‘Please, Signore.’
‘Then I must admit that a number of things about this investigation are upsetting to me.’
‘In what way, Signor Viscardi?’
‘Not the least,’ he began, turning to Brunetti with a smile of candid friendliness, ‘are my feelings about the way I was treated by your policemen.’ He paused, sipped at his wine, tried another smile, this time a consciously tentative one. ‘I may speak frankly, I hope, Commissario.’
‘Certainly, Signer Viscardi. I desire nothing else.’
‘Then, let me say that I felt, at the time, as if your policemen were treating me more as a suspect than as a victim.’ When Brunetti said nothing to this, Viscardi added, ‘That is, two of them came to the hospital, and both of them asked questions that had little bearing on the crime.’
‘And what is it that they asked you?’ Brunetti enquired.
‘One asked how I knew what the paintings were. As if I wouldn’t recognize them. And the second asked me if I recognized that young man in the photo and seemed sceptical when I said that I did not.’
‘Well, that’s been sorted out,’ Brunetti said. ‘He had nothing to do with it.’
‘But you’ve got no new suspects?’
‘Unfortunately not,’ Brunetti answered, wondering why it was that Viscardi was willing so quickly to abandon interest in the young man in the photo. ‘You said that there were a number of things that bothered you, Signor Viscardi. That is only one. Might I ask what the others are?’
Viscardi raised his glass towards his lips, then lowered it without drinking and said, ‘I’ve learned that certain questions have been asked about me and about my affairs.’
Brunetti opened his eyes in feigned surprise. ‘I hope you don’t suspect that I would pry into your private life, Signor Viscardi.’
Viscardi suddenly set his glass, still almost completely full, back onto the counter and said, quite clearly, ‘Swill.’ When he saw Brunetti’s surprise, he added, ‘The wine, of course. I’m afraid we haven’t chosen the right place to have a drink.’
‘No, it isn’t very good, is it?’ Brunetti agreed, setting his empty glass down on the counter beside Viscardi’s.
‘I repeat, Commissario, that questions have been asked about my business dealings. No good can come of asking those questions. I’m afraid that any further invasion of my privacy will force me to seek the aid of certain friends of mine.’
‘And what friends are those, Signor Viscardi?’
‘It would be presumptuous of me to mention their names. But they are sufficiently well-placed to see that I am not the victim of bureaucratic persecution. Should that be the case, I am sure they would step in to see that it was stopped.’
‘That sounds very much like a threat, Signor Viscardi.’
‘Don’t be melodramatic, Dottor Brunetti. It would be better to call it a suggestion. Further, it is a suggestion in which your father-in-law joins me. I know I speak for him when I say that you would be wise not to ask those questions. I repeat, no good will come to anyone who asks them.’
‘I’m not sure that I would expect much good at all to come of anything that has to do with your business dealings, Signor Viscardi.’
Viscardi suddenly pulled some loose bills from his pocket and threw them onto the counter, not bothering to ask how much the wine cost. Saying nothing to Brunetti, he turned and walked to the door of the bar. Brunetti followed him. Outside, it had begun to rain, the wind-shoved sheets of autumn. Viscardi paused at the door but only long enough to pull up the collar of his coat. Saying nothing, not bothering to glance back at Brunetti, he stepped out into the rain and quickly disappeared around a corner.
Brunetti stood in the doorway for a moment. Finally, seeing no other way, he reached down and unwrapped
* * * *
24
Brunetti went back to the Questura in the afternoon after first demanding his black umbrella from Paola. He answered correspondence for an hour or so but left early, saying he had a meeting, even though the meeting was with Ruffolo and was more than six hours away. When he got home, he told Paola about the midnight meeting, and she, who remembered talk of Ruffolo from the past, joined Brunetti in treating it as a lark, a stab at melodrama clearly brought on by Ruffolo’s having watched too much television during his last imprisonment. He hadn’t seen Ruffolo since the last time he had testified against him and imagined that he would find him much the same: good- tempered, flap-eared, and careless, in far too great a hurry to get on with the business of his life.
At eleven, he went out onto the balcony, looked up at the sky, and saw the stars. Half an hour later, he left the house, assuring Paola that he would probably be home by one and telling her not to bother waiting up for him. If Ruffolo gave himself up, they would have to go down to the Questura, and then there would be the business of writing up a statement and having Ruffolo sign it, and that could take hours. He said he would try to call her if this happened, but he knew she was so accustomed to his being out at odd hours that she would probably sleep through the call, and he didn’t want to wake the children.
The number five stopped running at nine, so he had no choice but to walk. He didn’t mind, especially on this splendid moonlit night. As so often happened, he gave no conscious thought to where he was going, simply allowed his feet, made wise by decades of walking, to take him there the shortest way. He crossed Rialto, passed through Santa Marina and. down towards San Francesco della Vigna. As always at this hour, the city was virtually deserted; he passed a night watchman, slipping little orange paper rectangles into the gratings in front of shops, proof that he had gone by in the night. He passed a restaurant and glanced in to see the white-jacketed staff crowded around a table, having a last drink before going home. And cats. Sitting, lying, serpentining themselves around fountains,
