of those free spirits who come and go through life as they please.' She stopped there and then added her own editorial comment, 'Leaving other people to pick up behind them.' When Brunetti remained silent, she continued. The last this woman heard from her was a few months after the father's death, a postcard from Bhutan, asking her to keep an eye on Claudia.'

Suddenly protective of the dead girl and outraged that her mother could have discarded her like this, Brunetti demanded, 'Keep an eye on her? How old was she - fifteen, sixteen? What was she supposed to do while her mother was off finding inner harmony or whatever it is people do in Bhutan?'

As this is the sort of question to which there is no answer, Elettra waited for his anger to pass away a bit and then said, The aunt told me Claudia lived with her parents until her father's death but then chose to come back to Italy, to a private school in Rome. That's when she got in touch with Signora Jacobs, I think. In the summers she went back to England and lived with the aunt.'

Listening to her explain Claudia's story calmed him somewhat, and after a time he said, 'Claudia told me her parents never married but that the father accepted parentage’

Signorina Elettra nodded. That's what the woman told me.'

'So Claudia was Guzzardi's heir,' Brunetti said.

'Heir to very little, it would seem,' Signorina Elettra said. Head tilted to one side, she looked up at him and added, ‘Unless...'

'I don't know what the law is regarding someone who dies in possession of objects the ownership of which is unclear,' Brunetti said, reading her mind. 'Then again, it's not normal to question the ownership of the things that are in a person's home when they die.'

'Not normally, no,' Signorina Elettra agreed. 'But in this case ...' She allowed her voice to trail off in an invocation of possibility.

There was nothing in her papers, no bills of sale for any of it.' Brunetti said.

She followed the current of his thoughts. 'Her notary or lawyer might have them.'

Brunetti shook his head: there had been nothing from either a lawyer or a notary among her papers, and the search through the pages of the books had proven entirely fruitless. It was Signorina Elettra who gave voice to the consequence of this thought. 'If there's no will, then it goes to her family’

'If she has a family.'

And in their absence, both realized, everything would go to the state. They were Italian and thus believed that nothing worse could happen to a person: everything they possessed, doomed to fall into the hands of faceless bureaucrats and plundered before being sent for storage, cataloguing and shifting, until what little survived the winnowing was eventually sold or forgotten in the cellar of some museum.

'Might as well just put it all out on to the street,' Signorina Elettra said.

Though in complete agreement, Brunetti did not think it fitting to admit this, so he asked, instead, What about Claudia's phone calls to Filipetto?'

1 haven't printed them out yet, sir,' she said, ‘But if you'll have a look, you can see’ She touched some keys and letters flicked across the screen of her computer. The screen rolled to black for an instant, then came back to life filled with short columns of numbers. Signorina Elettra tapped her finger against the heading of each and explained: 'Number called, date, time, and length of call. Those are her calls to Filipetto,' she said, then touched another key, and further columns inserted themselves below. 'And these are the ones from his house to hers’ She gave him a moment to study the numbers and then asked, 'Strange, isn't it, seven calls between people who didn't know one another?'

She punched more keys, and new numbers replaced the old ones.

What are those?' Brunetti asked.

The calls between her number and the Library. I haven't had time to separate them yet, so they're mixed in together in chronological order’

He studied the column of figures. The first three were from her number to the Library. Then one from the Library. One from her. Then, after a gap of three weeks, a series of calls from the Library began. They were repeated at four- or five-day intervals and went on for six weeks. At first, Brunetti assumed they must be calls from Claudia to her flatmate, but then he saw that some of the calls were made after nine at night, a strange time for anyone to be in the Library. He studied the final column, which gave the length of each call, and found that, although the later calls in the series had lasted for five or ten minutes, the last one was very short, less than a minute.

Signorina Elettra had been studying the list along with him and said, 'I've had it happen to me, so I recognize the pattern.' 'Harassment?' Brunetti asked, forced to use the English

word and struck by its absence from Italian. Does that mean we lack the concept, as well as the word? he wondered. ‘I’d say so’

'Can you print me a copy of the first ones?' he asked, and at her nod, he explained, 'I think I'll go and speak to Doctor Filipetto again. See if the list refreshes his memory.'

The woman Filipetto called Eleonora let Brunetti in again and, without bothering to inquire as to the reason for his visit, led him into the study. Had Brunetti been asked, he would have sworn that the old man had not moved since they had spoken. As they had the last time, papers and magazines covered the surface in front of him.

'Ah, Commissario’ Filipetto said with every suggestion of pleasure, 'you've come back.' He waved Brunetti forward and held up a restraining hand to the woman, gesturing for her, however, not to leave the room. Brunetti was vaguely conscious of her presence behind him, somewhere near the door.

‘Yes, sir, I've come to ask you a few more questions about that girl,' Brunetti said as he took the chair the old man indicated.

'Girl?' Filipetto asked, sounding befuddled; to Brunetti, it seemed intentionally so. ‘Yes, sir, Claudia Leonardo’

Filipetto stared up at Brunetti and blinked a few times. 'Leonardo?' he asked. 'Is this someone I know?'

That's what I've come to ask about, sir. I came here a few days ago and you said you'd never heard of her.'

That's true’ Filipetto said, a slight irritation audible in his voice. 'I've never heard the name.'

'Are you sure of that, sir?' Brunetti asked blandly.

