A Venetian Reckoning Part 1

A Venetian reckoning.

by DONNA LEON.

Questo e il fin di chi fa mal!

E de' perfidi la morte alia vita e sempre ugual.

This is the end of evildoers.

The death of the perfidious Is always the same as their lives.

Don Giovanni Mozart'DaPonte Mozart'DaPonte

1.

On the last Tuesday in September, snow fell for the first time in the mountains separating northern Italy from Austria, more than a month before it could ordinarily be expected. The storm arrived suddenly, carried by fat clouds that swept in from nowhere and with no warning. Within a half-hour the roads of the pa.s.s above Tarvisio were slick and deadly. No rain had fallen for a month, and so the first snow lay upon roads already covered with a glistening layer of oil and grease.

The combination proved deadly to a sixteen-wheeled truck bearing Romanian licence plates and carrying a cargo manifest for 90 cubic metres of pine boards. Just north of Tarvisio, on a curve that led down to the entrance to the autostrada and thus into the warmer, safer roads of Italy, the driver braked too hard on a curve and lost control of the immense vehicle, which plunged off the road moving at 50 kilometres an hour. The wheels gouged out huge trenches in the not yet frozen earth, while the body of the truck cannoned off trees, snapping them and hurling them about in a long swath that led to the bottom of the gully, where the truck finally smacked into the rock face of a mountain, smas.h.i.+ng open and scattering its cargo in a wide arc.

The first men on the scene, drivers of other heavy transport trucks who stopped without thinking to help one of their own, went first to the cabin of the truck, but there was no hope for the driver, who hung in his seat-belt, half suspended from the cabin, one side of his head battered in by the branch that had ripped off the driver's door as the truck careered down the slope. The driver of a load of pigs being brought down to Italy for slaughter climbed over what remained of the hood of the truck, peering through the shattered windscreen to see if there was another driver. The other seat was empty, and so the searchers who had by then gathered began to look for the other driver, thrown free of the truck.

Four drivers of trucks of varying sizes began to stumble down the hill, leaving a fifth up on the road to set out warning flares and use his radio to summon the polizia stradale. polizia stradale. Snow still fell heavily, so it was some time before one of them spotted the twisted body that could be seen a third of the way down the slope. Two of them ran towards it, they too hoping that at least one of the drivers had survived the accident. Snow still fell heavily, so it was some time before one of them spotted the twisted body that could be seen a third of the way down the slope. Two of them ran towards it, they too hoping that at least one of the drivers had survived the accident.

Slipping, occasionally falling to their knees in their haste, the men struggled in the snow the truck had crashed through so effortlessly. The first man knelt beside the motionless form and began to brush at the thin layer of white that covered the supine figure, hoping to find him still breathing. But then his fingers caught in the long hair, and when he brushed the snow away from the face, he exposed the unmistakably delicate bones of a woman.

He heard another driver cry out from below him. Turning in the still-falling snow, he looked back and saw the other man kneeling over something that lay a few metres to the left of the scar torn by the truck as it plunged down the hill.

'What is it?' he called, placing his fingers softly against her neck to feel for life in the oddly positioned figure.

'It's a woman,' the second one cried. And then, just as he felt the absolute stillness of the throat of the form below him, the other called up to him, 'She's dead.'

Later, the first driver to explore behind the truck said that he thought, when he first saw them, that the truck must have been carrying a cargo of mannequins: you know, those plastic women they dress up and put in the windows of shops. There they were, at least a half-dozen of them, lying scattered over the snow behind the shattered rear doors of the truck. One even seemed to have got caught in the lumber that had been tossed about inside the truck and lay there, half hanging from the back platform, legs pinned down by stacks of boards so securely wrapped that the impact of the truck against the mountain had not been sufficient to break them open. But why would mannequins be dressed in overcoats, he remembered wondering. And why that red in the snow all around them?

2.

