Through a glass, darkly

'Not unless I think there's reason to do that’ Brunetti answered, which was the truth. He had no desire to speak to De Cal again; further, he did not think her father a man much given to listening to the voice of sweet reason.

'You want me to tell you their names?' she asked, her voice suddenly softer, as if by making it smaller she could more easily hide from the answer.

'Yes.'

She looked at him for a long time. Finally she said, 'Giorgio Tassini, l'uomo di notte. For my father and for the fornace next door. And Paolo Bovo. He doesn't work for us, but he heard him talking.'

Brunetti asked for their addresses, and she wrote them down on a piece of paper he gave her, asking him if he would try to talk to Tassini away from the fornace. Brunetti was happy to agree, seeing it as an opportunity to stay clear of De Cal for the moment.

Brunetti had never been good at giving false assurances to people, but he wanted to give her at least some comfort. 'I'll see what they tell me,' he said. 'People tend to say things they don't mean, especially when they're angry, or when they've had too much to drink.' He remembered De Cal's face and asked, 'Does your father drink more than he should?'

She sighed again. 'A glass of wine is more than he should drink’ she said. 'He's a diabetic and shouldn't drink at all, and certainly not as much as he does.'

'Does this happen often?'

'You know how it is, especially with workmen’ she said with the resignation of long familiarity. 'Un'ombra at eleven, and then wine with lunch, then a couple of beers to get through the afternoon, especially in the summer when it's hot, and then a couple more ombre before dinner, and more wine with the meal, and then maybe a grappa before bed. And then the next day you start all over again.'

It sounded like the kind of drinking he was used to seeing in men of his father's generation: they'd drunk like this most of their adult lives, yet he had never seen one of them behave in a way that would suggest drunkenness. And why on earth should they change just because the professional classes had switched to prosecco and spritz?

'Has he always been like this?' he asked, then clarified the question by adding, 'I don't mean the drinking: I mean his temper and the violent language.'

She nodded. 'A few years ago, the police had to come and stop a fight.'

'Involving him?'

'Yes.'

'What happened?'

'He was in a bar, and someone said something he didn't like—he never told me about it, so I don't know what it was. I know this only from what other people have told me—and he said something back, and then one of them hit the other—I never learned who. And someone called the police, but by the time they got there, the other men had stopped them, and nothing happened. That is, no one was arrested and no one made a denuncia.'

'Anything else?' Brunetti asked.

'Not that I know about. No.' She seemed relieved that she could put an end to his questions.

'Has he ever been violent with you?'

Her mouth fell open. 'What?'

'Has he ever hit you?'

'No’ she said with such force that Brunetti could only believe her. 'He loves me. He'd never hit me. He'd cut off his hand first.' Strangely enough, Brunetti believed this, too.

'I see,' he said, and then added, 'That must make this even more painful for you.'

She smiled when he said that. 'I'm glad you can understand.'

There seemed nothing more to ask her, and so Brunetti thanked her for coming to speak to him and asked if she wanted to tell him anything else.

'Just fix this, please,' she said, sounding decades younger.

'I'll try,' Brunetti said. He asked for her telefonino number, wrote it down, then got to his feet.

He walked downstairs with her and out onto the embankment. It was warmer than when he had arrived a few hours before. They shook hands and she turned towards SS Giovanni e Paolo and the boat that would take her to Murano. Brunetti stood on the riva for a few minutes, looking across at the garden on the other side and running through his memory for personal connections. He went back into the Questura and up to the officers' room, where he found Pucetti.

The young officer stood when his superior entered. 'Good morning, Commissario’ he said. Was that a tan he saw on Pucetti's face? Brunetti had signed the forms authorizing staff leave during the Easter holiday, but he couldn't recall if Pucetti's name had been on it.

'Pucetti’ he said as he drew near the desk. 'You have family on Murano, don't you?' Brunetti could not remember why this piece of information had lodged in his memory, but he was fairly certain that it had.

'Yes, sir. Aunts and uncles and three cousins.'

'Any of them work at the fornaci?'

He watched Pucetti run through the list of his relatives. Finally he said, 'Two.'

'They people you can ask things?' Brunetti asked, not having to specify that the question referred to their discretion more than to the information they might possess.

'One of them is,' Pucetti said.

'Good. I'd like you to ask about Giovanni De Cal. He owns a fornace out there.'

'I know it, sir. It's on Sacca Serenella.'

'Do you know him?' Brunetti asked.

'No, sir. I don't. But I've heard about him. Is there anything specific you'd like to know?'

'Yes. He's got a son-in-law he hates and whom he may have threatened. I'd like to know if anyone thinks he'd actually do anything or if it's just talk. And I'd like to know if there's any word that he's thinking of selling his fornace.'

Brunetti watched Pucetti suppress the impulse to salute as he said, 'Yes, sir.' Then the younger man asked, 'Is there any hurry? Should I call him now?'

'No, I'd like to keep this as casual as possible. Why don't you go home and change and go out and talk to him? I don't want it to seem like ...' Brunetti let his voice trail off.

'Seem like it is what it is?' Pucetti asked with a smile.

'Exactly,' Brunetti said, 'though I'm not sure I know what that is.'

7

L'uomo di notte, Brunetti considered, by definition worked nights, which would have him home during the day. It was only a little after eleven, one of the sweetest times of day in springtime, and so Brunetti decided to walk down to Castello to talk to Giorgio Tassini and see if he would be willing to repeat what De Cal had told him. It occurred to Brunetti that he was perhaps engaging in that portmanteau offence, abuso d'ufficio, for he was certainly using the powers of his office to look into something that was of interest to him personally and had no official interest to the forces of order. The thought that the alternative to a walk in the sunshine down to Via Garibaldi was to return to his office to begin reading through the personnel files of the officers due for promotion was more than enough to propel Brunetti out onto Riva degli Schiavoni.

He turned left and started down towards Sant'-Elena. His strides grew longer as he felt the sun begin to work the winter stiffness out of him. Days like these reminded him of what a filthy climate the city really had: cold and damp in the winter; hot and damp in the summer. He banished this thought as the remains of winter gloom and