Brunetti chose to make no comment on how this would contaminate the scene or at least present a legal pretext for any future defence attorney to call the evidence into question. Only on television crime shows was forensic evidence accepted without question.
‘Scarpa’s still there,’ she said. ‘He went over with a few others. He took Alvise.’
‘Might as well set up a boat stop at the place where it happened,’ said a disgusted Brunetti. ‘Who’s doing the autopsy?’
Again, the line broke up. ‘. . . asked for Rizzardi,’ she said, showing again that her short time at the Questura had not been wasted.
‘Can he do it?’
‘I hope so. His name wasn’t on the roster, but at least that other idiot has been away on vacation for a week and didn’t leave a contact number.’
‘No way to speak of the assistant medico legale of the city, Commissario,’ Brunetti said.
‘That arrogant idiot, then, Commissario,’ she corrected.
Brunetti let it pass in silent agreement. ‘I’ll come back.’
‘I hoped you would,’ she said with audible relief. ‘Most people are away, and I didn’t want to end up working this with Scarpa.’ Then, to details. ‘How? Do you want me to call Bolzano and have them send you back in one of their squad cars?’
Brunetti looked at his watch and asked,’ Where are you?’
‘In my office. Why?’
‘Take a look at the train schedule and see when the next train going south from Bolzano leaves.’
‘Don’t you want a car?’ she asked.
‘I’d love a car, believe me. But once in a while you can see the autostrada from the train, and nothing’s moving in either direction on certain parts of it. The train would be faster.’
She muttered something, and then he heard the phone being set down. He listened to the gaps, which seemed to be related to the closeness of the train to high power lines. But then he heard Griffoni say, ‘The EuroCity from Munich to Venice is scheduled to leave one minute after your train gets in.’
‘Good,’ Brunetti said. ‘Call the station in Bolzano and tell them to hold it. We should be there in twelve minutes, so I’ll just get from this one to that one and be back in four hours or so.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you back.’
Brunetti broke the connection, leaned against the window to the compartment where his family sat, and studied the mountains that soared up above the unbroken fields of apple trees.
After they had passed many fields, his phone rang and Griffoni said, ‘That train’s ten minutes late, so if yours is on time, you’ll make it easily. It’ll be on track four.’
‘I have to take my family to their train, so call them and tell them to have it wait until I get there.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Someone will meet you at this end.’
Brunetti pocketed his phone and turned to open the door to the compartment.
15
Later, as he sat on the train carrying him back to Venice, Brunetti reflected upon the way human nature could still surprise him: the young people had insisted on helping them carry their luggage to the connecting train, a conductor having met them and told Brunetti that the train to Venice would be delayed another ten minutes. When his family was aboard, the two young people disappeared, asking nothing about his mysterious reason for returning immediately to Venice. Brunetti kissed Paola and the children, promised he would come north again as soon as possible, and stood back from their train as it carried them off to Merano, to the mountains, and to the delights of sleeping under eiderdowns in the middle of August.
His own train back to Venice gave the same sensation, but intermittently, for the air conditioning was working only when it pleased, alternating blasts of tropical air with those more accurately described as arctic. The windows in the new trains did not open, so he and the other three people in the first-class compartment to which the conductor had taken him sat as if on some means of transport that alternated stops between Calcutta and Ulan Bator. Brunetti had sent his suitcase, and thus his sweaters, along with the family, so when the train was anywhere near Ulan Bator, he was forced to flee into the corridor, which was at least consistent in temperature, however elevated that temperature might be.
For the moment therefore, he could neither read in peace nor think calmly of the situation in Venice and what it might be necessary to do when he got