'Did it.'
'Did what? I didn't hear you.'
'She was hit by a car, sir. I'm in Mestre, at the hospital.'
'What happened?'
'She was going to the train station in Mogliano, where she lives. At
least she was walking in that direction. A car hit her, knocked her
down and didn't stop.'
'Did anyone see it?'
Two people. The police there talked to them, but neither was sure
about anything other than that it was light-coloured and the driver
might have been a woman.'
Glancing at his watch, Brunetti asked, 'When did this happen?'
'At about seven, sir. When the police saw that she was Fernando Moro's
mother, one of them remembered the boy's death and called the Questura.
They tried to get you, and then they called me.'
Brunetti's glance fell on the answering machine. A tiny pulsating
light illuminated the one message that awaited him. 'Has he been
told?'
They called him first, sir. She's a widow, and his name and address
were in her purse.'
'And?'
'He came out.' Both men thought of what that must have been for Moro,
but neither said anything.
'Where is he now?' Brunetti asked.
'In the hospital here.'
'What do the doctors say?' Brunetti asked.
'Some cuts and bruises, but nothing broken. The car must just have
brushed her. But she's seventy-two, so the doctors decided to keep her
overnight.' After a pause, Vianello added, 'He just left.'
There was a lengthy silence. Finally, Vianello said, in response to
Brunetti's unspoken question, 'Yes, it might be a good idea. He was
very shaken.'
Part of Brunetti's mind was aware that his instinctive desire to profit
from Moro's weakness was no less reptilian than Vianello's
encouragement that he do so. Neither idea stopped him. 'How long
ago?' Brunetti asked.
'About five minutes. In a taxi.'
Familiar sounds came from the back of the apartment: Paola moving about
in the bathroom, then going down the corridor to their bedroom.
Brunetti's imagination soared above the city and the mainland and
watched a taxi make its way through the empty streets of Mestre and
across the long causeway that led to Piazzale Roma. A single man
emerged,
reached back inside, shoving money at the driver, then turned away and
began to walk towards the iinbarcudero of the Number One. I'll go,'
Brunetti said and hung up.
Paola was already asleep when he looked into the bedroom, a stream of
light falling across her legs. He wrote a note then couldn't decide
where to leave it. Finally he propped the sheet of paper on the
answering machine, where the flickering light still called for
attention.
As Brunetti walked through the quiet city, his imagination took flight
again, but this time it observed a man in a dark suit and a grey
overcoat walking from San Polo toward the Accademia Bridge. As he
watched, the man crossed in front of the museum and made his way into
the narrow calling of Dorsoduro. At the end of the underpass that ran
beside the church of San Gregorio, he crossed the bridge to the broad
Riva in front of the Salute. Moro's house, off to his right, was dark,
though all the shutters were open. Brunetti moved along the canal and
stopped at the foot of the bridge leading back over the small canal and
to the door of Moro's house. From there, he would see Moro returning,
whether he walked, came by taxi or took the Number One. He turned and
looked across the still waters at the disorderly domes of San Marco and
the piebald walls of Palazzo Ducale, and thought of the peace their
beauty brought him. How strange it was: nothing more than the
arrangement of lines and colours, and he felt better than he had before
he looked at them.
He heard the throb of the motor of the vaporetto arriving; then saw the
prow emerge from behind the wall of a building. The noise moved into a
different key, and the boat glided up to the imbarcadero. The crewman
tossed out the rope with effortless accuracy and whipped it around the
metal stanchion in the centuries-old knot. A few people got off the
boat, none of them Moro. The metal scraped as the gate was pulled
shut; a careless flip and the rope came free, and the boat continued.
