said, ‘what have you done?’ Brunetti noted that he used the familiar ‘tu’ when speaking to her. He sounded like a parent, disappointed in a child who has failed at something.

‘Dottore,’ she said and opened her eyes. She smiled. ‘I didn’t want to cause trouble.’

Rizzardi leaned down and placed one of his hands over hers. ‘You’ve never caused a moment’s trouble, Elvira. Quite the opposite. The only reason I have any faith in this lab is because you’re here.’

She closed her eyes again and tears trickled from the outer edges. They spurred Rizzardi to say, ‘Don’t cry, Elvira. Nothing’s going to happen. You’ll be all right.’

‘He’ll leave me,’ she said, eyes still closed and tears running into her ears.

‘No, once he knows what you’ve done, he’ll want to help you,’ Rizzardi said, then glanced at Brunetti, as if to ask if he were saying the right lines.

‘He won’t be able to use the lab results now,’ she said. ‘People won’t believe he helps them.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked up at Rizzardi. ‘But he does, Dottore. He really does.’ She smiled, and for an instant her face was transformed into something approaching beauty. ‘He helped me.’

There was a great deal of noise behind them. Brunetti looked up and saw three green-jacketed aides blocking the door with a wheeled stretcher. They banged it repeatedly against the sides of the door until one slipped around to the front and guided it through. Two of them came quickly over to the woman on the floor and the men kneeling beside her, forcing them aside with the press of their bodies.

Brunetti and Rizzardi got to their feet. Almost maddened by its sound, Brunetti took two steps to the sink and turned off the water. Vianello, who had come in with the attendants, went to stand beside Rizzardi. The third aide came over, pushing the stretcher. He did something with a lever and the stretcher sank almost to the ground, then he joined his colleagues and together they lifted the woman on to it. Another motion of the switch raised her slowly to waist height. The first one took a tube running from a bottle of clear liquid hanging above the stretcher and inserted the needle into a vein in her arm.

Rizzardi stepped forward then and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, holding it for some time, either to take her pulse or to convey whatever reassurance he could. ‘Get her to emergency,’ he said.

One of the attendants started to say something, but the first one, who seemed to be in charge, said, ‘He’s a doctor.’

As Rizzardi started to unwrap his fingers from her wrist she opened her eyes again and said, ‘Will you come with me, Dottore?’

Rizzardi smiled at her, and Brunetti realized how seldom he had seen the doctor smile in all the years he had known him. ‘Of course,’ he said, and the attendants started towards the door.

27

Brunetti’s first thought was the Contessa. He didn’t know exactly how Gorini had profited from the lab tests Signorina Montini must have altered, but he knew she had done it to his profit, and for love, so that he would not leave her. If Gorini was capable of this, then Brunetti wanted to keep his mother-in-law away from him.

‘I can’t let Paola’s mother see him.’ Vianello, who knew of Brunetti’s conversation, understood. Brunetti took out his telefonino, found the number for Palazzo Falier and was quickly put through to her.

‘Ah, Guido, how lovely to hear your voice. How are Paola and the kids?’ she asked, as if she did not speak to her daughter at least twice a day.

‘Fine, fine. But I’m calling about that other thing.’

After the briefest of pauses, she said, ‘Oh, you mean that Gorini man?’

‘Yes. Have you done anything about contacting him?’

‘Only indirectly. As it turns out, a friend of mine, Nuria Santo, has been going to him for months, and she says she’d be happy to introduce me to him. She’s convinced he saved her husband.’

‘Oh, how?’ Brunetti inquired, speaking in his mildest voice and allowing signs of only the most modest curiosity.

‘Something about his cholesterol. She said it doesn’t make any sense: Piero eats like a bird, never eats cheese, doesn’t like meat, but his bad cholesterol – I think there’s a bad one and a good one . . .’ The Contessa paused and then added, ‘Isn’t it strange that nature should be so Manichaean?’ Brunetti ignored the remark, told himself to be patient