The Golden Egg

17





Brunetti didn’t know whether to laugh or to turn away from the young man. He had certainly deceived witnesses during his own career, but he had seldom been this good at it, though he wasn’t sure that was the adjective to describe what he had seen Pucetti do. The young man had a genius for deceit, the way another person had a gift for music or golf or knitting. The comparisons left him uncomfortable, if only because those other pursuits were neutral, whereas deceit was not. If this deceit led to an understanding of the circumstances of Signora Cavanella’s son’s death, it would surely help, and thus it was good. Oh, how very Jesuitical he had become.

He looked at the unlined face of the young officer and wondered where Dante would put him. Among the Evil Counsellors? The Evil Impersonators? Was Pucetti to be enveloped in a tongue of flame or preyed upon and rent to pieces by others like him?

Rizzardi saved him from the need to comment by saying, ‘You had me convinced.’ Then he added, ‘I saw you together this morning, and you were very good to her then.’

Pucetti looked at the floor, pressed his lips together, and said, ‘I’m not sure I like being able to do it, Dottore.’ He raised his eyes to watch a white-coated woman doctor approach and pass them by, then looked at Rizzardi. ‘Most people want so much to believe in what others say that it makes it too easy.’ Then, earnestly, ‘I’m not just saying this, you know. I really don’t like that it’s so easy.’ He paused, then added, ‘And it’s not easy to do it with her. He was her only child.’

Listening to Pucetti say this, Brunetti realized how much he wanted to believe him. His thoughts turned to Paola, as deceitful and duplicitous a person as one could hope to find, yet who remained one of the only truly honest people he had ever known.

Rizzardi interrupted. ‘I’ve got to get back. I’ll let you pick over this poor woman’s bones.’ Leaving them with that, he turned and walked away.

Brunetti and Pucetti continued towards the exit. Pucetti took this opportunity to tell Brunetti that the parocco had told him he had been at the parish only six months and had never heard of Signora Cavanella. At the front door, they looked out across the campo. The rain had stopped and the sky was clearing, so Brunetti would not need the umbrella. He realized then that he had left it somewhere, either at the entrance to Pronto Soccorso or in Signora Cavanella’s room, or in the bar. Where did they go, he wondered, all of those umbrellas he had forgotten on trains, in boats, in offices and stores during all of these decades?

He walked out into the cooler air: autumn had arrived. ‘Tell me what happened this morning,’ he asked Pucetti. Standing there, feeling the refreshed air, seeing the clouds scuttle west, he had no desire to return to the Questura. He started towards the bridge, heading for home and pulling Pucetti in his wake.

As they walked in front of the school, Pucetti caught up with him and began to explain what had happened. He had arrived on time at Signora Cavanella’s home and been careful to be formal and polite, nothing more. But at the second bridge, when she paused before starting up it, he slipped his arm under hers, careful to release it when they reached the other side. Because she had decided to walk, there were many more bridges, and by the time they got to the last one, the one in front of the hospital that he and Brunetti had just crossed, the habit was established that he would help her cross them.

It was she who asked Rizzardi if the young officer could come into the morgue with her, and it was Pucetti who held her arm and kept her from falling when Rizzardi pulled back the sheet that covered her son’s face.

Later, he had helped her fill in the forms and had all but sequestered an ambulance to take her home. Brunetti was curious about the reasons for Pucetti’s behaviour, but he didn’t know how to phrase the question. Without being asked, the young man said, just as they came out into Campo San Bortolo, ‘At first, I thought it would be a good idea to win her confidence any way I could, but I ended up feeling sorry for her, Commissario. His death’s destroyed her. No one can fake that.’

Brunetti stopped beneath the statue of the ever-dapper Goldoni; he resisted the impulse to point out to Pucetti that he himself had faked a strong emotion, and quite convincingly. Instead, he told the young man he had done well and could call it a day if he wished. But Pucetti decided he’d go back to the Questura. Brunetti raised a hand in an informal farewell and turned right towards home.

*

The next morning, Brunetti made a special point of arriving at the Questura on time, not that anyone paid any particular attention to when he got there. He had called the hospital from home just after eight and spoken to the nurse in charge of Ana Cavanella’s ward. The signora had passed a quiet night; the doctor who examined her had decided to keep her one more day and night before sending her home. The nurse did not know if she had had any visitors, only that another woman had been moved into her room.

