refrigerated. Obviously, he can’t inspect it all, but he does look at samples and decides if it’s safe for human consumption.’
‘And if it’s not?’
‘Then it’s destroyed.’
‘How?’
‘It’s burned.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said.
‘Any other duties?’
‘No, only those two things.’
‘How many days a week is he here?’ Brunetti asked, as if he had not already had this information from the dead man’s wife.
‘Two. Monday and Wednesday mornings.’
‘And the other days? What does he do?’
If she was puzzled by the question, she did not hesitate to answer it. ‘He has a private practice. Most of the examining veterinarians do.’ She smiled and shrugged, then said, ‘It would be hard to live on what they earn here.’
‘But you don’t know where?’
‘No,’ she said regretfully, then said, ‘But it’s probably in our files, on his application. I could easily find out for you.’
Brunetti held up a hand both to acknowledge and decline her offer. In a friendly voice, he asked, ‘Could you give me a clearer idea of how things work here? That is, how is it that he inspects animals on only two days?’ He spread his hands in a gesture of confusion.
‘It’s quite simple, really,’ she said, using an expression most commonly chosen to begin an explanation of something that was not simple. ‘Most farmers get their animals here the day before the slaughtering, or the same day. That saves them the cost of keeping and feeding and watering the animals while they wait. Dottor Nava inspects them on Monday and Wednesday, and they’re processed after that.’ She paused to see if Brunetti was following, and Brunetti nodded. He was, as well, mulling over the verb ‘processed’.
‘And if he doesn’t see them?’ Vianello broke in to ask, also using the deliberately deceptive present tense.
She raised her eyebrows, either at the discovery that the Inspector could speak or at the question itself. ‘That’s never happened before. Luckily, his predecessor has agreed to come in and do the inspections and continue with them until Dottor Nava comes back.’
Imperturbable, Brunetti asked, ‘And the name of his predecessor?’
She could not disguise her surprise. ‘Why do you want to know that?’
‘In case it becomes necessary to speak to him,’ Brunetti answered.
‘Meucci. Gabriele Meucci.’
‘Thank you.’
Signorina Borelli straightened up, as though she thought that would be the end of it, but Brunetti asked, ‘Could you give me the names of the other people Dottor Nava is in contact with here?’
‘Aside from me and the Director, Dottor Papetti, there’s the chief knacker, Leonardo Bianchi. He might know other people, but we’re the ones he deals with most frequently.’
She smiled, but the wattage was now dimmer. ‘I think it’s time you explained why you’re asking all these questions, Commissario. Perhaps I watch too much television, but usually this kind of conversation takes place when someone has died and the police are trying to get information about him.’
Her glance went back and forth between the two men. Vianello kept his head bent over his notebook, leaving it to his superior to answer.
‘We have reason to believe that Dottor Nava has been the victim of violence,’ Brunetti said, unable to resist the bureaucrat’s need to release information in small portions.
Just then, as if to draw attention to the phrase, a shrill noise penetrated whatever acoustical insulation was meant to protect this room from the reality beyond it. Unlike the previous long cry, this one was not drawn out, only three short blasts like the ones that on the vaporetti were a command to abandon ship. There were three more cries, muffled this time, and then the animal making them was forced to abandon ship, and the noises stopped.
‘Is he dead?’ Signorina Borelli asked, visibly shaken.
Confused for an instant by the object of her curiosity, it took Brunetti a moment to answer. ‘We think so, yes.’
‘What does that mean: you think so?’ she demanded, looking back and forth between them. ‘You’re the police, for heaven’s sake. If you don’t know, then who does?’
‘We still don’t have a positive identification,’ Brunetti said.
‘Does that mean you’re going to ask me to make one?’ she asked, voice hot with the outrage ignited by Brunetti’s last remark.
‘No,’ Brunetti said calmly. ‘We’ve already found a person to do that.’
She leaned forward suddenly, her head extended like a snake about to strike, and said, ‘You’re cold-hearted, aren’t you? You tell me he’s been the victim of violence, but the fact that you’re here means he’s dead, and the fact that you’re asking all these questions means someone killed him.’ She wiped at her eyes as she spoke and seemed to have trouble finishing some of her words.
Vianello looked up from his notebook and studied Signorina Borelli’s face.
She propped her elbows on the desk and lowered her face into her upraised palms. ‘We find a good man, and this happens to him,’ she said. Brunetti had no idea how to interpret ‘good’, and there was no hint in her voice. Did she judge Nava to be a competent man or a decent one?
After a short time, and still not completely in control, she said, ‘If you have more questions, you’ll have to ask Dottor Papetti.’ She slapped both palms on the desk, and the noise seemed to calm her. ‘What else do you want?’
‘Would it be possible to look at your facility?’
‘You don’t want to,’ she said without thinking.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Brunetti said.
‘You don’t want to see what we do here.’ She sounded entirely calm and reasonable. ‘No one does. Believe me.’
Few remarks could have as effectively steeled Brunetti’s intention to see what went on here.
‘We do,’ he said and got to his feet.
19
FOR ALL THE care they had taken in dressing, Vianello and Brunetti might as well have worn tuxedos to the slaughterhouse. The first thing Signorina Borelli did, in the face of Brunetti’s adamant insistence that they be taken to see where Dottor Nava had worked, was to phone the chief knacker, Leonardo Bianchi, and ask him to meet them in the changing room. Then she led them from her office, down a cement-floored corridor, up a double flight of stairs and into a spartan room that reminded Brunetti of the ones he had seen in American films of high schools: metal lockers lined the walls, a table in the centre was chipped and scarred with cigarette burns and spills of thick, dried liquid. Benches held crumpled copies of
She led them silently across the room to a locker, took a key ring from her pocket and used a small key to open the padlock on the door. She reached in and pulled out a folded white paper jumpsuit of the sort worn by the men on the crime squad, shook it open and handed it to Brunetti, another to Vianello. ‘Take your shoes off to put it on,’ she said.
Brunetti and Vianello obeyed the instructions. By the time they had their shoes on again, she had found two sets of transparent plastic shoe covers. Silently she handed them to Brunetti. He and Vianello slipped them on. Next came transparent plastic caps that looked like the ones Paola wore in the shower. They pulled them over their
