Through a glass, darkly

indignation mounted: it was his sweater; he'd worked to pay for it; the colour was perfect for these slacks. He stopped outside Raffi's door, preparing himself for the sight of his son wearing his sweater, knocked on the door and entered when he heard Raffi's voice.

'Ciao, Papa,' Raffi said, looking up from the papers scattered over his desk. A textbook was in front of him, propped open by the ceramic frog Chiara had given him for Christmas. Brunetti said hello and gave what he thought was a quite thoroughly professional glance around the room.

'I put it on your bed,' Raffi said and went back to his homework.

'Oh, good’ Brunetti said. 'Thanks.'

He wore it to dinner, earning compliments from Paola and from Chiara, though she complained that men always got to wear the best sweaters and jackets and girls always had to wear pink angora and horrible things like that. Girls, however, did get first crack, it seemed, at fried artichoke bottoms and then at pork ribs with polenta. Not at all disturbed by the fact that it had just been carried home, Paola had opened the Sangiovese, and Brunetti found it perfect.

Because he had eaten the two pastries, Brunetti declined a baked pear, to the considerable surprise of the others at the table. No one asked after his health, but he did notice that Paola was particularly solicitous in asking him if he would like a grappa, perhaps with coffee, in the living room while the kids did the dishes?

She came in a little later, carrying a tray with two coffees and two ample glasses of grappa. She placed it on the table and sat beside him. 'Why did you take a shower?' she asked.

He spooned sugar into his coffee and stirred it, saying, 'I went for a walk, and it was colder than I expected, so I thought it would warm me up.'

'Did it?' she asked, sipping at her own coffee.

'Uh huh,' he said, finishing his coffee, and picked up his grappa.

She set her cup down, picked up her glass and moved back in the sofa. 'Nice day for a walk.'

'Uh huh’ was the best Brunetti could do. Then he said, 'I'll tell you another time, all right?'

She moved minimally closer to him, until her shoulder touched his, and said, 'Of course.'

'You're good at crossword puzzles and things like that, aren't you?' he asked.

'I suppose.'

'I have something I'd like you to look at’ he said, getting to his feet. Without waiting for her answer, he went out to the hallway to get the three sheets of paper from his jacket, and took them back into the living room.

He unfolded them, sat back down beside her, and handed them over. 'I found these in the room of someone who worked on Murano. I think he was killed.'

She took the papers and held them at some distance from her. Brunetti got up again, went down to her study, and came back with her glasses. After she put them on, she looked more closely at the papers, studying them. She tried to hold them in line with one another, but gave that up, leaned forward and spread them out on the table, pushing the tray to one side to make enough room for them.

Brunetti offered, 'I thought of bank codes, but that doesn't make any sense. He didn't have any money. I don't think he was very interested in it, either.'

Paola put her head down again and studied the papers. 'You excluded dates, too?' she asked, and he grunted in assent.

After some time, she said, 'The first number on the first page is almost twice as big as the second one.'

'Does that mean anything to you?' he asked.

'No,' she said with a quick shake of her head. She said nothing about the numbers on the second and third pages.

So they sat, for another ten minutes, staring with futile attention at the papers. Chiara, on her way back to her room to continue her Latin homework, found them that way and flopped down on the arm of the sofa next to Brunetti. 'What's that?' she asked.

'Puzzles,' Brunetti answered. 'Neither of us can make any sense of them.'

'You mean the coordinates?' Chiara asked, pointing at the numbers that appeared on the third page.

'Coordinates?' asked an astonished Brunetti.

'Sure,' Chiara said in her most offhand manner.

'What else could they be? See,' she said, pointing at the degree sign after the first number, 'this is the degree, the minute, and the second.' She pulled the paper a bit closer and said, 'This one is the latitude—that's always given first—and that one's the longitude.' She looked at the numbers a moment more and said, 'The second set is for a place that's got to be very near to the first, slightly to the south-east. And the third is to the southwest. You want to know where they are?'

'Where what are?' Brunetti asked, still slightly stunned.

'The places,' Chiara said, tapping her finger on the paper. 'Do you want to know where they are?'

'Yes,' Paola said.

'OK,' Chiara said and got to her feet. In less than a minute, she was back with the giant atlas she had requested for Christmas, the best Brunetti could find, more than 500 pages and published in England, its page spread almost as large as the Gazzettino's.

Chiara thumped it down on the table, covering the papers, then pulled them out by their corners. She had to use both hands to open the book to the middle, then started to page through it, occasionally glancing at the numbers, then at the book. With a snort of irritation, she turned back to the opening pages, ran her finger across the numbers at the top of a map of Europe, then down the right side of the page.

Carefully she turned the pages by their top corners until she found the page she was looking for, opened the book and let it fall flat, and they all found themselves looking at the laguna of Venezia.

'Looks like they're on Murano’ Chiara said, 'but you'd need a more detailed map—probably a nautical chart of the laguna—to find the exact places.'

Neither of her parents said anything; both were staring at the map. Chiara got to her feet again, saying, 'I've got to get back to the Gallic Wars’ and went to her room.

20

'Did she learn all that from reading those Patrick O'Brian books?' Brunetti asked when Chiara was gone.

He had intended the question as a joke, at least as a semi-joke, but Paola took it seriously and answered, 'They probably used the same notation for writing latitude and longitude in the nineteenth century: she's got the advantage of better maps.'

I'll never say another word against those books,' Brunetti promised.

'But you still won't try again to read them?' she asked.

Ignoring the question, Brunetti said, 'Do we still have those nautical charts?'

'They'd be in the box,' Paola answered, leaving it to Brunetti to go and hunt out the battered old wooden box in which the family kept their maps.

He was back with it in a few minutes, handed her half of the pile and started sorting through the others. After a few minutes Paola said, holding it up, 'Here's the big one of the laguna.'

It was a relic of the summer they had spent exploring the laguna in a battered old boat a friend had let them use. It must have been more than twenty years ago, before either of the kids was born. He remembered one star-scattered night when they had been trapped in a canal by the withdrawing tide.

'Those mosquitoes’ Paola said, her memory, too, drawn to that night and what they had done after spreading insect repellent on one another.

Brunetti dropped the maps he held on the floor and spread hers across the table. Unasked, she read him out the latitudinal coordinate of the first number while he ran his finger down the side of the map, stopping when he found the proper place. With his knees he pushed the table back to allow the entire map to fit flat on it. She read out the longitude, and he brought his finger slowly across the top of the map until he found that number, as well. He ran his left index finger down one of the vertical lines on the map; then the right followed a horizontal line until his fingers met at the point of intersection. The second point appeared to be little more than a few metres from the first.

'They're all on Sacca Serenella,' he said.