him a few coins for his trouble. Pampolini had told him to forget everything that had taken place that evening. The dredger shrugged; you got used to all sorts, working on the river. Before he left, he admitted that the grazes on the girl’s body had happened when he heaved her into the boat. He regretted his clumsiness, he said, then he disappeared into the night.
‘That was quick thinking,’ I said, ‘to buy his silence.’
Pampolini chuckled. ‘I even surprise myself sometimes.’
‘Sardigna, though. What a terrible place to end up.’
‘You know it?’
‘Yes.’
He walked round the table. ‘We don’t have any idea who she is, or how she died. She might have been murdered – that’s what the dredger thought – but there’s no evidence of violence. She might have killed herself. It might even have been an accident – though there’s the small matter of the missing clothes …
‘It’s a shame about the clothes, actually. They would have told us a lot.’
‘Maybe that’s why they were taken,’ I said.
‘In any case, no one’s enquired about her yet.’ He bent down and studied the fingers of her right hand. ‘I have the feeling she’s a foreigner. I’m not sure why.’
‘But apart from the grazes, there are no marks on her?’
‘Now you come to mention it …’ Pampolini turned the girl’s body on to its side, and I saw patches of indigo across her thighs and the small of the back where the blood had pooled. ‘Lift the hair away from her neck.’
I did as he asked. Her hair was unusually heavy, perhaps because it was still wet. It felt eerie in my fingers.
‘See it?’ Pampolini said.
At the top of the girl’s spine, above the first cervical, the head of a dog had been carved into her skin. Judging by the pointed muzzle and the jagged rows of teeth, the person responsible had had a particular breed in mind.
‘It’s not an injury, is it?’ I said. ‘I mean, it doesn’t look like something that happened accidentally.’
‘No,’ Pampolini said.
‘Can you tell how long it’s been there?’
‘The wound’s still bleeding, and there’s no sign of inflammation. It looks recent.’
‘So it could have been done after she was dead?’
Pampolini looked at me. ‘Or just before.’
In that moment, a revelation flashed across the inside of my brain. Ever since that drink with Jack Towne, I had been aware of the need to build something ambiguous into the commission. I’d had no idea how to go about it, though. Now, for the first time, I thought I saw a way forwards. If I were to incorporate the dog’s head, I would be creating a piece of work which, depending on what Towne called one’s ‘angle of approach’, could be viewed on at least two different levels.
‘Have you ever seen anything like this before?’ I was trying to keep the excitement out of my voice.
Pampolini shook his head.
I let go of the girl’s hair and walked away from the table. ‘A dog …’
There was a sudden retching sound. Turning, I saw Earhole bent over a stone sink at the back of the room. I looked at Pampolini. ‘He’s not squeamish, is he?’
‘It’s not that,’ Pampolini said. ‘He was mauled by a dog when he was a baby. That’s how he lost his ear.’
He lowered the body on to the slab and stood back, rubbing the palm of one hand slowly against the other, then he fetched a bottle and two glasses, poured large measures, and handed one of the glasses to me. I downed the contents in a single gulp. An oily fire spread through my belly.
‘Quite fitting, really,’ Pampolini said. ‘It was an omen of the plague, wasn’t it, the constellation of the dog?’
‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘There’s no evidence of disease, though, is there?’
‘None.’ He looked down into his empty glass. ‘So – are you interested?’
‘How long’s she been dead?’
‘I told you what the dredger said. She was warm when he found her. And there’s no stiffening in the eyelids yet, or in the fingers. I don’t think she’s been dead for more than about three hours.’
‘All the same, there’s no time to lose.’
He said he could have the body delivered to my workshop immediately.
‘On this occasion, though,’ he added, ‘since these aren’t what you might call normal circumstances, I might need a little reimbursement.’
I looked at him steadily. ‘How much?’
He mentioned a price.
‘That’s a bit steep,’ I said.
He yawned, his jawbone cracking. ‘But then again, she’s exactly what you’re looking for, isn’t she? Just think how