She shook her head.
All of this talk of Brett made Brunetti suddenly realize that she had been gone from the room for a long time. ‘Is that the only door?’ he asked.
His question was so sudden that Flavia took a moment to understand it and then to understand everything it meant.
‘Yes. There’s no other way out. Or in. And the roof is separate. There’s no access to it.’ She got up. ‘I’ll go and see how she is.’
She was gone a long time, during which Brunetti picked up the book that Brett had left on the sofa and paged through it. He stared at the photo of the Ishtar Gate for a long time, trying to see which part of the figure appeared on the brick that had killed Semenzato. It was like a jigsaw puzzle, but he proved incapable of fitting the single missing piece that lay in the police laboratory at the Questura into the whole picture of the gate that lay in front of him.
It was almost five minutes before Flavia came back. She stood by the table while she spoke, letting Brunetti know that their conversation was over. ‘She’s asleep. The pain pills she’s taking are very strong, and I think there’s a tranquillizer, too. The champagne didn’t help things. She’ll sleep until the afternoon.’
‘I need to speak to her again,’ he said.
‘Can it wait until tomorrow?’ It was a simple question, not an imperious demand.
It really couldn’t, but he had no choice. ‘Yes. Is it all right if I come at about the same time?’
‘Of course. I’ll tell her you’re coming. And I’ll try to limit the champagne.’ The conversation might be over, but the truce apparently held.
Brunetti, who had decided that Dom Perignon was an excellent mid-morning drink, thought this an unnecessary precaution and hoped that Flavia might change her mind by the next day.
* * * *
Chapter Twelve
Was this the beginning of alcoholism, Brunetti wondered, as he found himself wanting to stop in a bar on the way back to the Questura and have another glass of champagne? Or was it merely the inescapable response to the certainty that he would have to speak to Patta that morning? The first explanation seemed preferable.
When he opened the door to his office, a wave of heat swept across him, so palpable that he turned to see if he could watch it roll down the corridor, perhaps to engulf some innocent soul unfamiliar with the vagaries of the heating system. Each year, on or about the feast day of Saint Agatha, 5 February, heat flared out of all the rooms on the north side of the fourth floor of the Questura at the same time as it disappeared from the corridors and the offices on the south side of the third floor. It remained this way for about three weeks, generally until the feast of Saint Leandro, whom most people in the building tended to thank for their deliverance. No one had ever been able to understand or correct this phenomenon, though it had gone on for five years or more. The main heating unit had, at various times and by various technicians, been worked on, inspected, adjusted, tinkered with, sworn at and kicked, but it had never been repaired. By now, people who worked on these two floors were resigned and took the necessary measures, some removing jackets while others wore gloves in the office.
So closely did Brunetti associate this phenomenon with the feast of Saint Agatha that he could never see an image of that martyr, invariably pictured holding her two severed breasts on a plate, but he imagined she was carrying thereon, instead, two matching pieces from the central heating unit: large washers, perhaps.
He walked across the room, stripping off coat and jacket as he went, and threw open both the tall windows. He was as suddenly chilled and went back to take his jacket from his desk, where he had tossed it. Over the course of the years, he had developed a rhythm for opening and closing the windows, one that not only effectively controlled the temperature in the room but also prevented him from concentrating on anything at all. Could the caretaker be in the pay of the Mafia? Each time he read the paper, it seemed that almost every other person who worked for the police was, so why not the caretaker?
On his desk lay the usual personnel reports and requests for information from police in other cities as well as letters from people in the city. There was one from a woman on the small island of Torcello, asking him personally to look for her son, whom she knew had been kidnapped by the Syrians. The woman was mad, and different members of the police received a letter from her each month: it was always the same non-existent son, but the kidnappers changed according to the winds of world politics.
If he went now, he could see Patta before lunch. With this beacon shining out its bright hope, he took the slim file of papers on the Semenzato and Lynch crimes and went down to Patta’s office.
Though fresh iris abounded, Signorina Elettra was not at her desk. Probably out at the landscaper’s. He knocked and was told to enter. Spared the vagaries of the heating system, Patta’s office was a perfect 22 degrees, the ideal temperature to allow him the luxury of removing his jacket, should the pace of work grow too frenetic. Having so far been spared that necessity, he sat behind his desk, his mohair jacket buttoned, diamond tie-pin neatly in place. As always, Patta looked as if he had just slipped off a Roman coin, his large brown eyes perfectly set among the other perfections of his face.
‘Good morning, sir,’ Brunetti said, taking the seat that Patta gestured him to.
‘Good morning, Brunetti.’ When Brunetti leaned forward to place the folder on Patta’s desk, his superior waved it away with his hand. ‘I’ve read it. Carefully. I take it you’re working on the assumption that the beating of Dottoressa Lynch and the murder of Dottor Semenzato are related?’
‘Yes, sir, I am. I don’t see how they can’t be.’
He thought for a moment that Patta, as was usual with him, would object to any expressed certainty that was not his own, but he surprised Brunetti by nodding his head and saying, ‘Yes, you’re probably right. What have you done so far?’
‘I’ve interviewed Dottoressa Lynch,’ he began, but Patta broke in.
‘I hope you were polite with her.’
Brunetti contented himself with a simple, ‘Yes, sir.’
