Though Brunetti dreaded the assignment of the two men to any case he was working on, he couldn’t help liking them. Alvise was a squat man in his late forties, almost a caricature of the dark-skinned Sicilian, save that he came from Tarvisio, on the border with Austria. He was accepted as the resident expert on popular music, this because he had once, fifteen years ago, actually had a program autographed by Mina, the mythic queen of Italian popular singing. Over the years, this event had swelled and expanded—as had Mina—by repeated retelling, until Alvise now suggested, eyes bright with the glitter of satisfied desire, that far more had gone on between them. The retelling seemed not at all affected by the fact that the singer was a head taller than Alvise and was now almost twice his girth.
Riverre, his partner, was a red-haired Palermitano, whose only interests in life appeared to be soccer and women, in that order. The high point in his life to date was having survived the riot in the Brussels soccer stadium. He augmented his account of what he had done there, before the Belgian police arrived, with tales of his triumphs with women, usually foreigners, who, he claimed, fell like wheat before the sickle of his charms.
Brunetti found them, as he had expected, standing at the counter in the bar. Riverre was reading the sports newspaper, and Alvise was talking with Arianna, the woman who owned the bar. Neither noticed Brunetti’s arrival until he came up to the bar and ordered a coffee. At that, Alvise smiled in greeting and Riverre pulled his attention away from the paper long enough to greet his superior.
‘Two more coffees, Arianna,’ Alvise said, ‘all three on my bill.’
Brunetti recognized the maneuver, aimed at putting him in the other’s debt. By the time the three coffees arrived, Riverre stood with them, and the newspaper had somehow been transformed into a blue-covered case file, which now lay open on the counter.
Brunetti spooned in two sugars and swirled his spoon around. ‘Is it you two who went to the Maestro’s house?’
‘Yes, sir,’ brightly, from Alvise.
‘And what a house it is!’ chimed in Riverre.
‘I’ve just been looking at your report.’
‘Arianna, bring us some brioches.’
‘I read it with great interest.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Particularly your comments about his wardrobe. I take it you didn’t like those English suits.’
‘No, sir,’ replied Riverre, as usual not getting it. ‘I think they’re cut too loose in the leg.’
Alvise, reaching along the counter to open the file, accidentally nudged his partner in the arm, perhaps a bit harder than was necessary. ‘Anything else, sir?’ he asked.
‘Yes. While you were there, did you notice any sign of the signora’s daughter?’
‘Is there a daughter, sir?’ This, predictably, from Riverre.
‘That’s why I’m asking you. Was there any sign of a child? Books? Clothes?’
Both showed signs of deep thought. Riverre stared off into space, which he seemed to find closer than most people did, and Alvise looked down at the floor, hands thrust into his uniform pockets. The requisite minute passed before they both answered, ‘No, sir,’ at the same time, almost as if they had practiced it.
‘Nothing at all?’
Again their separate displays, then the simultaneous response: ‘No, sir.’
‘Did you speak to the maid, the Belgian?’
Riverre rolled his eyes at the memory of the maid, suggesting that any time spent with such a stick of a woman was time wasted, even if she was a foreigner. Alvise contented himself with ‘Yes, sir.’
‘And did she tell you anything that might be important?’
Riverre drew in a breath, preparing himself to answer, but before he could begin, his partner said, ‘Nothing she actually said, sir. But I got the impression she didn’t like the signora.’
Riverre couldn’t let this pass and asked, with a lurid smile, ‘What’s not to like there?’ putting heavy emphasis on the last word.
Brunetti gave him a cool glance and asked his partner, ‘Why?’
‘It was nothing I could put my finger on,’ he began. Riverre snorted. So much for the effectiveness of his cool glance.
‘As I was saying, sir, it was nothing definite, but she seemed much more formal when the signora was there. Be hard for her to be more formal than she was with us, but it just seemed that way. She seemed to, I don’t know, get cooler when the signora was there, especially when she had to speak to her.’
‘And when was that?’
‘When we first went in. We asked her if it would be all right if we had a look around the apartment, at his things. From the way she answered us, I mean the signora, sir, it looked like she didn’t like the idea very much. But she told us to go ahead, and then she called the maid and told her to show us where his things were. It was then, when they were talking to each other, that the maid seemed, well, cold. Later, when she was talking to us, she seemed better. Didn’t warm up or anything—after all, she is Belgian—but she was better with us, more friendly, than she was with the other one.’
‘Did you speak to the signora again?’
‘Just before we were leaving, sir. We had the papers with us. She didn’t like it that we were taking them with us. It was just a look, but it’s the way she made us feel. We asked her if we could take the papers. We had to; it’s the regulation.’
