'What?' the voice asked through another roar of static.

'Signor Tassini,' he shouted.

'... trouble ... who? ... enough...' the voice said.

Brunetti decided communication was useless, so he pressed his finger against the bell and kept it there until the door snapped open.

He climbed the stairs to the third floor, where he found a white-haired woman standing in a doorway on the top landing. She had the papery skin of a heavy smoker and short, badly permed white hair that fell in a jagged fringe across her eyebrows. Below it, her eyes were deep green and held in a perpetual squint, as though forced into it by decades of rising smoke. She was short, and her squat rotundity spoke of endurance and strength. She did not smile, but her face relaxed, and a thin tracery of wrinkles softened around her eyes and mouth. 'What can I do for you?' she asked in purest Castello, her voice almost as deep as his own.

Brunetti answered in dialect, as seemed only polite. 'I'd like to speak to Signor Tassini if he's here’ he said.

'Signor Tassini is it, now?' she asked with an inquisitive tilt of her chin. 'What could my son-in-law have done that the cops are interested in him?' She seemed curious rattier than fearful.

'Is it that obvious, Signora?' Brunetti asked, waving his right hand at his own body. 'Couldn't I be the gasman?'

'As easily as I could be the Queen of Sheba’ she said and laughed from somewhere deep behind her stomach. When she stopped, both of them heard what sounded like the yipping of a puppy from inside the apartment. She turned her head towards it, still speaking to Brunetti as she did so. 'You better come in, then, so you can talk to me. Besides, I've got to keep an eye on them while Sonia does the shopping, isn't it true?'

As he gave her his name and shook her hand, it occurred to Brunetti to wonder how much of what she said would be comprehensible to a person from, say, Bologna. A number of the teeth on the top left side of her mouth were missing, so her speech was slurred, but it was the Veneziano stretto that was sure to defeat any ear not born within a hundred kilometres of the laguna. Yet how sweet it was to hear that dialect, so much like the one his grandmother had spoken all her life, never bothering to have anything to do with Italian, which she had always dismissed as a foreign language and not worthy of her attention.

The woman, who might have been fifty as easily as sixty, led him into a meticulously clean living room at the end of which stood a bookcase out of which books pretty well did whatever they wanted to do—hung, leaned, fell, tilted. Facing the sofa where the woman must have been sitting was a small television with a hothouse cyclamen in a plastic pot on top of it. On the television, pastel-coloured cartoon creatures danced around silently, for the sound had been turned down or off.

The sofa was draped with a plaid blanket and might once have been white, though it was now the colour of oatmeal. In the middle of the sofa sat a young boy, perhaps two years old. He was the source of the noise, a piping cry of wordless joy with which he kept time to the jumps and steps of the pastel creatures. At the approach of the adults, the little boy smiled at his grandmother and patted the place beside him.

She plumped herself down next to him, grabbed him up, and pulled him onto her lap. She bent and kissed the top of his head, provoking ecstatic wriggles. He turned away from the screen, hiked himself up on his feet, and planted a wet kiss on her nose. She looked up at Brunetti, smiled, then put her face up to the little boy's. Then she buried her face in his neck and whispered, 'More, xe beo, xe propio beo.' She looked at Brunetti, face bright, and asked, 'E xe beo, me puteo?'

Brunetti grinned in agreement and praised the boy's sunlike radiance, his obvious superiority to any child he'd ever seen, his remarkable resemblance to his grandmother. Her eyes narrowed momentarily, and she gave Brunetti a long, speculative glance.

'Mine are older now’ he said, 'but I still remember when they were his age. I used to invent some excuse to leave and go home from work just to be with them. I'd say I was going out to question someone, and I'd go home and play with my babies.'

Her smile widened in approval. From the back of the apartment there came a muffled noise, the unmistakable cry of a baby, and Brunetti looked at her in confusion. 'It's Emma,' she said. She bounced the boy on her lap and added, 'His twin sister.' She sized up Brunetti with astute eyes and asked, 'You think you could go and get her? He'll cry if I leave him now, even for a minute.'

Brunetti looked towards the back of the apartment.

'Just follow the noise,' she said and went back to bouncing the boy on her lap.

He did as he was told and went into a bedroom on the right side of the corridor, where he found two cribs that stood head to head. Bright-coloured mobiles floated from the ceiling, and a small zoo of stuffed animals stood behind the bars of the cribs. A little girl lay in one of them, beside her a furry elephant just as big as she. He walked over to her, saying, 'Emma, how are you? Aren't you a pretty girl? Come on, now, we're going out to see your nonna, eh?'

He bent and picked her up, surprised to find that she lay limp in his hands, like a frightened animal. Not-quite-forgotten habit slipped into operation and he put her over his shoulder, noticing the insubstantiality of her, patting her warm back with his right hand, saying nonsense things to her all the way back to the living room.

'Just put her here, next to me’ the woman said when he came in. He seated the little girl next to her grandmother, whereupon she tilted to the right and fell over. She made a low noise but did not move.

Before Brunetti could reach down and set her upright, the woman said, 'No, leave her. She can't sit up yet.'

 

At two, both of his children were walking, even running, and Raffi had declared war on any object within his reach. Brunetti made himself respond as if he found her remark in no way surprising.

'Has she seen a doctor?'

'Ah, doctors,' she said, the way Venetians always spoke of doctors.

She got to her feet, propped the little boy upright next to his sister, stuck a pillow on his other side, and took a packet of Nazionale blu out of the pocket of her apron. 'Would you watch them while I go and have a cigarette?' she asked. 'Sonia and Giorgio don't want me to smoke in the house, so I have to go out on the landing and open the window.' She grinned at this. 'I suppose it's only fair. I did it to Sonia, God knows, for years.' The grin turned into a smile and she added, 'At least, with her, it worked, and she doesn't smoke. I suppose I should be thankful for that.'

Before Brunetti could agree, she walked to the door of the apartment and out onto the landing, leaving the door ajar. He decided to sit on the chair to the left of the sofa, leaving the children as undisturbed as possible. The little boy seemed to forget his grandmother as soon as she was gone and returned his attention to the plump figures on the screen that were now jumping into a river of blue flowers. The little girl lay where she had fallen. Brunetti sat, gazing at the small children, suddenly overcome by a wild uneasiness that something would happen to one of them while their grandmother was out of the room and he would not know how to deal with the situation. He watched the twins, amazed at the difference in their sizes, looked at the half-closed door, and then at the television screen.

After a few minutes, the woman came back into the apartment, trailing the odour of smoke. 'Giorgio never stops telling me how bad it is for me’ she said, patting the cigarettes that appeared to be back in her pocket. 'And I suppose he's right, but I've been smoking since before he was born, so it can't be as bad for me as he says.' She saw Brunetti's reluctant smile and added, 'Whenever he keeps at it, I always tell him that the salad he's eating is probably just as dangerous as my cigarettes.' She raised her shoulders, lowered them, and sighed deeply. 'I suppose we're both right, but you'd think he'd know me well enough by now to leave me alone about it.' Another sigh, another shrug. 'But he wants to believe what he wants to believe. Just like all of us. Pazienza.'

She took her seat on the sofa again, but this time she lifted the little girl on to her lap, placed a hand at her waist, and held her upright. The boy, seeing that she was holding his sister, scrambled onto his feet on the sofa and wrapped his grandmother's neck in his embrace, whispering secrets in her ear and laughing.

'Oh, look at them,' the woman said, pointing a finger at the screen and using that voice of feigned enthusiasm that seems always to deceive children. 'Look what they're doing now.'

The little boy fell for it and turned his attention away from his grandmother's ear and back to the television. Though he kept one arm draped around her shoulders, he appeared to forget about her. 'What was it you wanted to talk to him about?' she asked Brunetti. The little girl lay inert on her lap.

'Your son-in-law works at the De Cal fornace, I believe’ Brunetti said.

'At the factory?' she asked.

'Yes.'

'What do you want to know? He's only the watchman.'

Brunetti was surprised by her reaction to what had seemed an entirely innocuous question.

"There's been talk of threats being made there, and I wanted to speak to your son-in-law about it’ Brunetti said, not thinking it necessary to tell her any more than that.

'Whatever he said, I'm sure it was just talk and he didn't mean it’ she said.

'Do you know Signor De Cal?' Brunetti asked.

Her free hand moved automatically towards her cigarettes and patted them for whatever comfort the packet might provide. 'I've seen him, but I've never spoken to him’ she said. 'People say he's a difficult man to get along with, and there was that fight in the bar a couple of years ago. Everyone on Murano knows about it.'

'So your son-in-law has told you about the threats?' Brunetti asked.

She patted the little boy's bottom, pulled him a bit closer, but his attention was entirely engaged by the figures on the screen and he could not be distracted. Finally she said, 'Yes. But I told you, it was just talk. I'm sure he didn't mean anything.'

Then why, Brunetti wondered, mention the fight? 'Did your son-in-law tell you exactly what was said?'

Brunetti thought she looked as though he had trapped her into saying something she should not have said and regretted ever having spoken to him. 'He's always blamed De Cal’ she began, speaking softly. 'I know, I know, even though there's nothing that can prove it, Giorgio still believes it. Just like with the cigarettes: he believes it and that's that. No use talking to him.'

She looked at the little girl and placed her palm on her back, covering it completely. 'I've tried to talk to him. Sonia's tried. The doctors. Nothing. He believes it and that's that.'

Brunetti felt as though he had been looking at one programme on television, and while he was momentarily distracted, someone had pressed the remote control and he was now watching a different programme with no idea of what had happened at the beginning.

'And the threat?' was the only thing he could think to ask.

'I don't know what made him do it. In the past, he's always been careful what he said, never said anything directly. Though I'm sure they know what he thinks: no one keeps any secrets out there, and he's talked to the men he works with.' She raised her hands as if her open palms could summon help from heaven. Two weeks ago, he told Sonia he was close to having the final proof. But he's said that so many times’ she went on, her face and her voice growing sadder. 'Besides, we know there's no proof.'

She wrapped her right arm around the boy and pulled him close to her, then used her left hand to wipe her eyes. Suddenly speaking in a voice close to anger, she took her hand from her face and waved it in the direction of the bookcase on the opposite wall. 'I should have known when he started reading all that stuff. How long is it? Two years? Three? And all he wants to do is read. So he keeps that job that pays almost nothing so he can read all night. But the children have to eat, we have to eat, and if I didn't own this apartment and couldn't stay home with the children, God knows what would happen to them: Sonia wouldn't work, and they'd starve on what he earns alone.' Her voice tightened with rage and she made a spitting motion with her lips. 'And try to get any help from this government; just try it. With all the proof they've got, with doctors' letters and certificates and tests from the hospital, and what do they give them? Two hundred Euros a month. And nothing for me, even though I have to stay here with them all the time. You try to raise two children on two hundred Euros a month and come and tell me how easy it is.'

The figures disappeared from the screen, and it was as if the little boy had suddenly been released to feel his grandmother's rage. He turned and put his arms around her neck. 'Good nonna, good nonna,' he said and began to stroke both her cheeks, pressing his face closer to hers.

'See?' she said, looking across at Brunetti. 'See what you've made me do?'

He saw that the woman was emotionally exhausted and was unlikely to answer any more questions, and so he said, 'I'd still like to speak to your son-in-law, Signora.' He pulled out his wallet and handed her one of his cards, then took out a pen and said, 'Could you give me his number so I can get in touch with him?'

