as a lab technician at the Ospedale Civile.’

‘Maybe he’s gone straight,’ Brunetti suggested.

She raised her eyebrows at this idea but said nothing.

‘Have you found any indication of what he’s doing?’

‘For all I can find, he could be devoting himself to a life of contemplation and good works,’ she said.

‘Yet Vianello’s aunt seems to be taking large sums of money to him at that address,’ said a sceptical Brunetti. ‘To one of the people at that address, at any rate,’ he corrected. ‘That’s the only apartment that uses that entrance.’

‘So that’s what Vianello’s been so worried about,’ Signorina Elettra said, her concern and affection audible in every word.

‘Yes, for some time.’

He thought about his connections at the hospital and said, ‘I can ask Dottor Rizzardi. He must know the people in the lab.’

Her cough was so discreet as hardly to exist, but to Brunetti it was a clarion call. ‘You spoke to him, then?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Before he could ask, she explained, ‘I took the liberty of asking.’

‘Ah,’ escaped his lips. ‘And?’

‘And she is that one reliable person upon whom the entire enterprise depends,’ she answered, and Brunetti kept his eyes from meeting hers. ‘She’s been there for fifteen years, never married; if anything, is married to her work.’

Impulsively, to divert them both from any reflection upon how closely this description, save for the number of years, matched Signorina Elettra herself, Brunetti asked, ‘Then how explain the presence of Signor Gorini in her home?’

‘Indeed,’ she agreed, then continued, ‘I asked the doctor if there was anything else he could tell me about her, and I sensed a certain reluctance on his part. He sounded, if anything, protective of her.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I lied, of course,’ she said with equanimity. ‘I told him my sister knew someone who worked in the lab with her – which is true – I even gave her name. It was someone Barbara went to medical school with but who didn’t finish. I said she had spoken very well of Signorina Montini but said she thought she’d changed in the last year or so.’

Before Brunetti could ask, she explained, ‘Any woman who has been living with a man like that has probably changed in the course of two years, and not for the better.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said her work was still excellent, and then he changed the subject.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘You want to ask your sister to talk to her classmate?’

Signorina Elettra gave a sharp shake of her head and lowered her eyes to her desk. ‘They don’t speak,’ was the only explanation she offered.

‘What else?’ he asked, seeing that there were still some papers she had not uncovered.

‘He’s got an account at the UniCredit.’ She handed him a bank statement of the movements for the last six months in the account of Stefano Gorini. Brunetti studied it, looking for a pattern, but there was none. Sums, always cash and never in excess of five hundred Euros, moved in and out of the account each month. The current total was less than two thousand Euros.

‘Any suggestion of how he supports himself?’

She shook her head. ‘He could have generous friends, or he could be living off Signorina Montini, or he could, for all I know, be very lucky at roulette or cards. The money washes in and flows away, and there’s never a deposit or withdrawal large enough to cause the least curiosity.’

‘Credit card bills?’ Brunetti asked.

‘It would seem he doesn’t have one.’

‘Mirabile dictu,’ Brunetti said. ‘And this in the new millennium.’

‘But he might have a telefonino,’ Signorina Elettra said, and explained, ‘I won’t know until this afternoon, perhaps not until tomorrow.’

She read Brunetti’s surprise and said, by way of explanation, ‘Giorgio’s on vacation.’

‘So you have to ask someone else?’

Her expression showed her bewilderment at his failure to understand client loyalty. ‘No, he’ll try it from Newfoundland, but he’s not sure he can get it to me today: he said it might be complicated to patch into the Telecom system from there.’

‘I see,’ said Brunetti, who didn’t. ‘I’d like to think of a way to keep an eye on his house.’

‘I looked it up in Calli, Campi, e Campielli, sir, and it doesn’t look like it would be easy. You’d need people permanently in Campo dei Frari and in San Tomà, and even then you wouldn’t be sure whoever went into or came out of the calle had been to that address.’

‘Can you think of anyone here who lives around there?’ he asked.

‘Let me check,’ she