and Paola’s to believe in human goodness.
‘Who called?’ she asked.
‘Monico.’
‘Good,’ she said, recognizing the name and familiar with the man. ‘I’ll call him and tell him about the guard.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Don’t wait up. I’m afraid this will take a long time.’
‘So will this,’ she said, leaning forward and gathering up the papers.
He bent again and this time kissed her on the lips. She returned his kiss and turned it into a real one. He straightened up and she surprised him by wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her face into his stomach. She said something that was too mumbled to understand. Gently, he stroked her hair, but his mind was on Semenzato and Chinese ceramics.
She pulled herself away and reached for her glasses. Putting them on, she said, ‘Remember to take your boots.’
* * * *
Chapter Nine
When commissario Brunetti of the Venice police arrived at the scene of the murder of the director of the most important museum in the city, he carried in his right hand a white plastic shopping bag which bore in red letters the name of a supermarket. Inside the bag were a pair of size ten rubber boots, black, which he had bought at Standa three years before. The first thing he did when he arrived at the guards’ station at the bottom of the staircase that led up to the museum was hand the bag to the guard he found there, saying he’d pick it up when he left.
As he placed the bag on the floor beside his desk, the guard said, ‘One of your men is upstairs, sir.’
‘Good. More will be coming soon. And the coroner. Has the press showed up yet?’
‘No, sir.’
‘What about the cleaning woman?’
‘They had to take her home, sir. She couldn’t stop crying after she saw him.’
‘That bad, is it?’
The guard nodded. ‘There’s an awful lot of blood.’
A head wound, Brunetti remembered. Yes, there’d be a lot of blood. ‘She’s bound to make a stir when she gets there, and that means someone will call
‘I’ll try, sir, but I don’t know if it’ll do any good.’
‘Keep them here,’ Brunetti said.
‘Yes, sir.’
Brunetti looked down the long corridor that led to a flight of stairs at the end. ‘Is the office up there?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir. Turn left at the top. You’ll see the light at the end of the passage. I think your man is in the office.’
Brunetti turned away and started down the corridor. His steps echoed eerily, reverberating back at him from both sides and from the staircase at the end. Cold, the penetrating damp cold of winter, seeped out from the pavement below him and from the brick walls of the corridor. Behind him, he heard the sharp clang of metal on stone, but no one called out, so he continued down the corridor. The night mist had set in, painting a slippery film of condensation on the broad stone steps under his feet.
At the top, he turned left and made towards the light pouring from an open door at the end of the passage. Halfway there, he called out, ‘Vianello?’ Instantly, the sergeant appeared at the door, dressed in a heavy woollen overcoat, from under the bottom of which protruded a pair of bright yellow rubber boots.
Vianello’s lined face remained impassive when he answered, ‘Pretty bad, sir. It looks like there was a struggle: the place is a mess, chairs turned over, lamps knocked down. He was a big man, so I’d say there had to be two of them. But that’s just first impressions. I’m sure the lab boys can tell us more.’ He stepped back as he spoke, leaving room for Brunetti to follow him inside.
It was just as Vianello said: a floor lamp pitched forward against the desk, its glass dome shattered across the surface; a chair sprawled on its side behind the desk; a silk carpet lying in a bunched heap in front of the desk, its long fringe caught around the ankle of the man who lay dead on the floor beside it. He lay on his stomach, one arm trapped under the weight of his body, the other flung out ahead of him, fingers cupped upward, as if already begging mercy at the gate of heaven.
Brunetti looked at his head, at the grotesque halo of blood that surrounded it, and he quickly looked away. But wherever his eye rested, he saw blood: drops of it had fallen on the desk, a thin trickle of it led from the desk to the carpet, and more of it covered the cobalt blue brick which lay on the floor half a metre from the dead man.
‘The guard downstairs said it’s Dottor Semenzato,’ Vianello explained into the silence that radiated out from Brunetti. ‘The cleaning lady found him at about ten thirty. The office was locked from the outside, but she had a key, so she came in to check that the windows were closed and to clean the room, and she found him here. Like that.’
Brunetti still said nothing, merely moved over to one of the windows and looked down into the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale. All was quiet; the statues of the giants continued to guard the staircase; not even a cat moved