'You mean the number of his telefonino?' she asked with an abrupt laugh.

Brunetti nodded.

'He doesn't have a telefonino,' she said, this time her voice carefully restrained. 'He won't use one because he believes the waves that come out of it are bad for his brain.' From her voice, it was evident how little credence she gave this opinion. "That's another idea he got from his books,' she said. 'It's not enough that he thinks he's contaminated; he's got to think telefonini are dangerous.'

'Can you believe that?' she asked with real curiosity. 'Can you believe they'd let that happen, that rays could come out and hurt you?' She made the spitting motion again, though what emerged was really little more than a puff of disbelief. She gave him the phone number of the house, and Brunetti wrote it down.

The woman's agitation finally registered with the little girl, who began to squirm around on the sofa. She made a noise, but it was nothing like the peeping noise her brother had made in time to the motions of the dancing figures. It was a bleat, a wail, the voice of anguish in a very high register. It started, it went on, and then the woman said, 'You better go now. Once she starts like this, it can go on for hours, and I don't think you want to hear it.'

Brunetti thanked her, did not offer her his hand, and did not pat the little boy on the head, as he would have done had the girl not begun to wail. He left the apartment, went down the stairs, and out into the light.

 

8

 

 

As he walked back towards the Questura, Brunetti found himself dwelling on a noise and a confusion. The noise was the one made by the little girl: something prevented him from referring to it as her voice. The other was the strangely parallel conversation he had had with the grandmother: he spoke of threats, and she said they were meaningless, nothing, all the while suggesting that De Cal was a potentially violent man. He tried to remember everything they had said and could come up with only one alternative interpretation: it was Tassini who had made the threats, perhaps provoked into them by De Cal's violence. If not this, then the old woman was talking nonsense, and that was something Brunetti was convinced this particular woman would not do. Lie, perhaps; evade, certainly; but she would always talk sense.

His phone rang, and when he stopped walking to answer it he heard Pucetti's voice asking, 'Commissario?'

'Yes. What is it, Pucetti?'

'You had lunch yet, sir?'

'No’ Brunetti answered, suddenly reminded that he was hungry.

'Would you like to go out to Murano and talk to someone?'

'One of your relatives?' Brunetti asked, pleased that the young man had worked so fast.

'Yes. My uncle.'

'I'd be happy to’ Brunetti said, changing direction and starting back towards Celestia, where he could get a boat to Murano.

'Good. What time do you think you could be there?'

'It shouldn't take me more than half an hour.'

'All right. I'll tell him to meet you at one-thirty.'

'Where?'

'Nanni's’ Pucetti answered. It's on Sacca Serenella, the place where all the glass-workers eat. Anyone can tell you where it is.'

'What's your uncle's name?'

'Navarro. Giulio. He'll be there.'

'How will I know him?'

'Oh, don't worry about that, sir. He'll know you.'

'How?' Brunetti asked.

'Are you wearing a suit?'

'Yes.'

Did he hear Pucetti laugh? 'He'll know you, sir', he said and broke the connection.

It took Brunetti more than half an hour because he just missed a boat and had to wait at the Celestia stop for the next and then again at Fondamenta Nuove. As he got off the boat at Sacca Serenella, he stopped a man behind him and asked where the trattoria was.

'You mean Nanni's?' he asked.

'Yes. I've got to meet someone there, but all I know is that it's the place where the workers go.'

'And where you eat well?' the man asked with a smile.

'I wasn't told that’ Brunetti answered, 'but it wouldn't hurt.'

'Come with me, then,' the man said, turning off to the right and leading Brunetti along a cement pavement that ran beside the canal towards the entrance to a shipyard. 'It's Wednesday,' the man said. 'So there'll be liver. It's good.'

'With polenta?' Brunetti asked.

'Of course,' the man said, pausing to glance aside at this man who spoke Veneziano yet who had to ask if liver was served with polenta.

The man turned to the left, leaving the water behind them, and led Brunetti along a dirt trail that crossed an abandoned field. At the end, Brunetti saw a low cement building, its walls striped with what looked like dark trails of rust running down from leaking gutters. In front of it, a few rusted metal tables stood around drunkenly, their legs trapped in the dirt or propped up with chunks of cement. The man led Brunetti past the tables and to the door of the building. He pushed it open and held it politely for Brunetti to enter.

Inside, Brunetti found the trattoria of his youth: the tables were covered with sheets of white butcher paper, and on most tables lay four plates and four sets of knives and forks. The glasses had once been clean, perhaps even still were. They were squat things that held little more than two swigs of wine; years of use had scratched and clouded them almost to whiteness. There were paper napkins, and in the centre of each table a metal tray that held suspiciously pale olive oil, some white vinegar, salt, pepper, and individually wrapped packets of toothpicks.

Brunetti was surprised to see Vianello, in jeans and jacket, sitting at one of these tables, accompanied by an older man who bore no resemblance whatsoever to Pucetti. Brunetti thanked the man who had led him there, offered him un'ombra, which the man refused, and walked over to greet Vianello. The other man stood and held out his hand. 'Navarro,' he said as he took Brunetti's hand. 'Giulio.' He was a thick man, with a bull-like neck and a barrel chest: he looked like he had spent his life lifting weight, rather than lifting weights. His legs were slightly bowed, as if they had slowly given way under decades of heavy burdens. His nose had been broken a few times and badly set, or not set at all, and his right front tooth had been chipped off at a sharp angle. Though Navarro was surely more than sixty, Brunetti had no doubt that he would have no trouble lifting either him or Vianello and tossing them halfway across the room.

Brunetti introduced himself and said, "Thanks for coming to talk to us’ including Vianello, though he had no idea how the Inspector happened to be there.

Navarro looked embarrassed by such easy gratitude. 'I live just around the corner. Really.'

'Your nephew is a good boy,' Brunetti said. 'We're lucky to have him.'

This time, it was praise that made Navarro glance away in embarrassment. When he looked back, his face had softened, even grown sweet. 'He's my sister's boy,' he explained. 'Yes, a good boy'

'As I suppose he's told you’ Brunetti said as they seated themselves, 'we'd like to ask you about some of the people out here.'

'He told me. You want to know about De Cal?'

Before Brunetti could answer, a waiter came to the table. He had no pen or order pad, rattled off the menu and asked them what they'd like.

Navarro said the men were friends of his, which caused the waiter to recite the menu again, slowly, with comments, even with recommendations.

They ended up asking for spaghetti with vongole. The waiter winked to suggest that they had been dredged up, perhaps illegally, but definitely in the laguna, the night before. Brunetti

had never much liked liver, so he asked for a grilled rombo, while Vianello and Navarro both asked for coda di rospo.

'Patate bollite?' the waiter asked before he walked away.

They all said yes.

Without asking, the waiter was soon back with a litre of mineral water and one of white wine, which he set down on their table before going into the kitchen, where they could hear him shouting out their order.

As if there had been no interruption, Brunetti asked, 'What do you know about him? Do you work for him?'

'No’ Navarro answered, obviously surprised by the question. 'But I know him. Everyone here does. He's a bastard.' Navarro tore open a package of grissini. He put one in his mouth and nibbled it right down to the bottom, like a cartoon rabbit eating a carrot.

'You mean in the sense that he's difficult to work with?' Brunetti asked.

'You said it. He's had two maestri now for about two years: longest he's ever kept any of them, far as I know.'

'Why is that?' asked Vianello, pouring wine for all of them.

'Because he's a bastard.' Even Navarro sensed the circularity of his argument and so added, 'He'll try anything to cheat you.'

'Could you give us an example?' Brunetti asked.

This seemed to stump Navarro for a moment, as though a request to supply evidence to support a judgement were a novelty for him. He drank a glass of wine, filled his glass and drank another, then ate two more grissini. Finally he said, 'He'll always hire garzoni and let them go before they can become serventi so he won't have to pay them more. He'll keep them for a year or so, working off the books or working with two-month contracts, but then when it's time for them to move up, and get more money, he fires them. Invents some reason to get rid of them, and hires new ones.'

'How long can he go on doing this?' Vianello asked.

Navarro shrugged. 'So long as there are boys who need jobs, he can probably go on doing it for ever.'

'What else?'

'He argues and fights.'

'With?' Vianello asked.

'Suppliers, workers, the guys on the boats who bring the sand or the guys on the boats who take the glass away. If there's money involved— and there's money involved in all of this—then he'll argue with them.'

'I've heard about a fight in a bar a couple of years ago . . .' Brunetti began and let his voice drop away.

'Oh that’ Navarro said. 'It's probably the one time the old bastard didn't start it. Some guy said something he didn't like and De Cal said something back, and the guy hit him. I wasn't there, but my brother was. Believe me, he hates De Cal more than I do, so if he said the old bastard didn't start it, then he didn't.'

'What about his daughter?' Brunetti asked.

Before Navarro could answer, the waiter brought their pasta and set the plates in front of them. Conversation stopped as the three men dug into the spaghetti. The waiter returned with three empty plates for the shells.

'Peperoncino,' Brunetti said, mouth full.

'Good, eh?' Navarro said.

Brunetti nodded, took a sip of wine, and returned to the spaghetti, which was better than good. He had to remember to tell Paola about the peperoncino, which was more than she used but still good.

When their plates were empty and the other plates full of shells, the waiter came and took them all away, asking if they had eaten well. Brunetti and Vianello said enthusiastic things: Navarro, a regular customer, was not obliged to comment.

Soon the waiter was back with a bowl of potatoes and the fish: Brunetti's was already filleted. Navarro asked for olive oil, and the waiter returned with a bottle of much better oil. All three poured it on their fish but not on the potatoes, which already sat in a pool of it at the bottom of the bowl. None of them spoke for some time.

While Vianello spooned the last of the potatoes from the bowl, Brunetti returned to his questions and asked, 'His daughter, do you know much about her?'

Navarro finished the wine and held up the empty carafe to get the waiter's attention. 'She's a good girl, but she married that engineer.'

Brunetti nodded. 'Do you know him or know anything about him?'

'He's an ecologist’ Navarro said, using the same sort of tone another person might use to identify a pederast or a kleptomaniac. It was meant to end discussion. Brunetti allowed it to pass and decided to play ignorant. 'Does he work here on Murano?' he asked.

'Ah, thank God, no,' Navarro said, taking the litre of white wine from the waiter's hand and filling all of their glasses. 'He works on the mainland somewhere, goes around looking for places where we'll still be allowed to put our garbage.' He drank a half-glass of wine, perhaps thought of Ribetti's professional duties, and finished the glass.

'We've got two perfectly good incinerators here, so why can't we just burn it all? Or if it's dangerous, just bury it somewhere in the countryside or ship it to Africa or China. Those people will let you pay for that. So why not do it? They've got all those open spaces, so just bury it there.'

Brunetti allowed himself a quick glance at Vianello, who was finishing the last of his potatoes. He set his knife and fork down on his plate and, as Brunetti feared he would, opened his mouth to speak to Navarro. 'If we built nuclear plants, then we could do the same thing with the waste from them, and then we wouldn't have to import all that electricity from Switzerland and France, either.' Vianello gave a manly smile, first to Navarro and then to Brunetti.