'Of course I'm sure of that’ Filipetto insisted. 'Why do you question my word?'

‘I’m not questioning your word, sir; I'm merely questioning the accuracy of your memory’

'And what is that supposed to mean?' the old man demanded.

'Nothing at all, sir, just that we sometimes forget things, all of us.'

'I'm an old man... Filipetto began, but then stopped, and Brunetti watched as a transformation took place. Filipetto hunched down in his chair; his mouth fell open and one hand scrabbled over the surface of the desk to rest on the other one. 'I don't remember everything, you know,' Filipetto said in a voice that was suddenly high pitched, the voice of a querulous old man.

Brunetti felt like Odysseus' dog, the only one able to penetrate his master's deceit and disguise. Had he not watched Filipetto deliberately turn himself into a feeble old man, compassion would have prevented his asking further questions. Even so, guile stood upon his tongue and stopped him from mentioning the record of the calls to and from Claudia Leonardo.

With a smile he worked hard to make appear as warm as it was credulous, Brunetti asked, 'Then you might have known her, sir?'

Filipetto raised his right hand and waved it weakly in the air. 'Oh, perhaps, perhaps. I don't remember much any more.' He raised his head and called to the woman near the door, 'Eleonora, did I know anyone called ...' He turned to Brunetti and asked, as if she had not been perfectly able to hear Claudia's name, 'What did you say her name was?'

'Claudia Leonardo,' Brunetti supplied neutrally.

The woman's response was a long time in coming. Finally she said, ‘Yes, I think the name is familiar, but I can't remember why it is I know it.' She said no more and didn't ask Brunetti to tell her who Claudia was.

Though it angered him to have been outmanoeuvred, Brunetti felt a grudging admiration for the way in which Filipetto had capitalized on his age and apparent infirmity.

The phone records, now, could do no more than prompt his old man's memory into recalling that, yes, yes, now that Brunetti mentioned it, perhaps he had spoken to some young girl, but he couldn't remember what it was they'd talked about.

Defeat would be no less decisive, Brunetti realized, if he were to stay to ask more questions. He put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. Leaning across the desk, he shook Filipetto's hand and said, 'Thank you for your help, Notaio. I'm sorry to have bothered you with these questions.' Filipetto's grasp had actually grown weaker; his hand felt as insubstantial as a handful of dry spaghetti. The old man, speechless, could do no more than nod in Brunetti's direction.

Brunetti turned towards the door, and the woman stepped aside to let him pass. He stopped at the end of the hall, just at the door of the apartment. With no preparation, he said, 'May I ask what your relationship to Dottor Filipetto is?'

She gave him a long, steady look and answered, 'I'm his daughter.'

Brunetti thanked her, did not offer to shake her hand, and left.

21

Aware that any decision concerning what he thought of as Signora Jacobs's murder must wait upon Rizzardi's report, Brunetti found himself purposeless and without the will to do any specific thing. He did not want to go back to work, nor did he want to begin to question the people who lived near the old woman; least of all did he want to think about Claudia Leonardo and her death. He walked.

He set off from Filipetto's and cut back toward San Lorenzo, but when he reached the bridge in front of the Greek church his courage failed him and he ducked into the underpass rather than continue to the Questura. He passed through Campo Santa Maria Formosa and saw what looked like a tribe of Kurds camped in front of the abandoned palazzo, their meagre possessions spread in front of them as they squatted and stooped on bright-coloured carpets. The men wore sober suits and black skullcaps, but the women's long skirts and scarves flared out in orange, yellow, and red. Their uninterest in passers-by seemed total; all they lacked were campfires and donkeys; they could just as easily have been in the middle of the plains.

He crossed Santi Apostoli, continued past Standa, then turned to the right and back toward the waters of the laguna. He passed the Misericordia and the stone relief of the turbaned merchant leading his camel, and then cut right again, walking by instinct until he came out at the vaporetto stop at Madonna dell' Orto. A vaporetto was just pulling off to the right, but when the pilot saw him he threw the motor into idle, then reverse, and backed up to the embarcadero, engine throbbing a command to step abroad. The sailor slid the metal bars back and Brunetti jumped on, although he had had no intention of taking a boat.

As the vaporetto pulled into Fondamente Nuove he made a decision and switched to another one that was leaving for the cemetery. He got off there, the one man among a crowd of women, most of them old and all of them carrying flowers. As he had done since he started walking, he moved forward by instinct alone, as if his feet were entirely in charge of the rest of his body.

He turned right through the cloister, then went up and down low flights of steps until he stood in front of the marble plaque behind which rested his father's bones. He read the name and the dates. Brunetti was almost as old as his father had been when he died, and he had as many children. It had always been his mother's custom to come out here to discuss things with her husband after his death, though he had not, even when living, been much help to her in deciding anything. Once Brunetti had asked her about it, and she said only that it helped her to feel close to someone again. Years passed before he accepted the bleak criticism of her remark, but by then his mother had slipped through the hands of love and concern and drifted into the waters of the senile and the mad, and so he had never been able to ask her pardon or make it up to her.

