A Question of Belief

a derisory rent?

He went to his open window, where the curtain hung limp, dead, and consulted with the facade of the church of San Lorenzo about how best to begin.

Suddenly overcome with impatience, Brunetti called the Ospedale Civile and learned that Dottor Rizzardi would be there all morning. He asked that the doctor be told he was on his way, and left the Questura. By the time he reached Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo, his jacket and shirt were glued to his back, and the sides of his feet rubbed uncomfortably against the inside of his shoes. To traverse the open campo was to question his own sanity at having decided to walk.

He went to Rizzardi’s office but was told that the doctor was still in the morgue. The very word dispersed some of the heat; the air that swirled around him when he pushed open the door drove off the rest of it. His shirt and jacket still clung to him, but the sensation was now coolly sinister instead of irritating.

Rizzardi, he was relieved to see, stood at a sink, already washing his hands. The fact that the sinks in the room were so deep and their fronts so low had always filled Brunetti with a vague uneasiness, but he had never wanted to ask about it.

‘I thought I’d come over,’ Brunetti said. He glanced around: three draped figures lay in a row to Rizzardi’s left. ‘I wanted to ask you about Fontana.’

‘Yes,’ Rizzardi said, wiping his hands on a thin green towel. Carefully, he wiped each finger on one hand separately, then transferred the towel to the other hand and repeated the task. ‘He was killed by three blows to the head, so if anyone over there is thinking he died in a fall, they can forget about it: he didn’t fall three times.’ The doctor stopped drying his hands. ‘There’s a bruise on his left temple suggesting that he was hit there, perhaps even with a fist.’

‘Was it the statue?’ Brunetti asked.

‘That killed him?’ Rizzardi asked. When Brunetti nodded, the doctor said, ‘Beyond question. There was blood and brain matter on it, and the shape of the wounds perfectly matches the configuration of the head of the statue.’ Brunetti shied away from asking where the statue had ended up. Rizzardi folded the towel in half horizontally and laid it over the edge of the sink. ‘One reconstruction could be that someone hit him — that would account for the bruise — and he fell against the statue.’ Rizzardi bent down and held his hand about forty centimetres above the ground. ‘The head of the lion is only about this high, so he would have fallen against it with some force.’

He stood up, adding, ‘Then all he’d have to do is lift his head again and hit it against the statue. It would have been easy enough.’

‘How long would it have taken him to die?’ Brunetti asked.

‘From what I saw, any of the blows could have killed him, but it would have taken some time for the blood to fill the brain and block off body function.’

‘No chance at all?’

‘Of what?’

‘If he’d been found sooner?’

Rizzardi turned and leaned back against the sink, crossed his ankles, then folded his arms across his chest. Because Rizzardi was wearing only a light cotton shirt and trousers under his cotton gown, Brunetti, almost painfully conscious of the cold, wondered if he was trying to keep himself warm by standing like that. He watched Rizzardi process his question as if he were reviewing the information that would provide an answer.

‘No,’ the doctor said. ‘Not likely. Not after the second, and third, blows. There are marks — really a faint bruising — on both sides of the chin and neck where he was held.’ To illustrate, Rizzardi held his hands up and made as if to crush something between them. ‘But either the killer was wearing gloves or he covered his hands with something, I’d say.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The bruises. If he’d been barehanded, the bruises would have been deeper, cleaner at the edges, but there was a kind of padding effect. If he’d been barehanded, the nails would have broken the skin, no matter how short they were.’ He raised his hands, as if to repeat the gesture, but let them fall to his sides.

He pulled off his lab coat and draped it over the sink, aligning it perfectly with the towel. ‘There’s something else,’ Rizzardi said.

His voice caught Brunetti’s attention.

‘Semen.’ As he said this, Rizzardi turned his eyes in the direction of the three draped forms, but since it was also the same direction as the door to the refrigerated room where bodies were kept, Brunetti ignored the gesture.

He had read historic accounts of the spontaneous ejaculation of hanged men; perhaps this was a similar case. Or perhaps he had been with a woman before returning home. Given his mother’s character, it would make sense that Fontana, poor thing, would keep such things far from her.

When Brunetti’s silence had gone on sufficiently long, Rizzardi said, ‘It was in his anus.’

‘Oddio,’ Brunetti exclaimed as the pieces of reality scrambled around in his mind and came out looking like something else entirely.

‘Enough to identify the man?’

‘If you find the man,’ Rizzardi answered.

‘Will the sample tell us anything about him?’ Brunetti asked.

What does a shrug sound like, and does it sound the same when it is heard above the hum of a refrigerator? Whatever it was, that was what Brunetti thought he heard when Rizzardi raised and dropped his shoulders. ‘Blood type, but for anything else, you need a sample from the other man.’

‘How long will it take to know the blood type?’ Brunetti asked.

‘It shouldn’t take long,’ Rizzardi began. ‘But. .’

‘But this is August,’ Brunetti finished for him.

‘Exactly. So it could take a week.’

‘Or more?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Can you hurry them up?’

‘I’m sure that, even as we speak, every police officer in this country is asking the same question of every medico legale, and that doctor is asking it of the laboratory.’

‘I suppose that means you can’t?’ Brunetti asked.

Rizzardi took a few steps away from the sink and stopped at the head of one of the draped figures. A sudden chill radiated out from the centre of Brunetti’s still-damp back. ‘I once sent DNA samples to the lab,’ the doctor said. ‘It was for a case in Mestre — and there were no results for two weeks.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said. He turned slightly, making the gesture seem an entirely casual one, and took a few steps towards the door to the corridor. He gave a short cough that could have been brought on by the cold, and said, ‘Ettore, I want to ask you something and I want you to believe I have a good reason to ask.’

Rizzardi’s glance was level. ‘What? Or who?’

‘Signorina Montini. Elvira.’

Brunetti waited. Absently, Rizzardi reached a hand towards one end of the draped figure, and Brunetti felt his chest tighten, but all the doctor did was straighten out a wrinkle in the cloth. Keeping his eyes on the draped form, Rizzardi said, ‘She’s the best worker here. She’s done me a lot of favours over the years. More than a decade.’

‘I admire your loyalty, Ettore, but she might be involved with someone she shouldn’t be involved with.’

‘Who?’

Brunetti shook his head. ‘I’m not sure yet.’

‘But you will be?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Will you promise me something?’ Rizzardi asked, finally looking at him. In all these years, Rizzardi had never asked him a favour.

‘If I can.’

‘Will you warn her if there’s time?’

Brunetti had no idea what that might come to mean — what trimming of the law, what compromise of the rules. ‘If there’s time. Yes.’