'Yes’ said Navarro. 'I hadn't thought about that, but it's a good idea.' Smiling, he turned back to Brunetti, 'What else did you want to know about De Cal?'

I've heard there's talk he wants to sell the fornace,' Vianello interrupted, now that Navarro had looked on him with approval.

'Yes. I've heard that, too’ Navarro said, not much interested. 'But there's always talk like that.' He shrugged off such talk, then added, 'Besides, if anyone buys it, it'll be Fasano. He's got the factory right alongside De Cal's, so if he bought it, he'd only have to join the two buildings together and he'd double his production.' Navarro thought about this possibility for a while and nodded.

'Fasano runs the Glassmakers' Association, doesn't he?' Vianello asked as the waiter arrived with another bowl of potatoes. Vianello let the waiter spoon a few onto his plate, but Navarro and Brunetti said no.

In answer to Vianello's question, Navarro smiled at the waiter and said, "That's what he does now, but who knows what he wants to become?' Hearing this, the waiter nodded and turned away.

Brunetti feared the conversation was veering away from De Cal, so he interrupted to say, 'I've heard there's been talk that De Cal's been threatening his son-in-law.'

'You mean that he says he's going to kill him?'

'Yes’ Brunetti said.

'He's said it in the bars, but he was usually drunk when he said it. Drinks too much, the old bastard’ Navarro said, filling his glass again. 'He's got diabetes and shouldn't drink, but. . .' Navarro paused and considered something for a moment, then said, "That's funny. You know, in the last couple of months he's started to look worse, like the disease is really getting to him.'

Brunetti, who had seen the old man only once some weeks before, had no point of comparison: he had seen an old man weakened and perhaps fuddled by years of drink.

'I'm not sure this is a legitimate question, Signor Navarro’ Brunetti began, taking a sip of wine he did not want. 'You think there's any real threat?'

'You mean that he'd really kill him?'

'Yes.'

Navarro finished his wine and put the glass on the table. He made no move to help himself to more and called to the waiter for three coffees. After he had given the order, he returned to Brunetti's question and at last said, 'I think I'd rather not answer that, Commissario.'

The waiter cleared away their plates. Both Brunetti and Vianello said that the meal had been excellent, and Navarro seemed more pleased than the waiter to hear them say it. When the coffee came, he put two packets of sugar into his cup, stirred it, looked at his watch, and said, 'I've got to get back to work, gentlemen.' He stood and shook hands with both of them, called over to the waiter that the bill was his and that he'd pay it the next day. Brunetti started to object, but Vianello stood and put out his hand again and thanked the older man. Brunetti did the same.

Navarro smiled one last time and said, 'Take good care of my sister's boy for me, all right?' He went over to the door, opened it, and was gone.

Brunetti and Vianello sat back down. Brunetti drank the last of his coffee, looked over at Vianello, and asked, 'Did Pucetti call you?'

'Yes.'

'What did he say?'

"That you were coming out here and maybe I should join you.'

Undecided as to whether he liked it or not, Brunetti finally said, 'I liked that about the nuclear waste.'

'I'm sure it's a feeling in which you are joined by countless people in the government,' Vianello said.

 

 

9

 

 

'Oh my, oh my, oh my’ Vianello said, directing his attention to the entrance of the trattoria. Brunetti, curious, started to turn around, but Vianello put a hand on his arm and said, 'No, don't look.' When Brunetti was facing him again, Vianello said, unable to disguise his surprise, 'What Navarro said about De Cal is true: he looks much worse than he did the last time.'

'Where is he?'

'He just came in and he's standing at the bar, having a drink.'

'Alone or with someone?'

'He's with someone’ Vianello answered. 'And that's what's interesting.'

'Why?'

'Because he's with Gianluca Fasano.'

 

An involuntary 'ah' escaped Brunetti and then he said, 'Not only President of the Glass-makers of Murano, but, as I've heard a few times and as even Navarro seems to know, a man who might be very interested in becoming our next mayor.'

'Right on both counts’ Vianello said, raising his glass in Brunetti's direction but not taking a sip. 'Complimenti.' He kept his eyes on Brunetti's face, but occasionally shifted his head to one side and cast his attention towards the two men standing at the bar. If the men looked in their direction, Brunetti realized, they would see two men at a table, one with his back to them. The only time De Cal had seen Vianello, he had been in uniform: without it, he could be anyone. Vianello nodded in the direction of the two men and said, 'Be interesting to know what they're saying, wouldn't it?'

'De Cal's a glassmaker, and Fasano's their leader,' Brunetti said. 'I don't see much of a mystery there.'

'There are more than a hundred fornaci’ Vianello said. 'De Cal's is one of the smallest.'

'He's got a fornace to sell,' Brunetti argued.

'He's got a daughter to inherit,' Vianello countered. The Inspector reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out five Euros. 'At least we can tip,' he said, putting the bill on the table.

'Probably give the waiter in a place like this a seizure,' Brunetti said. He saw Vianello shift in his chair and asked, 'Are they still there?'

'De Cal's paying.' After a minute, Vianello got quickly to his feet, saying, 'I want to see where they go.'

Brunetti doubted that De Cal, who had been beside himself with anger the one time they met, would remember him, but he stayed at the table and let Vianello go outside by himself.

After a few minutes, Vianello came back; Brunetti got to his feet and went over to join him at the door. 'Well?' he asked.

"They walked down to the water and turned left, down to a dirt path and turned left again. Then they went back to some buildings on the other side of an empty field.'

'Do you have your telefonino?' Brunetti asked.

Vianello took his phone from the pocket of his jacket and held it up.

'Why don't you call that classmate of yours who told you the love story about Assunta and ask him where De Cal's factory is?'

Vianello flipped the phone open, found the number and called. Brunetti heard him ask the question, then explain that they were at Nanni's. He watched as Vianello nodded his way through his friend's explanation, thanked him and hung up. 'That's where De Cal's place is: down at the end of that path, the buildings on the right. Just beside Fasano's.'

'You think that's important?' Brunetti asked.

Vianello shrugged. 'I don't know, not really. I'm interested because of what I've read in the papers—that Fasano's suddenly discovered ecology, or suddenly discovered his commitment to it.'

 

Brunetti had a vague memory of having read something along these lines, some months ago, and of having had a similarly cynical response, but he simply asked, "That's the way it happens to most people, though, isn't it?' Brunetti left it to Vianello to realize, or not, that it was precisely what had happened to him.

'Yes’ Vianello admitted, though reluctantly. 'Maybe it's because of his interest in politics. Once someone says they're thinking about public office, I start to get suspicious of anything they do or say'

Though he had taken a few steps, Brunetti was not yet this far along the road to total cynicism, and so he said, 'It's other people who are saying it about him, if I remember correctly'

'It's one of the things politicians love the most: popular acclamation,' Vianello replied.

'Come on, Lorenzo’ Brunetti said, unwilling to continue with this subject. Remembering the other thing he could usefully do while he was on Mu-rano, he explained about Assunta's visit and said he wanted to go and talk to one of the men who had heard her father threaten Ribetti. He told Vianello he would see him back at the Questura. They walked out to the riva, and Vianello went down to the Sacca Serenella stop to wait for the 41.

Assunta had told him Bovo lived just on the other side of the bridge, in Calle drio i Orti, and he found the calle with little trouble. He walked as far as Calle Leonarducci without finding the house and turned to go back and check more closely. This time he found the number and Bovo's name among those on the doorbells. He rang and waited, then rang again. He heard a window open above him, stepped back, and looked up. A child, from this vantage point its age and sex unclear, stuck its head out of a third-floor window and called, 'Si?'

'I'm looking for your father,' Brunetti called up.

'He's down at the bar,' the child called back in a voice so high it could have belonged to either a boy or a girl.

'Which one?'

A tiny hand stuck out the window, pointing to Brunetti's left. 'Down there,' the voice called, and then the child disappeared.

The window remained open, so Brunetti called his thanks up to it and turned to return to Calle Leonarducci. At the corner he came to a window covered to chest height with curtains that had begun life as a red-and-white check but had moved into a wrinkled, hepatic middle age. He opened the door and walked into a room more filled with smoke than any he could remember having entered in years. He went to the bar and ordered a coffee. He displayed no interest in the barman's tattoos, a pattern of intertwined serpents that encircled both wrists with their tails and ran up his arms until they disappeared under the sleeves of his T-shirt. When the coffee came, Brunetti said, I'm looking for Paolo Bovo. His kid told me he was here.'

'Paolo’ the barman called towards a table at the back, where three men sat around a bottle of red wine, talking, 'the cop wants to talk to you.'

 

Brunetti smiled and asked, 'How come everyone always knows?'

The barman's smile was equal in warmth to Brunetti's, though not in the number of teeth exposed. 'Anyone who talks as good as you do has to be a cop.'

'A lot of people talk as well as I do’ Brunetti said.

'Not the ones who want to see Paolo’ he answered, wiping at the counter with an unusually clean cloth.

Brunetti sensed movement to his left and turned to meet a man of his own height, who appeared to have lost not only all of his hair but at least twenty of the kilos Brunetti was carrying. From this distance, Brunetti could see that he had lost his eyebrows and eyelashes as well, which explained the pale greasiness of his skin.

Brunetti extended his hand and said, 'Signor Bovo?' At the man's nod, Brunetti asked, 'May I offer you something to drink?'

Bovo declined with a shake of his head. In a deep voice presumably left over from his former body, he said, 'I've got some wine back with my friends.' He shook Brunetti's hand and Brunetti read on his face the effort it cost him to make his grip firm. He spoke in Veneziano, with a Muranese accent of the sort that Brunetti and his friends used to imitate for comic effect.

'What do you want?' Bovo asked. He rested one elbow on the bar, succeeding in making the gesture look casual rather than necessary. Before his illness, Brunetti realized, this situation would have been charged with aggression, perhaps even danger: now the best the man could manage was gruffness.

'You know Giovanni De Cal’ Brunetti said and stopped.

Bovo said nothing for some time. He looked at the barman, who was pretending to take no interest in their conversation; then he glanced back at the men he had left at the table. Brunetti watched him weighing the chances that, reduced to no power except words, he could still impress his friends with his toughness. 'The bastard wouldn't give me a job.'

'When was that?'

'When that bastard at the other fornace fired me’ he said but offered no further information.

'Why did he fire you?' Brunetti asked.

Brunetti watched his question register with Bovo, saw in his eyes the confusion it caused him, as if he had never given the matter any thought.

Finally Bovo said, 'Because I couldn't lift things any more.'

'What sort of things?'

'Bags of sand, the chemicals, the barrels we have to move. How was I supposed to lift them if I couldn't even bend down to tie my shoes?'

Brunetti said, ‘I don't know.' He waited some time before asking, 'And then what happened?'

'Then I left. What else could I do?' Bovo moved a bit closer to the bar and put his other elbow on it, shifting his weight as he changed arms.

 

This conversation seemed not to be going anywhere, so Brunetti decided to return to his original point. 'I'd like to know what you heard De Cal say about Ribetti and if you could tell me the circumstances.'

Bovo called the barman over and asked for a glass of mineral water. When it came, he lifted it to salute Brunetti and drank some of it. He put the glass back on the bar and said, 'He was in here one night after work. He usually doesn't come in here: got his own bar he goes to, down towards Colonna, but they were closed or something, so he came in here.' He looked at Brunetti to see that he was following, and Brunetti nodded.

