Drawing Conclusions

was a beige rug of some sort of fibre on the floor, but the only decoration on the walls was a medium-sized crucifix that looked as if it had been mass produced in some non-Christian country: surely Christ was not meant to have such rosy lips and cheeks, nor was there anything much to justify his smile.

A dark brown sofa sat on the other side of the room, its back to the windows that looked out on to the campo and the illuminated apse of the church. There must once have been a door in the wall to the right of the sofa, but during one of the restorations that had been done to this building over the centuries, someone had decided to brick it up. Whoever had done the most recent restoration had removed some of the bricks and plastered over the back of the opening, added shelves, and turned it into an inset bookcase.

A desk with a typewriter stood not far from the sofa, it too facing away from the window. Brunetti stared at it to be sure he was seeing what he thought he was. Yes, an old Olympia portable, the sort of thing his friends had taken off to university decades ago. His own family had been unable to provide him with one. He sat at the desk and placed his fingers above the keys, careful not to touch them. He had to turn his head sharply to see out the window, and after orienting himself with the bell tower of the church, he realized that in the daylight the ignored view from these third floor windows must extend all the way north, as far as the mountains.

From behind him, he heard the sounds of Vianello opening and closing drawers in the kitchen, then the whoosh of the opening refrigerator. He heard the rush of flowing water and the clink of a glass. Brunetti found the noises comforting.

Even though the desk appeared to have been checked for prints, from habit he slipped on plastic gloves and opened the single drawer at the centre, searching for he didn’t know what. He was relieved to find disorder: unsharpened pencils, some paper clips swirling around on the bottom, a topless pen, a single cufflink, two buttons, and a blue notebook, the sort of thing used by students and, like the notebooks of so many students, empty.

He pulled out the drawer and set it beside the typewriter. He bent and looked into the empty space, but nothing was hidden, nor, when he held it up, could he see anything taped to the bottom of the drawer. Feeling not a little foolish and certain that Marillo’s men had already done all of this, Brunetti knelt and stuck his head under the desk, but there was nothing taped there, either.

‘What are you looking for?’ Vianello asked from behind him.

‘I don’t know,’ Brunetti admitted, pushing himself to his feet. ‘It’s all so orderly.’

‘Isn’t that supposed to be a good thing?’ Vianello asked.

‘In theory, yes. I suppose,’ Brunetti admitted. ‘But…’

‘But you don’t want to accept that she could have died of a heart attack or a stroke, the way Rizzardi suggested.’

‘It’s not that I want anything,’ Brunetti said tersely, ‘but you saw the mark.’

Instead of answering, Vianello let out a heavy breath, making a noise that could mean anything as easily as it could mean nothing. Brunetti was unwilling to mention the feeling he had had in the corridor for fear that Vianello would dismiss it as foolishness.

‘There’s no sign that anyone went through this place,’ Vianello said. He glanced at the clock that hung beside the refrigerator. ‘It’s almost three, Guido. Could we lock the door and tape it and continue this tomor… later today?’

The name of the hour fell on Brunetti’s shoulders like a heavy garment, bearing him back towards the tiredness he had felt even before his dinner with Patta and Scarpa.

He nodded, and the two men moved through the house, turning off lights. They chose to leave the shutters open, as they had found them: enough light filtered in from the campo to allow them to move through the apartment even after they had turned out most of the lights. Brunetti opened the door of the apartment and switched on the light in the stairway. Vianello pulled out a roll of red and white tape and used it to draw an enormous X across the door. Brunetti locked it and pocketed the keys, which he had taken from the table by the door. They had found no address book. There had been only a simple phone with no stored numbers, and it was now too late to bother the woman upstairs to ask about the dead woman’s family. Brunetti turned away from the apartment and headed down the stairs.

‘The woman upstairs said she was in a hotel in Palermo for five days. I’ll check that,’ Brunetti said.

As they passed the door to the apartment below, Vianello tilted his head towards it. ‘The people in there heard us going up and down, so if they had anything to tell us, they probably would have.’ Then, before Brunetti could comment, he added, ‘But I’ll come back later today and ask them. You never know.’

Outside, the Inspector phoned the station at Piazzale Roma and asked them to send a boat to pick him up at the Riva di Biasio stop. Brunetti knew it would be faster to walk, so he shook hands with his assistant and turned towards home.

5

By the time Brunetti awoke from a troubled sleep, everyone in the house had already left, and for half an hour he drifted in and out of wakefulness, recalling Signora Giusti’s exclamation, ‘She was a good neighbour,’ and the pasty red goo that had seeped into the white hair of that good neighbour. His selective memory found Marillo’s embarrassed reticence and replayed Rizzardi’s cool thoroughness. He turned on to his back and looked at the ceiling. Is that what he would want someone to say about him, someone who had lived near him for a number of years? That he had been a good neighbour? Nothing more to be said about a person after years of acquaintanceship?

After a time, he went out into the kitchen, grumbling at the day, and found a note from Paola. ‘Stop grumbling. Coffee on stove. Just light it. Fresh brioche on counter.’ He saw the second and the fourth, did the first and the third. While the coffee was brewing, he went to the back window and looked off to the north. The Dolomites were clearly visible, the same mountains that Signora Altavilla had turned her back on and that Signora Giusti would see from her fourth-floor windows.

Though Brunetti was the son, grandson, great-grandson – and more – of Venetians, he had always found greater comfort in the sight of mountains than in that of the sea. Each time he heard of the approaching Something that was going to wipe the slate clean of humankind or read about the ever-escalating number of ships filled with toxic and radioactive waste scuttled by the Mafia off the coast of Italy, he thought of the majestic solidity of mountains, and in them he found solace. He had no idea how many years man had left to him, but Brunetti was sure that the mountains would survive whatever was to come and that something else would come after. He had never told anyone, not even Paola, about this idea nor of the strange consolation he took from it. Mountains seemed, he thought, so very permanent, while the sea, ever changing, was to him visibly disturbed by what happened to it; further, it was a more evident victim of the damage and depredations of man.

His thoughts had just moved to the continent-sized mass of garbage and plastic that was floating in the Pacific Ocean when the sound of bubbling coffee pulled him back to a more modest reality. He emptied the pot into his cup, spooned in sugar, and pulled a brioche from the bag. Cup in one hand, brioche in the other, he returned to the contemplation of the mountains.

This time it was the telephone that grabbed his attention. He walked into the living room and, mouth busy with his brioche, answered with his name.

‘Where are you, Brunetti?’ Patta shouted down the line.

When he had been younger and more prone to acts of prankish resistance, Brunetti would have answered that he was in his living room, but the years had taught him to interpret Patta-speak, so he recognized these words as a demand that he explain his absence from his office.

He swallowed the last of the brioche and said, ‘I’m sorry to be delayed, sir, but Rizzardi’s assistant said that the doctor was going to call me.’

‘Don’t you have a telefonino, for God’s sake?’ his superior demanded.

‘Of course, sir, but his assistant said the doctor might want me to go and talk to him at the hospital, so I’m waiting for his call before I leave home. If I get to the Questura and have to go back to the hospital, it will waste-’

Even as Brunetti became aware that he was talking too much, Patta interrupted him. ‘Stop lying to me, Brunetti.’