The flowers resting in a small silver vase below the plaque were fresh, but Brunetti had no idea who might have left them: perhaps his brother or his sister-in-law? Most assuredly it had not been their children or his own: young people seemed to have no interest in the cult of the dead, and so the graves of his generation would probably be left flowerless and unvisited. Once Paola was gone, who would come to talk to him here? Had anyone questioned him or had Brunetti thought to question himself, he would have attributed his assumption that he would be the first to die to a wealth of statistics: men died first, and women lived on alone. But the real answer probably lay in some fundamental difference in their characters: Paola usually opted for light and the forward leap into life, while his spirit felt more comfortable one step back from the stage, where things were less well illuminated and he could study them and adjust his vision before deciding what to do.

He placed his right hand on the letters of his father's name. He stood for a moment, then glanced to his left, at the long row of tombs lined up in their orderly ranks, one on top of the other, each occupying the same amount of space. Soon enough, both Claudia Leonardo and Signora Jacobs would take their places here. In the neatly tended field behind him stood the marble tombs of the wealthy, enormous monuments in every shape and style. He thought of Ivan Ilych, advising his family to forgo, and he thought of Ozymandias, King of Kings, but he thought most of how little real emotion he felt standing here, at his father's tomb. He left the cemetery and took the boat back to Fondamente Nuove.

Brunetti had to search for a public phone with which to call Vianello and tell him he wouldn't be back in the office that afternoon. As was usual in an age when everyone was encouraged to have a telefonino, it proved impossible to find a public phone, so Brunetti ended up going into a bar and ordering a coffee he didn't want in order to justify using their phone. After he spoke to Vianello he called home, but there was no one there, just his own voice giving the phone number and asking him to leave a message.

In a state of complete inattention, Brunetti passed through the city and towards his home, almost dizzy with the desire to be there. So glad was he to arrive that he actually leaned against the front door after he closed it, though the action made him feel like the heroine of some cheap melodrama, relieved at having escaped the menaces of the slavering suitor who still lurked beyond the door.

Eyes closed, he said aloud, 'God, I'll be hiding under the bed next.'

From his left, he heard Paola say, 'If this is the first sign of madness, I'm not sure I'm ready for it.' He turned and saw her standing at the door to her study, a book in her hand, smiling.

‘I doubt it's the first sign you've seen’ he said and pushed himself away from the door. 'Why are you home this afternoon? It's Tuesday, isn't it?'

‘I put a note on my office door, saying I was sick’ she explained.

He studied her face: her eyes glistened with good humour, her skin with health. 'Sick?' he asked.

'Of sitting in my office.'

'But never of the books?' he asked.

'Never’ she asserted, then asked, 'Why are you home so early?'

'As you heard me saying, I want to hide under the bed.' She turned back into her study, saying, 'Come and tell me about it.'

Twenty minutes later Brunetti had told her all there was to say about the death of Signora Jacobs and his belief that it had been neither natural nor accidental.

'Who would want to kill them both?' Paola asked, sharing his conclusion that the two deaths had to be related.

'If I knew why, it would be easy enough to find out who’ Brunetti answered.

The why has got to be the paintings’ Paola pronounced, and Brunetti saw no reason to question her conclusion.

'Then all we've got to do is wait until a will is found or a notary presents one for probate?' he asked sceptically.

That seems a bit simplistic to me’ Paola answered. She gazed at the wall of books opposite them for a long time and then said, 'If s all very much like The Spoils of Poynton.'

Tell me’ he prodded, knowing that she would, even if he didn't ask.

'It's one of the Master's novellas. Ifs all about possession of a house full of beautiful objects and reveals what people are really like by the way they respond to the objects.'

'For example?' Brunetti asked, always finding it easier to have Paola tell him about the books of Henry James than actually to read them.

'Well, I think it would be easier if you read it yourself’ she said.

Brunetti said only, 'Give me one example.'

The woman's son - that is, the son of the woman who owns all of the beautiful things - has no appreciation of the beauty of her possessions, is deaf or blind to them, just as he's blind and deaf to the young companion of his mother, who would be the ideal wife for him, instead of the young woman he gets engaged to. He can't appreciate their obvious beauty, and he can't appreciate her hidden beauty.' She thought about what she'd said for a moment, then added, in quick apology to the Master, The story tells this far better, but that’ s pretty much what it’s about.'

'All right, I'll ask’ Brunetti said when he realized she had finished. How do you connect this with Signora Jacobs?'

He sat and watched her trying to formulate an answer he would understand. Finally she said, 'In the end, are things more important than people? Which do you pull from the burning building, the Rembrandt or the baby? And how, in this greedy age of ours, do you separate beauty from value?'

'Now tell me without the rhetorical questions,' he asked.

She laughed at his answer, not at all offended, and went on. 1 think it’s a sign of some sort of spiritual illumination to respond to beauty,' she began, letting him know he was in for one of her convoluted explanations, though he did not doubt that it would lead somewhere interesting. 'But I think our age has so transformed art into a form of investment or speculation that many people can no longer see the beauty of an object or care much about it if they do: they see only the value, the convertibility of the object into a particular sum of money.'

'And is that bad?' he asked.

'I think so’ she said, glancing at him and then smiling again as she added, 'but you know what a terrible snob I am.' When he did not take advantage of the pause she left him to deny this, she went on, 'I think that once we convert beauty into financial value, we're willing to go to different lengths to acquire it. That is, I don't find it at all strange that a person should kill to obtain a painting that they viewed only in terms of how much money it's worth, but I can't imagine that anyone would kill in order to obtain one painted by his favourite artist simply because he admired it.' She laid her head back against the top of the sofa, closed her eyes, then opened them and went on. 'Different goals drive people to different lengths. Or perhaps different people are driven by different goals. At any rate, I think people will do more if they are after something they view as a manifestation of money than if they view it as a manifestation of beauty.'