'So he was sitting there, in the back, when I came in. He was being the big man with his friends, drinking and talking about how many orders he had, and how people always wanted his glass pieces, and how someone from the museum asked if they could have a piece for a show.' He looked at Brunetti and pursed his lips, as if to ask him if he had ever heard anything so ridiculous.

'Did he see you?'

'Of course he saw me,' Bovo said. "This was six months ago.' He said it with pride, as though boasting of some other person whose every entrance was sure to be noted by everyone in the place.

'What happened?'

'Some friends of mine were at another table, so I went back to have a drink with them. No, we weren't close: there was a table between us. I sat down and I guess he sort of forgot about me. And after a while he started to talk about his son-in-law: the usual shit he always says, that he's crazy and married Assunta for her money and doesn't know anything and just cares about animals. We've all heard it a thousand times, ever since Assunta married him.'

'Do you know Ribetti?' Brunetti asked.

'Yeah, sort of’ Bovo answered. It appeared he was going to leave it at that, but as Brunetti started to ask for an explanation Bovo went on. 'She's a good person, Assunta, and it's obvious the guy loves her. Younger than she is, and he's an engineer, but he's still a good enough guy'

'What was it that De Cal said about him?' Brunetti asked.

"That he'd like to open the Gazzettino one morning and read that he'd been killed in an accident. On the road, at work, in his house: the old bastard didn't care, just so long as he was dead.'

Brunetti waited to see if this was all, then said, 'I'm not sure that's a threat, Signor Bovo.' He added a smile to soften his observation.

'You going to let me finish?' Bovo asked.

'Sorry.'

"Then he said that if he didn't die in an accident, he might have to kill him himself.'

'Do you think he was serious?' Brunetti asked, when it seemed that Bovo had indeed finished.

'I don't know. It's the sort of thing you say, isn't it?' Bovo asked, and Brunetti nodded. The sort of thing you say.

'But I had the feeling he'd really do it, the old bastard.' He took a few more small sips of the water. 'He can't stand it that Assunta's happy.'

'Is that the reason he hates Ribetti so much?'

'I suppose. And that he'll have a say in the fornace when the old bastard dies. I think that's what makes him crazy. He keeps saying Ribetti will ruin everything.'

'You mean if he leaves it to his daughter?'

'Who else can he leave it to?' Bovo asked.

Brunetti paused to acknowledge the truth of that and then said, 'She knows the business. And Ribetti's an engineer; besides, they've been married long enough for him to have learned something about running the place.'

Bovo gave him a long look. 'Maybe that's why the old man thinks he'll ruin everything.'

'I don't understand,' Brunetti confessed.

'If she inherits it, then he'll want to take over, won't he?' Bovo asked. Brunetti maintained a neutral expression and waited for an answer. 'She's a woman, isn't she?' Bovo asked. 'So she'll let him.'

Brunetti smiled. 'I hadn't thought of that’ he said.

Bovo looked satisfied at having successfully explained things to the policeman. 'I'm sorry for Assunta,' he said.

'Why?'

'She's a good person.'

'Is she a friend of yours?' Brunetti asked, curious as to whether there might have been some history between them. They were of an age, and he must once have been a very impressive man.

 

'No, no, nothing like that’ Bovo said. 'It's that she tried to keep that other bastard from firing me. And when he did, she tried to give me a job, but her father wouldn't let her.' He finished the water and put the glass on the counter. 'So now I don't have a job. My wife does—she goes out and cleans houses—and I'm supposed to stay home with the kids.'

Brunetti thanked him, put two Euros on the counter, and held out his hand. He shook Bovo's hand carefully, thanked him again, and left.

Deciding it would be quicker, Brunetti walked down to the Faro stop and took the 41 back to Fondamenta Nuove, then switched to the 42 that would take him down to the hospital stop. From there, it was a quick walk back to the Questura.

As he walked inside, Brunetti was forced to accept the fact that he had spent almost an entire working day on something that could in no way be justified as a legitimate use of his time. Further, he had involved both an inspector and a junior officer, and some days ago he had commandeered both a police launch and a police car in the same matter. In the absence of a crime, it could not be called an investigation: it was nothing more than indulgence in the sort of curiosity he should have abandoned years before.

Conscious of this, he went to Signorina Elettra's office and was happy to find her at her desk, wrapped in spring. A pink scarf was tied around her head, gypsy fashion, and she wore a green shirt and severe black slacks. Her lipstick matched the scarf, prompting Brunetti to wonder when it would start matching the shirt.

'Are you very busy, Signorina?' he asked after they had exchanged greetings.

'No more so than usual’ she said. 'What can I do for you?'

'I'd like you to take a look and see what you can find about two men’ he began and saw her slide a notebook closer. 'Giovanni De Cal, who owns a fornace on Murano, and Giorgio Tassini, the night-watchman at De Cal's factory.'

'Everything?' she asked.

'Whatever you can find, please.'

Idly, driven only by the same sort of curiosity Brunetti felt propelling him, she asked, 'Is this for anything?'

'No, not really’ Brunetti had to admit. He was about to leave, when he added, 'And Marco Ribetti, who works for a French company, but is Venetian. An engineer. His speciality is garbage disposal, I think, or building garbage dumps.'

'I'll see what I can find.'

He thought of adding Fasano's name but stopped himself. It was only a fishing expedition, not an investigation, and she had better things to do. He thanked her and left.

 

 

 

10

 

 

A day passed, and then another. Brunetti heard nothing from Assunta De Cal and gave her little thought, nor did he spend time thinking about Murano and the threats made by a drunken old man. He had young men, instead, to keep him occupied, young men—though legally they were still children—who were repeatedly arrested, processed, then identified and collected by people claiming to be their parents or guardians, though because they were gypsies, few of them had documents which could prove this.

And then came the shock story in one of the weekly newspaper inserts about the fate of such young boys in more than one South American city, where they were reportedly being executed by squads of off-duty policemen. 'Well, we aren't there yet’ Brunetti muttered to himself as he finished reading the article. There were many qualities in his fellow citizens that Brunetti, as a policeman, abhorred: their willingness to accommodate crime; their failure to trust the law; their lack of rage at the inefficiency of the legal system. But we don't shoot children in the street because they steal oranges, he said, though he was not at all sure if this was sufficient reason for civic pride.

Like an epileptic sensing the imminence of a seizure, Brunetti knew he was best advised to use work to distract himself from these thoughts. He took out his notebook and found the phone number Tassini's mother-in-law had given him. A man answered.

'Signor Tassini?' Brunetti asked.

'Si’

"This is Commissario Guido Brunetti, Signore.' He paused, waiting for Tassini's question, but the man said nothing, and so Brunetti continued. 'I wonder if I could trouble you for some of your time, Signor Tassini. I'd like to speak to you.'

'Are you the one who was here?' Tassini asked, making no attempt to hide his suspicion.

'Yes, I am’ Brunetti answered easily. 'I spoke to your mother-in-law, but she could give me very little information.'

'What about?' Tassini asked neutrally.

'About the place where you work, Signore’ he said and again waited for Tassini to respond.

'What about it?'

'It has to do with your employer, Giovanni De Cal. That's why I chose to contact you away from your place of work. We would prefer that your employer not learn that we're taking an interest in him.' This was true enough, and it was similarly true that De Cal could cause considerable trouble if he were to learn that Brunetti was in essence running a private investigation.

'Is it about my complaint?' Tassini asked, curiosity getting the better of his distrust.

'It's about that, of course,' Brunetti lied effortlessly, 'as well as about Signor De Cal and a report we've had about him.'

'A report from whom?' Tassini asked.

'I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to reveal that, Signor Tassini. I'm sure you understand that everything we're told, we're told in confidence.' He waited to see if Tassini would swallow this, and when his silence suggested that he had, Brunetti asked, 'Would it be possible to speak to you?'

After some hesitation, Tassini asked, 'When?'

'Whenever it's convenient for you, Signore.'

Tassini's voice, when he answered, was less easy than it had been a moment before. 'How did you get this number?'

'Your mother-in-law gave it to me,' Brunetti said. Softening his voice and putting into it a note of near-embarrassment, he added 'Your mother-in-law told me you have no telefonino, Signor Tassini. Speaking personally, I'd like to compliment you on the wisdom of that decision.' He ended with a half-laugh.

'You think they're dangerous, too?' Tassini asked eagerly.

'From what I've read, I'd say there's good reason to believe it’ Brunetti said. From what he had read, there was also good reason to believe that automobiles, central heating, and aeroplanes were dangerous, but this was a sentiment he chose not to reveal to Signor Tassini.

'When do you want to meet?' Tassini asked.

'If you could possibly spare me the time right now, I could be there in about fifteen minutes.'

The line sang emptily for a long time, but Brunetti resisted the impulse to speak. 'All right’ Tassini said, 'but not here at the house. There's a bar opposite San Francesco di Paola.'

'On the corner before the park?' Brunetti asked.

'Yes.'

'I know it, the place that draws the little hearts on the cappuccino schiuma, no?'

'Yes’ said Tassini in a gentler tone.

'I'll be there in fifteen minutes’ said Brunetti and put down the phone.

When Brunetti entered the bar, he looked around for a man who might be the night-watchman in a glass factory. There was one man at the bar, drinking a coffee and talking to the barman. Another pair stood farther along, two coffees in front of them, one man with a briefcase propped against his leg. Another man with a large nose and a peculiarly small head stood at the end of the bar, feeding one-Euro coins into a video poker machine. His gestures were rhythmic: feed a coin, punch a button, wait to see the flashing results, punch more buttons, wait again to see the results, quick double sip at a glass of red wine, then another coin.

Brunetti excluded them all, as he did a young man next to the poker player, who was drinking what looked like a gingerino. There were four tables against the back wall: at one of them sat three women, each with a cup and a pot of tea. They were handing around photographs and exclaiming in enthusiasm that sounded genuine enough for it to be a baby and not a vacation. At the last table, in the angle behind the bar, sat a man who glanced in Brunetti's direction. He had a glass of water in front of him, and as Brunetti moved towards him, the man raised the glass in his left hand and saluted him with it.

The man got to his feet and extended his hand. 'Tassini,' he said. He was tall, perhaps in his mid-thirties, with large dark eyes set wide apart and a nose that seemed too small to fill the space left for it. He had an untrimmed beard with some grey in it that covered, though it did not hide, the hollowness of his cheeks. Brunetti had seen that face on countless icons: the suffering Christ. 'Commissario Brunetti?' Tassini asked.

Brunetti took his hand and thanked him for agreeing to speak to him. 'What would you like to drink?' Tassini asked when Brunetti was seated, raising his hand to catch the attention of the barman.

'Since I'm here’ Brunetti said with a smile, 'I should have a cappuccino, don't you think?' He sat, and Tassini called the order to the barman. For some time, neither man spoke.

Brunetti finally said, 'Signor Tassini, as I told you on the phone, we'd like to speak to you about Giovanni De Cal, your employer.' Before Tassini could ask, Brunetti added, using his gravest voice, 'And, of course, about your complaint.'

'So you're beginning to believe me, eh?' Tassini asked, using the plural.

