Through a glass, darkly

'You don't sound surprised.'

'I'm not.'

'Why?'

It took Brunetti almost half an hour to tell her, glossing over the precise circumstances of Tassini's death, to arrive at their search of the dead man's room, a room located not far from the point where those lines intersected, and then the grim meeting with his wife and mother-in-law.

When he finished, Paola went into the kitchen and returned holding the bottle of grappa. She handed it to Brunetti and sat next to him, then folded the map and dropped it on top of the others on the floor. She took back the bottle and poured them each another small glass.

'Did he really believe all that about having been contaminated and passing it on to his daughter?' Paola asked.

'I think so, yes.'

'Even in the face of the medical evidence?' Paola asked.

Brunetti shrugged, as if to show how unimportant medical evidence was to a person who chose not to believe it. 'It's what he thought happened.'

'But how would he be contaminated?' she asked. 'I'd believe it if he worked at Marghera, but I've never heard any talk that Murano is at risk, well, that the people who work there are.'

Brunetti thought back to his conversation with Tassini. 'He believed that there was a conspiracy to prevent him from getting accurate test results, so there would never be sufficient genetic evidence.' He read her scepticism and said, 'He believed it.'

'But what did he believe?' Paola demanded.

Brunetti opened his hands in a gesture of futility. 'That's what I couldn't get him to tell me: what he thought his problem was or how it would have affected the baby. All he'd tell me was that De Cal wasn't the only person involved in whatever was going on’ and before she could ask again, he added, 'and no, he didn't say what that was.'

'You think he was crazy?' Paola asked in a softer voice.

'I don't know about things like that,' Brunetti answered after considering the question. 'He believed in something for which there seems to be no evidence and for which he appeared to have no proof. I'm not ready to call that crazy'

He waited to see if Paola would remark that he had just described religious belief, but she was taking no easy shots that evening, it seemed, and said only, 'But he believed it enough to write down these numbers, whatever they are.'

'Yes’ Brunetti admitted. 'Doesn't mean that what he believed is true, just because he wrote some numbers down.'

'What about these other numbers?' she said, taking the other two sheets from the floor and placing them on the table.

'No idea’ Brunetti said. I've been staring at them all afternoon and they don't make any sense to me.'

'No clues?' she asked. 'Wasn't there anything else in his room?'

'No, nothing’ Brunetti said, and then he remembered the books. 'Just Industrial Illness and Dante.'

'Don't be cute, Guido,' she snapped.

He got up and went over to his jacket again; this time he brought back the two books.

Her reaction to Industrial Illness was the same as his, though she tossed it on the floor, not on the table. 'Dante’ she said, reaching for the book. He handed it to her and watched as she examined it: she opened to the title page, then turned to the publication information, then opened it in the middle and flipped through to the end.

'It's his school text, isn't it?' she said. 'Was he a reader?'

'There were a lot of books in his house.'

'What sort of books?' Like Brunetti, she believed that books served as a mirror of the person who accumulated them.

'I don't know’ he said. 'They were in a shelf against the back wall, and I never got close enough to read the titles.' He hadn't been conscious of examining them at the time, but now, recalling the room, he saw the rows of books, the backs of some of what might well have been the standard editions of the poets, and the gold-ribbed backs of the same editions of the great novelists Paola had in her study.

'He was a real reader, though’ Brunetti finally said.

Paola had the Dante open and was already lost in it. He watched her for a few minutes, until she turned a page, looked across at him with an expression of blank astonishment, and asked, 'How is it that I forget how perfect he is?'

Brunetti picked up the maps and put them back in the box. He closed it and left it on the floor.

Suddenly the accumulated weight of the day's events bore down on him. 'I think I have to go to bed’ he said, offering no explanation. She acknowledged his words with a nod and plunged back into Hell.

Brunetti sank immediately into a heavy sleep and was not aware of Paola when she came to bed. If she turned on the light, if she made any noise, if she stayed awake reading: Brunetti had no idea. But as the bells of San Marco rolled past their window at five the following morning, he woke up, saying, 'Laws.'

He turned on the light, raised himself onto his shoulder to see if he had woken Paola, and saw that he had not. He pushed back the covers and went out into the hallway, one side of which was lined with the books he thought of as his: the Greek and Roman historians as well as those who had followed them for the next two thousand years. On the other side were art books and travel books and, on the top shelf, some of the textbooks he had used at university as well as some current volumes on civil and criminal law.

In the living room he found Tassini's papers still on the table alongside Industrial Illness. He had a degree in law, had spent years reading and memorizing them: why had he not recognized the notation? If the first six digits were read as a date, the first came out as 20 September 1973 and the second as 10 September 1982. The last three numbers would then be the number of the law. He knew he had the volumes of the Gazzetta Ufficiale in his office and not here, but still he looked for them. His feet got cold so he took the papers and Tassini's book with him to the bedroom.

He climbed into bed, slapped his pillow into submission behind him, but then cursed under his breath and went back into the living room to get his glasses. Coming back into the room, he grabbed his new sweater and tied it around his shoulders, and got into bed again.

He let the sheets of paper drift into the valley between himself and his apparently comatose wife and opened Industrial Illness at the index.

He read until nearly six, when he set down the book and went into the kitchen, made himself caffe latte, and took it back into the bedroom. He sat, sipping at his coffee and watching the light on the paintings on the far wall.

'Paola’ he said soon after the bells had rung seven. And then again, ‘Paola.'

She must have responded to something in his voice rather than to her name, for she replied in an entirely natural voice. 'If you bring me coffee, I'll listen to you.'

For the fourth time, he got out of bed. He made a larger pot of coffee and brought two cups back to the bedroom with him. He found her sitting up, her glasses slipped down to the end of her nose, Tassini's book open on her knees.

He handed her a cup. She took it, sipped, and smiled her thanks. She patted the bed beside her and he sat. They drank some coffee. After a time, she pushed her glasses up onto her head. She said, 'I have no idea what you're doing, Guido. Reading something like this half the night.' With her free hand, she shut the book and tossed it on to the bed.

'I think I know what the numbers mean,' he said. 'He knew the laws that deal with pollution and he listed them in the proper legal way, only without the spaces between the dates and numbers.'

He expected Paola to ask what the laws were, but she surprised him by saying, 'How would he know the numbers of the laws?' In her tone, he detected more than a little of the scorn the educated reserve for those who aspire to their knowledge.

'I have no idea,' Brunetti confessed.