in a sweat. ‘Raffi came to his senses quickly enough,’ she said. ‘I suppose we should be grateful for that. But they’re sure to drag home some other ideas sooner or later.’
Brunetti moved over to the window that gave on to the north and felt the faint stirring of a breeze. ‘You think the weather could be changing?’ he asked.
‘Getting hotter, probably,’ she said and pulled out another sweater.
The next day Signorina Elettra was meant to have coffee with her admirer at the Tribunale. Brunetti assumed she would want to get the flowers early in the morning, before the heat had a chance to grab the city by the throat. Allowing time for a leisurely coffee, interspersed with interesting conversation about common acquaintances and people at the Tribunale, she would probably get to the Questura by eleven, he estimated. He was prevented from going down to see if she had arrived, however, by a long phone call from a friend who worked in the Palermo Questura, asking him if he knew anything about two new pizzerias and a hotel that had recently opened in Venice.
Brunetti had heard a number of things about them and about their ownership, both apparent and real. What his friend had to tell him concerned the real owners. Of greatest interest to Brunetti was his friend’s explanation of the unwonted speed with which permits had been granted for extensive restoration of both pizzerias and the hotel.
The permits for the hotel, strangely enough, had been granted in less than two weeks. Further, permission had been granted for the crews to work round the clock, something virtually unheard of in the city. The pizzerias required less work; these permits took just under a week to be granted.
When his friend in Palermo admitted to having a special interest in the director of the office granting the permits, Brunetti could only sigh, so familiar to him was the name and so useless did he judge any attempt to investigate the methods used in conceding permissions.
With a noise that wanted to be laughter, but failed, Brunetti said, ‘Once, when I was working in Naples we parked a truck down the street from a pizzeria and left it there, filming everyone who went in and out. We even had another camera directly opposite the place, so we could film anyone who sat at the tables, until they closed.’
‘How much business did they do?’
‘Eight people went in and stayed long enough to eat. We filmed them waiting for their pizzas and eating them. And one man went in and took home six pizzas.’
‘Let me guess,’ the voice came down the line: ‘the total intake for the day showed something more than fourteen pizzas.’
Brunetti could only laugh. ‘They took in more than two thousand Euros.’
‘What did you do?’
‘We gave the film to the Guardia di Finanza.’
‘And?’
‘And it ended up in court, and the judge ruled that the cameras were an invasion of privacy, and the film could not be used as evidence because the people shown in it had not been warned that they were being filmed.’ After a moment, Brunetti added, ‘It’s the same thing that happened with the baggage handlers at the airport.’
‘I read about it.’
Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost noon. Suddenly eager to speak to Signorina Elettra before she could leave for lunch, he said, ‘I’ll let you know if I hear anything,’ and brought the conversation to a close.
To disguise, perhaps to himself, how much he wanted to speak to her, Brunetti delayed his arrival by stopping at the squad room to show Gorini’s photo to some of the men on duty. Though it was a strong face, none of them could remember ever having seen him in the city. He left the photo with the request that the rest of the squad have a look and went downstairs, where he found Signorina Elettra at her desk, idly rubbing at the palm of her hand. Two bunches of flowers lay on the windowsill, half unwrapped and beginning to wilt.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘A disaster. The whole thing was a disaster.’
‘Tell me,’ he said, pushing the flowers aside and leaning back against the windowsill, arms folded.
With a conscious effort she pressed her palms flat on either side of her keyboard. ‘I got the flowers, then went over to the Tribunale and up to his office. He was there, working, so I suggested we go out for a coffee.
‘We went down to Caffè del Doge, and he