Signorina Elettra was in her office, standing at the cabinet beside the door, slipping a file back into place. Seeing her wearing cashmere – a rusty orange cardigan – after the long pause of the summer, Brunetti had confirmation that autumn had arrived.

‘Ah, Commissario, come and I shall tell you mysterious things.’

He followed her back to her desk. Instead of turning on her computer, she pulled out the small chiavetta protruding from the side. ‘Shall we use your computer, Signore?’ she asked. A quick glance showed him that Patta’s door was open, suggesting that he had not yet arrived. Yes, better that Patta’s day should not begin with the sight of him in confabulation with Signorina Elettra and her computer.

Upstairs, he left it to her to insert the chiavetta and turn on the computer while he hung his raincoat and scarf in the cupboard. ‘Please,’ he called over to her; she sat in his chair and ran an affectionate hand over the keys of the computer she had procured for him a year ago. He did not want to know what she had done in order to achieve that, nor how many police offices in Bari were without basic equipment because he had this top-of-the-line computer that was the envy of the younger staff and a source of witless pride to himself. To have somehow had the Ministry of the Interior buy him a Maserati would have been no greater example of conspicuous, and wasted, consumption.

From her smile, it was evident how much she appreciated the machine she was using, which caused him, not for the first time, to wonder why she had had it consigned to him and not to herself. He walked to the desk and pulled one of the guest’s chairs around behind it.

‘Look,’ she said, pointing to the screen. He recognized the double-faced document he saw before him: front and back cover and then the inside pages of a carta d’identità, issued six years before by the Comune di Venezia. The woman’s age was given as 53, birthplace Venice, and residence the address in San Polo. Her civil status was ‘nubile’, not ‘sposata’, and her profession ‘casalinga’, a housewife or woman who kept house. She received the minimum state pension.

Signorina Elettra hit a key, and the identity card was replaced by a report from Ulss that gave the woman’s name and the same address, and the name of the doctor who had her under his care. His address was in San Polo, as well.

Another key, and Brunetti saw the list of and reasons for her medical visits as well as the diagnoses and prescriptions that resulted from them, at least for the last seventeen years, since the records began to be computerized. Running his eye down them, he saw that she was another of those people who would, as was said of his mother for most of her life, put the doctors out of business. She had visited the doctor six times in the last twelve years, twice for influenza, once for a bladder infection, and twice to get a referral for her Pap test. A year ago, she had received a prescription for a common sleeping pill.

‘And the son?’ Brunetti asked.

She shook her head. ‘Nothing. He doesn’t exist. He wasn’t born, didn’t go to school, never saw a doctor or went to the hospital.’ She glanced up at him and said, ‘It’s the same thing Pucetti found. Or didn’t find.’

She typed in ‘Davide Cavanella’, and the screen showed the name on a document and, across from it, rows of XXXXXXXXXs in place of information. He was never arrested, or issued a hunting or a driver’s licence, had no passport, no carta d’identitá, never worked for the state or paid into a pension. Nor did he receive a disability allowance. Then, as an afterthought or to show that she had checked every possible category, Signorina Elettra went back to the previous screen and tapped at the listing: ‘No carer’s allowance for the mother.’

In a country filled with fake blind people, with others collecting the pensions of relatives who had died a decade before, of people declared to be 100 per cent incapacitated who played golf and tennis, here was a genuinely disabled person who had never made any claim on the state.

‘Nothing?’ he asked, certain that she had looked in other places and not bothered to tell him.

‘Nothing. For all the official evidence there is, he does not exist and never has.’

For some time, they sat quietly, looking at the screen. She pushed another key, and it went blank, as if in illustration of Davide Cavanella’s life: Brunetti considered the gesture melodramatic, but he kept this opinion to himself.

‘And Lucrezia Lembo?’ he asked for want of any other possibility.