It took the polizia stradale polizia stradale more than half an hour to respond to the call and, when they finally arrived at the scene of the accident, they were forced to set out flares and deal with the kilometre-long rows of traffic that had backed up on both sides of the accident as drivers, already made cautious by road conditions, slowed even more to gape down through the wide hole in the metal railing, down to where the body of the truck lay. Among the other bodies. more than half an hour to respond to the call and, when they finally arrived at the scene of the accident, they were forced to set out flares and deal with the kilometre-long rows of traffic that had backed up on both sides of the accident as drivers, already made cautious by road conditions, slowed even more to gape down through the wide hole in the metal railing, down to where the body of the truck lay. Among the other bodies.

As soon as the first officer, unable to understand what the truck drivers shouted to him, saw the broken forms around the wreckage of the truck, he climbed back up the hill and put in a radio call to the carabinieri station in Tarvisio. His call was answered quickly, and soon the traffic was worsened by the arrival of two cars carrying six black-uniformed carabinieri. They left their cars parked on the shoulder of the highway and lurched down the slope towards the truck. When they found that the woman whose legs were pinned under the boards inside the truck was still alive, the carabinieri abandoned any interest they might have had in the traffic.

There followed a scene so confused that it might have been comic, had it not been so grotesque. The piles of lumber pinning the woman's legs to the bottom of the truck were at least two metres high: they could easily be moved with a crane, but no crane could get down the slope. Men could s.h.i.+ft them, surely, but to do so they would have to climb up and walk over them, adding to the weight.

The youngest of the officers crouched at the back of the truck, s.h.i.+vering in the bitter cold of the descending Alpine night. His regulation down parka lay tucked around the visible portion of the body of the woman pinned to the floor of the truck. Her legs disappeared at the thighs, straight into a solid pile of wood, as though the subject of a particularly whimsical Magritte.

He could see that she was young and blonde, but he could also see that she had grown visibly paler since his arrival. She lay on her side, cheek pressed down on the corrugated floor of the truck. Her eyes were closed, but she seemed still to breathe.

From behind him, he heard the sharp sound of something heavy falling on to the floor of the truck. The other five, ant-like, crawled up the sides of the pile, pulling, shoving at the neat packages of wooden beams, working them loose from the top. Each time they tossed one to the floor of the truck, they jumped down after it, picked it up, and heaved it out of the open back, pa.s.sing the girl and young Monelli as they did.

Each time they walked past Monelli, they could see that the puddle of blood seeping out from under the boards was closer to his knees. Still they tore at the beams, ripping their hands open on them, gone temporarily mad with the need to break the girl free. Even after Monelli pulled his jacket over the girl's face and got to his feet, two of them continued to rip boards from the pile and hurl them out into the growing darkness. They did this until their sergeant went to each of them in turn and placed his hands on their shoulders, telling their bodies that they could stop now. They grew calm then and returned to the routine investigation of the scene. By the time they finished that and called back down to Tarvisio for ambulances to carry the dead away, more snow had fallen, full night had come, and traffic was effectively tied up all the way back to the Austrian border.

Nothing more could be done until the following day, but the carabinieri were careful to post two guards, knowing the fascination the locus of death exerts over many people and afraid that evidence would be destroyed or stolen if the wreck were left unattended through the night.

As so often happens at that time of year, the next morning dawned rosy-fingered, and by ten the snow was no more than a memory. But the wrecked truck remained, as did the deep scars leading down to it During the day, it was emptied, the wood stacked in low piles in an area well clear of the wreckage. As the carabinieri worked, grumbling at the weight, the splinters, and the mud that churned under their boots, a forensics team began a careful investigation of the truck's cab, dusting surfaces and supping all papers and objects into clearly labelled and numbered plastic bags.

The driver's seat had been ripped from its frame by the force of the final impact; the two men working in the cab loosened it further and then peeled back its plastic and cloth cover, looking for something they did not find. Nor did they find anything in any way suspicious behind the plastic panelling of the cabin.

