Bocchese moved beside him and slid the metal piece from its place under the lens. ‘Here, take a look,’ he said, handing it to Brunetti.
The rectangle certainly had the weight of metal; on its surface Brunetti saw a sword-wielding knight mounted on a caparisoned horse no bigger than a postage stamp. The man’s armour was carved in great detail, as was that of the horse. His head and face were covered by a helmet, but the horse wore only some sort of protection on its ears, and a thin line of damask material down the front of its face. It was the horse’s eye, he realized, that he had seen. Without the magnification, he had to hold the plaque to the light to be able to see the tiny hole of the iris.
‘What is it?’ Brunetti asked again.
‘I’d say it’s from the studio of Moderno, which is what my friend wanted me to tell him.’
Utterly at a loss, Brunetti asked, ‘What friend and why did he want you to tell him?’
‘He collects these things. So do I. So whenever he’s offered a really good piece, he asks me to check it for him to see that it’s what the seller says it is.’
‘But here?’ Brunetti asked, indicating the laboratory.
‘The microscope,’ Bocchese said, giving it the sort of affectionate pat one might give a favourite dog. ‘It’s much better than the one I have at home, so I can see every detail. It helps me be certain.’
‘You collect these?’ Brunetti asked, holding the rectangle up close to his face, the better to examine the scene. The horse reared up, nostrils flared in fear or anger. The knight’s left hand, covered in a thick mailed glove, pulled the reins tight while his right arm poised just at the farthest point of backward extension. In less than a second, both horse and man would crash forward, and God pity anything that stood before them.
Bocchese’s answer was an exercise in caution. ‘I’ve got a few.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ Brunetti said, handing it back carefully. ‘I’ve seen them in museums, but if you can’t get close to them, then you can’t really see the detail, can you?’
‘No,’ Bocchese agreed. ‘And you miss the patina, and the feel of it.’ To display that last, he held out his hand, the bronze piece cushioned in his palm, and hefted it up and down a few times. ‘I’m glad you think it’s beautiful.’ Bocchese’s expression was as warm as his voice had suddenly become.
Brunetti held his breath at the intimacy of the moment. In the years they had worked together, he had never doubted the technician’s loyalty, but this was the first time Brunetti had seen him express a feeling stronger than the detached irony with which he chronically viewed human activity. ‘Thank you for showing it to me,’ was all Brunetti could think of to say.
‘
‘She told you I wanted to see you?’ the technician asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Come and have a look,’ he said. He led Brunetti over to an examining table, where a number of photographs of fingerprints lay. Bocchese picked up one, flicked through the others with his forefinger, and pulled out another. He turned them over and checked what was written on the back, and then laid them side by side.
Brunetti saw the enlarged photographs of two single fingerprints. Like all prints, they looked identical to him. But he knew better than to say this to Bocchese.
‘Do you see it?’ Bocchese asked.
‘See what?’
‘That they’re identical,’ Bocchese said sharply, all trace of his former affability gone.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti said truthfully.
‘They’re both from that address in Castello,’ Bocchese explained.
‘Tell me more,’ Brunetti said.
Bocchese turned the photos over, as if to remind himself which was which, and then put them back where they had been. ‘Neither of these was in the apartment when you called and had Galli go over the first time, but both were there when he went back,’ he said, tapping his own finger against the photo. He pointed to the second photo, ‘And this was on the package of biscuits that Vianello brought me when you went back.’
‘They’re identical?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Same print, same hand,’ Bocchese said.
‘Same man, then,’ Brunetti said.
‘Unless he’s in the habit of lending it to someone else, it is,’ Bocchese said.
‘Where, exactly, was this one?’ Brunetti asked, tapping a finger against the first print.
Bocchese flipped it over again, studied the number and abbreviated words on the back, and said, ‘In the room on the top floor.’
‘Where, exactly?’
‘On the handle of the door, on the bottom side. It’s only a partial but it’s enough for me to make a match. I assume he wiped the handle off, only he didn’t wipe it all around, so he left the print,’ he said, again tapping at the photo.’
He pointed to the second photo. ‘As I told you, this was on the bag of biscuits. They were the only clear prints I found on the things Vianello brought me. The bag had a lot of grease on it. There were other smudges and partials, but nothing I could be sure about. Just this.’ He paused, then added, ‘I checked Galli’s report. He wiped things clean after he checked the place, so the print went on to the bag after you were there.’
‘Did you send them to Interpol?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Ah, Interpol,’ Bocchese repeated, voice filled with the despair peculiar to those forced to deal with international bureaucracies. ‘For what it’s worth, even those of us down here have heard the rumours about the Ministry of the Interior, so, just to be sure, I sent them to a friend of mine who works in the lab in the Ministry, and I asked him if he could perhaps deal with it privately.’ He paused a moment, then said, ‘I sent him those other prints — of the dead man.’
‘What does that mean, “privately”?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Well,’ Bocchese said, leaning back against the counter and folding his arms across his chest. ‘If it were an official request, it would take a week or two. But this way I should hear from my friend tomorrow or the next day. And no copy will go to anyone else at the Ministry of the Interior.’
At times Brunetti asked himself why he bothered with official police channels at all, if he had to rely almost exclusively on private connections and friendships in order to do his job. He wondered if it was like this in every country or every city. ‘You think there exists a place where the police are left alone to get on with their job?’ he asked Bocchese.
The technician appeared to treat this as a genuine question and gave it the consideration he thought it merited. Then he said, ‘Maybe, but only in places where the government wants the police really to function, regardless of who’s suspected or how important they are.’ He saw Brunetti’s expression, and added, with a smile, ‘But I still vote Rifondazione Comunista, so I’m bound to see it that way, I suppose.’
Brunetti thanked him for his comments and the information and went back to his office, marvelling that he had, in that brief visit, learned more about Bocchese than he had in more than a decade.
20
About an hour after Brunetti got back to his office, his phone rang. He answered with his name.
‘I asked that person,’ Sandrini said without introduction. ‘That is, I got him talking about that subject, and he said the job was given to people from Rome, who were sent up to do it.’
‘What about the guns? They have metal detectors at the airports now, you know,’ Brunetti said, irritated by Sandrini’s attempt to speak in code and hoping to irritate him, too. Getting a gun in Venice would be no problem to men with the right connections.
‘You ever hear about the train?’ Sandrini asked savagely. ‘It runs on metal tracks, goes back and forth between here and Rome. Goes choo choo choo.’
Ignoring his remark, Brunetti asked, ‘Is that all he said, that they were from Rome?’
