'Signora, this is Commissario Guido Brunetti. Of the police. I'd be
very grateful if you would find the time to speak to me.' He waited
for her to reply, then added, 'About your son.'
'Aah,' she said. Then nothing for a long time.
'Why have you waited?' she finally asked, and he sensed that having to
ask the question made her angry.
'I didn't want to intrude on your grief, Signora.' When she was
silent, he added, 'I'm sorry.'
'Do you have children?' she surprised him by asking.
'Yes, I do.'
'How old?'
'I have a daughter he began, then said the rest quickly, 'My son is the
same age as yours.'
'You didn't say that at the beginning,' she said, sounding surprised
that he should have failed to use such an emotive tool.
Unable to think of anything suitable to say, Brunetti asked 'May I come
and speak to you, Signora?'
'Any time you want she said, and he had a vision of days, months,
years, an entire lifetime stretching away from her.
'May I come now?' he asked.
'It's all the same, isn't it?' she asked; it was a real request for
information, not a sarcastic or self-pitying pose.
'It should take me about twenty minutes to get there he said.
'I'll be here she replied.
He had located her address on the map and so knew which way to walk. He
could have taken the boat up towards San Marco, but he chose to walk up
the Riva, cutting through the Piazza and in front of the Museo Correr.
He entered Frezzerie and turned left at the first cafe on his left. It
was the second door on the right, the top bell. He rang it, and with
no question asked through the intercom, the door snapped open and he
went in.
The entrance hall was damp and dark, though no canal was nearby. He
climbed to the third floor and found, directly opposite him, an open
door. He paused, called, 'Signora Moro?' and heard a voice say
something from inside, so he went in and closed the door behind him. He
went down a
narrow corridor with a cheap machine-made carpet on the floor, towards
what seemed to be a source of light.
A door stood open on his right and he stepped inside. A woman was
sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, and light filtered in
from two curtained windows that stood behind her. The room smelled of
cigarette smoke and, he thought, mothballs.
'Commissario?' she asked, raising her face to look in his direction.
'Yes/ he answered. Thank you for letting me come.'
She waved his words away with her right hand, then returned the
cigarette it held to her mouth and inhaled deeply. There's a chair
over there she said, exhaling and pointing to a cane-seated chair that
stood against the wall.
He brought it over and set it facing her, but not very close and a
short distance to one side. He sat and waited for her to say
something. He didn't want to seem to stare at her and so he directed
his attention to the windows, beyond which he saw, just on the other
side of the narrow calle, the windows of another house. Little light
could get in that way. He turned his attention back to her and, even
in this strange penumbra, recognized the woman in the photo. She
looked as though she'd been on a crash diet that had drawn the flesh
tight on her face and honed the bones of her jaw until they were so
sharp that they would soon come slicing through the skin. The same
process seemed to have pared her body down to the bare essentials of
shoulders, arms, and legs contained in a heavy sweater and dark slacks
that accentuated her body's frailty.
It became evident that she was not going to speak, was simply going to
sit with him and smoke her cigarette. 'I'd like to ask you some
questions, Signora/ he began, and exploded in a sudden fit of nervous
coughing.
'Is it the cigarette?' she asked, turning to the table on her right
and making to put it out.
He raised a reassuring hand. 'No, not at all he gasped but was gripped
by another coughing fit.
She stabbed out the cigarette and got to her feet. He started to get
to his, doubled over by his coughing, but she waved him back and left
the room. Brunetti lowered himself into the chair and continued to
cough, tears streaming from his eyes. In a moment, she was back,
