more than seemed normal for a weekday morning in late spring. When he got to the first of the stalls selling 'original Burano lace', most of which he had always thought was imported from Indonesia, he found his way forward blocked by pastel-coloured bodies. He began to skirt around them, confused by how unaware they seemed that other people wanted to walk to actual destinations rather than mill around and regroup idly in the middle of the pavement.
He turned from the piazza into Via Galuppi and headed for da Romano; he was sure he could reserve a place for one o'clock: a single person was always welcome in a restaurant. At worst, he might have to wait a quarter- hour, but on a day like this it would be a joy to sit at a table in one of the bars that lined the street, sip a prosecco, perhaps read the paper.
The small tables in front of the restaurant were all occupied; at many of them, three people sat at tables designed for two. He passed through the door and into the restaurant, but before he could speak, one of the waiters, hurrying past with a platter of seafood antipasto, saw him and called out,
For a moment, it occurred to Brunetti to argue and try to find a place, but when he glanced around inside he abandoned the idea and left. Two other restaurants were similarly full, though it was just after twelve, far too early for a civilized person to want to eat.
Brunetti had lunch in a bar, standing at the counter and eating toast filled with flabby ham and a slice of cheese that tasted as if it had spent most of its life in plastic. The prosecco was bitter and almost completely flat; even the coffee was bad. Disgusted with his meal and angered by the disappointment of his hopes, he walked dispiritedly down to a small park, bent on sitting in the sun to allow his mood to lighten. He sat on the first bench he saw, put his head back and turned his face to the sun. After a few minutes, his attention was drawn by a furious barking, and he opened his eyes to see again the enormous black dog, which he now recognized as a Newfoundland.
The dog dashed madly across the grass, aiming at a small blonde girl who stood at the foot of the ladder of a long children's slide. Seeing the dog approaching, the little girl grabbed the sides of the ladder and began to scramble up. The dog's owner stood at the other side of the park, its leash hanging helplessly from his hand, calling after the dog.
Barking wildly, the dog reached the slide. The girl, at the top, screamed in terror, her voice high and piercing. Suddenly the dog launched itself up the ladder, astonishing Brunetti, who watched helplessly as it reached the top. The girl dropped on to the top of the metal slide and sailed down; the dog plunged after her, front legs stiff.
The little girl sprawled into the sand at the bottom of the slide, and Brunetti leaped to his feet and started to run in her direction, his hand reaching helplessly for the gun he had, again, forgotten to wear. He closed his right hand into a fist and ran on.
The dog landed just to the left of the little girl, who opened her arms and embraced its enormous head. Its barks were drowned by her shrill laughter, and then all noise stopped as the dog set itself to trying to lick her face off.
Brunetti stopped, almost pitching headlong on to the grass. He looked across at the dog's owner, who waved once and started towards him. The little girl got to her feet and ran around to the ladder, the dog following joyously in her wake. Again he followed her up to the top and then down the slide, and at the bottom they fell into the same pink-tongued tableau. Before the owner could reach him, Brunetti turned and walked away, heading for Campo Vigner, the address the phone book listed for Vittorio Spadini.
The house on the right of Spadini's was bright red, the one to the left as bright a blue. The Spadini house, however, was a pale pink, bleached clean by years of rain and sun. Brunetti noticed other signs: a curtain falling from the rod at one of the windows, the right side of a shutter all but eaten through by rot. The Buranesi were, if nothing else, a houseproud people, and so it surprised him to see such patent signs of neglect.
He rang the bell, waited a moment, and rang it again. No one answered, so after a time he went to the red house and rang the bell there. It was opened by a round woman, or at least his first glance suggested that she was round. Short, even shorter than Chiara, she must have weighed more than a hundred kilos, most of which had decided to settle between her breasts and her knees. Her head was round and her face was round; even her little eyes, squeezed tight by the flesh surrounding them, were round.
'Good afternoon, Signora,' he said. 'I'm looking for Signor Spadini.'
'So are a lot of people,' she said with a laugh that set most of her body shaking loosely.
'I beg your pardon.'
'His wife's looking for him, and his sons are looking for him, and I suppose, if my husband thought there was any chance of getting the money he lent him back, he'd be looking for him, too.' Again, she laughed and again she shook.
Brunetti, unsettled by the strange dissonance between what she had to say and the way she chose to say it, asked, 'When was the last time anyone saw him?'
'Oh, last week some time.' Then, explaining the casualness with which she said this, she explained, 'He does this all the time, disappears and doesn't come home until he's spent all his money and has to go to work again.'
'As a fisherman?'
'Of course,' she said, this time not laughing; in fact, her face expressed confusion that this stranger at her door could think there was anything else a man from Burano could do to earn his living. 'And his wife?'
'She works’ the woman explained. Then, seeing that Brunetti was about to ask for an explanation, added, 'a cleaner at the elementary school'.
As if it had suddenly occurred to her that this man, clearly not a Buranesi, though he did speak Veneziano, had not explained the reason for his curiosity, she asked, 'Why do you want to see him?'
Brunetti smiled easily and, he hoped, wryly. 'I suppose I'm in the same position as your husband, Signora. I lent him some money.' He sighed, shook his head, and spread his hands in a display of mingled disappointment and resignation. 'Any idea where I might find him?'
She laughed again, this time at the absurdity of his errand. 'No, not until he decides to come back. He's a forest bird, Vittorio: he arrives and disappears when he wants to, and there's no catching him, no matter how much you might want to.'
For a moment, Brunetti toyed with the idea of giving her his home number and asking her to call if Spadini returned, but he thought better of it, thanked her for her help, and added, ‘I hope your husband has better luck.'
All of her shook again at the unlikeliness of this; she smiled, and closed the door, leaving Brunetti to make his way through the milling crowds towards the vaporetto and back to Venice.
Back at the Questura, he was astonished to find Pucetti, in uniform, standing outside the Ufficio Straniero, keeping an eye on the people who stood in line, waiting for their papers to be processed.
'What are you doing here?' he asked the equally surprised officer.
‘I called in this morning and asked for you, sir,' Pucetti said, ignoring the people who stood behind him. 'But I was put through to Lieutenant Scarpa. I think he'd left orders that he was to speak to me whenever I called. He said he had direct orders from the Vice-Questore that I was to report here instantly, in uniform. I tried to tell him I was on a special assignment, but he said it would be grounds for dismissal if I refused to obey.' Pucetti had the courage not to look away and spoke directly to Brunetti. 'I didn't think I could refuse a direct order, sir. So I came back.'
'Have you seen him?' Brunetti asked, keeping a tight rein on his anger.
'Scarpa?'
'Yes,' Brunetti answered, refusing to correct Pucetti for omitting the lieutenant's title. 'What did he say?'
'He asked me where I'd been, and I told him I'd been ordered not to speak about it to anyone.'
'Did he ask who gave you the order?'
'Yes, sir.' Pucetti's voice was calm. ‘I told him you did, and he said he'd speak to you about it.'
'Anything else?'
'No, sir. That's all he said.'
Though Brunetti had himself considered summoning Pucetti back to Venice, he could not stand the fact that Scarpa had gone over his head.
'I'm sorry sir,' Pucetti said, then turned away for a moment to stare at a heavily bearded man whose voice
