did you give them to me?’ Brunetti made no attempt to disguise his irritation.

For a long time, there was no response from Brusca’s end of the line, and then he said, ‘I thought you might be able to think of something to do. And I hoped you’d be outraged by it.’

‘That’s putting it a bit too strongly,’ Brunetti said.

‘All right, all right, not outrage. Hope, then. Perhaps that’s what I admire in you, that you can still hope that things will turn right and the Augean Stables will be cleansed.’

‘That’s unlikely, as you say,’ Brunetti agreed. Then, turning back to the original purpose of the call and with the voice of friendship restored, he asked, ‘Really, why did you give them to me?’

‘It’s true. I hoped you’d be able to do something,’ Brusca answered. Then, in a voice Brunetti suspected his friend was deliberately making sound lighter, he added, ‘Besides, it’s always nice to be able to cause one of them a bit of trouble.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Brunetti said, knowing as he spoke how little chance there was of that.

Brusca said a quick goodbye.

Brunetti propped his left elbow on his desk and rubbed his thumbnail back and forth along his lower lip. His shirt felt clammy under his arms and across his back. He went to the window and looked down at the water of the canal, black in the day’s harsh reflection. Campo San Lorenzo had been baked free of life; even the cats who lived in the multi-storey cat condominium erected against the façade of the church had disappeared; he wondered if they had fled the city to go on vacation.

For a moment, he let himself indulge in a fantasy about cats on vacation in the mountains or at the seaside, sent there by DINGO, the city’s cooperative society of animal lovers. Brunetti hated the ‘animalisti’, hated them for their defence of the loathsome, disease-ridden pigeons, hated them for having rounded up all of the wild cats of the city, no doubt to the delight of the ever-increasing population of rats. While on the subject of animals, he added to his list of people he hated those who did not clean up after their dogs; if he had his way, he’d slap a fine on them so strong it would . . .

‘Commissario?’ His attention was torn from wild speculation about the amount of the fine he’d impose and the system he’d invent to implement it.

‘Yes, Signorina?’ he said, turning towards her. ‘What is it?’

‘I saw Vianello a moment ago. I went into the squad room and he was on the phone. He didn’t look at all well.’

‘Is he sick?’ Brunetti asked, thinking of the sudden things that could be brought on by the heat.

Signorina Elettra came a few steps into his office. ‘I don’t know, sir. I don’t think so. He looked more worried or frightened and not wanting to show it.’ Brunetti was accustomed to the fact that she looked good; today he was amazed to realize she still looked cool. Instead of asking about Vianello, Brunetti blurted out, ‘Don’t you find it hot?’

‘Excuse me, sir?’

‘The heat. The temperature? Isn’t it hot? For you, I mean. Don’t you think it’s hot?’ If he had gone on any longer, he would probably have been reduced to drawing a picture of the sun to show her.

‘No, not particularly, sir. It’s only 30 degrees.’

‘And that’s not hot?’

‘Not for me, no.’

‘Why?’

He watched her hesitate about what to tell him. Finally she said, ‘I grew up in Sicily, sir. So I guess my body grew accustomed to the heat. Or my thermostat was programmed. Something like that.’

‘In Sicily?’

‘Yes.’

‘How was that?’

‘Oh, my father worked there for a few years,’ she said, her uninterested voice telling Brunetti that he had best be equally uninterested, or at least pretend to be.

Obediently, Brunetti veered away from her private life and asked, ‘Do you have any idea who he was talking to?’

‘No, sir, but it was someone he knew well enough to use “Tu” with. And he seemed to be doing more listening than talking.’

Brunetti got to his feet. He picked up some papers she had given him earlier that morning and said, ‘I wanted to show him these. I’ll take them down.’ He waited for her to leave, thinking it might not be a good idea for Vianello to see them coming down the stairs together, as if she had been telling tales out of school.

She smiled before turning towards the door.