'We're certainly interested in listening to what you have to say,' Brunetti said. He was spared the need to elaborate by the arrival of the barman with his cappuccino. As he anticipated, the foam had been poured in a swirling motion that created a heart on the surface. He tore open a packet of sugar and poured it in. He stirred the coffee around, and broke its heart.

'What about my letters, then?' Tassini asked.

"That's certainly part of the reason I'm here, Signor Tassini,' Brunetti said and took a sip of his coffee. It was still too hot to drink, so he set the cup back in the saucer to let it cool.

'Did you read them?'

Brunetti gave him his most direct look. 'Ordinarily, if this were part of an official investigation, I'm afraid I'd lie here and say I had,' he said, trying to sound faintly embarrassed by the confession. 'But in this case, let me deal frankly, right from the start.' Before Tassini could reply, he went on. 'They're in a file held by another division. But I've been told about them by people who have read them, and some excerpts have been passed on to us.'

'But they were addressed to you’ Tassini insisted. 'That is, to the police.'

'Yes’ Brunetti acknowledged with a nod, 'but we're detectives, and such things don't get sent on to us automatically. The letters were given to the complaints department and a file was opened. But before those files are processed and passed on to the people who actually will conduct an investigation, months can pass.' He saw the anguished look on Tassini's face, saw him open his mouth to protest, and added, lowering his face in feigned embarrassment again, 'or even longer.'

'But you know about them?'

'I've been told about them, as I've said, but it's come to me third hand.' Brunetti looked across at Tassini and opened his eyes wider as if to suggest that some new possibility had suddenly occurred to him. 'Would you be willing to tell me, in your own words, so that I'd finally understand what's in them? That might help things move more quickly'

At the sight of Tassini's dawning relief, Brunetti felt faintly soiled by what he had just done: it was too simple, too effortless: human need was just too easy to take advantage of. He picked up his cappuccino and took a few sips.

'It's about the factory’ Tassini began. 'You know at least that much?'

'Of course’ Brunetti said with a little deceitful bow of his head.

 

'It's a death trap,' Tassini said. 'All sorts of things: potassium, nitric acid and fluoric acid, cadmium, even arsenic. We work around this stuff; we breathe it in; we probably even eat it.'

Brunetti nodded. Any Venetian knew this much, but even Vianello had never suggested there existed any significant risk for the workers on Murano. And if anyone would know, it was Vianello.

"That's why it happened,' Tassini said.

'Why what happened, Signor Tassini?'

Tassini's eyes contracted in a look replete with what Brunetti knew was suspicion. But still he said, 'My daughter.'

'Emma?' Brunetti supplied seamlessly. And then, filled with something close to disgust at himself, he said, 'Poor little girl.'

That did it: Tassini was his. He watched as all reservation, all suspicion, all discretion fled from Tassini's face. "That's why it happened,' Tassini said, voice hot with conviction. 'All those things. I've been working there for years, breathing them, touching them, spilling them on me.' He drew his hands together in tight fists. "That's why I keep writing those letters, even when no one will pay attention to what I say.' He looked up at Brunetti with a face made soft by hope, or love, or some emotion Brunetti chose not to identify. 'You're the first one who's paid any attention to me.'

'Tell me about it’ Brunetti forced himself to say.

'I've read a lot’ Tassini began. 'I read all the time. I've got a computer and I read things on the Internet, and I've read books about chemistry and genetics. And it's all there, it's all there.' He rapped his left fist three times on the table as he repeated, 'It's all there.'

'Go on.'

'These things, especially the minerals, can damage the genetic structure. And once the genes are affected, then we can pass the damage on to our children. Damaged genes. You know about the letters, so you know what I've described. When you see the medical reports, you'll know what the doctors say is wrong with her.' He looked at Brunetti. 'Have you seen the photos?'

Even though Brunetti had seen the child so could have continued to lie, he could not bring himself to do so: all the rest, but not this. 'No.'

'Well’ Tassini said. 'Maybe that's better. Besides, you know what's wrong, so there's no need for you to see them.'

'And the doctors? What do they say?'

Tassini's enthusiasm disappeared abruptly; apparently mention of the doctors took him back into the land of the unbelievers. 'They don't want to get involved.'

'Why's that?' Brunetti asked.

'You've seen what's happened at Marghera, with the protests and people wanting to shut it all down. Imagine if it became public, what's going on on Murano.'

Brunetti nodded.

'So you see why they have to lie’ Tassini said with growing heat. 'I've tried to talk to the people at the hospital, tried to get them to test Emma. To test me. I know what's wrong. I know why she's the way she is. All they have to do is find the right test, find the right thing that's in me and in her, and then they'd know what happened. If they admitted what happened to Emma, then they'd have to look at all the other damage, all the other people who are sick, all the people who have died.' He spoke with conviction and urgency, willing Brunetti to understand, and agree.

Brunetti was suddenly aware that, though he had known how to get himself into this one, he had no idea how to get out.

'And your employer?'

'De Cal?'

'Do you think he knows?'

Tassini's face changed again and he moved his mouth into something that resembled a smile but was not. 'Yes, he knows. They both do, but they have to cover it all up, don't they?' he asked, and Brunetti wondered in what way Assunta could be involved in this.

'But you have proof?' Brunetti asked.

Tassini gave a sly smile. 'I've started a file, and I keep everything in there. The new job gives me the time to find the final proofs. I'm close. I'm very close.' He glanced across at Brunetti, his eyes filled with the illumination of one who has discovered the truth. 'I put it all in there. I read a lot, and it helps me understand things. I keep track of everything.' With a sly glance he added, 'But we'll have to wait and see, won't we?'

'Why?'

Brunetti was not sure Tassini had heard his question, for by way of answer he said, 'Our greatest men knew about these things long before we did, and so now I do, too.' Ever since his daughter had been mentioned, Tassini had become increasingly agitated. When he started to talk of his file and the information he kept there, a bemused Brunetti decided it was time to deflect him back to the subject of De Cal.

He lowered his head in a gesture that suggested deep thought, then looked across at Tassini and said, 'I'll have a look at our file as soon as I get back to the Questura.' He shifted his cup to one side to indicate a change of subject and went on, 'I'd like to ask you some questions about your employer, Giovanni De Cal.'

His question brought Tassini up short, and the man could not disguise his surprise and disappointment, just when he had begun to talk about the great men who agreed with him. He took a not very clean handkerchief out of his left-hand pocket and blew his nose. He stuffed it back in his pocket and asked, 'What do you want to know?'

'It's been reported to us that Signor De Cal has threatened the life of his son-in-law. Do you know anything about this?'

'Well, it makes sense, doesn't it?' Tassini asked.

Brunetti gave a smile of mild confusion and said, 'I'm not sure I follow your reasoning.' He smiled again to emphasize his belief that there was some thread of reasoning here, although he in fact suspected there might be none.

'To keep him from inheriting the fornace.'

'But isn't it his daughter who would inherit?' Brunetti inquired.

'Yes. But then Ribetti would be free to go there’ Tassini said, as if this were something so obvious it hardly needed mentioning.

'Doesn't he go there now?' Behind them, a telephone rang; not a telefonino, a real telephone.

Tassini laughed. 'I heard the old bastard talk about killing him once. That was just talk, but if he saw him at the fornace, he'd probably try.'

Just as Brunetti started to ask Tassini to explain this remark, the barman called, 'Giorgio, it's your wife. She wants to talk to you.'

Panic crossed Tassini's face and he scrambled to his feet. He walked quickly to the bar and took the receiver the barman handed to him. He turned his back on both the barman and Brunetti and hunched over the phone.

As Brunetti watched, Tassini's body relaxed, but only minimally. He listened for some time, spoke again, and then listened for an even longer time. As the conversation progressed, he gradually stood more and more upright until he reached his normal height. He said something and put the phone down, then turned and thanked the barman. He took a few coins out of his pocket and put them on the bar.

He came back to Brunetti and said, 'I have to go.' From the look on his face, he was already gone; he had already forgotten Brunetti or dismissed him as insignificant.

Brunetti pushed his chair back and started to get to his feet, but by the time he was standing, Tassini had already turned and was walking towards the door. He opened it, slipped through it, and shut it behind him.

 

11

 

 

The conversation, interrogation, whatever it was, with Tassini left Brunetti uneasy. He felt cheapened by the way he had deceived the man and by the way he had induced him to speak of his daughter. Who knew what the poor devil suffered because of her? And who knew the effect of the presence of the healthy child: a sense of relief that at least one of them was not afflicted? Or was his health and vitality but part of the daily flagellation that the profundity of the other child's condition caused the father?

Brunetti was neither a religious nor a superstitious man, though if he could have thought of the proper deity, he would have given thanks for the health and safety of his own children. As it was, he was left with a vague sense of unease at their continued good fortune and never ceased to worry about them. Sometimes he viewed this quality in himself with favour and thought of it as feminine; other times he saw it as a form of cowardice and chided himself with being womanly. Paola, not much given to sparing him the rough edge of her tongue, never joked with him about this tendency, certainly an indication that she saw it as central to his being and thus unapproachable.

He carried these unhappy thoughts back to the Questura and, to divert himself from them, went directly to Signorina Elettra's office. Perhaps the Vice-Questore had come up with some new directive suggesting a strategy for dealing with the recidivist adolescents.

She smiled when he came in and asked, 'Did Vianello tell you?'

'Tell me what?'

To come and see me after you spoke to Signor Tassini.'

'No. Nothing. What have you got?'

She picked up a sheaf of papers and waved them, then set them on the desk and started to leaf through them, identifying each as she did: 'The non-arrest report for Signor De Cal; Ribetti's driver's licence application and driving record—it was the only thing about him in our files; Bovo's real arrest record, for assault, though it was six years ago; and copies of the letters Tassini has been sending for more than a year, as well as the medical records for his wife and child.'

 

There were still a number of papers on the desk when she finished, and he asked, 'And those?'

She looked up with an embarrassed grin and said, 'Copies of De Cal's tax statements for the last six years. Once I start looking for things, it's hard for me to stop.' She smiled with what a less astute person might have mistaken for sincerity.

He nodded to suggest that he, too, understood the frenzy of the hunt, and she said, 'The most interesting are the medical records, especially if you read them in conjunction with Tassini's letters.'

'Do you want to tell me,' he asked seriously, 'or do you want me to read them and then come back and talk about them to see if I find them interesting in the same way you do?'

'I think that would be the best thing’ she said and handed him the papers. 'But I'll come up when you want to look at them together. I'm not sure the Vice-Questore would be pleased, if he should come in and find us discussing documents from a non-case.'

He thanked her, accepted the papers, and went up to his office to read them. Though he trusted her judgement that the first papers were not likely to prove of great interest, he read through them anyway, only to come to the same conclusion. The police report exonerated De Cal from any aggression; Bovo's case was quite the opposite, but things ended when the other man refused to press charges; and Ribetti was revealed to have a blameless driving record.

 

He turned to the medical records and noticed a few notations and, above the first of them, in Signorina Elettra's hand, 'Barbara checked through these.' Her sister, a doctor, should certainly be able to interpret a medical record, and judging from the pencilled notes in the margin, she had paid close attention.

The story told by the records was a grim one. It began with a pregnant woman who had decided, with her husband, to have her child at home. Even when they were told that the child they were expecting was two children, thus increasing the danger of home delivery, they persisted in their decision. The record of obstetrical visits had a pencilled 'tutto normale' in the margin. Two weeks before the estimated date of delivery, there was an unscheduled obstetrical visit. The record contained a recommendation for a Caesarean, followed by, 'Refused by patient.' The margin contained a lone exclamation point.

