photos, and set the book down again.
The other men walked around the apartment, but neither stooped to pick up anything interesting or stopped to point out an object or an incongruity. The bathroom held nothing but soap, razors, and towels. A chest of drawers at the end of the bed held clean and folded men’s underwear and, in the bottom drawer, clean towels and sheets.
There was none of the mess left behind by the permanent residence of a child. Only the clothing said anything about the persons using the apartment, and all it said was that it was a man of a certain size and a small boy.
‘You think it’s just the way he lived, or has someone been in here?’ Brunetti finally asked.
Vezzani shrugged, reluctant to answer. Vianello gave another long look around and then said, ‘I hate to say it, but I think he lived like this.’
‘Poor devil,’ Vezzani said. Soon after, none of them having found anything further to say, they left.
17
THE MEN AGREED it would be wiser to go to the slaughterhouse the following morning, when the place would be at work. As Vezzani drove them across the bridge to Piazzale Roma, Brunetti stared from the right side of the car at the vast industrial complex of Marghera. His thoughts were not on the daily ration of death pumped out by the chimneys he viewed but on the slaughterhouse and the idea of early morning as the best time for sudden death. Had not the KGB taken people off in the dark of night, their victims’ senses dulled with sleep?
The ringing of Vianello’s phone broke into these reflections, and from his seat in the back of the car the Inspector said, ‘That was Foa. He says he can’t pick us up. He’s docked below Patta’s place, waiting for him and his wife to come down. He’s got to take them to Burano.’
‘Police business, no doubt,’ Vezzani commented, giving evidence that Patta’s reputation extended even to the Questura in Mestre.
‘If the police have to investigate a restaurant, it is,’ Vianello answered. Brunetti told him to tell the pilot he was still waiting for a report on the tides for the night of Nava’s murder. Vianello passed on the message and snapped his phone closed.
‘You guys have any idea how lucky you are?’ Vezzani asked.
Brunetti turned to him and asked, ‘To work for Patta?’
Vezzani laughed. ‘No, to work in Venice. There’s hardly enough crime worth talking about.’ Before either of them could protest, he said, ‘I don’t mean this Nava guy, but in general. The worst criminals are the politicians, but since there’s nothing we can do about them, they don’t count. So what do you get? A few break-ins, some tourist who gets his wallet stolen? The guy who kills his wife and calls you up to confess? So you spend your days reading notices from the idiots in Rome, or waiting for the next Minister of the Interior to be arrested so you get a new boss and new notices, or you walk down the street to have a coffee and sit in the sun and read the newspaper.’ He tried to make it sound like a joke, but Brunetti suspected he meant every word of it.
Brunetti took a quick glance into the rear-view mirror but saw only Vianello’s left shoulder. In a level voice, he said, ‘People pray for rain. Perhaps we should pray for murder.’
Vezzani took his eyes off the road and glanced quickly at Brunetti, but there was nothing to read in Brunetti’s face, just as there had been nothing to read in his voice.
At Piazzale Roma, Brunetti and Vianello got out of the car and reached in to shake Vezzani’s hand, then Brunetti said they’d get one of their own drivers to take them to the slaughterhouse the next morning. Vezzani did not bother to protest, said goodbye, and drove off.
Brunetti looked at Vianello, who shrugged.
‘If that’s the way he thinks, there’s nothing we can do about it,’ Brunetti said.
Vianello followed him towards the
People hurried towards them, most of them keeping to the left but some swerving closer to the water to get past faster and arrive a few seconds earlier at the buses that would take them to their homes on the mainland.
They passed the taxis bobbing in the water. Finally Vianello said, ‘I suppose I can understand him. After all, the
‘And we don’t have drunk drivers,’ Brunetti offered.
‘That’s for the
Undeterred, Brunetti added, ‘Or arson. People don’t set fire to factories.’
‘That’s because we don’t have any factories any more. Only tourism,’ said a dispirited Vianello, quickening his steps at the sound of the approaching vaporetto. The Inspector flashed his warrant card at the uniformed young woman on the boat landing.
The gate slid shut just behind them and they went inside to sit. Neither of them spoke until they passed under the Scalzi bridge, when Vianello said, ‘You think he’s jealous?’
On the left, the church of San Geremia slid towards them, and after a moment they could see, ahead of them on the right, the columned facade of the Natural History Museum.
‘He’d be crazy if he weren’t, don’t you think?’ Brunetti asked.
Only when he reached the door to his apartment did Brunetti realize how profoundly tired he was. He felt like a billiard ball that had been sliding around all day, first to this side and then to that. He’d learned too much and travelled too much, and now all he wanted to do was sit quietly and eat his dinner while listening to his family discuss subjects that had nothing to do with crime or death. He wanted a peaceful, uncontentious evening.
However much this might have been Brunetti’s wish, it was not that of his lady wife, something he realized at the first sight of her and by the greeting she gave him when he went into her study.
‘Ah, there you are,’ she said with a broad smile that was perhaps too graced with teeth. ‘I want to ask you a legal question.’
Brunetti sat on the sofa, and only then did he say, ‘After eight at night, I function only as a private legal consultant and expect to be paid for my time and for any information I might provide.’
‘In prosecco?’
He kicked off his shoes and extended himself to his full length on the sofa. He pummelled a pillow until its shape suited him, and lay back. ‘Unless it is a serious or a non-rhetorical question, in which case I am to be paid in champagne.’
She removed her glasses, placed them on the open pages of the book she had been reading, and left the room. Brunetti closed his eyes and let his mind wander through the day in search of something restful he could contemplate until Paola’s return. He found himself remembering the teddy bear in Teo’s hand, its stomach fur rubbed or chewed away by childish adoration. Brunetti emptied his mind of everything else and considered the bear, which led him to the bears his children had loved and then to the one he could still remember having, though where he came from and where he went were mysteries long removed from his memory.
The clink of glass on glass brought him back from childhood to adult life. The fact that his eyes opened to a bottle of Moet in the hand of his wife did a great deal to ease the transition.
She filled the second glass and came towards the sofa. He pulled back his feet to give her room and took the glass she offered him. He held it toward her and joyed in the sound the glasses made as they touched, then took the first sip. ‘All right,’ he said as she sat down beside him, ‘tell me.’
She shot him a look, tried to inject it with surprise, but when his expression remained unmoved, she abandoned the attempt and drank some of her wine. She pushed herself back in the sofa and let her left hand fall on to his calf. ‘I want to know whether it’s a crime to know that something illegal is going to take place and not report it.’
He took another sip of champagne, decided not to try to distract her with compliments for it, and considered
