Not following, Pucetti asked, 'Excuse me, sir?'
'As if they were speaking to an enlisted person? Is that how they
spoke to you?'
Pucetti nodded. 'Yes, I think so, as if I was supposed to obey them
and not ask questions.'
'But that doesn't tell us why they didn't want to talk Vianello
interrupted.
'There's usually only one reason for that Brunetti said.
Before Vianello could ask what he meant, Pucetti blurted out, 'Because
they all know whatever Ruffo does, and they don't want us to talk to
him.'
Once again, Brunetti graced the young man with an approving smile.
By three that afternoon, they were seated in an unmarked police car
parked a hundred metres from the entrance to the home listed for Cadet
Ruffo, a dairy farm on the outskirts of Dolo, a small town halfway
between Venice and Padova. The stone house, long and low and attached
at one end to a large barn, sat back from a poplar-lined road. A
gravel driveway led up to it from the road, but the recent rains had
reduced it to a narrow band of mud running between patches of dead
grass interspersed with mud-rimmed puddles. There were no trees within
sight, though stumps stood here and there in the fields, indicating
where they had been cut. It was difficult for Brunetti, stiff and cold
in the car, to think of a season different from this one, but he
wondered what the cattle would do without shade from the summer sun.
Then he remembered how seldom cows went to pasture on the farms of the
new Veneto: they generally stood in their stalls, reduced to motionless
cogs in the wheel of milk production.
It was cold; a raw wind was coming from the north. Every so often,
Vianello turned on the motor and put the heat on high, until it grew so
hot in the car that one or another of them was forced to open a
window.
After half an hour, Vianello said, The don't think it makes much sense
to sit here, waiting for him to show up. Why don't we just go and ask
if he's there or not?'
Pucetti, as befitted his inferior position, both in terms of rank and,
because he was in the back seat, geography, said nothing, leaving it to
Brunetti to respond.
Brunetti had been musing on the same question for some time, and
Vianello's outburst was enough to convince him. 'You're right,' he
said. 'Let's go and see if he's there.'
Vianello turned on the engine and put the car into gear. Slowly, the
wheels occasionally spinning in search of purchase, they drove through
the mud and gravel and towards the house. As they drew nearer, signs
of rustic life became more and more evident. An abandoned tyre, so
large it could have come only from a tractor, lay against the front of
a barn. To the left of the door of the house a row of rubber boots
stood in odd pairings of black and brown, tall and short. Two large
dogs emerged from around the side of the house and ran towards them,
low and silent and, because of that, frightening. They stopped two
metres short of the car, both on the passenger side, and stared, their
lips pulled back in suspicion, but still silent.
Brunetti could recognize only a few well-known breeds, and he thought
he saw some German Shepherd in these dogs, but there was little else he
could identify. 'Well?' he asked Vianello.
Neither of the others said anything, so Brunetti pushed open his door
and put one foot on the ground, careful to choose a patch of dried
grass. The dogs did nothing. He put his other foot on the ground and
pushed himself out of the car. Still the dogs remained motionless. His
nostrils were assailed by the acidic smell of cow urine, and he noticed
that the puddles in front of what he thought to be the doors of the
barn were a dark, foaming brown.
He heard one car door open, then the other, and then Pucetti was
standing beside him. At the sight of two men standing side by side,
the dogs backed away a bit. Vianello came around the front of the car,
and the dogs backed away
even farther, until they stood just at the corner of the building.
Vianello suddenly stamped his right foot and took a long step towards
them, and they disappeared around the corner of the building, still
without having made a sound.
The men walked to the door, where an enormous iron ring served as a
knocker. Brunetti picked it up and let it drop against the metal
plaque nailed into the door, enjoying the weight of it in his hand as
well as the solid clang it created. When there was no response, he did
it again. After a moment, they heard a voice from inside call
something they could not distinguish.
The door was opened by a short, dark-haired woman in a shapeless grey
woollen dress over which she wore a thick green cardigan that had
obviously been knitted by hand, a clumsy hand. Shorter than they, she
stepped back from the door and put her head back to squint at them.
Brunetti noticed that there was a lopsided quality about her face: the