'And in this case?' he asked.

'Murder's pretty far’ she said by way of an answer.

'And the mad art collector who wants to own everything?' Brunetti asked.

'There are probably some, but I suspect very few of them go about stabbing young girls or killing old women to get the things they want. Besides, no one knows yet where these pieces are going to end up, do they?'

Brunetti shook his head. That was the still unanswered question.

She broke into his silence by saying, ‘I remember what you always say, Guido.' 'What’s that?'

That crime is always about money, sex or power.' And, indeed, he often did say that, simply because he had seen so little evidence of other motives. 'Well, if Claudia was a virgin and Signora Jacobs was over eighty, then I think we can exclude sex,' she went on. 'And I can't see how power could be an issue, can you?' He shook his head, and she concluded by asking, 'Well?'

He was still mulling over Paola's thoughts when he arrived at the Questura the following morning. He went directly to his office without bothering to tell anyone he was there. The first thing he did was call Lucia Mazzotti in Milano and was surprised when the girl answered the phone herself. She sounded like a different person, all timidity gone from her voice, and Brunetti marvelled at the ability of the young to recover from everything. He began with the usual platitudes but, aware that the girl's mother might be there, he quickly turned to the business of his call and asked if Claudia had ever said anything to her about someone who was too attentive to her or bothered her with his attentions. The line went silent. After a long time Lucia said, 'She got phone calls. A couple of times when I was there.'

'What sort of phone calls?' Brunetti asked.

'Oh, you know, from some guy who wants to go out with you or just talk to you. That you don't want to talk to or see.' She spoke with authority, her youth and her beauty ensuring that calls like this would be part of her normal experience. That’s what I thought from the way she talked.'

'Do you have any idea who this man might be, Lucia?'

There was a long silence, and Brunetti wondered why Lucia should be reluctant to tell him, but at last she said, ‘I don't think it was always a man.'

'Excuse me,' Brunetti said. Would you explain that to me, Lucia.'

Sounding a little impatient, Lucia said, ‘I told you. It wasn't always a man. One time, about two weeks ago, Claudia got a call, and the person who called was a woman. But it was the same kind of call, from someone she didn't want to talk to.'

Would you tell me about it?' Brunetti asked.

‘I answered the phone, and she asked for Claudia.'

Brunetti wondered why she hadn't told him this while he was questioning her, but then he remembered that the girl's flatmate lay dead above them when they spoke, and so he kept his voice calm and asked. What did she say?'

'She asked to speak to Claudia,' Lucia repeated simply in a tone that suggested only an idiot wouldn't recall what she had just said.

'Do you remember if she asked for Claudia or Signorina Leonardo?' Brunetti asked.

After a long pause, the girl said, ‘I don't remember, really, but it might have been Signorina Leonardo.' She thought again and then said, all impatience gone from her tone, ‘I'm sorry, I really don't remember. I didn't pay much attention since it was a woman. I thought it would be work or something.'

'Do you remember what time it was?'

'Before dinner some time.'

'Could it have been the Austrian woman?'

'No, she had an accent, and this woman didn't.'

Was she Italian?'

‘Yes.'

'Venetian?'

‘I didn't listen to her long enough to know. But I'm sure she was Italian. That’s why I thought it was about work.'

'You said it was someone she didn't want to talk to. What made you think that?'

'Oh, from the way Claudia spoke to her. Well, mostly listened to her. I was in the kitchen, making dinner, but I could hear Claudia and she sounded, well, she sounded sort of angry.'

'What did she say?'

'I don't know, really. I could only tell from her voice that she didn't like talking to this woman. I was frying onions so I couldn't hear her words, only that she didn't like the call or the caller. Finally she hung up.'

'Did she say anything to you about it?'

'No, not really. She came into the kitchen and she said something about people being so stupid she couldn't believe it, but she didn't want to talk about it, so we talked about school.'

'And then?'

'And then we ate dinner. And then both of us had a lot of reading to do.'

'Did she ever mention this again?' 'No, not that I remember.' 'Did she get any more calls?' 'Not that I know about.' 'And the man?'

'I never answered the phone when he called, so I can't tell you anything about him. Anyway, it's more a feeling I had than anything I know for certain. Someone called her, and she'd listen for a while, saying "yes" or "no", and then she'd say a couple of words, and then she'd hang up.'

'You never asked her about it?'

'No. You see, we weren't really friends, Claudia and I. I mean, we were friends, but not the sort of friends who tell one another things.'

'I see’ Brunetti said, sure that even though he did not understand the distinction his daughter certainly would.

'And she never said anything about these calls?'

'Not really. Besides, I was only there a couple of times when she got them.'

'Did she get other calls, when you knew who the caller was?'

'Once in a while. I knew the Austrian woman's voice, and her aunts.'

The one in England?' 'Yes.'

Brunetti could think of nothing else to ask the girl, and so he thanked her for her help and said he might have to call her again but hoped he wouldn't have to disturb her any more about this.

That's all right, Commissario. I'd like you to find the person who did it’ she said.