Signora Elettra’s hands returned to the keyboard, and she brought up the files and highlighted one of them. She opened it to show another carta d’identità with a black and white photo of a woman of a certain age looking severely at the camera, as if suspicious of its intentions. Her eyes were light, which suggested that her dark colouring was the result of sun rather than nature, and she appeared to be wearing little or no makeup, so it was impossible

to disguise those wary eyes and a tightly closed mouth. He looked at the inner pages, where he read her date of birth: two years before Ana Cavanella, her parents resident in Dorsoduro. Her height was given as 1.74 metres, her civil state as ‘sposata’, her hair ‘bionda’, her current profession ‘Direttrice’, which, without an indication of what it was she was the director of, could mean just about anything.

‘What else?’ he asked.

Silently, she showed him Lucrezia Lembo’s health records for the last fifteen years, which made heavy reading. She had developed diabetes in her fifties, yet apparently kept it under control with pills; she had been hospitalized twice with pneumonia, and according to her doctor’s notes, continued to smoke heavily, which the same doctor noted as a factor exacerbating not only the pneumonia, but the diabetes. There was little evidence that she had yearly tests of any sort: she had apparently never had a PAP test or a mammogram, though her doctor’s notes were filled with recommendations that she do so.

She took Avandia for her diabetes, Tavor for anxiety, Zoloft for depression, and in the past had been given Antabuse, a drug he knew was given to alcoholics that made them violently ill if they consumed any alcohol. That prescription had been filled once six years ago, then four years ago, but not since then. Brunetti cast his eye down a long list of the medicines which had been prescribed to her with some regularity and noticed a number of common antibiotics; the others were unfamiliar to him.

She had a passport and over the years had always kept it renewed. There was no indication of where she went with it.

Three years before, she had started to receive a state pension, having worked for twenty-seven years as the Director of Products of Lembo Minerals.

‘What does Lembo Minerals do?’ he asked.

‘They extract ore – chiefly copper – from mines all over the world and ship it to factories in other countries.’

‘That’s all?’

‘In essence, yes,’ Signorina Elettra said. ‘At least, from the public information available.’

‘Then what would their products be?’

‘Large and small pieces of earth, I’d guess, with quantities of metal stuck in or to them.’

‘She was Director of Products,’ he said, pointing to the words on the form displayed on the screen.

‘It was her father’s company,’ Signorina Elettra suggested.

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning we should be glad he gave her a job and she paid taxes and contributed to her pension. Otherwise, he could just have handed it to her, and that was that, and no taxes paid on it.’

‘I hadn’t thought of it that way,’ Brunetti admitted.

Ignoring that, or pretending to, she said, ‘Look at this.’ She hit a few keys, and the screen exploded in colour. When his eyes adjusted to the change, he saw that he was looking at the cover of a Spanish scandal magazine. The photo showed a Junoesque woman in a bikini she really should not have dared to wear, not any more, with one hand raised to shield her perma-tanned face from the sun. The background was the standard turquoise-floored swimming pool, palm trees everywhere. Beside the pool, a gloriously handsome young man in equally skimpy bathing attire he could wear with panache handed a cigarette to the woman while another much younger couple in thick white cotton beach robes perched, knees pressed together, on the edge of dazzling white plastic chairs, doing their best to look as though they had no idea who those other two people were.

The Spanish caption was easy enough to translate into: ‘Lucrezia, the Princess of Copper, and her new companion, enjoy themselves at the home of friends in Ibiza.’ Signorina Elettra flicked the pages with a touch of a key: Brunetti was impressed by the way they turned as if in response to the motions of a human hand. The magazine opened to two inner pages containing further photos of all four people. The page on the left had more bathing suit photos, a very unfortunate one of Lucrezia Lembo from the back, not only because of the sad sagging that had begun to assail the flesh at the top of her thighs, but for the sight of the young man’s hand slipped under the elastic of her bikini bottom. The captions on the opposite page explained that the two white-clad young people – who remained fully covered in every picture in which they appeared – were her son and daughter, Loredano and Letizia.

‘They seem to like the letter,’ Signorina Elettra said.

Ignoring this and pointing at the screen, Brunetti asked, ‘How many years ago was this?’

She flicked the screen back to the magazine cover and let him read: twelve years before. Lucrezia would have been fifty, with a face that appeared to have been kept behind for a decade or so. Her children looked in their late teens, so they’d be approaching or in their early thirties now.

‘The young man?’ he asked.

