vaporetto rather than walk home. He and Vianello made desultory conversation while waiting for the boat and inside the cabin as it made its majestic way up the most beautiful waterway in the world.
Brunetti got out at San Silvestro, blind to the beauty of the moonlit night. He wanted nothing more than to find his wife and his bed, and to lose the memory of Iacovantuono’s sad, knowing eyes. Inside the apartment, he hung up his coat and went down the corridor towards their bedroom. No light came from either of the children’s rooms, but nevertheless he opened their doors and checked that they were both asleep.
He opened the door of their bedroom quietly, hoping to undress in the light that filtered in from the corridor and not to disturb Paola. But it was a vain courtesy: the bed was empty. Even though there was no gleam coming from under the door of her study, he checked to confirm his certainty that it was empty. No lights burned in any other part of the apartment, but he went into the living-room, half hoping, yet knowing how vain the hope was, that he would find her asleep on the sofa.
The only light in that part of the house flickered red from the answering machine. There were three messages. The first was his own phone call, made from Treviso at about ten, telling Paola that he would be delayed even longer. The second was a hang-up and the third, as he had both known and feared it would be, was from the Questura, Officer Pucetti asking the commissario to call as soon as he got home.
He did so, using the direct number to the officers’ room. It was answered on the second ring.
‘Pucetti, this is Commissario Brunetti. What is it?’
‘I think you’d better come down here, Commissario.’
‘What is it, Pucetti?’ Brunetti repeated, but his voice was tired, not at all brusque or imperative.
‘Your wife, sir.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘We’ve arrested her, sir.’
‘I see. Can you tell me more about it?’
‘I think it would be better if you came over, sir.’
‘May I speak to her?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Of course,’ Pucetti answered, relief flooding his voice.
After a moment, Paola asked, ‘Yes?’
Sudden rage swept him. She gets herself arrested and all she can do is act the prima donna. ‘I’m on my way down there, Paola. Did you do it again?’
‘Yes, I did.’ Nothing more.
He put down the phone, went into the kitchen and left a note, and the light burning, for the children. He headed towards the Questura, his heart heavier than his feet.
A light shower had begun to fall, really more a liquefaction of air than anything as distinct as rain. Automatically he pulled up his collar as he walked.
After a quarter of an hour he arrived at the Questura. A very worried-looking uniformed officer stood at the door and opened it for him with a salute so crisp it seemed out of place at this hour. Brunetti nodded at the young man – he couldn’t remember his name, though he knew he knew it – and took the steps up to the first floor.
Pucetti stood and saluted when he came in. Paola looked up at him from where she sat facing Pucetti, but she didn’t smile.
Brunetti took a chair on Paola’s side of the desk and pulled the arrest form that lay in front of his colleague towards him. He read it slowly.
‘You found her there, in Campo Manin?’ Brunetti asked the officer.
‘Yes, sir,’ Pucetti answered, still standing.
Brunetti motioned to the young man to sit down, which he did with obvious timidity. ‘Was anyone with you?’
‘Yes, sir. Landi.’
That cuts it, then, Brunetti thought and pushed the paper back across the desk. ‘What did you do?’
‘We came back here, sir, and we asked her, your wife, for her
Landi was bound to do that, Brunetti knew. ‘Why did you both come back here? Why didn’t one of you stay there?’
‘One of the Guardia di San Marco heard the alarm and came, so we left him there until the owner showed up.’
‘I see, I see,’ Brunetti said, then, ‘Did Lieutenant Scarpa come in?’
‘No, sir. He and Landi talked. But he didn’t give any orders, just left it to us to do it the normal way.’
Brunetti almost said there probably was no normal way to arrest the wife of a commissario of police, but instead he stood and glanced down at Paola, addressing her for the first time. ‘I think we can go now, Paola.’
She didn’t answer, but immediately got to her feet.
‘I’ll take her home, Pucetti. We’ll be back here in the morning. If Lieutenant Scarpa asks any questions, tell him that, would you?’
‘Of course, sir,’ Pucetti answered. He started to add something, but Brunetti cut him off with an upraised hand.
‘It’s all right, Pucetti. You had no choice.’ He glanced at Paola and added, ‘And besides, it would have happened sooner or later.’ He tried to smile at the man.
When they got to the bottom of the stairs, they found the young policeman at the door, his hand already pulling it open. Brunetti let Paola pass in front of him, raised a hand without actually looking at him, and walked out into the night. The liquid air surrounded them, instantly turning their breath into soft clouds. They walked side by side, the sword of discord as palpable between them as their breath was visible in the air.
7
Neither of them spoke on the way home, nor did they sleep for the rest of the night, save for odd patches of troubled dreams. A few times, as they drifted between waking and moments of forgetting, their bodies rolled together, but there was none of the ease of long familiarity in the contact. Quite the opposite: the touch could have been that of a stranger and each responded by moving away. They had the grace not to make it a sudden move, not to start in shock and horror at the touch of this stranger who had invaded their marriage bed. Perhaps that would have been more honest, to let the flesh give voice to the mind and the spirit, but both of them managed to control that impulse, to beat it down out of some idea of loyalty due to memory or the love both of them feared had been damaged or somehow changed.
Brunetti forced himself to wait for the seven o’clock bells from San Polo, refused to let himself get out of bed until then, but they had not finished sounding before he was into the bathroom, where he stood under the shower for a long time, washing away the night and the thought of Landi and Scarpa, and what was bound to be waiting for him when he got to work that morning.
As he stood under the water, he told himself that he would have to say something to Paola before he left the house, but he had no idea what that would be. He decided to let it depend upon how she behaved when he went back into the bedroom, but when he did she was no longer there. He heard her in the kitchen, the familiar sounds of water, coffee pot, a chair scraping on the floor. Knotting his tie, he went along there and, as he saw her sitting at her regular place, noticed that two large cups were placed at their normal places on the table. He finished with his tie, bent and kissed the top of her head.
‘Why do you do that?’ she asked, reaching backwards with her right arm and wrapping it around his thigh. She pulled him towards her.
He leaned against her, but he did not touch her with his hand. ‘Habit, I suppose.’
‘Habit?’ she asked, already on the way to being offended.
‘The habit of loving you.’
‘Ah,’ she said, but anything further was cut off by the hiss of the coffee pot. She poured coffee, added steaming