It was only in the back of the truck that anything at all unusual was found: eight plastic bags, the sort given by supermarkets, each holding a change of women's clothing and, in one case, a small prayer book printed in what one of the technicians identified as Romanian. All of the labels had been removed from the clothing in the bags, as turned out to be true of the clothing worn by the eight women killed in the crash.

The papers found in the truck were no more than what should have been there: the driver's pa.s.sport and licence, insurance forms, customs papers, bills of lading, and an invoice giving the name of the lumberyard to which the wood was to be delivered. The driver's papers were Romanian, the customs papers were in order, and the s.h.i.+pment was on its way to a woodmill in Sacile, a small city about a hundred kilometres to the south.

Nothing more was to be learned from the wreckage of the truck, which was finally, with great difficulty and with enormous disruption of traffic, hauled up to the roadside by winches attached to three tow-trucks. There, it was lifted on to a flatbed truck and sent back to its owner in Romania. The wood was eventually delivered to the woodmill in Sacile, which refused to pay the extra charges imposed.

The strange death of the women was picked up by the Austrian and Italian press, where stories about them appeared in articles variously entided, 'Der lodeslaster' and 'Camion della Morte'. Somehow, the Austrians had managed to get hold of three photos of the bodies lying in the snow and printed them with the story. Speculation was rife: economic refugees? illegal workers? The collapse of Communism had removed what would once have been the almost certain conclusion: spies. In the end, the mystery was never resolved, and the investigation died somewhere amidst the failure of the Romanian authorities to answer questions or return papers and the Italians' fading interest The women's bodies, as well as that of the driver, were returned by plane to Bucharest, where they were buried under the earth of their native land and under the even greater weight of its bureaucracy.

Their story quickly disappeared from the press, driven off by the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in Milan and the murder of yet another judge. It did not disappear, however, before it was read by Professoressa Paola Falier, a.s.sistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Ca' Pesaro in Venice and, not incidentally to this story, wife of Guido Brunetti, Commissario of Police in that city.

3.

Carlo Trevisan, Avvocato Carlo Trevisan, to give him the t.i.tle he preferred to hear used when people spoke of him, was a man of very ordinary past, which in no way impinged upon the fact that he was a man of limitless future. A native of Trento, a city near the Italian border with Austria, he had gone to Padua to study law, which he did brilliantly, graduating with the highest honours and the united praise of his professors. From there, he accepted a position in a law office in Venice, where he soon became an expert on international law, one of the few men in the city to interest himself in such matters. After only five years, he left that firm and set up his own office, specializing in corporate and international law.

Italy is a country where many laws are pa.s.sed one day, only to be repealed the next Nor is it strange that, in a country where the point of even the simplest newspaper story is often impossible to decipher, there sometimes exists a measure of confusion as to the exact meaning of the law. The resulting fluidity of interpretation creates a climate most propitious to lawyers, who claim the ability to understand the law. Among these, then, Avvocato Carlo Trevisan.

Because he was born industrious and ambitious, Avvocato Trevisan prospered. Because he married well, the daughter of a banker, he was put in familial and familiar contact with many of the most successful and powerful industrialists and bankers of the Veneto. His practice expanded along with his waistline, until, the year he turned fifty, Avvocato Trevisan had seven lawyers working in his office, none of them a partner in the firm. He attended weekly Ma.s.s at Santa Maria del Giglio, had twice served with distinction on the City Council of Venice, and had two children, a boy and a girl, bom bright and both beautiful.

On the Tuesday before the feast of La Madonna delta Salute in late November, Avvocato Trevisan spent the afternoon in Padua, asked there by Francesco Urbani, a client of his who had recently decided to ask his wife of twenty-seven years for a separation. During the two hours the men spent together, Trevisan suggested that Urbani move certain monies out of the country, perhaps to Luxemburg, and that he immediately sell his share of the two factories in Verona which he held in silent partners.h.i.+p with another man. The proceeds from those transactions, Trevisan suggested, might well follow the others quickly out of the country.