22

The next day when Brunetti got to the Questura, the guard at the door handed him an envelope as he came in. 'A man said to give this to you when you came in, Commissario’

'What kind of man?' Brunetti asked, looking down at the manila envelope in the man's hand and thinking of letter bombs, terrorists, sudden death.

'It’s all right, sir. He spoke Veneziano,' the guard said.

Brunetti accepted the envelope and started up the stairs. It was a bit larger than letter size and appeared to contain a package of some sort, perhaps a number of papers. He squeezed it, shook it, but waited until he got to his desk to open it. He flipped it over and looked at the front, where he saw his name written in block capital letters in purple ink.

Only one person he knew used ink that colour: Marco Erizzo had been the first one of their group to buy and use a Mont Blanc fountain pen, and to this day he carried two of them in the pocket of his jacket.

Brunetti's heart sank at the thought of what would be in the envelope: a package of papers could mean only one thing, and from his friend. He determined to say nothing, to give it to charity, never to speak to Marco again. The word 'disonorato' came into his mind, and he felt his throat tighten at the death of friendship.

He slipped his thumbnail under the flap, ripped the envelope open roughly, and took out a thick sheet of beige foolscap and a small, sealed envelope. He folded the page open and saw the same slanted letters and the same ink.

'In the other envelope is some of the rosemary Maria's son sends her from Sardinia. She said to use only about a half-teaspoon for a kilo of mussels and half a kilo of tomatoes and not to use any other spice.'

Brunetti held the smaller envelope to his nose and breathed in the odour of love.

As the day continued, however, he found that his strange lack of will regarding the death of Signora Jacobs was not to be shaken off. Rizzardi's report arrived by fax at about eleven and stated that, though there were bruises on the dead woman's arms, they were not inconsistent with a fall. The actual cause of death was a heart attack, one so severe that the pills she took might not have been sufficient to save her.

Vianello came up just before lunch to report that he had spoken to her neighbours, but, in an unsettling echo of the answers his question had earned from Claudia Leonardo's neighbours, none of them had heard or seen anything out of the ordinary the day before. When Brunetti asked if he had spoken to the man in the tobacco shop Vianello had no idea what he was talking about, and when Brunetti explained about the key, Vianello said no one had thought to ask.

And there things stood. Patta called him into his office later that afternoon and asked what progress there had been in the murder of 'that girl', and Brunetti was forced to put on an earnest expression and tell him that they were investigating every possibility. More than one hundred Mafia bosses had been released from jail that week because the Ministry of Justice had not got around to bringing them to trial within the appointed time, so the press was baying at the Minister with sufficient savagery to distract them from one small murder in Venice, hence Patta seemed less disturbed than usual at the lack of progress. Not for an instant did it pass through Brunetti's mind to suggest that Claudia Leonardo's death might be linked to Signora Jacobs's.

The day passed and then another. Claudia's aunt in England besieged the Questura with questions, and then with demands for the release of Claudia's body, which she wanted sent to her for burial, but the bureaucracy could not be made to provide the necessary consent and so the body remained in Venice. On the third day Brunetti realized that he had been thinking of her as 'the body’ and not 'the girl', and after that he no longer read the aunf s faxes. Signorina Elettra was sent to Milano on a training course in some new form of computer wizardry, and her absence added to the general spirit of lethargy that had fallen upon the Questura. Signora Jacobs was buried in the Protestant part of the cemetery, but Brunetti did not attend. He did, however, see that a team was sent into her apartment to photograph the art works in place and make a complete catalogue.

And so things continued to drift until, one morning, as Brunetti put on a jacket he had not worn for a week, he put his hand in the pocket and found the key to Signora Jacobs's apartment. There was no tag, no key holder, but he recognized it instantly and, as it was a bright morning and he remembered that there was a particularly good pasticceria down by San Boldo, he resolved to walk down that way, have a coffee and a brioche, give back the key and have a word with the tabacchaio, then take the vaporetto to work.

The brioche more than justified the trip: it was crisp and soft at the same time and filled with more jam than the average person would like, which meant just enough to satisfy Brunetti. With a sense of virtue at having resisted a second, Brunetti continued on past the door to Signora Jacobs's house and into the tobacco shop.

The man behind the counter seemed alarmed to see him and said, even before Brunetti could speak, ‘I know, I know I should have called you. But I didn't want her to get into any trouble. She's a good woman.'

Though he was just as surprised as the other man, Brunetti had the presence of mind to respond calmly, ‘I don't doubt that. But you still should have called us. It might have been important.' He kept his voice calm, suggesting he already knew everything the man could tell him but might perhaps like to hear it in his own words. He took out the key and held it up, as though this were the missing clue that had brought him back to hear the man's full story.

The man put his hands down at his sides, fingers tightened into fists as if to make it unthinkable that he would accept the key. 'No, I don't want it.' He shook his head to add emphasis to his assertion. 'You keep it. After all, that's the cause of all the trouble in the first place, isn't it?'

Brunetti nodded and slipped the key back into the pocket of his jacket. He wasn't sure how to play this, though he had no sense that the man felt anything more than embarrassment at not having done whatever it was he should have done about this woman, whoever she was. 'Why didn't you call? After all, how much trouble could she get into?' he asked, hoping that would sound sufficiently unthreatening to lead the man into further explanation.

'She's illegal. And she's working in black. She was terrified she'd be made to leave if anyone found out, that you'd send her back.'

