Beastly Things

arrival. Brunetti interpreted the responding shout as a request that he enter. Patta, he saw, was costumed for the role of country squire. The instant he saw him, Brunetti realized his superior had finally gone too far in pursuit of sartorial perfection, for he was today arrayed in a proper shooting jacket. A light brownish tweed, cut long and close to the body, it had the requisite brown suede patch at the right shoulder, a single pocket opposite on the left. Below were envelope pockets that could be easily unbuttoned to allow the wearer to reach for more shotgun cartridges. The white shirt Patta wore with it had a discreet check, and the green silk tie was covered with tiny yellow sheep that put Brunetti in mind of the ones in the mosaic behind the main altar in the Basilica of Saint’ Apollinaire in Classe in Ravenna.

Much in the manner of Saint Thomas, incapable of believing in Christ’s Resurrection until he put his hand into the wound in his Master’s side, Brunetti was overcome with the urge to go and place his cheek on the brown suede patch on Patta’s shoulder, for the patch was evidence, however outrageous, of all existence. In this instant, still battered by the experiences of the afternoon, Brunetti’s spirit needed proof that the ordinary, indeed, all of life, was still there, and what better proof was there than this absurd display? Here was Patta talking on the phone, here was consistency, here was Proof. The Vice-Questore glanced up and, seeing who it was, said something and replaced the phone.

Brunetti resisted the temptation to bend down and look under the desk to see if the Vice-Questore had chosen to wear what Brunetti’s reading of English novels had trained him to think of as ‘sturdy brogues’. At the desk, with an effort he fought down the urge to thank his superior for calling him back to life. Instead, Brunetti said, ‘Di Oliva said you’d like to speak to me, sir.’

Patta picked up a copy of Il Gazzettino, the newspaper that Brunetti had chosen not to read on the boat. ‘Have you seen this?’ Patta asked.

‘No, sir,’ Brunetti said. ‘My wife is making me read L’Osservatore Romano this week.’ He was going to add that it was the only newspaper that gave him a daily account of the appointments of the Holy Father, much in the manner of the Times with its calendar of the doings of the royals, but he was not sure – not having read the paper for decades – whether this was the case, nor would his gratitude allow him to goad Patta any farther. He contented himself, therefore, with the shrug of a true weakling and reached for the paper.

Patta surprised him by handing it to him gently and saying, ‘Sit down and read it. It’s on page five. Then tell me where the motive came from.’

Hastening to obey, Brunetti sat and opened the paper and quickly found the headline, ‘Mystery Man in Canal Identified as Local Veterinarian’. The article gave Nava’s name and age, said that he lived in Mestre, where he ran a private veterinarian clinic. It reported that he was separated from his wife and had one son. The police investigating his death were considering the possibility of a private vendetta.

‘“Vendetta privata”?’ Brunetti looked up to ask.

‘That’s exactly what I wanted to ask you about, Commissario,’ Patta said with sarcasm that halted just short of a leer. ‘Where did that idea come from?’

‘From his wife, from her relatives, or anyone that the reporter spoke to, or maybe he just liked the sound of it. God knows.’ Brunetti weighed for a moment the wisdom of suggesting that it could just as easily have been someone at the Questura, but wisdom and the knowledge that life was long silenced him.

‘You deny suggesting it?’ Patta asked, level-voiced.

‘Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said in his calmest, most reasonable voice, ‘it doesn’t matter where they got the idea.’ Knowing the crannies and dark corners of Patta’s brain as he did, Brunetti went on to say, ‘If you think about it, “personal vendetta” is far better than the idea that it was random assault.’ He was careful to keep his eyes on the paper and pay no attention to Patta as he said this, speaking as though he were engaged in idle reflection. It probably didn’t matter to Patta that a man had been stabbed and tossed into a canal, so long as the man was a local. Had he been a tourist, then the crime would have disturbed Patta, and had the victim been a tourist from a wealthy European country, there was no saying how strong the Vice-Questore’s response would have been.

‘Possibly,’ Patta said grudgingly; Brunetti translated this immediately into an unspoken ‘You’re probably right.’ He folded the paper closed, and set it in front of Patta. He pasted a look of dutiful eagerness across his face.

‘What have you done?’ Patta finally asked.

‘I spoke to his wife. His widow.’

‘And?’ Patta asked, but he said it in such a way that Brunetti decided that this was not the day to continue sparring with Patta.

‘She told me they were separated; there’s no question she wanted a divorce. He was involved with a woman colleague. Not at his clinic but at the macello where he worked: it’s just outside of Preganziol.’ He paused to give Patta the opportunity to ask questions, but his superior merely nodded. ‘His wife said he was troubled.’

‘Other than with this woman?’ Patta asked.

‘So it would seem from what she said, or from the way she said it. I wanted to get a sense of the place.’ More than that, Brunetti could not bring himself to say.

‘And?’

‘It’s not a nice place: they kill animals and cut them up,’ Brunetti said bluntly. ‘I spoke to the woman who must have been his lover.’

Before he could continue, Patta cut him off, demanding, ‘You didn’t tell her you know about their affair, did you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘That he was dead.’

‘How did she react?’

Brunetti had been thinking about this for some time. ‘She was angry that it took us so long to tell her, but she didn’t say anything particular about him.’

‘No reason to, really, I suppose,’ Patta said. Then, seeing Brunetti’s reaction and displaying a remarkable sensitivity to it, Patta hastened to add, ‘From her point of view, that is.’ Returning to his usual self, he demanded, ‘What’s a woman doing working there, anyway?’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ Brunetti said, ignoring this echo of his own thoughts.

‘It doesn’t sound like you got much information,’ Patta said, sounding gratified to be able to say it.

Brunetti had, on the contrary, got too much information, but this was not something he wanted to discuss with Patta or, indeed, with anyone. He contented himself with giving Patta a serious look, then said, ‘I suppose you’re right, Vice-Questore. I didn’t learn much about what he did out there, nor how this woman might enter into things. If at all.’ He was suddenly too tired and – much as it disgusted him to admit it – too hungry to dispute things with Patta. He allowed his gaze to drift towards the window of Patta’s office, the one that looked out on the same campo as his.

He was suddenly tempted to ask Patta if he had ever considered the view from his window as a metaphor for the difference between himself and Brunetti. They both looked at the same thing, but because Brunetti’s view came from a higher place, it was better. No, perhaps wiser not to ask Patta this.

‘Well, get busy with it, then,’ Patta said in the voice he used when urged to be a mover of men and a creator of dynamic action.

Brunetti knew from long experience that this was the voice that was most in need of deference, and so he answered, ‘Si, Dottore,’ and got to his feet.

Downstairs, Vianello was at his desk. He was not reading, nor talking with his colleagues nor on the phone. He sat at his desk, motionless and silent, apparently deep in consideration of its surface. When Brunetti came in, the other men in the room looked at him uneasily, almost as if they feared he was coming to take Vianello away because of something he had done.

Brunetti stopped at the desk of Masiero and asked in a normal voice if he had had any luck with the break-ins to the cars parked in the Municipal Garage at Piazzale Roma. The officer told him that, the night before, three of the video cameras in the garage had been vandalized, and six cars had been broken into.

Though he was not involved in the case and had no interest in it, Brunetti continued to question the officer about it, speaking more loudly than he ordinarily would. As Masiero explained his theory that the thefts must be the work of someone who worked there or of someone who parked his car there, Brunetti kept the edge of his attention