Paola allowed a long time to pass before she asked, ‘What does that mean?’
He tried to find a way of saying what he wanted to say without angering her. ‘That I think you’ve offended her,’ he finally offered.
‘Her?’ Paola said with false incredulity. ‘How?’
He poured some more wine into his glass but left it on the table. ‘By assaulting her without giving her a chance to explain.’
Her look was long and level. ‘“Assaulting?”’ she repeated. ‘Does that mean there’s some explanation or justification for ideas like hers, that the death of a man can be dismissed with a cavalier “only”, and that her listener is somehow obliged to let the remark pass unobserved? Or that to object to it is to “assault” the person who made it?’
‘Of course not,’ he said, trained by Paola herself to recognize and dismiss the
‘Then what are you saying?’
‘That you might have been better advised to see where she got these ideas and try to reason with her.’
‘Rather than assaulting her, as you put it?’ she asked, beginning to show her anger.
‘Yes,’ he answered calmly.
‘I’m not in the habit of attempting to reason with racial prejudice,’ she said.
‘Then what do you want to do with it, beat it with a stick?’
He saw her start to answer, then bite it back. She took a sip of her wine, then another, then set the glass down. ‘All right,’ she finally said. ‘Perhaps I was a little too severe with her. But it was so embarrassing, to hear her say those things and to think I might have been responsible, in some way, for her having said them.’
‘Are we talking about Chiara here, or about you?’ he surprised her by asking.
She pursed her lips, glanced across at the window that looked off to the north, nodded in acknowledgement of the accuracy of his question, and said, ‘You’re right.’
‘I’m not interested in being right,’ Brunetti said.
‘What are you interested in, then?’
‘Living in peace in my own home.’
‘I suppose that’s pretty much all anyone wants,’ she said.
‘If only it were that simple, huh?’ he asked, got to his feet and leaned over to kiss her on the head, then went back to the Questura and to the investigation of the death of the man who was only a
The African’s death, or at least the cause of it, was catalogued in the print-out of the autopsy report that lay on Brunetti’s desk. The speed with which it had arrived surprised Brunetti, and he flipped to the back to see if Rizzardi had given a reason. His surprise grew when, instead of the pathologist’s name, he found a blank where the name of the responsible pathologist should have appeared. Deciding to waste no time in attempting to figure out why Rizzardi might have failed to fill this in, he began to read.
The victim was estimated to have been in his late twenties, and although there was evidence he had been a heavy smoker, he was in excellent health, as were his organs. He was 1.82 metres tall and weighed 68 kilos. A set of his fingerprints had been forwarded to Lyon for possible identification.
In total, five bullets had struck him, a number which corresponded to the number of sounds the Americans had heard. Either of two of them would have sufficed to kill him: one had severed his spine, and one had perforated the left ventricle of the heart. The remaining three had pounded into his torso; one had lodged in the liver, while two had simply buried themselves in his flesh without damaging any organs. The fact that all five shots had struck him spoke to Brunetti of proximity as much as marksmanship, for from what the Americans had described, the killers had been little more than a metre from their victim. The angles of the paths of the bullets suggested that one man was taller than the other; the fact that the bullets had lacked the force to emerge from the body suggested that the guns were of low calibre. The bullets had been extracted and sent to the lab for analysis, though a layman’s guess was that the gun that fired them would turn out to be a.22, a weapon Brunetti knew was not unknown to paid killers.
‘Layman,’ Brunetti said aloud, setting the report to one side. Rizzardi, who had worked in Naples a decade ago, had probably seen more signs of violent death than anyone else in the city, so he would hardly have used such a term when writing an autopsy report.
The report had arrived by email, which meant that the photos would be on view in Signorina Elettra’s computer. Brunetti, however, had no desire to see them: the sight of wounds had always caused him pain and disgust. It was only the idea of the motivation that had caused them that interested him. He admitted to himself that he had little real knowledge of Africa, thought of the continent as a vague, amorphous mass where things went wrong and people suffered and starved while they lived amidst a wealth of natural resources that had been strewed about them with nature’s most prodigal hand.
He had read of the colonial past of the continent, but the closer history moved towards the present, the less interest he took in it. But this, he realized, was true of his interest in history in general.
Brunetti gazed out of the window of his office at the crane that still, after years, towered over the
Brunetti tried to consider the factors that might bear on the murder and could come up with nothing more helpful than the man’s origins and past behaviour or something he might be involved in now. As for his past, Brunetti admitted he knew nothing, not even the man’s country of origin, though Senegal was a safe guess. And for the present, he imagined possibilities only to exclude them immediately: jealous husbands did not in general send killers to vindicate their honour; and the wholesalers of the bags, so far as Brunetti knew, hardly needed the example of murder to keep their employees in line. The Africans were surely only too grateful for any chance of work to risk losing their jobs through attempting to cheat their employers. Beyond these thoughts, the possibilities stretched out, both unknown and unlimited.
He took a copy of that week’s staff assignments and flipped it over. On the back he began a list of the things they needed to know about the dead man: ‘Name, nationality, profession, criminal record, how long in Italy, address, family, friends.’ He thought about how to begin to penetrate the mystery of the man’s existence, remembered someone who might be able to help him, picked up the phone and called down to the officers’ room.
As he had hoped, Vianello answered.
‘You free?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Two minutes,’ Brunetti said and added, ‘We’ll need a boat.’
It took him more than that time to put on his overcoat and find a spare pair of gloves, which were stuffed into the pockets of a down vest that had been forgotten in his closet. He went down to the entrance hall.
Vianello was waiting at the front door, wearing so many layers of sweaters and vests under his coat as to seem almost twice his normal size. ‘We’re not going to Vladivostok, you know,’ Brunetti said in greeting.
‘Nadia’s got flu, the kids have colds, and I don’t want to get sick and have to stay at home.’
‘Who’s with them?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Nadia’s mother. You know how close she lives, so she’s in and out all day.’ Vianello waved the officer on duty aside and pulled open the front door, allowing a gust of frigid air to sweep around them and into the hall. He stuffed his gloved hands into the pockets of his parka and stepped outside.
The pilot stood on deck, no more of his face visible than a small triangle of eyes and nose swaddled in the fur-lined hood of his jacket. Stepping on board, Brunetti said, ‘Could you take us over to San Zan Degola?’ before hurrying down the steps and into the cabin.
Vianello followed him inside, allowing the double doors to slap closed behind him. The cabin was cold, but at least they were out of the wind that buffeted the doors. When he was seated opposite Brunetti, Vianello asked, ‘What’s over there?’
‘Don Alvise.’
