Acqua Alta

at the Oriental in Bangkok, where he had gone, it seemed, for a weekend. Seeing that, Brunetti shuffled back through the papers until he found the list of Semenzato’s travels and his credit card receipts. He put the papers side by side: La Capra and Semenzato had spent the same two nights at the Oriental. Brunetti separated the papers and laid the separate sheets in two vertical columns on his desk. On at least five occasions, Semenzato and La Capra had been in a foreign city on the same dates, often staying in the same hotel.

Did hunters feel this rush of excitement when they saw the first prints in the snow or when they heard a rustling in the trees behind them and turned to see the bright rush of wings? La Capra and his new palazzo, La Capra and his purchases at Sotheby’s, La Capra and his trips to the Orient and the Middle East. The trajectory of his life crossed repeatedly with that of Semenzato, and Brunetti suspected the reason lay in their shared interest in things of great beauty and even greater price. And Murino? How many objects had his shop provided for Signor La Capra’s new home?

He decided to go down and thank her in person, telling himself that he would make no inquiries about the source of her information. The door to her office was open, and she sat behind her desk, typing into her computer, head turned aside to watch the screen. He noticed that today’s flowers were red roses, at least two dozen of them, flowers which proclaimed love and longing.

She sensed his presence and glanced up at him, smiled, and stopped typing. ‘Buon giorno, Commissario,’ she said. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I’ve come to thank you, bravissima Elettra,’ he said. ‘For the papers you left on my desk.’

She smiled at the use of her first name, as if she saw it as a tribute, not a liberty. ‘Ah, you’re welcome. Interesting coincidences, aren’t they?’ she asked, making no attempt to disguise her satisfaction at having noticed them.

‘Yes. How about the phone records? Did you get them?’

‘They’re cross-checking them now to see if they called one another. They’ve got the records on Signor La Capra’s phone in Palermo as well as the phone and fax lines he had installed here. I told them to check for any that might have come from Semenzato’s home or office, but that will take a bit longer and probably won’t be ready until tomorrow.’

‘Do we owe all of this to your friend Giorgio?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No, he’s in Rome on some sort of training programme. So I called and said Vice-Questore Patta needed the information immediately.’

‘Did they ask you what it was for?’

‘Of course they did, sir. You wouldn’t want them to give this sort of information out without the proper authorization, would you?’

‘No, of course not. And what did you tell them?’

‘That it was classified. A government matter. That will make them work faster.’

‘And what if the Vice-Questore finds out about this? What if they mention this to him, say you used his name?’

Her smile grew even warmer. ‘Oh, I told them that he would have to deny all knowledge of it, so he wouldn’t like their mentioning it to him. Besides, I’m afraid they’re rather used to doing things like this, checking on private phones and keeping records of the calls that people make.’

‘Yes, so am I,’ Brunetti agreed. He was afraid that a record was also kept of what some people said during those phone calls, a flight of paranoia in which he was probably joined by a large part of the population, but he didn’t bother to mention this to Signorina Elettra. Instead, he asked, ‘Any chance we could get them today?’

‘I’ll give them a call. Perhaps this afternoon.’

‘Would you bring them up to me if they come in, signorina?’

‘Of course,’ she answered and turned back to her keyboard.

He went to the door but before reaching it, he turned, hoping to capitalize on the intimacy of the last minutes. ‘Signorina, excuse me if I ask, but I’ve always been curious about why you decided to come to work for us. Not everyone gives up a job at Banca d’ltalia.’

She stopped typing but kept her fingers poised over the keys. ‘Oh, I wanted a change,’ she answered casually and turned her attention back to her typing.

And fish flew, Brunetti thought to himself as he left her office and went back up to his own. The heat had become tropical in his absence, so he opened the windows for a few minutes, holding them only partially open to prevent the rain from driving in, then closed them and went back to his desk.

La Capra and Semenzato, the mysterious man from the South and the museum director. The man with expensive taste and the money to indulge it, and the museum director with the contacts that might be necessary to indulge that taste to its fullest. They were an interesting pair. What other objects would Signor La Capra have in his possession, and were they to be found in his palazzo? Was the restoration completed, and, if so, what sort of changes had been made? That was easily discovered; all he had to do was go down to city hall and ask to see the plans. Of course, what was to be read in the plans and the work that had actually been done might not bear too close a resemblance to each other, but to discover the truth of that, all he had to do was learn which of the city inspectors had signed off on the final papers, and he would have a fairly good idea of how close the relationship was likely to be.

There remained the question of what objects might be contained in the newly restored palazzo, but that demanded a different sort of answer. The magistrate who would issue a search warrant on the basis of hotel receipts for the same dates didn’t exist in Venice, a city where palazzi such as La Capra’s sold for seven million lire per square metre.

He decided to try official means first, which meant a call to the other side of the city and the offices of the catasto, where all plans, projects and transfers of ownership had to be registered. It took him a long time to get through to the proper office, as his call was shunted back and forth between uninterested civil servants who were sure, even before Brunetti had a chance to explain what he wanted, that it was another office which could give him the information. A few times, he tried speaking in Veneziano, sure that the use of dialect would ease things by assuring the person on the other end of the line that he was not only a police official but, more importantly, a native Venetian. The first three people he spoke to answered his every question in Italian,