think you work there?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Hardly. It was written all over her face. She’s a judge, for heaven’s sake: of course she’d know who works at the Questura.’

‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti tried to temporize.

Signorina Elettra pushed herself to her feet and came towards him so quickly that Brunetti stepped aside to avoid her. Ignoring him, she picked up the flowers and ripped the paper from them. She set them on her desk, walked over to her armadio and took out two large vases, then went out into the hall. Brunetti remained where he was, considering what she had just told him.

When she returned, he took one of the water-filled vases from her and set it on the windowsill. She put the other one on the small table against the wall, then went over and picked up one of the bunches of flowers. With no ceremony, she pulled the rubber bands from the stems, tossed them on her desk, and stuffed the flowers into the first vase, then repeated the process with the second bunch.

She sat back in her chair, looked at Brunetti, looked at the flowers, and said, ‘Poor things. I shouldn’t take it out on them.’

‘I don’t think you have anything to take out on anything,’ he said.

‘You wouldn’t say that if you had seen her reaction,’ she insisted.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.

‘I’d like to take a look at whatever it is that aroused your curiosity about the judge.’

14

Signorina Elettra came back to his office with him, where he gave her the sheets of paper that had come to him from the Tribunale. He explained what he had made of the delays in certain cases heard by Judge Coltellini and pointed to Fontana’s signature at the bottom of the papers.

‘Child’s play,’ she said in reference to the system used by the Ministry of Justice to preserve the integrity of the judicial system. Looking at Fontana’s signature, she said, ‘You know, I’ve begun to think there’s something strange about the way Fontana behaved with the judge.’

‘Unrequited love is always strange to the people who don’t feel it,’ Brunetti observed, conscious of sounding more sententious than Polonius.

‘That’s just it,’ Signorina Elettra said, looking at him. ‘I’m not sure it is unrequited love.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she answered. She crossed her arms and tapped the corner of the papers idly against her lower lip. ‘I’ve seen unrequited love,’ she said, failing to explain from which side. ‘At first I thought that’s what it was, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like something different. He’s too abject, too servile when he speaks to her: even a man as dull as he is would realize that no one likes to be talked to that way.’

‘Some people do,’ Brunetti said.

‘I know, I know. But she doesn’t. That much is clear. One thing I didn’t tell you – it’s really embarrassing to talk about it – was the way he kept offering to get her things: a coffee, a glass of water, a pastry. It was as if he felt indebted to her, but in an odd way.’

‘If they’re in this together, then she’s probably already getting the bigger share of whatever’s being paid,’ Brunetti said, admitting to both of them the interpretation he had made of the lists he had been sent. ‘So she’s the one who should be paying for the coffees.’

‘No, no,’ Signorina Elettra said, shaking away both his interpretation and his attempt at humour. ‘It’s not as if he thinks he can actually pay her back. It’s as if there’s some great gaping hole between them and all he can think of doing is to try to fill it up, though it’s so big he knows he never can.’ She thought for a moment, then added, ‘No, that’s not it, either. He’s grateful to her, but grateful the way people are when the Madonna answers a prayer. It’s embarrassing to see it.’

‘Did your friend Umberto notice this?’

‘If he did, he didn’t comment. And I was so eager to get away that I didn’t ask him. Besides, I dreaded the thought of standing on the riva, in the sun, and talking to him for a minute longer. All I wanted to do was get in the gondola and get to the other side.’

Brunetti couldn’t resist asking, ‘Is that how Umberto treats you – like the Madonna?’

‘Oh no,’ she said, without a pause. ‘For him, it’s unrequited love.’

Neither that day nor the next did Signorina Elettra