After the meeting, which he had arranged to coincide with his next appointment, Trevisan met for a weekly dinner with a business a.s.sociate. They had met in Venice the previous week, so tonigjht they met in Padua. Like all of their meetings, this one was marked by the cordiality that results from success and prosperity. Good food, good wine, and good news.

Trevisan's partner drove him to the railway station where, as he did every week, he caught the Intercity for Trieste, which would get him to Venice by 10.15. Though he held a ticket for the fust-cla.s.s section, which was at the back of the train, Trevisan walked through the almost empty carriages and took a seat in a second-cla.s.s compartment: like all Venetians, he sat at the front of the train so as not to have to walk the length of the long platform when the train finally pulled into the Santa Lucia station.

He opened the calfskin briefcase on the seat opposite him and pulled from it a prospectus recently sent to him by the National Bank of Luxemburg, one offering interests as high as 18 per cent, though not for accounts in Italian lira. He slid a small calculator from its slot in the upper lid of the briefcase, uncapped his Montblanc, and began to make rough calculations on a sheet of paper.

The door of his compartment rolled back, and Trevisan turned away to take his ticket from his overcoat pocket and hand it to the conductor. But the person who stood there had come to collect something other than his ticket from Avvocato Carlo Trevisan.

The body was discovered by the conductor, Cristina Merli, while the train was crossing the laguna laguna that separates Venice from Mestre. As she walked past the compartment in which the well-dressed gentleman lay slumped against the window, she first decided not to bother him by waking him to check his ticket, but then she remembered how often ticketless pa.s.sengers, even well-dressed ones, would feign sleep on this short trip across the that separates Venice from Mestre. As she walked past the compartment in which the well-dressed gentleman lay slumped against the window, she first decided not to bother him by waking him to check his ticket, but then she remembered how often ticketless pa.s.sengers, even well-dressed ones, would feign sleep on this short trip across the laguna, laguna, hoping this way not to be disturbed as they stole their 1000-lira ride. Besides, if he had a ticket, he'd be glad to be awakened before the train pulled in, especially if he had to catch the No. 1 boat to Rialto, which left the hoping this way not to be disturbed as they stole their 1000-lira ride. Besides, if he had a ticket, he'd be glad to be awakened before the train pulled in, especially if he had to catch the No. 1 boat to Rialto, which left the embarcadero embarcadero in front of the station exactly three minutes after the train arrived. in front of the station exactly three minutes after the train arrived.

She rolled the door open and stepped into the small compartment. 'Buona sera, signore. s...o...b..glietto, per favore! 'Buona sera, signore. s...o...b..glietto, per favore!

Later, when she talked about it, she thought she remembered the smell, remembered noticing it as soon as she sfid back the door of the overheated compartment. She took two steps towards the sleeping man and raised her voice to repeat, 's...o...b..glietto, per favore! 's...o...b..glietto, per favore! So deeply asleep, he didn't hear her? Not possible: he must be without a ticket and now trying to avoid the inevitable fine. Over the course of her years on the trains, Cristina Merli had come almost to enjoy this moment: asking them for identification and then writing out the ticket, collecting the fine. So, too, did she delight in the variety of the excuses that were offered to her, all by now grown so familiar that she could recite them in her sleep: I must have lost it; the train was just pulling out, and I didn't want to miss it; my wife's in another compartment and she has the tickets. So deeply asleep, he didn't hear her? Not possible: he must be without a ticket and now trying to avoid the inevitable fine. Over the course of her years on the trains, Cristina Merli had come almost to enjoy this moment: asking them for identification and then writing out the ticket, collecting the fine. So, too, did she delight in the variety of the excuses that were offered to her, all by now grown so familiar that she could recite them in her sleep: I must have lost it; the train was just pulling out, and I didn't want to miss it; my wife's in another compartment and she has the tickets.