Brunetti permitted himself a smile. 'There's little danger of that, unless she does something ...' he was about to say that there would be no danger unless the woman, whoever she was, did something criminal, but he didn't want to present even this possibility to the man, and so he finished by saying, 'stupid'.

'I know, I know’ the man said, raising his hands and using them to gesticulate as he spoke. 'Just think of all the Albanians there are, doing whatever they like, robbing and killing whoever they please, and no one thinks of sending them back, the bastards.'

Brunetti allowed himself to relax and nodded to the man, as if in agreement with this opinion of the Albanians.

'God knows, poor devils, they live in hell, but at least let them come here and work, like the rest of us. Like Salima. She's not even a Christian, but she works like one. And the Signora, may she rest in peace, said you could trust her with anything, give her ten million lire and ask her to hold it for you for a week and she'd give it back and no need to count it.' The man considered this and then added, ‘I wish I could get her to work here for me, but she's afraid of the authorities -God knows what happened to her in Africa - and won't do anything to get papers. Nothing I do or say can convince her even to try.'

‘I suppose she's afraid she'll be arrested’ Brunetti suggested, making it sound as though the police were some alien force and he had nothing to do with them.

'Precisely. That's why I think she had trouble before, either where she came from or when she got here.'

Brunetti shook his head in sympathy; he still had no idea where this flow of information was carrying them.

1 suppose you'll have to speak to her, eh?' the man asked, ‘Because of the keys?'

I'm afraid so’ Brunetti admitted, making himself sound very reluctant.

That's why I should have called you, you see’ the man said. 'Because I knew that sooner or later you'd have to talk to her. But I couldn't do it to her, frighten her that way, either by telling her I was going to call or by calling you.'

1 understand’ Brunetti said, and at least in part this was true. He had never had much to do with illegal immigrants or their problems, but colleagues of his had told him stories of what many had experienced, not only at the hands of the police in their own countries, but at the hands of the police in this country to which they had fled in hopes of a better life. Extortion, violence and rape didn't disappear at the borders, so if this woman was afraid of the police, which meant afraid of Brunetti, then she probably had good cause to be so. Yet he still had to speak to her. About the keys and about Signora Jacobs.

'Maybe it would be easier if you took me to her’ Brunetti suggested. 'Does she live near here?'

'I've got the address somewhere’ the man said as he bent to open the bottom drawer in front of him. He pulled out a thin ledger and, first wetting a finger with his tongue, began to page through it slowly. On the seventh page he found what he sought. 'Here it is. San Polo 2365. It's over by Campo San Stin somewhere.' He glanced up at Brunetti and tilted his head in a silent question.

Uncertain whether this was meant to ask if Brunetti knew where the address was or if he still wanted the man to go with him or if he wanted them to go now, Brunetti nodded an affirmative to all three. Without the least resistance, perhaps even curious now to see how things would turn out, the man took a set of keys from his pocket and came around the counter. While Brunetti waited for him in the calle, the man shut and locked the door to his shop.

During the few minutes it took them to walk to Campo San Stin, the tabacchaio, whose name was Mario Mingardo, explained that it was his wife who had found Salima when the woman who cleaned both for her mother and for Signora Jacobs had moved to Treviso and she'd had to look for someone new. This had proven difficult, at least until a neighbour had suggested the woman who cleaned for her, a black woman from Africa but very clean and a good worker. That had been two years ago, and since then Salima had become a fixture in their lives.

'I don't know much about her’ Mingardo said, 'except what my mother-in-law says, and the Signora’

'What about her family?'

‘I think she has family back there, but she never talks about them.'

They crossed over the Rio di Sanf Agostin and were quickly out into the campo. 'If s got to be over here on the right somewhere’ Mingardo said, turning into the first calle. ‘I’m just assuming she'll be at home’ he said. 'She hasn't been back since the Signora's death and I don't know if she'd have the courage to try to find a new job on her own.' Mingardo took the single step up to the building, looked at the names on the bells, and rang the bottom one. Brunetti could see that the name was 'Luisotti', which he did not think was an African name.

'Si?' a woman's voice asked.

'It’s me, Salima, Mario. I've come about the Signora.'

They had to wait a long time before they heard footsteps behind the door, and an even longer time elapsed before it began to open. Mingardo put out his hand and pushed it open, stepping over the threshold and holding the door for Brunetti to follow him.

When the woman inside saw a second man, she whipped around before Brunetti had a clear look at her and took one step towards the door that stood open halfway down the corridor, but Mingardo called out, ‘He's a friend, Salima. It's all right.'

She froze in place, one arm still swung out in front of her to give extra momentum to help her flee towards safety. Slowly, she turned to look back at the two men, and when he saw her Brunetti took a short breath, struck both by her beauty and by the fact that Mingardo had said nothing about it.

She was in her late twenties, perhaps even younger. She had the narrow face and skull, the fine arching nose, and eyes of such almond perfection as to awaken his memory of the bust of Nefertiti he had seen in Berlin many years ago. The skin under her eyes was darker still than the mahogany of the rest of her face but served only to make her teeth and eyes seem all the whiter. My God, he caught himself thinking, what must we look like to these people: great potato lumps with little pudding eyes? Solid hunks of some badly cured meat? How can they stand to move around our great hulking paleness, and what must it be to gaze from such beauty at such pale ungainliness?

