was a perfect cupid’s bow, but a very thick, unwieldy bow.
A thin film of sweat covered his face and had so slicked his thin hair to his skull that Brunetti was put in mind of the greasy pomades his father had used on his hair when Brunetti was a boy. ‘Dottore,’ he said for the third time, this time in a normal voice, his tone perhaps a bit sharp.
The eyes opened; small, dark, curious, and then suddenly wide with fear. Before Brunetti could say anything else, the man shoved himself away from his desk and got to his feet. He did not leap, nor did he jump, though Brunetti had no doubt that he moved as quickly as his bulk would permit. He pressed himself against the wall behind him and looked across the room at the door, then shifted his gaze back and forth between Brunetti and Vianello, who blocked his path.
‘What do you want?’ he asked. His voice was curiously high-pitched, either from fear or just from some odd mismatch between his body and his voice.
‘We’d like to speak to you, Dottore,’ Brunetti said in a neutral voice, choosing to delay an explanation of who they were or the purpose of their visit. He glanced aside at Vianello and saw that the Inspector, in response to the doctor’s fear, had managed somehow to transform himself into a thug. His entire body had become more compact and was angled forward, as though waiting only the command to launch itself at the man. His hands, curved just short of fists, dangled beside his thighs as though longing to be given weapons. The habitual geniality of his face had vanished, replaced by a mouth he seemed unable to close and eyes forever in search of his opponent’s weakest point.
The doctor’s hands, palms outward, rose in front of his chest; he patted at the air, as if to test if it were strong enough to keep these men from him. The doctor smiled: Brunetti recalled a description he had read once of a flower on a corpse, something like that. ‘There’s got to be some mistake, Signori. I’ve done everything you told me to. You must know that.’
Suddenly all bedlam was let out on the other side of the door. It started with a thump, a loud roar, and then a high-pitched woman’s scream. A chair fell over or was pushed over, another woman screamed an obscenity, then everything was drowned out by a chorus of hysterical barks and growls. There followed a series of yelps, and then all animal noise stopped for a moment and was replaced by an exchange of obscenities in two equally shrill voices.
Brunetti pulled the door open. The old woman stood barricaded behind a fallen chair, her ancient dog trembling in her arms, as she hurled epithets at another woman on the other side of the room. This woman, hatchet-faced and thin as a rail, stood behind two now wildly barking dogs with unusually large, squarish heads. They barked as hysterically as the two women screamed, the only differences being their lower pitch and the trickles of saliva that hung suspended from their lips. For the first time in his career, Brunetti wanted to pull his pistol and fire a shot into the air, but he had forgotten to wear his pistol, and he knew the noise of the shot would deafen every creature in the room.
Instead, he crossed to the two dogs, grabbing one of the magazines as he passed the table. He rolled it into a cylinder, then bent and smacked one of the large dogs across the nose. Given the lightness of Brunetti’s blow, the dog’s howl was disproportionately loud, and his quick retreat behind the legs of his owner as surprising as it was ignominious. His fellow dog looked up at Brunetti and started to bare his teeth, but a threatening thrust of the rolled magazine sent him to cower beside the other dog.
The thin-faced woman changed target and began to hurl her obscenities at Brunetti, ending in a loud boast that she would call the police and have him arrested. After this, she stopped shouting, sure that she now had the upper hand. Even the two dogs relaxed into this new legal certainty and began to growl, though they remained safely behind the woman’s legs.
The still-thuggish Vianello chose this moment to walk into the room, his warrant card shoved in the woman’s direction. ‘
The old woman with the dog in her arms said, ‘Officer’, but Vianello silenced her with a look.
‘Well?’ he demanded in his roughest voice. ‘Do you know what the fine is?’
Brunetti was sure Vianello didn’t, so he doubted that the woman did.
One of the large dogs suddenly began to whine; she yanked violently at its leash, silencing it instantly. ‘I know. But I thought that in here, inside…’ She waved vaguely at the walls with the hand that did not hold the leashes. Her voice trailed away. She bent down and patted the head of the first dog, then the other. Their long tails thumped against the wall.
Seeing how automatic her gesture was and the dogs’ easy, affectionate response to it must have disarmed Vianello, for he said, ‘All right for this time, but be careful in the future.’
‘Thank you, officer,’ she said. The dogs came out from behind her, wiggling towards Vianello until she pulled them back.
‘What about what she said to us?’ the old woman demanded.
‘Why don’t you sit down, ladies, while we finish talking to the doctor?’ Brunetti suggested and went back into the doctor’s office.
The advantage had been lost: that was obvious to Brunetti as soon as he saw the fat man. He stood by the open window of his office, taking a deep pull from the cigarette he held in his nicotine-stained hand. He looked at the returning men with eyes in which all trace of fear had been replaced by strong dislike. Brunetti suspected it originated not from embarrassment at the fear he had displayed as from what he had discovered them to be.
He continued to draw on the cigarette, saying nothing, until it was a stub that came close to burning his fingers. He shifted it to the very tips of his fingers, took one last long pull, then tossed it out the window. He closed the window but remained standing in front of it.
‘What do you want?’ he asked in the same high voice.
‘We’re here to talk to you about your successor, Dr Andrea Nava,’ Brunetti said.
‘I can’t help you, then, Signori,’ Meucci said, sounding uninterested.
‘Why is that, Doctor?’ Brunetti inquired.
It looked as though Meucci had to fight back a smile as he answered, ‘Because I never met him.’
Brunetti, in turn, fought back his surprise at this and asked, ‘You didn’t have to explain anything to him: who the people at the
‘No. The Director and his staff saw to all of that, I imagine.’ Meucci reached into the left pocket of his jacket and pulled out a battered box of Gitanes and a plastic lighter. Flicking it alive, he lit the cigarette, took a deep drag, and turned to open the window behind him. Cool air swept in, spreading the smoke around the room.
‘Did you have to leave him written instructions?’ Brunetti asked.
‘He wasn’t my responsibility,’ Meucci said. For a moment, Brunetti imagined that the other man could not know Nava was dead and so casually say such a thing. But then he realized that Meucci must know – who in Venice could not, especially someone who had formerly held the man’s job?
‘I see,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Could you tell me what your duties were?’
‘Why do you want to know that?’ Meucci asked, not bothering to hide his irritation.
‘So as to understand what it was Dottor Nava did,’ Brunetti answered blandly.
‘Didn’t they tell you that out there?’
‘Out where?’ Brunetti inquired mildly and glanced aside at Vianello, as if to suggest he remember Meucci’s question.
Meucci tried to disguise his surprise by turning to throw his half-finished cigarette out the window. ‘At the slaughterhouse,’ he forced himself to answer when he turned back to Brunetti.
‘When we were there, do you mean?’ Brunetti asked pleasantly.
‘Weren’t you?’ was the only thing the doctor could think to ask.
‘Surely you know that already, Dottore,’ Brunetti said with a small smile and pulled his notebook from his pocket. He opened it and made a note, then looked at the doctor, who already had another lighted cigarette in his hand.
‘What can you tell me about Dottor Nava?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I told you I never met him,’ Meucci said, anger held in check, but just barely.
‘That’s not what I’m asking, Dottore,’ Brunetti said, gave another tiny smile, and made another note.