Conscious of all of this, knowing she would now be delayed, right at the end of the long trip from Torino, she was sudden in her gestures, perhaps even harsh.

'Please, signore, wake up and show me your ticket,' she said, leaning down over him and shaking his shoulder. At the first touch of her hand, the man in the seat leaned slowly away from the window, toppled over on to the seat, and slid to the floor. As he fell, his jacket slid open and she saw the red stains that covered the front of his s.h.i.+rt. The smell of urine and excrement rose up unmistakably from his body.

'Maria Vergine,' she gasped and backed very slowly out of the compartment, to her left, she saw two men coming towards her, pa.s.sengers moving towards the door at the front of the train. I'm sorry, gentlemen, but that door at the front is blocked: you'll have to use the one behind you.' Used to this, they turned and walked back towards the rear of the carriage. She glanced out of the window and saw that the train was almost at the end of the causeway. Three, perhaps four minutes remained until the train drew to a stop in the station. When it did, the doors would open and the pa.s.sengers would get out, taking with them whatever memories they might have of the trip and of people they had seen in the corridors of the long train. She heard the familiar clicks and bangs as the train was shunted to the proper track and the nose of the train slid under the roof of the station.

She had worked for the railway for fifteen years and had never known it to happen, but she did the only thing she could think of doing: she stepped into the next compartment and reached up to the handle of the emergency brake. She pulled at it and heard the tiny 'pop' as the tattered string broke apart, and then she waited, not without a distant, almost academic curiosity, to see what would happen.

4.

The wheels locked and the train slid to a halt; pa.s.sengers were knocked to the floor of the corridors and into the laps of strangers sitting opposite them. Within seconds, windows were yanked down and heads popped out, searching up and down the track for whatever it was that had caused the train to grind to a stop. Cristina Merli lowered the window in the corridor, glad of the biting winter air, and stuck her head out, waiting to see who would come towards the train. It turned out to be two of the uniformed polizia ferrovia polizia ferrovia who came running up the platform. She leaned out from the window and waved at them. 'Here, over here.' Because she didn't want anyone except the police to hear what she had to tell them, she said nothing more until they were directly underneath her window. who came running up the platform. She leaned out from the window and waved at them. 'Here, over here.' Because she didn't want anyone except the police to hear what she had to tell them, she said nothing more until they were directly underneath her window.

When she told them; one of them broke away and ran back towards the station; the other moved towards the engine to tell the engineer what was going on. Slowly, with two false starts, the train began to crawl into the station, inching its way up the track until it came to a halt at its usual place on track 5. A few people stood on the platform, waiting for pa.s.sengers to get down from the train or to climb aboard themselves for the late-night trip to Trieste. When the doors didn't open, they mulled together, asking one another what was wrong. One woman, a.s.suming that this was yet another train strike, threw her hands into the air and her suitcase to the ground. As the pa.s.sengers stood there, talking and growing irritated at the unexplained delay, yet another proof of the inefficiency of the railways, six police officers, each carrying a machine-gun, appeared at the front of the platform and walked along the train, positioning themselves at every second car. More heads appeared at the windows, men shouted down angrily, but no one listened to anything that was said. The doors of the train remained locked.

After long minutes of this, someone told the sergeant in charge of the officers that the train had a public-address system. The sergeant pulled himself up into the engine and began to explain to the pa.s.sengers that a crime had been committed on the train and they were being held there in the station until the police could take their names and addresses.

When he finished speaking, the engineer unlocked the doors and the police swung themselves aboard. Unfortunately, no one had thought to explain anything to the people waiting on the platform, who consequently crowded on to the train, where they quickly became confused with the original pa.s.sengers. Two men in the second carriage tried to push past the officer in the corridor, insisting that they had seen nothing, knew nothing, and were already late. He stopped them by raising his machine-gun across his chest in front of them, effectively blocking off the corridor and forcing them into a compartment, where they grumbled about police arrogance and their rights as citizens.

