Anonymous Venetian aka Dressed for Death

asked, nodding at the ring of tomatoes on the plate in front of Paola.

‘Oh, supercop,’ Paola said, reaching for another tomato. ‘He sees a ring of tomatoes with spaces left between each slice, pieces just big enough to allow a slice of mozzarella to be slipped in between them, and then he sees the fresh basil standing in a glass to the left of his fair wife, right beside the fresh mozzarella that lies on a plate. And he puts it all together and guesses, with lightning-like induction, that it’s insalata caprese for dinner. No wonder the man strikes fear into the heart of the criminal population of the city.’ She turned and smiled at him when she said this, gauging his mood to see if she had perhaps pushed too far. Seeing that, somehow, she had, she took the glass from his hand and took another slip. ‘What happened?’ she asked as she handed the glass back to him.

‘I’ve been assigned to a case in Mestre.’ Before she could interrupt, he continued. ‘They’ve got two commissari out on vacation, one in hospital with a broken leg, and another one on maternity leave.’

‘So Patta’s given you away to Mestre?’

‘There’s no one else.’

‘Guido, there’s always someone else. For one, there’s Patta himself It wouldn’t hurt him to do something else but sit around in his office and sign papers and fondle the secretaries.’

Brunetti found it difficult to imagine anyone allowing Patta to fondle her, but he kept that opinion to himself.

‘Well?’ she asked when he said nothing.

‘He’s got problems,’ Brunetti said.

‘Then it’s true?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been dying to call you all day and ask you if it was. Tito Burrasca?’

When Brunetti nodded, she put her head back and made an indelicate noise that might best be described as a hoot. ‘Tito Burrasca,’ she repeated, turned back to the sink and grabbed another tomato. ‘Tito Burrasca.’

‘Come on, Paola. It’s not all that funny.’

She whipped around, knife still held in front of her. ‘What do you mean, it’s not that funny? He’s a pompous, sanctimonious, self-righteous bastard, and I can think of no one who deserves something like this better than he does.’

Brunetti shrugged and poured more wine into his glass. So long as she was fulminating against Patta, she might forget Mestre, though he knew this was only a momentary deviation.

‘I don’t believe this,’ she said, turning around and apparently addressing this remark to the single tomato remaining in the sink. ‘He’s been hounding you for years, making a mess of any work you do, and now you defend him.’

‘I’m not defending him, Paola.’

‘Sure sounds like it to me,’ she said, this time to the ball of mozzarella she held in her left hand.

‘I’m just saying that no one deserves this. Burrasca is a pig.’

‘And Patta’s not?’

‘Do you want me to call Chiara?’ he asked, seeing that the salad was almost ready.

‘Not before you tell me how long this thing in Mestre is likely to take.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘What is it?’

‘A murder. A transvestite was found in a field in Mestre. Someone beat in his face, probably with a pipe, then carried him out there.’ Did other families, he wondered, have pre-dinner conversations as uplifting as his own?

‘Why beat in the face?’ she asked, centring on the question that had bothered him all afternoon.

‘Rage?’

‘Um,’ she said, slicing away at the mozzarella and then interspersing the slices with the tomato. ‘But why in a field?’

‘Because he wanted the body far away from wherever he killed him.’

‘But you’re sure he wasn’t killed there?’

‘Doesn’t seem so. There were footprints going up to the place where the body was, then lighter ones going away.’

‘A transvestite?’

‘That’s all I know. No one has told me anything about age, but everyone seems sure he was a prostitute.’

‘Don’t you believe it?’

‘I have no reason not to believe it. But I also have no reason to believe it.’

She took some basil leaves, ran them under cold water for a moment, and chopped them into tiny pieces. She sprinkled them on top of the tomato and mozzarella, added salt, then poured olive oil generously over the top of everything.

‘I thought we’d eat on the terrace,’ she said. ‘Chiara’s supposed to have set the table. Want to check?’ When he turned to leave the kitchen, he kept the bottle and glass with him. Seeing that, Paola set the knife down in the sink. ‘It’s not going to be finished by the weekend, is it?’

He shook his head. ‘Not likely.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘We’ve got the reservations at the hotel. The kids are ready to go. They’ve been looking forward to it since school got out.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ she repeated. Once, about eight years ago, he had managed to evade her questions about something; he couldn’t remember what it was. He’d got away with it for a day.

‘I’d like you and the kids to go to the mountains. If this finishes on time, I’ll come up and join you. I’ll try to come up next weekend at any rate.’

‘I’d rather have you there, Guido. I don’t want to spend my vacation alone.’

‘You’ll have the kids.’

Paola didn’t deign to grace this with rational opposition. She picked up the salad and walked towards him. ‘Go see if Chiara has set the table.’

Chapter Five

He read through the files that night before going to sleep and found in them evidence of a world he had perhaps known existed but about which he had known nothing either detailed or certain. To the best of his knowledge, there were no transvestites in Venice who worked as prostitutes. There was, however, at least one transsexual, and Brunetti knew of this person’s existence only because he had once had to sign a letter attesting that Emilio Marcato had no criminal record, this before Emilia could have the sex listed on her carta d’identita changed to accord with the physical changes already made to her body. He had no idea of what urges or passions could lead a person to make a choice so absolutely final; he remembered, though, being disturbed and moved to an emotion he had chosen not to analyse by that mere alteration of a single letter on an official document: Emilio – Emilia.

The men in the file had not been driven to go so far and had chosen to transform only their appearance: face, clothing, make-up, walk, gesture. The photos attached to some of the files attested to the skill with which some of them had done this. Half of them were utterly unrecognizable as men, even though Brunetti knew that was what they were. There was a general softness of cheek and fineness of bone that had nothing of the masculine about them; even under the merciless lights and lens of the police camera, many of them appeared beautiful, and Brunetti searched in vain for a shadow, a jut of chin, for anything that would mark them as men and not as women.

Sitting beside him in bed and reading the pages as he handed them to her, Paola glanced through the photos, read one of the arrest reports, this one for the sale of drugs, and handed the pages back to him with no comment.

‘What do you think?’ Brunetti asked.

‘About what?’

‘All of this.’ He raised the file in his hand. ‘Don’t you find these men strange?’

Her look was a long one and, he thought, replete with distaste. ‘I find the men who hire them much stranger.’