‘You sound very sure about that.’

‘I am.’

‘Why?’

‘Because someone must have been paid to let them stock-pile it there, and if they don’t move it, there will be trouble.’

‘So you wait?’

‘So we wait,’ Ribasso answered. ‘Besides, we’ve got lucky. A new magistrate’s been assigned to Guarino’s murder, and it looks like she might be serious.’

Brunetti, silent, left him to his optimism.

Then Ribasso asked, ‘What happened to your man? They told me it looked as if you had to help him to your car.’ ‘He fell and put his hand down into the mud.’ Hearing Ribasso’s sudden intake of breath, Brunetti said,

‘He’ll be all right. He’s seen a doctor.’

‘Is that where you are, the hospital?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let me know what happens to him, all right?’

‘Of course,’ Brunetti said, and then asked, ‘How bad is it in there?’

‘You name a chemical and it’s in that mud.’ After a long pause he said, ‘And blood.’

Brunetti allowed an even longer period to pass and asked, ‘Guarino’s?’

‘Yes.’ He added, ‘And the mud matches what was on his clothes and shoes.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Ribasso said nothing.

‘You find the bullet?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes. In the mud.’

‘I see.’ Brunetti heard a door open behind him and saw Vianello put his head out. ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Take care of your man,’ Ribasso said.

‘What is it, Lorenzo?’ Brunetti asked as he flipped his phone closed.

Vianello held out his own telefonino. ‘It’s Griffoni. She’s been trying to get you. So she called me.’

‘What’s she want?’ Brunetti asked.

‘She wouldn’t say,’ the Ispettore said, handing the phone to Brunetti.

‘Yes?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Someone called Vasco’s been trying to find you, but your phone was turned off; then it was busy. So he called me.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That the man you’re looking for is there.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Brunetti said. He went back into the other room, where Vianello stood leaning against the wall. The doctor did nothing to disguise his displeasure at Brunetti’s arrival. ‘It’s Vasco. He’s there.’

‘The Casino?’

‘Yes.’

Instead of answering, Vianello looked at the dull-eyed Pucetti, who sat bare-chested on the edge of the examining table, propping his bandaged hand up with the other. He turned to Brunetti and smiled, ‘It doesn’t hurt any more, Commissario.’

‘Good,’ Brunetti said and smiled encouragingly. Then, to Vianello, ‘Well?’ He held up the phone to show the call was still active.

He watched Vianello consider and then decide. ‘See if she can go with you,’ he said. ‘You’ll be less conspicuous. I’ll stay with him.’

Brunetti pulled the phone back and said, ‘I’m at the hospital in Mestre, but I’m leaving now. I’ll be at the Casino in. .’ he began, paused to calculate the time, and said, ‘In half an hour. Can you make it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not in uniform,’ he said.

‘Of course.’

‘And have a launch get me at Piazzale Roma. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

‘Yes,’ she said and was gone.

Brunetti never understood how she did it, but Commissario Claudia Griffoni was standing on the deck of a taxi waiting at the police landing stage when his car pulled up twenty minutes later. Even had she worn her uniform, it would have been reduced to insignificance, perhaps invisibility, by her dark mink coat. It reached just to the top of a pair of razor-point crocodile-skin shoes with heels so high they made her as tall as Brunetti.

The taxi pulled away as soon as he was on deck and sped up the Grand Canal towards the Casino. Brunetti explained as much as he could, finishing with what Ribasso had told him about sharpshooters.

When he stopped, she asked only, ‘And Pucetti?’

‘His hand’s burnt; the doctor said it’s not as bad as it could have been and his only real risk is infection.’

‘What was it?’ she asked.

‘God knows. Whatever’s leaked out of those barrels.’

‘Poor boy,’ she said with real feeling, though she could be no more than ten years older than Pucetti.

They saw Ca’ Vendramin Calergi appear on their left and moved out on to the deck. The driver cut towards the dock, switched into reverse, and brought them to a stop a millimetre from the landing. Griffoni opened her sequined bag, but the driver said only, ‘Claudia, per piacere,’ and offered an arm to help her step on to the dock.

Glad that he had thought to clean his shoes and wipe his coat with one of the hospital’s towels, Brunetti stepped on to the red carpet close behind her, took her arm, and walked towards the open doors. Light spilled towards them and warmth engulfed them as they stepped inside: how very unlike the place where he had been with Vianello and Pucetti. He glanced at his watch: well after one. Was Paola asleep or was she awake, perhaps in the company of Henry James, waiting for her legal husband to come home? He smiled at the thought, and Griffoni asked, ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. I thought of something.’

She gave him a quick look before they moved off across the courtyard and through the main doors. At the front desk, Brunetti asked for Vasco, who appeared after a very short time, his face unable to disguise his excitement and then, when he saw a different woman with Brunetti, his surprise.

‘Commissario Griffoni,’ Brunetti said, enjoying the sight of Vasco’s badly disguised reaction, which he covered by telling them to come with him and put their coats in his office. Inside, he handed Brunetti a tie and while he waited for him to put it on, said, ‘He’s up at the blackjack table. He’s been here about an hour.’ Then, with surprise even greater than that with which he had greeted Griffoni, he said, ‘Winning.’ It sounded as if that sort of thing were not meant to happen there.

The two commissari fell into step behind Vasco, who decided to take the stairs to the first floor. Everything was as Brunetti remembered it: the same people, the same sense of physical and moral dilapidation, the same soft lighting on shoulders and jewels.

Vasco led them through the roulette rooms and towards the one in which Brunetti had watched the card players. He stopped just before the door and told them to wait there until he was well across the room. He had dealt with Terrasini before and did not want to be seen entering the room with them.

Vasco walked in and made his slow way towards one of the tables, his hands clasped behind his back in the manner of a floorwalker or an undertaker. Brunetti noticed that Vasco’s right forefinger was pointing to the table at his left, though his attention seemed entirely directed to another table.

Brunetti looked towards the table, and as he did a man on the near side stepped aside, opening a sightline to the young man who sat on the opposite side. Brunetti recognized the sharp, exaggerated angle of the eyebrows, as though painted there with geometric exactitude. Dark eyes, unnaturally bright and seeming to be all iris, a broad mouth, and dark, gelled hair that brushed past the left eyebrow without touching it. He had a day’s growth of beard and, when he raised his cards to look at them, Brunetti saw large, thick-fingered hands, the hands of a labourer.

As Brunetti watched, Terrasini slid a small pile of chips forward. The man sitting next to him tossed down his

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