In the end, there proved to be only thirty-four people on the train, excluding those who had crowded on behind the police. After half an hour, the police got their names and addresses and asked if they had seen anything strange on the train. Two people remembered a black pedlar who got off at Vicenza; one said he'd seen a man with long hair and a beard coming out of the toilet before they pulled into Verona, and someone had seen a woman in a fur hat get off at Mestre, but aside from that, no one had noticed anything at all out of the ordinary.

Just as it began to look as though the train would be there all night and people were beginning to straggle off to telephone relatives in Trieste to tell them not to expect their arrival, an engine backed its way into the far end of the track and attached itself to the rear of the train, suddenly converting it into the front. Three blue-uniformed mechanics crawled under the train and detached the last carriage, the one in which the body still lay, from the rest of the train. A conductor ran along the platform, yelling 'In partenza, in partenza, siamo in partenza', partenza, in partenza, siamo in partenza', and pa.s.sengers scrambled back up into the train. The conduttore slammed a door, then another one, and pulled himself up on to the train just as it started to move slowly out of the station. And Cristina Merli stood in the office of the Station Master, attempting to explain why she should not be subject to a fine of 1 million lire for having pulled the train's alarm. and pa.s.sengers scrambled back up into the train. The conduttore slammed a door, then another one, and pulled himself up on to the train just as it started to move slowly out of the station. And Cristina Merli stood in the office of the Station Master, attempting to explain why she should not be subject to a fine of 1 million lire for having pulled the train's alarm.

5.

Guido Brunetti did not learn of the murder of Avvocato Carlo Trevisan until the following morning, and he learned of it in a most unpolicemanlike manner, from the shouting headlines of II Gazzettino, II Gazzettino, the same newspaper that had twice applauded Avvocato Trevisan's tenure as city counsellor. 'Avvocato a.s.sa.s.sinato sul Treno,' the headline cried, while the same newspaper that had twice applauded Avvocato Trevisan's tenure as city counsellor. 'Avvocato a.s.sa.s.sinato sul Treno,' the headline cried, while La Nuova, La Nuova, ever drawn to melodrama, spoke of 'Il Treno della Morte'. Brunetti saw the headlines while on his way to work, stopped and bought both papers, and stood in the Ruga Orefici to read both articles while early-morning shoppers pa.s.sed by him unnoticed. The article gave the barest facts: shot to death on the train, body found as it crossed the ever drawn to melodrama, spoke of 'Il Treno della Morte'. Brunetti saw the headlines while on his way to work, stopped and bought both papers, and stood in the Ruga Orefici to read both articles while early-morning shoppers pa.s.sed by him unnoticed. The article gave the barest facts: shot to death on the train, body found as it crossed the laguna, laguna, police conducting the usual investigation. police conducting the usual investigation.

Brunetti looked up and allowed his eyes to wander sightlessly across the banked stalls of fruit and vegetables. The 'usual investigation'? Who had been on duty last night? Why hadn't he been called? And if he hadn't been called, which one of his colleagues had been?

He turned away from the news-stand and continued walking toward the Questura, calling to mind the various cases on which they were working at the moment, trying to calculate who would be given this one. Brunetti was himself almost at the end of an investigation that had to do, in Venice's minor way; with the enormous spider web of bribery and corruption that had been radiating out from Milan for the last few years. Super highways had been built on the mainland, one to connect the city with the airport, and billions of fire had been spent to build dm It was not until after construction was completed that anyone had troubled to consider that the airport, one with fewer than a hundred daily flights, was already well served by road, public buses, taxis, and boats. It was only then that anyone thought to question the enormous expenditure of public monies on a road that no stretch of the imagination could view as being in any way necessary. Hence Brunetti's involvement and hence the warrants that had gone out for both - the arrest and the freezing of the a.s.sets of the owner of the construction firm that had done the major portion of the work on the road and of the three members of the City Council who had fought most vociferously for his being awarded the contract.