There was a gap of two weeks, and when Brunetti turned the page he found himself with two babies, though their mother and one of the babies were in the sala di rianimazione. A marginal note read: 'Attached 118 report of original phone call at 3.17 AM', and sent him to the last sheet of paper, where he found a brief description of the call for medical help and the 3.21 departure time of the emergency ambulance boat. When the crew arrived at the Murano address, seventeen minutes later, they found Signora Sonia Tassini already delivered of one baby, while the other was trapped in the birth canal. The ambulance arrived at the Ospedale Civile at 4:16, which was astonishing, given the fact that they had had to go out to Murano.

Brunetti flipped back to the medical record. The second delivery, by Caesarean, was difficult, both for the mother and for the baby, who appeared to have been cut off from the oxygen supply during the final minutes of the procedure.

Sara Tassini remained in the hospital for more than two weeks, though she was released as a patient on the fifth day. The second child, a girl to be named Emma, had remained in rianimazione for four more days, and then had been put in a room with her mother and her brother, where they all remained for another week. When they were released, her mother was instructed to bring the child back every two weeks for tests to monitor her development, both physical and neurological.

For the first six months, the Tassinis brought the child to the hospital, but they failed to cooperate with the various social agencies which existed to help people in similar circumstances. When he read the phrase, 'similar circumstances', Brunetti whispered 'Gesu Bambino' and turned the page. The child was described as being smaller than other children her age, and likely to remain so for however long she lived. Though the full extent of her handicaps would become evident only with time, there was no doubt in the minds of any of the doctors who examined her that the damage was the result of the lack of oxygen to her brain during her birth, and was irreversible.

Because of the demands of caring for the child, the Tassinis moved, when the children were six months old, to the home of Signora Tassini's mother, a widow who lived in Castello. At this point, Signora Tassini ceased to take the child to the hospital, and this was also the point when Tassini's letters started arriving at the police and at various other city offices. Some months later, Signora Tassini had begun treatment for depression at Palazzo Boldu. She was oppressed, she said, by a sense of guilt at having gone along with her husband's insistence that the children be born at home.

Attached was a report from Palazzo Boldu, chronicling her gradual ascent out of depression. Though she still felt guilt, the report stated, it was no longer crippling her life. However, Signora Tassini stated that her husband was still very much afflicted with it, though it manifested itself in his trying to find another explanation for the child's condition. For a time, she said, he claimed it was a result of the environmental contamination of their vegetarian diet, of medical incompetence, and then of some defect in their genes. 'Classic,' was pencilled in the margin. During her many conversations with her doctor, she never mentioned the letters her husband was writing, making Brunetti wonder if she even knew about them.

Brunetti turned almost with relief to Tassini's letters. They chronicled the changing targets his wife had mentioned but also referred to the negligence of the boat crew and the delivery room staff. And then on to genes and genetic disturbance, which he claimed had been exacerbated by the electric transformer one street from their home in Murano. Tassini also blamed his daughter's condition on the air that drifted over to the city from Marghera, but then he began to maintain that it resulted from his employment in a glass factory on Murano. What struck Brunetti was the apparent lucidity of the early letters, the clear, cogent style, with frequent reference to specific reports and scientific papers which presented evidence in support of his various and ever-changing contentions.

The villain responsible for the Tassinis' plight was chameleon-like, changing and changing again as Tassini read more, explored farther with his reading and Internet researches. But the guilty party was always at one remove, was always other, never his own ideas or behaviour. Brunetti didn't know whether to weep for the man or take him by the shoulders and shake him until he admitted what he had done.

The most recent letter was dated more than three weeks before and made mention of new information that Tassini was in the process of acquiring, more evidence he would soon be able to produce to prove that he had been the unknowing victim of the criminal behaviour of two people. He said that he was now in a position to prove his assertions and had but to perform what he called two more 'examinations' in order to confirm his suspicions.

 

Brunetti read through the letters again and reinforced the sense he had the first time he read them, that the style had deteriorated over time, that they ceased to present their case clearly or cogently and came ever more to resemble the sort of vague accusatory letters the police were all too familiar with. The conjunction Signorina Elettra identified was no doubt that of the growing misery of the child's condition with the mounting confusion of Tassini's letters.

He finished reading the letters for a second time and let them fall onto his desk. Paola had once told him about a medieval Russian epic she had read about while at university, named after its hero: Misery Luckless Plight. Indeed.

The content of the papers had made him forget Signorina Elettra's admonition that they discuss them in his office, not hers; absent-mindedly, he picked them up and started down to her. If she seemed surprised to see him or to see him with the papers, she gave no sign of it and said only, 'Terrible, eh?'

I've seen the little girl,' he said.

Her answering nod could either have been in acknowledgement that she knew he had seen her or that he was telling her now.

'Poor, desperate people,' she said.

He allowed a long silence to pas's before he asked, "The letters?'

'He's got to blame somebody else, hasn't he?'

'The wife doesn't seem to feel the same need,' Brunetti said with some asperity. 'That is, she realizes they were responsible for what happened.'

'Women have . , .' she started to say and then stopped.

Brunetti waited a moment and at her continued silence, prodded, 'Have what?'

Her glance put him on the scales and weighed him, and then she said, 'Less trouble accepting reality, I think.'

'Possibly,' he answered, hearing in his own voice that tone of half-doubt with which the unwilling greet the expression of good sense. He corrected himself to 'Probably,' and her expression softened.

'What now?' she asked.

'I think I have no choice but to wait until he contacts me and gives me this evidence he keeps talking about.'

'You don't sound very persuaded,' she said.

With a wry look, Brunetti asked, 'Would you be?'

'I didn't talk to him, remember. So I don't have a real sense of him, as a person. Just the letters, and they . . . they don't suggest great reliability. At least not the ones he's writing now. In the beginning, perhaps.' She stopped and then could do nothing more than repeat, after a long pause, 'Poor, desperate people.'

'Which people?' Patta asked from behind Brunetti.

Neither of them had heard the Vice-Questore approach, but it was Signorina Elettra who recovered more quickly. Without missing a beat, she answered, 'The extracomunitari who apply for residence permits and then never hear anything more about them.'

 

'I beg your pardon’ Patta said, pausing just outside his door. He looked at Signorina Elettra but pointed a finger at Brunetti and then at the door to his office. 'If they apply, then they have to be patient. Just like everyone else who deals with a bureaucracy.'

"Three years?' she inquired.

That stopped him. 'No, not three years.' He made to continue into his office but then stopped on the threshold and turned back to her. 'Who's had to wait three years?'

"The woman who cleans my father's apartment, sir.'

"Three years?'

She nodded.

'Why has it taken so long?'

Brunetti wondered if she would make the obvious response and say that this was exactly what she wanted to know, but she opted for moderation and instead answered, 'I've no idea, sir. She applied three years ago, paid the application fee, and then she heard nothing. She thought that her case would come under the amnesty, but she never heard anything further. So she asked me if I thought she should begin the whole process again and reapply. And pay the fee again.'

'What did you tell her?'

'I don't have an answer to give her, Vice-Questore. It's a lot of money for her—it's a lot of money for anyone—and she doesn't want to go to the expense of applying again if there's any hope that the original application will be successful. That's why I was telling the Commissario that she and her husband were poor, desperate people.'

'I see’ Patta said, turning from her. He waved the waiting Brunetti ahead of him, then turned to Signorina Elettra and said, 'Give me her name and, if you can, her file number and I'll see what I can find out about it.'

'You're very kind, sir,' she said, sounding like she meant it.

Inside, Patta wasted no time: turning to Brunetti, he asked, 'What's all this business of your going out to Murano?'

Deny that he had? Ask how Patta knew? Repeat the question to give himself more time to think of an answer? De Cal? Fasano? Who on Murano had told Patta?

Brunetti opted to tell Patta the truth about what he was doing. 'A woman I know on Murano’ he began—suggesting that she was a woman he had known for some time and thus showing himself how incapable he was of telling Patta the real truth about anything—'told me her father has been threatening her husband, well, making threatening statements about him. Not to him. She wanted me to see if I thought there was any real reason to fear that her father would do something.'

Brunetti watched Patta weigh this, wondering what his superior's response would be to this uncharacteristic frankness. The habit of suspicion, as Brunetti feared, triumphed. 'I suppose this explains why you went out to Murano for some sort of secret meeting in a trattoria, eh?'

 

Patta asked, unable to disguise his satisfaction at the sight of Brunetti's surprise.

Having begun with the truth, not that it seemed to have helped, Brunetti continued that way. 'He's someone who knows the man who's been making the threats,' Brunetti explained, relieved that Patta appeared to know nothing of Navarro's relationship to Pucetti and even more relieved that his superior had made no mention of Vianello's presence at the meeting. 'I asked him if he thought there was any real basis in them.'

'And? What did he say?'

'He chose not to answer my question.'

'Have you spoken to anyone else?' Patta demanded.

Since telling the truth to Patta had failed as a strategy, Brunetti decided to return to the tried and true path of deceit and said, 'No.'

Patta's information had come from someone who had seen them in the restaurant, so perhaps he knew nothing about Brunetti's visits to Bovo and Tassini.

'So there's no threat?' Patta demanded.

'I'd say no. The man, Giovanni De Cal, is violent, but I think it's language and nothing more.'

'And so?' Patta asked.

'And so I go back to seeing what's to be done about the gypsies’ Brunetti answered, trying to sound contrite.

'Rom,' Patta corrected him.

'Exactly’ said Brunetti in acknowledgement of Patta's concession to the language of political correctness, and left his office.

 

 

 

12

 

 

Brunetti called Paola, after one, told her he would not be home for lunch and was hurt when she accepted the news with equanimity. When, however, she went on to observe that, since he said he was calling from his office, and he had not called until now, she had already come to that sad conclusion, he felt himself strangely heartened by her disappointment, however sarcastically she might choose to express it.

He dialled the number of Assunta De Cal's telefonino and told her he would like to come out to Murano to speak to her. No, he assured her, she had nothing to fear from her father's threats: he believed there was little danger in them. But he would still like to speak to her if that were possible.

 

She asked him how long it would take him to get there. He asked her to hold on a moment, went to the window, and saw Foa standing on the riva, talking to another officer. He went back to the phone and told her it would not take him more then twenty minutes, heard her say she would wait for him at the fornace, and hung up.

When he emerged from the main entrance of the Questura five minutes later there was no sign of Foa, nor of his boat. He asked the man at the door where the pilot was, only to be told he had taken the Vice-Questore to a meeting. This left Brunetti with no choice but to head back to Fondamenta Nuove and the 41.

Thus it took him more than forty minutes to get to the De Cal factory. When he tried the office, Assunta was not there, nor was there any response when he knocked on the door to what a sign indicated was her father's office. Brunetti left that part of the building and went across the courtyard to the entrance to the fornace, hoping to find her there.

The sliding metal doors to the immense brick building had been rolled back sufficiently to allow room for a man to slip in or out. Brunetti stepped inside and found himself in darkness. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, and when they did they were captured by what, for an instant, he thought was an enormous Caravaggio at the other end of the dim room. Six men stood poised for an instant at the doors of a round furnace, half illuminated by the natural daylight that filtered in through the skylights in the roof and by the light that streamed from the furnace. They moved, and the painting fell apart into the intricate motions that lay deep in Brunetti's memory.