Mario said Brunetti's name and he stepped forward, offering her his hand, hoping it would be the hand of friendship and not betrayal. ‘Id like to talk to you, Signora’ Brunetti said.

Mingardo looked down at his watch, then up at the woman. 'You can trust him, Salima’ he said. ‘I have to get back to work but you're all right with him. He's my friend.' He smiled at the woman, then at Brunetti, then turned and left quickly without offering his hand to either of them.

Still the woman had not said a word, and still she stood in place and studied Brunetti, assessing what danger there was to be had from this man, even though Mingardo had said he was a friend.

She unfroze and turned fully to walk towards her apartment, leaving Brunetti to follow. At the door she paused a moment and made a small bow, as if it were a ceremony too sacred to ignore, even with a man who brought she knew not what danger.

Brunetti asked permission and went in. He put his hand on the handle of the door and looked at the woman, who indicated that he should close it. He did so and turned into the room. A simple woven rush mat lay on the floor, and beyond it a divan covered with a piece of dark green embroidered cloth and a small pile of similarly embroidered pillows. There was a small wooden table and two chairs, and against one wall a chest with five drawers. In the centre of the table was an oval wooden bowl containing apples, and against the back wall there was a hot plate and a small sink, above which hung a double-doored cabinet. The single door to the left must lead to the bathroom. The room breathed the exotic scent of spices, among which he thought he could identify clove and cinnamon, but it was far richer than those. Brunetti estimated that the total area of the apartment was smaller than his daughter's bedroom.

He went to the table and pulled out one of the chairs, then stood away from it, smiled and gestured to her to sit. When she did, he took the other, careful to place it as far from her as possible, and sat.

'I'd like to speak to you, Signora.' When she said nothing, he continued, 'About Signora Jacobs.'

She nodded to acknowledge that she understood but still said nothing.

'How long did you work for her, Signora?'

'Two years,' she said, a phrase so simple as to give no indication of how well she spoke Italian.

'Did you enjoy working for the Signora?'

'She was a good woman,' Salima said. There was not a lot of work to do, and she was always as generous with me as she could be.'

'Was she a poor woman, do you think?' She shrugged, as if any Western definition of poverty was bound to be absurd, if not insulting. 'In what way was she generous?'

'She would give me food and sometimes she gave me extra money.'

‘I would imagine many employers are not generous,' Brunetti observed, hoping that this would somehow break through her formal reserve.

But the attempt was too obvious, and she ignored his words, sat quietly and waited for his next question.

'Did you have keys to her apartment?'

She looked up at him, and he saw her consider the risk of telling the truth. His impulse was to reassure her that there would be no danger in telling him the truth, but he knew that to be a lie and so he said nothing.

'Yes.'

'How often did you go?'

'I went to clean once a week. But sometimes I went in to bring her a meal. She didn't eat enough. And always smoking.' Her Italian was excellent, and he realized she must be from Somalia, a place where his father had fought, he with his machine-gun against men with spears.

'Did she ever talk about the things in her apartment?'

'They are harram’ she said, 'and she knew I didn't like to talk about them or look at them.'

'I'm sorry, Signora, but I don't know what that means,' Brunetti confessed.

'Harram, dirty. The Prophet tells us not to make pictures of people or animals. It is wrong, and they are unclean.'

Thank you, I understand now’ he said, glad that she had explained, though he marvelled at the idea that anyone could think one of those delicate little dancing girls was unclean.

'But did she ever talk about them?'

'She told me that many people would value them, but I didn't want to look at them for fear of what it would do to me.'

'Did you ever meet the girl Signora Jacobs called her granddaughter?'

Salima smiled. 'Yes, I met her three or four times. She always called me "Signora" and spoke to me with respect. Once, when I was cleaning the bedroom, she made me a cup of tea and brought it to me. She remembered to put in a lot of sugar: I told her once that’s how my people like to drink it. She was a good girl’

'Did you know that she was killed?'

Salima closed her eyes at the thought of that good girl, dead, opened them and said, 'Yes.'

'Do you have any idea who might have wanted to harm her?'

'How could I know that and not go to the police?' she asked with real indignation, the first emotion she had shown since he began to talk to her.

'Signor Mario told me you were afraid of the police.' Brunetti said.

'I am,' she said shortly. 'But that doesn't matter, not if I knew something. Of course I'd tell them.' 'So you know nothing?'

'No. Nothing. But I think that's what killed the Signora.' 'Why do you say that?'

'She knew she was going to die. Some days after the girl died she told me that she was in danger.' Her voice had returned to calm neutrality.

'Danger?' Brunetti repeated.

That’s the word she used. I knew about her heart and she was using her pills much more, taking many more of them every day.'

'Did she say that was the danger?' Brunetti asked.

Salima considered his question for a long time, as if holding it up to the light at a different angle and seeing it in a different manner. 'No. She said only that she was in danger. She didn't say from what.'

'But you assumed it meant her heart?'

'Yes.'

'Could it have been something else?'

Her answer was long delayed. 'Yes.'

'Did she say anything else to you?'

She pulled her lips together, and then he saw her tongue shoot out and moisten them. Her hands were folded primly on the edge of the table, and she looked down at them. She bowed her head and said something so softly that Brunetti couldn't hear.

'I'm sorry, Signora. I didn't hear.'

'She gave me something.'

'What was that, Signora?'