‘Her husband, you mean,’ Signorina Elettra said, and Brunetti felt a wave of pathos sweep across him, as if he’d heard of the illness or death of a friend.

Not wanting Signorina Elettra to accuse him of judging people rashly, nor of that equal crime of throwing his compassion around with too liberal a hand, he said nothing, but he did take another look at the face and posture of the young man. His body bristled with confidence: was there a desire that had not been answered? Was there something he still longed to have?

Brunetti forced himself to look away from the photo, troubled that his feelings against this unknown man could be so unreasonably strong. He told himself to stop behaving like a teenage Sir Galahad and said, ‘What about the other sister, or sisters?’

‘There were three altogether,’ she answered. ‘Lavinia and Lorenza, and Lucrezia.’

‘They were stretching a bit with Lorenza,’ Brunetti said, relieved to have so easily rediscovered his ironic tone.

‘As it happens, she died.’

‘What happened?’

‘According to the reports I read, she drowned in their swimming pool,’ Signorina Elettra answered. Brunetti’s memory fled to the first photo.

‘Where?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘not there.’ Then quickly, ‘I should have explained. They had a ranch in Chile, some kind of finca, it sounds like, and she was found there.’ Before he could ask, she said, ‘Eight years ago.’ Then, soberly, ‘She was the baby of the family, only twenty when it happened.’

Brunetti had been busy working out the dates and, when he had finished, he asked, ‘Same mother?’

‘No. He left the first one after thirty-four years and set up a household with – are you ready? – the physical therapist who took care of him after he broke his shoulder in a skiing accident. Lorenza was their daughter.’

‘How old was he?’

‘When he left?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sixty.’

It was a common enough story and certainly none of his business. It had usually happened to his friends when they were about forty: all Lembo had done was wait a generation. ‘He died last year, didn’t he?’ Brunetti asked. He had a vague memory of reading about his death, but what he remembered most was his surprise that the newspapers would engage in so much hand-wringing over the death of another dinosaur.

‘Yes. They were here, but not living in the palazzo.’

‘Where? They?’

‘He was living on the Giudecca. Not with the physical therapist: she left him after the daughter died. He had a companion and people who came to clean and cook. He wasn’t married to the companion.’

Brunetti had the strange sensation that he had just played another round of the backward plot game with his family. Wealthy blonde marries gigolo young enough to be her son. Wealthy man unable to produce a male heir, leaves wife for younger woman, only to have another daughter. Daughter dies. ‘And the other daughter? Lavinia?’

Signorina Elettra made no move towards the keys. ‘She studied abroad and lives abroad. She’s fifty-one now.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Ireland. Teaching mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin.’ Before he could ask, she said, ‘She’s been to her classes this week.’

Brunetti felt relief pass over him at this suggestion that one of the daughters had turned out well. He returned his attention to Lucrezia and asked, ‘Could you go back and show me the name of her doctor again?’

‘Whose?’ she asked, surprised.

‘Signora Cavanella’s.’

She quickly brought up the medical records, and he wrote down the name, address, and phone number of the doctor. The name seemed familiar, Luca Proni. Hadn’t he been at school with Umberto Proni? Surely there could not be more than one family in the city with that name.

He pulled out his phone and dialled the number of the doctor’s office. A recorded message told him the doctor’s office hours were 9–13 and 16–19, Monday to Friday. For emergencies, patients could reach him on his telefonino. Brunetti was astonished to hear such a message from a family doctor, and even more so when it was followed by the number. He wrote down the number and immediately dialled it.

After three rings, a deep voice answered with, ‘Proni.’

‘Dottor Proni,’ Brunetti said, deciding not to waste time and not to deceive. ‘This is Guido Brunetti. I was at school with Umberto.’

‘You’re the one who became a policeman, aren’t you?’ he asked in an entirely neutral voice.

‘Yes.’

‘Umberto’s often spoken of you.’ From the way he said it, there was no way of gauging what Umberto might have said.

‘Spoken well, I hope,’ Brunetti said lightly, trying to remember anything Umberto might have told him, all those years ago, about his older brother. Nothing came.

‘Always.’ Then, ‘How may I help you, Commissario?’

‘You’re listed as Ana Cavanella’s doctor.’

There was a brief hesitation. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘Then you’ve been told, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked. He was her doctor, so the hospital would have called him.