Two rectangular ovens stood against the right wall, but the forno di lavoro stood free at the center of the room. There appeared to be only two piazze at work, for he saw only two men twirling the blobs of molten glass at the ends of their canne. One seemed to be working on what would become a platter, for as he spun the canna, centrifugal force transformed the blob first into a saucer and then into a pizza. Memory took Brunetti back to the factory where his father had worked—not as a maestro but as a servente— decades ago. As he watched, this maestro became the maestro for whom his father had worked. And as Brunetti continued to watch, he became every maestro who had worked the glass for more than a thousand years. Except for his jeans and his Nike trainers, he could have stepped out of any of the centuries when such men had done this work.

Ballet was not an art for which Brunetti had much affection, but in the motions of these men he saw the beauty others saw in dance. Still spinning the canna, the maestro glided over to the door of the furnace. He turned to keep his left side towards it, and Brunetti noticed the thick glove and the sleeve protector he wore against the savage heat. In went the canna, one side of the platter passing no more than a centimetre from the solid edge of the door.

Brunetti drew closer and looked beyond him and into the flame, where he saw the inferno of his youth, the Hell to which the good sisters had assured him and all his classmates they would be consigned for any infraction, no matter how minor. He saw white, yellow, red, and in the midst of it he saw the plate spinning, changing colour, growing.

The maestro pulled it out, again missing the side by a hair, and this time went back and sat at his banco and resumed spinning the plate. Without needing to look for them, he picked up an enormous pair of pincers, nor did he seem to have to look at the platter as he pressed the point of one blade up to its surface and, spinning, spinning, still spinning, cut a groove in the surface of one side. A sliver of wet glass peeled off the plate and slithered to the floor.

The servente responded to a signal too subtle for Brunetti to see and came over and carried the canna to the furnace while the maestro picked up a bottle that stood under his chair and took a long drink. He set it down one second before the servente came back and passed him the canna with the freshly heated plate suspended from the end. Their motions were as liquid as the glass itself.

Brunetti heard his name and turned to see As-sunta standing at the door. He realized that his shirt was stuck to his body and his face beaded with sweat. He had no idea how long he had stood, transfixed by the beauty of the men at work.

He walked towards her, conscious of the sudden chill of the perspiration on his back. 'I was delayed’ Brunetti said, offering no explanation. 'So I came to look for you in here.'

She smiled and waved this aside. 'It's all right. I was down at the dock. Today's the day they collect the acid and the mud, and I like to be there to see that the numbers and weights are right.'

Brunetti's confusion was no doubt apparent— he had never heard of such things in his father's time—for she explained: 'The laws are clear about what we can use and what we must do with it after we use it. They have to be.' Her smile grew softer and she added, 'I know I must sound like Marco when I say these things, but he's right about them.'

'What acid?' Brunetti asked.

'Nitric and fluoric,' she said. She saw that Brunetti was no less confused and so went on. 'When we make beads, we drill a copper wire through the centre to make the hole, then the copper has to be dissolved in nitric acid. Every now and then, we have to change the acid.' Brunetti did not want to know what had been done with the acid in the past.

'Same with the fluoric. We need it to smooth the surfaces on the big pieces. Well, it's the same in that we have to pay to get rid of it.'

'And mud, did you say?' he asked.

'From the grinding, when they do the final polishing,' she said, then asked, 'Would you like to see?'

'My father worked out here, but that was decades ago’ Brunetti said, in an attempt not to appear completely ignorant. 'Things have changed, I suppose.'

'Less than you'd think’ she answered. She stepped past him and waved an arm at the men who continued undisturbed in their ritual movements in front of the furnaces. 'It's one of the things I love about this’ she said, her voice warmer. 'No one's found a better way to do what we've been doing for hundreds of years.'

She leaned towards Brunetti and put her hand on his arm to capture his attention fully. 'See what he's doing?' she asked, pointing to the second of the maestri, who was just returning from the furnace. He took his place behind a small wooden bucket on the floor. As they watched, he blew into one end of the iron canna, inflating the blob of glass at the other end. Quickly, with the grace of a baton twirler, he swung the glowing mass until it was just above the bucket and squeezed it carefully into the cylindrical tub, moving it up and down and slipping it around until it slid inside. He blew repeatedly into the end of the pipe, each puff forcing a halo of sparks to fly from the top of the tub.

When he pulled the canna out, the blob was a perfect cylinder, now recognizable as the flat-bottomed vase it would become. 'Same raw materials, same tools, same technique as we were using here centuries ago’ she said.

He glanced aside at her and their smiles met, reflecting one another. 'It's wonderful, isn't it, something so permanent?' Brunetti said, not quite certain if that last word was the one he sought, but she nodded, understanding him.

'The only change we've made is to switch to gas’ she said. 'Aside from that, nothing's changed.'

'Except these laws Marco supports?' Brunetti asked.

Her expression changed and became serious. 'Is that meant as a joke?'

He had not intended to offend her. 'No, not at all,' he protested quickly. 'I assure you. I don't know what laws you mean, but what I know about your husband tells me they're probably ecological laws, in which case I'm sure they were necessary and well past time.'

'Marco says it's too little, too late,' she said, but she said it quietly.

This was not the place for a conversation like this, Brunetti knew, so he took a step away from her and closer to the workers, hoping to break the mood created by her last words. He pointed at the men near the furnaces and turned back to ask her, 'How many workers do you have here?'

She seemed relieved by the change of subject and began to count them off on her fingers. 'Two piazze, that's six; then the two men down at the dock and who do the packing and delivery; then three who do the final molatura, that's eleven; and then I'uomo di notte: that makes twelve, I think.'

He watched her tally the men again on her fingers. 'Yes, twelve, and my father and I.'

'Tassini's the uomo di notte, isn't he?'

'You spoke to him?'

'Yes, and he thought there would be no danger unless your husband were to come to the fornace,' Brunetti said, and then at her look of fear, he added, 'But he never comes here, does he?'

'No, not at all,' she said, voice rich with disappointment. Brunetti could well understand this. He had observed her passion for her work and for her husband. To have one excluded from the other, either by choice or decree, was understandably a difficult thing for her to bear.

'Did he once?' he asked.

'Before we were married, yes. He's an engineer, remember, so he's interested in the process of mixing and making glass and working it, everything about it.' As if to remind herself of one of those passions, she looked over at the men, the rhythm of whose work continued undisturbed by their talk: the first one was already working on an entirely different piece. Brunetti looked at them and saw the servente to the first maestro touch a pendulant drop of red glass onto one side of the top of what appeared to be a vase. The maestro's pliers smoothed the tip of the drop onto the vase, then pulled it, as though it were a piece of chewing gum, and attached the other end lower down on the vase. A quick snip, smooth the sides, and the first handle was made.

'They make it look so easy’ Brunetti said, his wonder audible.

'For them, I suppose it is. After all, Gianni's been working glass all his life. He could probably make some pieces in his sleep by now.'

'Do you ever get tired of it?' Brunetti asked.

She turned and looked at him, trying to assess how serious a question this was. Apparently she concluded that Brunetti meant it, for she said, 'Not of watching it. No. Never. But the paper part of it, if I can call it that, yes, I'm tired or that, tired of the endless laws and taxes and regulations.'

'Which laws do you mean?' Brunetti asked, wondering if she would refer again to the ecological laws her husband seemed so to favour.

'The ones that specify how many copies of each receipt I have to make and who I have to send them to, and the ones about the forms I have to fill in for every kilo of raw material we buy.' She shrugged them off. 'And that's not even to mention the taxes.'

If he had known her better, Brunetti would have said that she must still manage to evade a great deal, but their friendship had not advanced to the stage of having the taxman as a common enemy, at least not as an openly declared one, so he contented himself with saying, 'I hope you find someone to do the paper part so you can keep the part you like for yourself,'

'Yes,' she said absently, 'that would be nice.' Then, shaking off whatever the effect of his words had been, she asked, 'Would you like to see the rest?'

'Yes’ he admitted with a smile. 'I'd like to see how much it's changed since I was a kid.'

'How old were you when you first came out?'

Brunetti had to think about this for a while, running the years and paging through the list of the jobs his father had held in the last decade of his life. 'I must have been about twelve.'

She laughed and said, 'That's the perfect age for you to have become a garzon.'

Brunetti laughed outright. 'That's all I wanted to be’ he said. 'And to grow up and become a maestro and make those beautiful things.'

'But?' she asked, turning towards the main doors.

Though she could not see him, Brunetti shrugged as he said, 'But it didn't happen.'

Something in his tone must have sounded in a particular way, for she stopped and turned towards him. 'Are you sorry?'

He smiled and shook his head. 'I don't think that way’ he said. 'Besides, I like the way things went.'

She smiled in response and said, 'How pleasant to hear someone say that.' She led him through the doors and out into the courtyard, then immediately towards a door on the right. Inside, he found the molatura, where a low wooden trough ran along one entire wall, numerous taps lined up above it. Two young men with rubber aprons stood at the trough, each holding a piece of glass, one a bowl and one a plate that looked very much like the one the maestro had been making a little earlier.

As Brunetti watched, they turned the objects, holding first one surface, then another, to the grinding wheels in front of them. Streams of water flowed down from the taps over the grinding wheels and then over the pieces of glass: Brunetti remembered that the water would keep the temperature down and prevent the heat shattering the glass as well as prevent the glass particles from filling the air and the lungs of the worker. Water splashed down the aprons and over the boots of the workers onto the floor, but the bulk of it was washed into the trough and flowed to the end, where, grey with glass dust, it disappeared down a pipe.

Just inside the door Brunetti saw vases, cups, platters, and statues standing on a wooden table, waiting their turn at the wheels. He could see the marks left by the clippers and by the straight edges used to fuse two colours of glass together: the grinding would quickly erase all imperfections, he knew.

Raising his voice over the noise of the wheel and running water, Brunetti said, 'It's not as exciting as the other.'

She nodded but said, 'But it's just as necessary'

'I know.'

He looked over at the two workers, back at Assunta, and asked, 'Masks?'

This time she shrugged but said nothing until she had led him out of the room and back into the courtyard. 'They're given two fresh masks every day: that's what the law says. But it doesn't tell me how to make them wear them.' Before Brunetti could comment, she said, 'If I could, I would. But they see it as some compromise of their masculinity, and they won't wear them.'

'The men who worked with my father never did, either’ Brunetti said.

She tossed her hands up in the air and walked away from him towards the front of the building. Brunetti joined her there and asked, 'I didn't see your father in his office. Isn't he here today?'

'He had a doctor's appointment,' she explained. 'But I hope he'll be back before the end of the afternoon.'

'Nothing serious, I hope,' Brunetti said, making a note to ask Signorina Elettra to see what she could find out about De Cal's health.

She nodded her thanks for his wishes but said nothing.

'Well,' Brunetti said, 'I'll go back now. Thanks for the tour. It brings back a lot of memories.'

'And thank you for going to the trouble of coming out here to tell me.'

'Don't worry,' he said. 'Your father's not likely to do anything rash.'

'I hope not,' she said, shaking his hand and turning back towards the office and her world.

