'Who cut him down?' Santini asked when he saw Brunetti.
'Vianello.'
'He shouldn't have done that,' another of the technicians called from
across the room.
That's exactly what he told me,' Brunetti answered.
Santini shrugged. The would have done it, too.' There were
affirmative grunts from two of the men.
Brunetti was about to ask what the crew thought had happened, when he
heard footsteps. He glanced aside and saw Dottor Venturi, one of
Rizzardi's assistants. Both men nodded, as much acknowledgement of the
other's presence as either was willing to give.
Insensitive to most human feelings that were not directed towards him,
Venturi stepped up close to the body and set his medical bag by the
head. He went down on one knee and
drew the edge of the cloak from the boy's face.
Brunetti looked away, back into the showers, where Pedone, Santini's
assistant, was holding a plastic spray bottle up towards the top of the
right-hand wall. As Brunetti watched, he squirted cloud after tiny
cloud of dark grey powder on to the walls, moving carefully from left
to right and then back to his starting point to repeat the process
about twenty centimetres below.
By the time all the walls were coated, Venturi was back on his feet.
Brunetti saw that he had left the boy's face uncovered.
'Who cut him down?' was the first thing the doctor asked.
'One of my men. I told him to,' Brunetti answered and bent down to
draw the edge of the cape back across the boy's face. He rose up again
and looked at Venturi, saying nothing.
'Why did you do that?'
Appalled at the question, Brunetti ignored it, irritated that he had to
speak to a man capable of asking it. He asked, 'Does it look like
suicide?'
Venturi's long pause made it obvious that he wanted to exchange
discourtesies with Brunetti, but when Santini turned to him and said,
'Well?' the doctor answered, 'I won't have any idea until I can take a
look at his insides.' Then, directly to Santini, 'Was there a chair,
something he could stand on?'
One of the other technicians called over, 'A chair. It was in the
shower.'
'You didn't move it, did you?' Venturi demanded of him.
'I photographed it,' the man answered, speaking with glacial clearness.
'Eight times, I think. And then Pedone dusted it for prints. And then
I moved it so it wouldn't get in his way when he dusted the shower
stall.' Pointing with his chin to a wooden chair that stood in front
of one of the sinks, he added, That's it, over there.'
The doctor ignored the chair. Till have my report sent to
3i you when I'm finished he said to Brunetti, then picked up his bag
and left.
When Venturi's footsteps had died away, Brunetti asked Santini, 'What
does it look like to you?'
'He could have done it himself the technician answered. He pointed to
some marks that stood out from the darker grey of the coating on the
walls of the shower. There are two long swipes across the wall here,
at about shoulder height. He could have done that.'
'Would that have happened?'
'Probably. It's instinct: no matter how much they want to die, the
body doesn't.'
Pedone, who had been openly listening to this, added, 'It's clean, sir.
No one had a fight in there, if that's what you're wondering about.'
When it seemed that his partner wasn't going to add anything, Santini
continued: 'It's what they do, sir, when they hang themselves. Believe
me. If there's a wall near them, they try to grab it; can't help
themselves.'
'It's the way boys do it, isn't it, hanging?' Brunetti asked, not
looking down at Moro.
'More than girls, yes Santini agreed. His voice took on an edge of
anger and he asked, 'What was he seventeen? eighteen? How could he do
something like that?'
'God knows Brunetti said.
'God didn't have anything to do with this, Santini said angrily, though
it was unclear whether his remark called into question the deity's
