and no one found him until this morning. I don’t know yet what Patta will do.’
‘Do you have any ideas?’
‘Only vague ones,’ he said. Because Paola had asked about the murder case, Brunetti felt no need to tell her that he had enlisted her mother into helping the police investigate what might be another crime. In order to stay away from that subject, he asked, ‘How are the kids?’
‘Tired. I’ve fed them and they’re trying to stay awake until ten. I think they still believe it’s only little kids who go to bed before that.’
‘Oh, to be a little kid,’ Brunetti exclaimed.
‘All right. Make the sauce and eat. Then go to bed. It will be well after ten by then.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I hope it stays sunny and cool enough to make you wear a sweater all the time.’
‘How is it there?’
‘Hot.’
‘Go and eat, Guido.’
‘I will,’ he answered, said goodbye and hung up the phone.
18
The next day, if anything, was hotter, and Brunetti woke shortly after six to damp sheets and a muddled sense of having been awake often in the night. In the absence of the representatives of the Water Police, he permitted himself the luxury of a long shower, first hot and then cold and then hot again. Worse, he allowed himself to shave in the shower, an act of ecological excess which would have earned him the loud condemnation of both his children.
He didn’t bother with coffee at home but stopped in the first bar he passed, then went into Ballarin for a cappuccino and a brioche. He had picked up the papers at his edicola and laid the second section of Il Gazzettino on the round table in the pasticceria. Sipping, he studied the headline, ‘Courthouse Clerk Found Murdered’. Well, that was fair enough. The article was surprisingly clear: it gave the time of the discovery of the body and the probable cause of death.
But then it slipped into what Brunetti thought of as ‘Gazzettino Mode’. The victim’s fellow workers spoke of his many virtues, his seriousness, his devotion to the cause of justice, his poor mother, a widow who had now to bear the death of her only son. And then, as ever, there came the sly insinuation – oh so carefully draped in the sober garb of innocent speculation – about what might have caused this terrible crime. Could the victim have been involved in some practice that had brought his death upon him? Had his job at the Tribunale provided him with access to information that had proven dangerous? Nothing was stated, but everything was implied.
Brunetti refolded the paper, paid, and continued through the growing heat to work. When he got there, well before eight, he made a list of things he needed to check: the first was the autopsy, which should have been done the previous day. Then there was the question of the relatives on Fontana’s side: perhaps Vianello had managed to find them. He also needed to know the names of the people involved in the various cases where Judge Coltellini had so long delayed her decisions. And how was it that Fontana and his mother were asked to pay Signor Puntera such a derisory rent?
He went to his open window, where the curtain hung limp, dead, and consulted with the façade of the church of San Lorenzo about how best to begin.
Suddenly overcome with impatience, Brunetti called the Ospedale Civile and learned that Dottor Rizzardi would be there all morning. He asked that the doctor be told he was on his way, and left the Questura. By the time he reached Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo, his jacket and shirt were glued to his back, and the sides of his feet rubbed uncomfortably against the inside of his shoes. To traverse the open campo was to question his own sanity at having decided to walk.
He went to Rizzardi’s office but was told that the doctor was still in the morgue. The very word dispersed some of the heat; the air that swirled around him when he pushed open the door drove off the rest of it. His shirt and jacket still clung to him, but the sensation was now coolly sinister instead of irritating.
Rizzardi, he was relieved to see, stood at a sink, already washing his hands. The fact that the sinks in the room were so deep and their fronts so low had always filled Brunetti with a vague uneasiness, but he had never wanted to ask about