‘The American you pulled out of the water this morning.’
‘Oh,’ Brunetti said, this time with polite surprise. ‘Is the report back so soon? He
‘Don’t be cute with me, Brunetti,’ Patta said angrily. ‘The report isn’t back yet, but he had American coins in his pocket, so he’s got to be an American.’
‘Or a numismatist,’ Brunetti suggested amiably.
There followed a long pause which told Brunetti the Vice-Questore didn’t know the meaning of the word.
‘I told you not to be smart, Brunetti. We’re going to work on the assumption that he’s an American. We can’t have Americans being murdered in this city, not with the state of tourism this year. Do you understand that?’
Brunetti fought back the impulse to ask if it would be all right to kill people of other nationalities - Albanians, perhaps? - but, instead, said only, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well?’
‘Well what, sir?’
‘What have you done?’
‘Divers are searching the canal where he was found. When we find out when he died, we’ll have them search the places from where he might have drifted, assuming he was killed somewhere else. Vianello is checking for drug use or dealing in the neighbourhood, and the lab is working on the things we found in his pockets.’
‘Those coins?’
‘I’m not sure we need the lab to tell us they’re American, sir.’
After a long silence that said it would not be wise to bait Patta any further, his superior asked, ‘What about Rizzardi?’
‘He said he’d have the report to me this afternoon.’
‘See that I’m sent a copy of it,’ he ordered.
‘Yes, sir. Will there be anything else?’
‘No, that’s all.’ Patta replaced his phone without saying anything else, and Brunetti went back to reading the reports.
When he finished with them, it was after one. Because he didn’t know when Rizzardi would call, and because he wanted to get the report as quickly as possible, he decided not to go home for lunch, nor spend the time going to a restaurant, though he was hungry after the long morning. He decided to go down to the bar at the foot of Ponte dei Greci and make do with a few
When he walked in, Arianna, the owner, greeted him by name and automatically placed a wine glass on the counter in front of him. Orso, her ancient German shepherd, who had developed a special fondness for Brunetti over the course of the years, hauled himself arthritically to his feet from his regular place beside the ice-cream cooler and tottered over to him. He waited long enough for Brunetti to pat him on the head and pull gently at his ears and then collapsed in a heap at his feet. The many regulars in the bar were accustomed to stepping over Orso and tossing him bits of crusts and sandwiches. He was especially fond of asparagus.
‘What would you like, Guido?’ Arianna asked, meaning
‘Give me a ham and artichoke, and one with shrimp.’ Fan-like, Orso’s tail began to beat softly against his ankle. ‘And one asparagus.’ When the sandwiches came, he asked for another glass of wine and drank it slowly, thinking of the way things would be complicated if the dead man did turn out to be American. He didn’t know if there would be questions of jurisdiction, decided not to think about that.
As if to prevent him, Arianna said, ‘Too bad about the American.’
‘We’re not sure that he is, not yet.’
‘Well, if he is, then someone is going to start crying “terrorism”, and that’s not going to do anyone any good.’ Though she was Yugoslavian by birth, her thinking was entirely Venetian: business first and above all.
‘There are lots of drugs in that neighbourhood,’ she added, as if talking about it could make drugs be the cause. He remembered that she also owned a hotel, so the very thought of the mere rumour of terrorism was bound to fill her with righteous panic.
‘Yes, we’re checking that, Arianna. Thanks.’ As he spoke, a stalk of asparagus worked itself loose from his sandwich and fell to the floor at Orso’s nose. And, when that one was gone, another. It was difficult for Orso to get to his feet, so why not let him eat takeaway?
He placed a ten-thousand-lire note on the counter and pocketed his change when she handed it to him. She hadn’t bothered to ring it up on the cash register, so the sum would go unreported and, therefore, untaxed. He had, years ago, ceased caring about this perpetual fraud committed against the State. Let the boys from the Finance Police worry about that. The law said she had to ring it up and give him a receipt; if he left the bar without it, both of them were liable to fines of as much as hundreds of thousands of lire. The boys from Finance often waited outside bars, shops, and restaurants, watching through the windows as business took place, then stopped emerging clients and demanded to be shown their receipts. But Venice was a small town, and all the men from Finance knew him, so he’d never be stopped, not unless they brought in extra police from outside the city and had what the Press had taken to calling a ‘blitz’, staking out the entire commercial centre of the city and, in a day, taking in millions of lire in fines. And if they stopped him? He’d show them his warrant card and say he’d stopped to use the toilet. Those same taxes paid for his salary; this was true. But that no longer made any difference to him, nor, he suspected, to the majority of his fellow citizens. In a country where the Mafia was free to murder when and whom it pleased, the failure to produce a receipt for a cup of coffee was not a crime that interested Brunetti.
Back at his desk, he found a note telling him to call Doctor Rizzardi. When Brunetti did, he found the Coroner still at his office on the cemetery island.
‘I took a look at his teeth. All the work is American. He has six fillings and one root canal. The work stretches back over years, and there’s no doubt about the technique. It’s all American.’
Brunetti knew better than to ask him if he was sure.
‘What else?’
‘The blade was four centimetres wide and at least fifteen long. The tip penetrated the heart, just as I thought. It slipped right between the ribs, didn’t even scrape them, so whoever did it knew enough to hold the blade horizontally. And the angle was perfect.’ He paused for a moment, then added, ‘Since it was on the left side, I’d say that whoever did it was right-handed or at least used his right hand.’
‘What about his height? Can you tell anything?’
‘No, nothing definite; But he had to be close to the dead man, standing face to face.’
‘Signs of a struggle? Anything under his nails?’
‘No. Nothing. But he’d been in the water about five or six hours, so if there was anything to begin with, it’s likely it would have been washed away.’
‘Five or six hours?’
‘Yes. I’d say he died about midnight, one o’clock.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Nothing particular. He was in very good shape, very muscular.’
‘What about food?’
‘He ate something a few hours before he died. Probably a sandwich. Ham and tomato. But he didn’t drink anything, at least not anything alcoholic. There was none in his blood, and from the look of his liver, I’d say he drank very little, if at all.’
‘Scars? Operations?’
‘He had a small scar,’ Rizzardi began, then paused and Brunetti heard the rustle of papers. ‘On his left wrist, half-moon shaped. Could have been anything. Never been operated on for anything. Had his tonsils, his appendix. Perfect health.’ Brunetti could tell from his voice that this was all Rizzardi had to give him.
‘Thanks, Ettore. Will you send a written report?’
‘Does His Superiorship want to see it?’
Brunetti grinned at Rizzardi’s title for Patta. ‘He wants to have it. I’m not sure he’s going to read it.’
‘Well, if he does, it’s going to be so filled with medical school jargon that he’ll have to call me to interpret it for him.’ Three years ago, Patta had opposed Rizzardi’s appointment as Coroner because the nephew of a friend of