 

13

 

 

The following morning, Brunetti arrived at the Questura after nine and went into Signorina Elettra's office, having forgotten that this was the day when she did not come in until after lunch. He started to write her a message, asking her if she could find De Cal's hospital records, but the thought that either Patta or Scarpa could read anything left on her desk made him change it to a simple request that she call him in his office when she could.

Upstairs, he read through the reports on his desk, had a look at the list of proposed promotions, and then started to read his way through a thick folder of papers from the Ministry of the Interior relating to new laws regarding the arrest and detention of suspected terrorists. National law did not accord with European law, it seemed, and that in its turn failed to conform to international law. Brunetti read with mounting interest as the confusions and contradictions became increasingly evident.

The section on interrogation was brief, as though the person commissioned to write it wanted to get through the assignment as quickly as possible without taking a stand of any sort. The document repeated something Brunetti had read elsewhere, that some foreign authorities— left unnamed—believed that the infliction of pain during interrogation was permissible up 'to the level of serious illness'. Brunetti turned from these words to a consideration of the doors of his wardrobe. 'Diabetes or bone cancer?' he asked the doors, but they made no response.

He read the report until the end, closed it, and pushed it to one side of his desk. During his early years as a policeman, he remembered, people still argued about whether it was right or wrong to use force during an interrogation, and he had heard all of the arguments from both sides. Now they argued about how much pain they could inflict.

Euclid came to mind: was it he who had claimed that, given a lever long enough, he could move the Earth itself? Brunetti's experience and his reading of history had led him to believe that, given the right pressure, almost anyone could be moved to confess to anything. So it had always seemed to him that the important question to be asked about interrogation was not how far the subject had to be pushed in order to confess, so much as how far the questioner was willing to go in order to get the inevitable confession.

These melancholy thoughts remained with him for some time, after which he decided to go downstairs to see if Vianello was in. As he went down the stairs, he encountered Lieutenant Scarpa, coming up them. They nodded but did not speak as they registered one another's presence. But Brunetti was brought up short when Scarpa moved to the left, effectively blocking his descent.

'Yes, Lieutenant?'

Without introduction, Scarpa asked, 'This Hungarian, Mary Dox, is she your doing?'

'I beg your pardon, Lieutenant?'

Scarpa held up a folder, as if the sight of it would make things clear to Brunetti. 'Is she yours?' the lieutenant asked again, his voice neutral.

'I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Lieutenant’ Brunetti said.

In an intentionally melodramatic gesture, Scarpa raised the hand with the folder in the air between them, as if he had suddenly decided to auction it off, and asked, 'You don't know what I'm talking about? You don't know anything about Mary Dox?'

'No.'

Just as Assunta De Cal had done when confronted with evidence of knuckle-headed masculinity, Scarpa threw his hands up in the air, then stepped to the right and continued on up the stairs without saying anything further.

Brunetti went to the officers' room in search of Vianello. He found, instead, Pucetti, hunched over his desk and deeply engrossed in what looked like the same report Brunetti had just finished. The young officer was so engrossed in what he was reading that he did not hear Brunetti approach.

'Pucetti’ Brunetti said as he reached the desk, 'have you seen Vianello?'

At the sound of his name, Pucetti looked up from the papers, but it took him a few seconds to tear his attention away from them; he pushed his chair back and got to his feet. 'Excuse me, Commissario, I didn't hear you,' he said. His right hand still grasped the papers, so he was prevented from saluting. To compensate, he stood as straight as he could.

'Vianello,' Brunetti said and smiled. 'I'm looking for him.'

He watched Pucetti's eyes and saw him force himself to recall who Vianello was. Then Pucetti said, 'He was here before.' He looked around the office, as if curious to discover where he found himself. 'But he must have gone out.'

Brunetti let almost a full minute pass, and during that time he watched Pucetti return from the land where interrogation techniques were discussed with cold dispassion—if, in fact, that was the subject that had so fully captured the attention of the young man.

When he had Pucetti's full attention, Brunetti said, 'Lieutenant Scarpa asked me about a folder he had, dealing with a Hungarian woman named Mary Dox. Do you have any idea what this is about?'

Pucetti's face registered comprehension and he said, 'He came in here this morning, sir, asking about the same woman. He wanted to know if any of us knew about her case.'

'And?'

'And no one did.'

Aware of the uniformed staff's opinion of the lieutenant, Brunetti asked, 'No one did or no one said they did?'

'No one did, sir. We talked about it after he left, and no one knew what he was talking about.'

'Is this where Vianello's gone?'

'I don't think so. He didn't know anything, either. My guess is that he's just gone down to get a coffee.'

Brunetti thanked him and told him to continue with his reading, to which Pucetti did not respond.

At the bar near Ponte dei Greci, Brunetti found Vianello at the counter, a glass of wine in front of him as he leafed through that day's paper.

'What did Scarpa want?' Brunetti asked as he came in. He asked the barman for a coffee.

Vianello folded the newspaper and moved it to one side of the bar. 'I've no idea,' he answered. 'Whatever it is, or whoever she is, it's trouble. I've never seen him so angry.'

'No idea?' Brunetti asked, nodding his thanks to the barman as he set down the coffee.

'None’ Vianello answered.

Brunetti stirred in sugar and drank half the coffee, then finished it. 'You read these regulations from the Ministry of the Interior?' he asked Vianello.

'I never read their directives,' Vianello said and took a sip of his wine. 'I used to, but I don't care about them any more.'

'Why?'

'They never say anything much: just words, words all tortured so as to sound good while justifying the fact that they really don't want to achieve anything.'

'Anything about what?' Brunetti asked.

'You ever been sent to ask one of the Chinese where the cash came from to buy his bar? You ever been asked to check the work permits of the people who work in those bars? You ever been sent out to close down a factory that got caught dumping its garbage in a national forest?'

What struck Brunetti was not the subject of Vianello's questions—questions that floated around the Questura like lint in a shirt factory— but the cool dispassion with which he asked them. 'You don't sound like you care much’ he observed.

'About this woman Scarpa wants to know about?' Vianello asked. 'No, I don't.'

That made quite a list of things Vianello didn't care much about this morning. 'I'll see you after lunch’ Brunetti said and left, heading home.

 

On the kitchen table, he found a note from Paola, saying she had to meet one of the students whose doctoral work she was overseeing but that there was lasagne in the oven. The kids would not be home, and a salad was in the refrigerator: all he had to do was add oil and vinegar. Just as Brunetti was preparing to start grumbling his way through lunch—having come halfway across the city, only to be deprived of the company of his family, forced to eat heated-up things from the oven, probably made with some sort of pre-packaged whatever and that disgusting orange American cheese for all he knew—he saw the last line of Paola's note: 'Stop sulking. It's your mother's recipe and you love it.'

Left to eat alone, Brunetti's first concern was to find the right thing to read. A magazine would be right, but he had already finished that week's Espresso. A newspaper took up too much space on the table. A paperback book could never be forced to stay open, not without breaking the binding completely, which would later cause the pages to fall out. Art books, which were surely big enough, suffered from oil stains. He compromised by going into the bedroom and taking from his bedside Gibbon, whose style forced him to read in translation.

He took out the lasagne, cut it and put a chunk on a plate. He poured a glass of pinot grigio then opened Gibbon to his place and propped it up against two books Paola had left on the table. He employed a cutting board and a serving spoon to hold the pages open on both sides. Satisfied with the arrangement, he sat down and started to eat.

Brunetti found himself back in the court of the Emperor Heliogabalus, one of his favorite monsters. Ah, the excess of it, the violence, the utter corruption of everything and everyone. The lasagne had layers of ham and thin slices of artichoke hearts interleaved with layers of pasta that he suspected might have been home made. He would have preferred more artichokes. He shared his table with decapitated senators, evil counsellors, barbarians bent on the destruction of the empire. He took a sip of wine and ate another bite of lasagne.

The Emperor appeared, arrayed like the sun itself. All hailed him, his glory, and his gracious-ness. The court was splendid and excessive, a place where, as Gibbon observed, 'a capricious prodigality supplied the want of taste and elegance'. Brunetti set his fork down, the better to savour both the lasagne and Gibbon's description.

He got up and took the salad, poured in oil and vinegar and sprinkled in some salt. He ate from the bowl, as Heliogabalus died under the swords of his guards.

On the way back to the Questura, Brunetti stopped for a coffee and pastry at Ballarin, then arrived just in time to meet Signorina Elettra at the front entrance.

After they exchanged greetings, Brunetti said, "There's something I'd like you to try and check for me, Signorina.'

'Of course’ she said encouragingly, 'if I can.'

'De Cal's medical records’ he said. 'His daughter said he had a doctor's appointment this afternoon, and a number of people have commented on his health. I wondered if there's reason for, well, for preoccupation.'

"That shouldn't be at all difficult, sir’ she said, pausing at the beginning of the second flight of steps. 'Anything else?'

If anyone could find out, it was she. 'Yes, there's one thing. Lieutenant Scarpa has been asking if anyone knows anything about a foreign woman, and I wondered if he's spoken to you.'

She looked frankly puzzled and said, 'No. He hasn't said a word. Who's the poor person?'

'A Hungarian woman’ Brunetti said. 'Mary Dox.'

'What?' she demanded sharply, coming to a halt. 'What did you say?'

'Mary Dox’ explained a puzzled Brunetti. 'He asked me, and it seems he went into the officers' room this morning to ask them if they knew anything about her.'

'Did he say what he wanted?' she asked, her voice calmer.

'No, not that I know of. When I saw him, he had a folder in his hand.' As he talked, the memory surfaced and he said, 'It looked like one of our files.' He hoped she would volunteer whatever information she had, but when she remained silent, he asked, 'Do you know her?'

After a pause he could describe only as speculative, she said, 'Yes, 1 do.' Her eyes shifted into long focus, as if the reason for Scarpa's curiosity might be found on the far wall. 'She's my father's cleaning woman.'

'The one you spoke to the Vice-Questore about?'

'Yes.'

'Did you give him her name?' Brunetti asked.

'Yes, I did, and the file number.'

'You think he could have passed them on to Scarpa and asked him to find out about her?'

'Possibly’ she said. 'But I left the information on his desk, so anyone could have seen it.'

'But why would Scarpa start asking about her unless Patta told him to do so?'

'I've no idea,' she said. She smiled and tried to dismiss the unease provoked by the idea that Scarpa was involved in something that concerned her, however tangentially. 'I'll ask the Vice-Questore if he needs any other information about her.'

'I'm sure that's what it is’ Brunetti—who wasn't—said.

'Yes, thank you’ she answered. 'I'll go and have a look for the medical records, shall I?'

'Yes’ Brunetti said, leaving her, and went back to his office, his mind a jumble of Scarpa, Heliogabalus, and the mysterious Mary Dox.

 

 

14

 

Most people dread middle of the night phone calls for their presage of loss or violence or death. The certainty that one's family is sleeping peacefully nearby in no way diminishes the alarm; it merely directs it towards other people. Thus Brunetti's fear was no less sharp when his phone rang a little after five the following morning.

'Commissario Brunetti?' inquired a voice he recognized as Alvise's. Had the call reached him at home at any other time of day, Brunetti would have asked the officer what man he expected to find answering the phone at his home, but it was too early for sarcasm: it was always too early for anything other than the literal with Alvise.