Another commissario was busy with the Casino where, yet once again, the croupiers had found a way to beat the system and skim off a percentage. The other was involved with an on-going investigation of Mafia-controlled businesses in Mestre, an mvestigation that appeared to have no limits and, alas, no end.

And so it was no surprise for Brunetti to arrive at the Questura and be greeted by the guards at the front door with the news, 'He wants to see you.' If Vice-Questore Patta wanted to see him this early, then perhaps Patta had been called last night and not one of the commissari. And if Patta was sufficiently interested in the death to be here this early, then Trevisan was more important or more powerfully connected than Brunetti had realized.

He went up to his own office and hung up his coat, then checked his desk. There was nothing on it that hadn't been there when he left the night before, which meant that any papers already generated by the case were down in Patta's office. He went down the back steps and into the Vice-Questore's outer office. Behind her desk, looking as though she were there only to meet the photographers from Vogue, Vogue, sat Signorina Elettra Zorzi, today arrayed as were the lilies of the field, in a white crepe-de-Chine dress that fell in diagonal, but decidedly provocative, folds across her bosom. sat Signorina Elettra Zorzi, today arrayed as were the lilies of the field, in a white crepe-de-Chine dress that fell in diagonal, but decidedly provocative, folds across her bosom.

'Buon giomo, commissariat she said, looking up from the magazine open on her desk and smiling. she said, looking up from the magazine open on her desk and smiling.

'Trevisan?' Brunetti asked.

She nodded. 'He's been on the phone for the last ten minutes. The Mayor.' 'Who called whom?'

'The Mayor called him,' Signorina Elettra answered. 'Why, does it matter?'

'Yes, it probably means we have nothing to go on.' 'Why?'

'If he called the Mayor, it would mean he was sure enough about something to a.s.sure him that we had a suspect or would soon have a confession. That the Mayor called him means Trevisan was important and they want it settled fast.'

Signorina Elettra closed her magazine and moved it to the side of the desk. When she had first started working for Patta, Brunetti remembered, she used to put them in the drawer when she wasn't reading them; now she didn't even bother to torn them face down.

'What time did he get here?' Brunetti asked.

'Eight-thirty.' Then, before Brunetti asked, she told him, 'I was already here, and I told him you'd been in and had gone out to see if you could talk to the Leonardis' maid.' He had spoken to the woman the afternoon before as part of his investigation of the builder, spoken to her and learned nothing.

'Grazie!' he said. Brunetti had more dun once reflected upon the strangeness of the fact that a woman with Signorina Elettra's natural indention towards the duplicitous should have chosen to work for the police. he said. Brunetti had more dun once reflected upon the strangeness of the fact that a woman with Signorina Elettra's natural indention towards the duplicitous should have chosen to work for the police.

She glanced down at her desk and saw that a red light on her phone had ceased to bank. 'He's finished talking,' she said.

Brunetti nodded and turned away. He knocked on Patta's door, waited for the shouted Viwmtt", and went into the office.

Though the Vice-Questore had arrived early, he had apparently had ample time to perform his toilette: the scent of some pungent aftershave hung in the air, and Patta's handsome face glowed. His tie was wool, His suit silk; no slave to tradition, the Vice-Questore. 'Where have you been?' was Patta's greeting 'At the Leonardis'. I thought I could talk to their maid.' 'And?'

'She knows nothing.'

'That doesn't matter,' Patta said, then gestured to the chair in front of his desk. 'Sit down, Brunetti.' When he was seated, Patta asked, 'Have you heard about this?'

It was not necessary to ask him what 'this' was. 'Yes,' Brunetti answered. 'What happened?'

'Someone shot him on the train from Torino last night. Twice, at very close range. Body shots. One must have severed an artery, there was so much blood.' If Patta said 'must have', that meant the autopsy hadn't been done yet, and he was only guessing.

'Where were you last night?' Patta asked, almost as if he wanted to eliminate Brunetti as a suspect before going any further.