Beastly Things

evident in her gaze.

Brunetti waited while the sale was completed and the customers led to the door, where there followed an exchange of deep bows, seeming not at all forced on the part of the saleswoman.

When Letizia came across to them, the manager explained who they were and what they wanted her to do. Letizia’s smile was interested, even curious. Brunetti handed her the photo.

At the sight of the face of the dead man, she said, ‘The man from Mestre.’

‘From Mestre?’ Brunetti inquired.

‘Yes. He was in here – oh, it must have been two months ago – and tried to buy a pair of shoes. I think he said he wanted loafers.’

‘Is there any reason why you remember him, Signorina?’

‘Well,’ she began, then added, with a quick glance at the manager, who was listening to all of this, ‘I don’t want to talk badly about our customers, not at all, but it’s because he was so strange.’

‘His behaviour?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No, not at all. He was very pleasant, very polite. It was the way he looked.’ Saying this, she glanced again at the other woman, as if asking permission to say such a thing. The manager pursed her lips and then nodded.

Visibly relieved, Letizia continued. ‘He was so big. No, not big the way Americans are big. You know, all over, and tall. It was only his torso and his neck that were so big. I remember wondering what size shirt he’d wear and how he’d find one with a neck big enough for him. But the rest of him was normal.’ She studied Brunetti’s face, and then Vianello’s. ‘He must have a terrible time buying a suit, too, now that I think about it: his shoulders and chest are enormous. The jacket would have to be two or three sizes bigger than the trousers.’

Before either of them could remark on this observation, she said, ‘He tried on a suede jacket, so I saw that his hips were like a regular man’s. And his feet were normal, too: size forty-three. But the rest of him was all… oh, I don’t know, all pumped up.’

‘You’re sure this is the man?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Absolutely,’ she said.

‘From Mestre?’ Vianello interrupted to ask.

‘Yes. He said he was in the city for the day and had tried to buy the shoes in our store in Mestre – but they didn’t have his size so he thought he’d look for them here.’

‘Did you have the shoes?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No,’ she said, her disappointment evident. ‘We had one size larger and one size smaller. We had his size only in brown, but he didn’t want them – only black.’

‘Did he buy another style, instead?’ Brunetti asked, hoping that he had and hoping even more strongly that he had paid for them with a credit card.

‘No. That’s exactly what I suggested, but he said he wanted the black because he already had them in brown and he liked them.’ These must be the shoes he had been wearing when he was killed, Brunetti thought, smiling at the young woman to encourage her to keep speaking.

‘And the suede jacket?’ he asked when he realized she was finished.

‘It didn’t fit over his shoulders,’ she said. Then, in a softer voice, she added, ‘I felt sorry for him when he tried it on and he couldn’t even get his other arm into the sleeve.’ She shook her head, her sympathy obvious. Then she added, ‘We usually keep our eyes on people who try on the suede jackets so they don’t steal them. But I couldn’t. He seemed almost surprised by it, sort of, but sad, really sad that he couldn’t make it fit.’

‘Did he buy anything at all?’ Vianello asked.

‘No, he didn’t. I wish he could have found a jacket that fitted him, though.’ Then, so they wouldn’t misunderstand: ‘Not because I wanted the sale or anything, but just so that he could find one that would fit him. Poor man.’

Brunetti asked, ‘Did he actually say he lived in Mestre?’

She looked at her colleague, as if to ask her please to remind her what the man had said to make her believe he was from Mestre. She tilted her head to one side in a very birdlike way. ‘He said that he’d bought a few pairs there, and I just sort of assumed that he must live there. After all, you usually buy shoes where you live, don’t you?’

Brunetti nodded his agreement, thinking that you usually don’t have the good fortune to be served by such a kind person, no matter where you buy your shoes.

He thanked both her and her manager, gave Letizia his card and asked her to call him if she remembered anything else the man had said that might give further information about him.

As they turned towards the door, Letizia made a noise. It wasn’t a word, little more than a voiced aspirant. Brunetti turned back and she asked, ‘Was he the man in the water?’

‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

She waved at him and Vianello, as though their presence, or their appearance, were sufficient answer, but then said, ‘Because he seemed troubled, not only sad.’ Before Brunetti could point out that she had said nothing about this, she went on. ‘I know, I know, I said he was pleasant and friendly. But under it, he was troubled by something. I thought it was the jacket, or that we didn’t have the shoes he wanted, but it was more than that.’

Someone as observant as she didn’t need to be nudged, and so Brunetti and Vianello remained silent, waiting.

‘Usually, when people are waiting for me to bring them something – a different size or a different colour – they look around at different shoes or get up and walk around, go and look at the belts. But he just sat there, staring at his feet.’

‘Did he seem unhappy?’ Brunetti asked.

This time, it took her a moment to answer. ‘No, now that you ask me about it, I’d say he looked worried.’

13

BRUNETTI AND VIANELLO decided to have lunch together, but both cringed at the idea of eating anywhere within a radius of ten minutes of San Marco.

‘How’d this happen?’ Vianello asked. ‘We used to be able to eat well anywhere in the city, well, just about anywhere. And it was usually good and didn’t cost an eye from your head.’

‘How long ago was “used to”, Lorenzo?’ Brunetti asked.

Vianello slowed to consider this. ‘About ten years.’ But then he added, his surprise audible, ‘No, it’s a lot more than that, isn’t it?’

They were passing in front of the place where the Mondadori bookstore used to be, only a few hundred metres from the arched entrance to Piazza San Marco, still undecided where to go for lunch. A sudden surge in the wave of milling tourists engulfed them, forcing them against the windows of the shop. Ahead of them, near the Piazza, the pastel wave defied tidal patterns and flowed both ways. Blind, slowly urgent towards no goal, it appeared to have no beginning and no end as it seeped from and into the Piazza.

Vianello turned to Brunetti and placed a hand on his forearm. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t go across the Piazza. Let’s take the boat.’ They took the right turn and struggled down towards the embarcadero. Long lines snaked away from the ticket office, and the floating docks lay low in the water from the weight of the people standing on them, waiting for the arriving vaporetti.

A Number One approached from the right, and the line moved forward a step or two, though there was nowhere for it to go, save into the water. Brunetti took his warrant card from his wallet and slipped around the bar that blocked the entrance to the passageway reserved for disembarking passengers. Vianello followed. They hadn’t gone four steps when a marinaio shouted at them from the landing ahead of them, waving them back and away.

Ignoring him, the two men approached, Brunetti holding out his card. ‘Scusi, Signori,’ the workman said when he saw it, stepping back to allow them on to the floating dock. He was young, like most of them these days, short and dark but speaking Veneziano. ‘They all try to sneak in this way, and I have to shout them back. Some day I’m probably going to hit one of them.’ The smile with which he said this belied the possibility.