'I think it was papers.'

‘You only think?'

'It was an envelope. She gave me an envelope and told me to keep it.' 'Until when?'

'She didn't say. She just told me to hold on to it.' 'When did she give it to you?'

He watched her count out the time. Two days after the girl died.'

'Did she say anything?' 'No, but I think she was afraid.' 'What makes you say that, Signora?' She raised those perfect eyes to his and said, 'Because I am familiar with fear.'

Brunetti glanced away. ‘Do you still have it?' 'Yes.'

'Would you get it for me, Signora?'

'You're police, aren't you?' she asked, head still bowed, her full beauty hidden from him, as if fearful of what it could provoke in a man with power over her.

‘Yes. But you've done nothing wrong, Signora, and nothing will happen to you.'

Her sigh was as deep as the gulf between their cultures. 'What must I do for you?' she asked, her voice tired now, resigned.

'Nothing, Signora. Only give me the papers and then I'll go. No more police will come to bother you.'

She still hesitated, and he thought she must be trying to think of something she could have him swear by, something that would be sacred to both of them. Whatever it was she sought in that silence, she failed to find it. Without looking at him, she got silently to her feet and went to the chest of drawers.

She pulled open the top drawer and from right on top pulled out a large manilla envelope that bulged with whatever was inside. Careful to hold it in both hands, she passed it to him.

Brunetti thanked her and took it. With no hesitation, he unhooked the two metal wings that held it closed. It was not taped or glued, and he would not insult her by asking if she had ever opened it.

He slipped his right hand inside and felt the soft crinkle of tissue paper extending from the top of what further exploration revealed were twin pieces of cardboard. At the bottom he felt another envelope, this one thick. He took his hand out and, using only the tips of his fingers, extracted whatever was held inside the sheets of cardboard. He slipped the tissue-clad paper from inside the cardboard and laid it on the table: it was a rectangle little larger than a book, perhaps the size of a small magazine. A small piece of paper was taped to the outside of the tissue paper, and on it a slanting hand, trained to write a script more angular than Italian, was written, This is for Salima Maffeki, a free gift of something that has long been in my personal possession’ It was signed 'Hedwig Jacobs' and bore a date three days before her death.

Brunetti peeled back the tissue paper and opened it, as he would the doors of an Advent calendar. 'Oddio,' he said, exclaiming as he. identified the sketched figure which lay in his mother's arms. It could only be a Tiziano, but he did not have the expert's eye to be able to say more than that.

She had turned towards him, not in curiosity at the drawing but at his exclamation, and he looked up to see her turn away from that than which nothing could be more harram, an image of their false god, this god so false that he could die. She turned as from obscenity.

Brunetti folded the tissue paper carefully closed and slipped the drawing back inside the joined sheets of cardboard, saying nothing. He set it aside and pulled out the second envelope. It, too, was unsealed. He lifted the flap and took out a batch of what might have been letters, all neatly folded into three horizontal sections held together by an elastic.

He opened the first: ‘I, Alberto Foa, sell the following paintings to Luca Guzzardi for the sum of four hundred thousand lire’ The paper was dated 11 January 1943 and contained a listing of nine paintings, all by famous artists. He opened two others and discovered that they, too, were bills of sale to Luca Guzzardi, both bearing dates before Mussolini's fall. One of them referred to drawings; the other listed paintings and statues.

Brunetti counted the remaining sheets of paper. Twenty-nine. With the three he had opened, a total of thirty-two bills of sale, no doubt all signed and dated and perfectly legitimate and, more importantly, legally binding proof that the objects in Signora Jacobs's possession had been the legitimate possessions of Luca Guzzardi, her lover, mad and dead this half-century.

More interestingly, that they were the inheritance of Claudia Leonardo, Guzzardi's granddaughter, stabbed to death and dead intestate.

He folded the three bills of sale and put them back on the pile, then caught them up in the elastic and slipped them back into their envelope.

He put that and, very carefully, the Tiziano sketch back into the larger envelope. 'Signora,' he said, looking across at her. ‘I have to take this with me’

She nodded.

'Signora, you must believe me when I tell you that you are in no danger. If you like, I will bring my wife and my daughter here and you can ask them if I am an honest man. I think they'll tell you that I am, but I'll do that if you want me to.'

'I believe you,' she said, still not looking at him.

'Then believe this, Signora, because it's important. Signora Jacobs has given you a great deal of money. I don't know how much it is, and I won't know until I speak to a man who can tell me. But it is a great deal.'

'Is it five million lire?' she asked with such longing that she must have believed that with that sum she could buy joy or peace or a place in paradise.

'Why do you need that amount, Signora?'

'My husband. And my daughter. If I can send them that much, then they can get out and come here. That’s why I'm here, to work and save and bring them.'

'It will be more than that,' he said, though he had no idea of the value of the drawing; at least that, probably inestimably more.

He turned his attention to the envelope and started to bend the metal flanges together to seal it again, so he didn't see her move. Her hands came up quickly and took one of his. Turning his hand palm down, she bowed over it and touched it with her forehead, pressing it there for long seconds. He felt her hands tremble.

She released his hand and got to her feet.

Brunetti stood and went to the door, the envelope dangling from one hand. At the door, he extended his hand to shake hers, but she shook her head and kept her hands at her sides, a modest woman who would not shake the hand of a strange man.