‘About what?’ Proni asked in a voice somewhere between curiosity and concern, but nowhere near alarm.

‘Signora Cavanella’s in the hospital.’

‘What?’ the doctor asked.

‘I’m sorry, Dottore. I thought they would have called you.’

‘No. What happened?’

‘She was found over on the Zattere yesterday. She told the man who found her that she’d fallen down.’ Brunetti spoke neutrally, merely repeating a piece of information. When Proni said nothing, Brunetti continued, ‘She may have a concussion, two fingers are crushed, and her face is badly bruised. But the doctor who examined her says she’s not in any danger.’ Proni still said nothing.

‘I’d like to speak to you,’ Brunetti added.

‘You realize I’m her doctor,’ he said, this time using that fact to construct a barrier to information.

‘I understand that, Dottore.’ Brunetti abandoned any idea of asking about Davide: all he wanted was the chance to talk to Proni directly. ‘I know what it means in terms of your professional responsibility.’

‘But still you want to talk to me?’

Brunetti decided to tell him the truth. ‘Yes, I do. There are things about her I don’t understand. And about her son.’

‘You mean his death?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was an accident,’ Proni said.

‘I believe that, Dottore. But I’d like to understand how it was possible.’

‘This sounds like nothing more than personal curiosity, Commissario.’

Brunetti let out a small puff of air, exasperated at how transparent he had become. ‘I suppose it is.’

‘In that case, I’ll speak to you,’ Proni surprised him by saying.

Brunetti glanced at his watch. ‘I could be at your office in twenty minutes, Dottore.’

‘All right.’ Brunetti heard the click of the phone as the doctor replaced it.





18





Brunetti went to the window, leaned out and saw Foa on the fondamenta, talking to the guard at the door. Brunetti called the pilot’s name and shouted down that he had to go over to San Polo; Foa raised an arm in assent. As he went down the stairs, Brunetti was conscious of the dim view Chiara would take of his crossing the entire city in a police boat when he could just as easily have used public transportation, even though the Number Two would take more than twenty minutes to get him there. ‘People have to learn to wait,’ was her current mantra.

He stepped on to the boat, ignoring the pilot’s outstretched hand. Foa turned the key, revved the motor, and pulled them away from the dock towards the bacino. ‘Last days for standing around outside, I’m afraid, sir,’ the pilot said amiably.

‘For the likes of me, it certainly is,’ Brunetti said. ‘Until the first sign of springtime, I’ll leave being out in the weather to you.’

Foa heard the friendliness and smiled. ‘I called a couple of people I know, sir. About the Lembo family, like you asked me to. To see what else I could learn.’

‘Very good,’ Brunetti said. ‘What did they have to

tell you?’

‘Well, sir,’ Foa said, turning right in a broad sweep that would take them up the Grand Canal, ‘It’s una famiglia sfigata.’ It was the language of the streets, but from the little Brunetti had heard, it did sound as if the whole family was screwed.

‘What did they tell you?’

‘Well, there’s the daughter that died. In Brazil, I think. There’s another one in Ireland or some place like that, but it seems she turned out all right. And then there’s the one who had the kids, Lucrezia.’ He gave a little puff of exasperation with the name. ‘Who’d do that to a kid, give her a name like that?’

‘She named her own children Loredano and Letizia.’

Foa made another exasperated noise. ‘I suppose that was to keep in good with her parents. From what my friends said, they ran a tight ship.’ Then, after a moment’s reflection, Foa said, ‘Though a couple of them said it was the mother. A real tiger. And a religious one at that.’

‘What does that mean?’ Brunetti looked up to the top of the bell tower of San Giorgio just at the instant when the angel chose to shift in the wind and wave his wings at Brunetti.

‘She was a friend of the Patriarch, always wore a black veil when she went to Mass, the worst sort of basabanchi.’ Then, after a pause, ‘Got it from her family, I’m told.’

Brunetti smiled, in love with his own language. He’d seen them as a boy, those veiled women in black, bending forward as if to kiss the top of the pew in front of them. Baciare il banco. Only the dialect of anti-clerical – proudly, historically anti-clerical – Venice could transform the word, and the act, and the idea, with such acid contempt. Basabanchi.

