Acqua Alta

to disturb the moonlit scene.

‘How long have you been here?’ Brunetti asked.

Vianello shot back his cuff and looked at his watch. ‘Eighteen minutes, sir. I touched his pulse, but it was gone, and he was cold. I’d say he’d been dead at least a couple of hours, but the doctor can tell us better.’

From off to the left, Brunetti heard a siren shriek out and shatter the tranquillity of the night, and for a moment he thought it was the lab team, arriving in a boat and being stupid about it. But the siren rose in pitch, its insistent whine ever louder and more strident, and then it wailed its slow way down to the original note. It was the siren at San Marco, calling out to the sleeping city the news that the waters were rising: acqua alta had begun.

The noise of their actual arrival camouflaged by the siren, the two men of the lab crew set their equipment down in the hall outside the room. Pavese, the photographer, stuck his head into the room and saw the dead man on the floor. Apparently unmoved by what he saw, he called across to the other two, voice raised to be heard above the siren, ‘You want a whole set, Commissario?’

Brunetti turned from the window at the sound of the voice and walked over towards him, careful not to go near the body until it had been photographed and the floor around it checked for fibres and hairs or possible scuff marks. He wondered if this caution served any real purpose: Semenzato’s body had been approached by too many people, and the scene was already contaminated.

‘Yes, and as soon as you’re done with them, see what there is in the way of fibres and hairs, then we’ll have a look.’

Pavese displayed no irritation at having his superior tell him to do the obvious and asked, ‘Do you want a separate set of the head?’

‘Yes.’

The photographer busied himself with his equipment. Foscolo, the second member of the team, had already assembled the heavy tripod and was attaching the camera to it. Pavese bent down and rummaged in his equipment bag, pushing aside rolls of film and slim packets of filters, and finally pulled out a portable flash that trailed a heavy electrical cord. He handed the flash to Foscolo and picked up the tripod. His quick professional glance at the body had been enough. ‘I’ll get a couple of the whole room from here, Luca, then from the other side. There’s an electrical outlet under the window. When I’m done with the shot of the entire room, we’ll set up there, between the window and the head. I want to get a few of the whole body, then we’ll switch to the Nikon and do the head. I think the angle from the left would be better.’ He paused for a moment, considering. ‘We won’t need the filters. The flash is enough to get the blood.’

Brunetti and Vianello waited outside the door, through which burst the intermittent glow of the flash. ‘You think they used that brick?’ Vianello finally asked.

Brunetti nodded. ‘You saw his head.’

‘They wanted to make sure, didn’t they?’

Brunetti thought of Brett’s face and suggested, ‘Or perhaps they liked doing it.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Vianello said. ‘I suppose it’s possible.’

A few minutes later, Pavese stuck his head out. ‘We’re finished with the photos, Dottore.’

‘When will you have them?’ Brunetti asked.

‘This afternoon, about four, I’d say.’

Brunetti’s acknowledgement of this was cut off by the arrival of Ettore Rizzardi, medico legale, there to represent the state in declaring the evident, that the man was dead, and then to suggest the probable cause of death, in this case not hard to determine.

Like Vianello, he was wearing rubber boots, though his were a conservative black and came only to the hem of his overcoat. ‘Good evening, Guido,’ he said, as he came in. ‘The man downstairs said it’s Semenzato.’ When Brunetti nodded, the doctor asked, ‘What happened?’

Rather than answer, Brunetti stepped aside, allowing Rizzardi to see the unnatural posture of the body and the bright splashes of blood. The technicians had been at work, and now strips of bright yellow tape surrounded two rectangles the size of phone books in which faint scuff marks were visible.

‘Can we touch him?’ Brunetti asked Foscolo, who was now busy sprinkling black powder on the surface of Semenzato’s desk.

The technician exchanged a quick glance with his partner, who was placing tape around the blue brick. Pavese nodded.

Rizzardi approached the body first. He set his bag down on the seat of a chair, opened it, and removed a pair of thin rubber gloves. He slipped them on, crouched beside the body, and stretched his hand towards the dead man’s neck, but, seeing the blood that covered Semenzato’s head, he changed his mind and reached, instead, for the outflung wrist. The flesh he touched was cold, the blood inside it forever stilled. Automatically, Rizzardi shot back his starched cuff and looked at the time.

The cause of death was not far to seek: two deep indentations penetrated the side of his head, and there seemed to be a third on his forehead, though Semenzato’s hair had fallen forward in death to cover it partially. Bending closer, Rizzardi could see jagged pieces of bone within one of the holes, just behind the ear.

Rizzardi dropped on to both knees to get greater leverage and reached under the body to shift it over on to its back. The third indentation was now clearly visible, the flesh around it bruised and blue. Rizzardi reached down and lifted first one dead hand and then the other. ‘Guido, look at this,’ he said, indicating the back of the right hand; Brunetti knelt beside him and looked at the back of Semenzato’s hand. The skin on the knuckles was scraped raw, and one of the fingers was swollen and bent brokenly to one side.

‘He tried to defend himself,’ Rizzardi said, then looked down the length of the body that lay below him. ‘How tall would you say he is, Guido?’

‘One-ninety, certainly-taller than either of us.’

‘And heavier, too,’ Rizzardi added. ‘There’d have to have been two of them.’