manner of a person not accustomed to lying, she looked down at her hands, and Brunetti suspected she had also told them she didn’t care.
She forced herself to look at him and went on. ‘He was living in a small apartment on the second floor of the building. Should I call them and tell them you’re coming?’ she asked.
‘No, thank you, Signora. I think I’d like to go there unannounced.’
‘To see if anyone tries to run away when they hear you’re policemen?’ she asked, only half joking.
Brunetti smiled. ‘Something like that. Though if your husband hasn’t been there for two days, and we show up without an animal, they’ll probably guess who we are.’
It took a few moments for her to decide that he was exaggerating. She did not smile.
‘Is there anything else?’ she asked.
‘No, Signora,’ Brunetti said, then added, speaking with great formality, ‘I’d like to thank you for being generous with your time.’ Speaking as a father, he said, ‘I hope you can find a way to tell your son,’ unconsciously using the plural when he spoke.
‘He is, isn’t he?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Ours.’
Vezzani was waiting for them in the bar, watching an afternoon cooking programme, the
‘Coffee?’ he asked.
They nodded, and Vezzani waved to the barman and asked for two coffees and a glass of water.
They came and sat at his table. He folded the newspaper and tossed it on the empty fourth chair. ‘What did she tell you?’
‘That he was having an affair with a woman at work,’ Brunetti answered.
Vezzani opened his mouth in a gasping O and held up both hands. ‘Well, who ever heard of such a thing? What’s the world coming to?’ The waiter approached with the coffees and a glass of water for Vezzani.
They drank and then Vezzani, in a more serious voice, asked, ‘What else?’
‘He was also working at the slaughterhouse,’ Vianello began.
‘The one at Preganziol?’ Vezzani asked.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Are there others?’
‘I think there’s one in Treviso, but that’s a different province. Preganziol’s the closest one to us.’
Vezzani asked, ‘Why do they need a vet at a slaughterhouse? It’s not as if he’s there to save the lives of the animals, is it?’
‘To check that they’re healthy, and I imagine he also has to see that they slaughter them in a humane way,’ Brunetti said. ‘There’s got to be some EU regulation about that.’
‘Name the activity about which there is no EU regulation and win a prize,’ Vezzani said, gave a mock toast with his glass, and took a sip of water. Then, his glass still held in the air in front of him, ‘Did he have any trouble with clients at his practice?’
‘His wife didn’t know of any,’ Brunetti said, but then added, ‘She did say that some people were unhappy with the way their animals were treated. But that’s not trouble.’
‘I’ve heard people say awful things,’ Vianello jumped in to say. ‘Some of them would be capable of violence to anyone who hurt their animals. I think they’re nuts, but we don’t have a pet, so maybe I don’t understand.’
‘It does seem exaggerated,’ Vezzani agreed, ‘but I’ve lost the ability to understand what people do. If they’ll kill you because you damage their car,’ he said, referring to a recent case, ‘think what they’d do if you hurt their dachshund.’
‘You know where his clinic is?’ Brunetti asked. He put some coins on the table and got to his feet. ‘Via Motta 145. It seems he was living there, too.’
Vezzani stood, saying, ‘Yes, I know the place. Let’s go and talk to them.’
At one time, the clinic must have been a two-floor suburban residence large enough for two families. Similar houses stood on either side of it, each surrounded by a broad expanse of grassed land. As they slowed in front of it, they could hear the sound of a dog barking from behind the building, then another one answering: a human voice intervened; a door slammed, and then silence.
Vezzani had trouble parking the car. He drove ahead a hundred metres or so, but there were cars everywhere and no chance of finding a space. Is this, Brunetti wondered, what it is to live out here on
With an irritated noise, Vezzani pulled the car into a sudden U-turn and drove back to the clinic. He parked on the wrong side of the road directly in front. He pulled down a plastic ticket from the windscreen, set it on the dashboard and got out of the car, slamming the door behind him. Brunetti and Vianello got out but did not slam the doors.
The three men walked up the short pavement to the front door. To one side a metal plaque bore the name ‘Clinica Amico Mio’, with below it the hours of operation. Dott. Andrea Nava was listed as the director.
Vezzani opened the door without ringing and entered; Brunetti and Vianello followed him inside. There was nothing, Brunetti realized, that could be done to eliminate the smell of the animals. He had smelled it before in the homes of friends of theirs who had pets, in the apartments of people he arrested, in abandoned buildings, and once in an antique shop where he had gone to question a witness. Sharp, rich with the tang of ammonia, it gave him the feeling that it would sink into his clothing and linger for hours after he left. And Nava had been living for some time above this.
The entrance was brightly lit, the floor covered with grey linoleum, and at one side stood a desk, behind which sat a young man in a white lab jacket. ‘
Vezzani stepped aside and allowed Brunetti to approach the desk. The boy could not have been eighteen and filled the air around him with a sense of health and well-being. Brunetti saw matched rows of perfect teeth, brown eyes so large his mind flashed to the description of ‘ox-eyed Hera’, even though he was looking at a boy. If roses had skin, his was the same.
‘We’re looking for the person in charge,’ Brunetti said, smiling back, as who could not?
‘Is it about your pet?’ the young man asked, not managing to sound as if he expected a positive response. He leaned to the side to see around them.
‘No,’ Brunetti said, letting his smile disappear. ‘It’s about Dottor Nava.’
At those words, the boy’s smile went the way of Brunetti’s, and he studied each of them more closely, as if in search of some new odour they might have carried into the room. ‘Have you seen him?’ he finally brought himself to ask.
‘Perhaps I could speak to the person in charge,’ Brunetti said.
The boy got to his feet, suddenly in a hurry. ‘That would be Signora Baroni,’ he said. ‘I’ll get her.’ Abruptly he turned away from them to open a door just behind him. Leaving it open, he walked down a short corridor and entered a room on the right. Animal sounds came from the open door: barking and a thumping sound that could have been anything.
After less than a minute, a woman emerged and came towards them. Leaving the door open behind her, she approached Brunetti, who was closest to her. Though her face suggested she was a generation older than the receptionist, there was no sign of this in the ease and fluidity of her motions.
‘Clara Baroni,’ she said, shaking Brunetti’s hand and nodding to the others. ‘I’m Dottor Nava’s assistant. Luca said you came to talk about him. Do you know where he is?’
Brunetti was struck by the awkwardness of the situation, the four of them standing in the room. It did not seem the best setting for what he had to say, but he saw no alternative. ‘We’ve just come from speaking to Dottor Nava’s wife,’ he began. Then, in case it was still necessary, ‘We’re policemen.’
She nodded, encouraging him.
‘The doctor’s been killed.’ He could find no better way to say it.
‘How?’ she asked, face blank with shock. ‘In an accident?’
‘No, Signora. Not an accident,’ Brunetti said evasively. ‘He had no identification, so it’s taken us this long to trace him.’ As he spoke to her, the focus of her eyes drifted away from him while she studied some interior place. She braced herself with one hand against the receptionist’s desk. None of the men said anything.