‘The mother had a nun living in the palazzo and governesses to turn the girls into ladies. Her father – the mother’s father, that is, so the girls’ grandfather – had some sort of title, but it was one that the Savoias gave him, so it was really just a piece of shit.’

Well, there’s a bit of vox pop to tell Paola about, Brunetti reflected. He hoped she would pass the remark on to her father: because his own title was several centuries older, he was sure to appreciate it. Foa paused and looked aside at Brunetti, who nodded in agreement. ‘This is all gossip, sir,’ the pilot went on. ‘You know what it’s like when people sit around in the bars and talk about other people.’

‘Who aren’t there to defend themselves?’ Brunetti asked with a laugh. He did not add that it also helped if the person under discussion was rich or successful, or both.

‘Exactly. Besides, it sounds as if the family always – well, the grandfather, they told me – was always quick to go to law with everyone, and no one likes that. Cross him in a deal, try to buy a property he wanted, and you’d find six lawyers at breakfast the next morning. I asked my father, and he said he never heard a good word about him.’

Brunetti stopped himself from observing that the list of the people about whom he himself had never heard a good word was longer than Leporello’s list of Don Giovanni’s conquests, but, instead, he asked, ‘Did you ever meet any of the daughters?’

‘Me, no. But my best friend Gregorio told me he had an affair with Lucrezia. A long time ago, before they were married. Wasn’t anything important, really.’ Brunetti did not have to strain to understand that they did not marry one another. ‘Gregorio always thought she did it to spite her mother.’

‘What sort of reputation did she have?’ Brunetti asked. ‘When she was a girl, that is.’

‘Oh, you know what it’s like, Signore,’ Foa said and cut to the left and into Rio de la Madoneta. ‘Once a woman goes with a man, everyone’s going to say he’s had her, too.’ Brunetti put this nugget in a side pocket in his memory to pull out the next time someone spoke to him of human progress.

Then, as if to make up for what he had said, Foa added, ‘Gregorio said she was a nice girl. They remained friends for a long time.’

‘But not now?’

‘Not on your life, sir. He married a girl from Giudecca, and she keeps him on a short lead. If she found out he even telephoned another woman, she’d have the cross up in the garden, and she’d send him out to get the nails.’

‘Would he go?’

‘I’m afraid so, sir.’ Foa brought the boat to a smooth stop on the right side of the canal.

‘No need to wait for me, Foa,’ Brunetti said.

‘Thank you, sir. I’ll have a coffee and go back to the Questura. If you change your mind, call me and I’ll

come get you.’

Brunetti said he would, though he trembled at the thought of Chiara’s reaction should she learn that he had had a boat travel twice all the way across the city, and the second time when there was no urgency. She’d probably send him out for the nails, too.

He had checked the address in Calli, Campielli e Canali, and so found it easily, an undistinguished building with a dark green double door. The doctor’s name was on one of the bells, and the door opened soon after Brunetti rang. The entrance hall smelled of damp; no surprise after the previous day’s rain. At the very end of the hallway, facing the entrance, a door stood open. Brunetti entered and found the standard chair-lined walls of a doctor’s waiting room, though here the chairs were separate, wooden, antique, and beautiful. More surprisingly, the walls displayed, not the usual sentimental portraits of dogs and children, but three fine-lined drawings that drew his eye. At first, he thought they were surreal cityscapes, with abstract towers and cupolas, until closer examination showed that it was his eyes, and not the lines, that created the illusion of a city. The lines were so close together that the background of the drawing seemed grey: Brunetti wondered what technique the artist

had used to put them so flawlessly close, for nowhere did one line touch another.

Brunetti took his reading glasses from his pocket and put them on, the better to study these magical lines that drew the gaze of the viewer with the force of an electromagnet. The second drawing suggested a beach, though here again it was the viewer who imposed this reality on the drawing, where the varied spaces between horizontal lines of different widths and lengths suggested the variation in surface and texture between sand and sea.

The third had to be the facades of the buildings on the eastern side of Campo San Polo, but only a Venetian would see that, just as only a Venetian would recognize Palazzo Soranzo and Palazzo Maffetti-Tiepolo. Or perhaps not. When Brunetti stepped back from the drawing, the distance transformed it into mere lines, closely drawn but utterly abstract and devoid of meaning. He swept his eyes along the three drawings and was very relieved to see that they were covered with glass. Then he moved closer to the third one again, and the magic repeated itself: the palazzi materialized among the lines. Enough to move back forty centimetres, and again they dissolved.

