make love with anyone he really loved.’

25

Brunetti nodded again, suggesting that he was already in possession of this information. In his most sympathetic voice he said, ‘That must have made his life very difficult.’

Fontana gave the phantom of a shrug and said, ‘In a way, but not really.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ Brunetti said, though, thinking of Fontana’s mother, perhaps he did.

‘That way, he could separate his emotional life from his sexual life. He loved me and his mother and his friend Renato, but we were already – what’s the right way to say this? – out of bounds sexually.’ He paused, as if considering what he had just heard himself say, then went on. ‘Well, Renato isn’t, I suppose. But I think Araldo couldn’t stand confusion of any sort in his life. So by separating them, those two things, then he didn’t have confusion. Or he thought he didn’t.’ Again, that shrug, and Fontana said, ‘I don’t know how to explain this, but it makes sense to me. Knowing him, I mean. How he is. Was.’

‘You said a moment ago, Signore, that you think this might have had something to do with his death,’ Brunetti said. ‘Could you explain that to us, please?’

Fontana folded his hands primly on his lap and said, speaking to Brunetti, ‘By keeping things separate, he was free – if that’s the word – to have anonymous sex. When we were younger . . . that sort of thing was all right, I suppose. And then I, well, I changed. But Araldo didn’t.’

After the silence had grown long, Brunetti asked, ‘Did he tell you this?’

Fontana tilted his head to one side. ‘Sort of.’

‘Excuse me,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’ He probably did, but he wanted to hear from Fontana what the other man had in mind.

‘He’d tell me things, answer questions, sort of hint at things,’ Fontana said, abruptly getting to his feet. But all he did was pull his trousers away from the back of his thighs and take a few steps on the spot to let them fall free from his body. He sat down again and said, ‘I knew what he meant to say, even if he didn’t say it.’

‘Did he tell you where this took place?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Here and there. In other people’s homes.’

‘Not in his?’

Fontana gave Brunetti a severe look and asked, ‘Have you met his mother?’

‘Of course,’ Brunetti said, glancing at the surface of his desk and then back at Fontana.

As if as a form of apology for the sharpness of his last remark, Fontana offered this: ‘Once, when I went to visit them, the speaker phone and door latch were broken, so I had to call Araldo on my telefonino, and he came down to let me in. As we were crossing the courtyard, he stopped and looked around. Then he said something about it being his little love nest.’

‘What did you say?’ Vianello broke in to ask.

‘I was embarrassed, so I ignored him and pretended he hadn’t said anything.’ A moment passed and he said, ‘I didn’t know what to say. We’d been so close as kids, and then he’d say something like this. I didn’t understand.’

‘Maybe he was embarrassed, as well,’ Brunetti suggested. Then, more appositely, ‘Did he ever mention anyone by name or make a remark that would allow you to identify one of his . . .‘ Brunetti struggled to find the right word: ‘lovers’ seemed wildly wrong, given what Fontana had been telling him. ‘. . . partners?’

Fontana shook his head. ‘No. Nothing. Araldo would have thought that was wrong.’ He waited for them to ask him about that, and when they did not, he continued. ‘It was all right for him to talk about his own life, but he never said anything about anyone else: no names, not even ages. Nothing.’

‘Just that he couldn’t love them?’ asked Vianello in a sad voice.

Fontana nodded, then whispered, ‘Or shouldn’t.’

After that, the information Fontana provided was routine: his cousin had never introduced him to anyone who was other than a friend from school or a colleague at work, nor had he ever spoken with particular affection of anyone except Renato Penzo, whom he had praised as a good friend. He had always gone on vacation with his mother and had once joked that it was more work than going to work.

In recent months he had seemed nervous and preoccupied, and when Giorgio commented on this, his cousin had told him only that he