‘Commissario?’ a man’s voice said behind him.

He turned, removed his reading glasses, and saw a short, thickset man a decade younger than himself. Though the doctor wore glasses, Brunetti saw that one eye was slightly larger than the other, or angled differently in his face. Yet when he looked for similar imperfection in his mouth, he found it was perfectly proportioned. He searched for a resemblance to Umberto and found it in the general squareness of the face: ears tight to the head, jawbone prominent and almost as wide as the cheekbones.

Brunetti extended his hand. ‘Thank you for letting me come,’ he said. He had learned, when greeting people who had agreed to speak to him, to say only that and to say nothing at first that would remind them that he was there to ask them questions. He returned his glasses to his pocket.

‘Do you like the drawings?’ the doctor asked.

‘More than that, I’d say.’ Brunetti turned back to them and, from this distance, saw that all three had turned into entirely different images. ‘Where did you get them?’

‘Here,’ Proni said. ‘A local artist.’ Then he turned, saying, ‘Perhaps we’d be more comfortable in my office.’

He held the door open for Brunetti, who passed through what must be the nurse’s reception room and then into the doctor’s, in which there was a desk that held a computer and a small bouquet of orange tulips. Two more of the antique chairs stood in front of the desk, and Brunetti went over to one of them, leaving the doctor to take his seat behind the desk. Being questioned by the police was so alien an experience for most people that it was best to make the circumstances as comfortable and close to normal as possible.

Brunetti sat and glanced around the room. The windows were heavily barred, standard practice in any doctor’s office where drugs might be, or be thought to be. A glass-doored cabinet between the windows, its shelves stacked with unruly piles of boxes of medicine, was exactly what addicts hoped to see: cocktail time. Brunetti was pleased to see another of the drawings on the wall opposite the windows. Had he not seen those in the waiting room, Brunetti would have taken it for an abstract watercolour in different tones of grey, but he now realized that the colour resulted from the closeness of the lines: there could not be a millimetre between them.

Proni called back Brunetti’s attention by saying, ‘I called the hospital and spoke to the doctor in charge of her ward. He says he wants to keep her there for at least another day. The concussion is very slight, but they want to be careful.’

‘Did she tell him what happened?’ Brunetti asked, though he was certain he knew what the answer would be.

‘Just what she told the man who found her: she fell down the steps.’ After saying that, Proni kept his eyes on Brunetti’s.

‘Let’s hope that’s what happened,’ was his response.

‘What does that mean, Commissario?’

‘Exactly what I said, Dottore: I hope that’s what happened.’

‘Instead of?’

‘Instead of an attempt to harm her.’

‘Who would want to do that?’ the Doctor asked, seeming honestly puzzled.

Brunetti allowed himself a small smile. ‘You’d have a better idea of that than I would, Dottore.’

Proni was immediately indignant. ‘If I might repeat myself, what does that mean?’

Brunetti held up one hand and gave a soft answer, to turn away wrath. ‘You’re her doctor, so you’d know more about her life than I do. All I know is that she is the mother of a man who died, Davide Cavanello.’ He knew more than that, but little of it was of substance, and none of any help.

‘What sort of thing do you expect me to know, Commissario?’ Proni asked, careful to use the polite form of address.

Brunetti responded with equal formality. ‘I’d like to know anything you can tell me about the relationship between Signora Cavanella and her son.’

‘She was his mother.’

Try as he might, Brunetti found no sarcasm there, so he responded quite naturally. ‘Was she a good mother?’

Proni’s face remained unchanged. ‘That’s an entirely subjective judgement, one I’m not qualified to make.’ There was no apology in his voice, only explanation. ‘She took care of his physical needs to the best of her ability, if that’s the sort of information you’re looking for.’

It wasn’t, but it was still information Brunetti had not had before and was glad to have. He did, however, find it interesting that the doctor specified physical needs and did not describe her ability.

Brunetti had no intention of telling him that he had seen Ana Cavanella’s medical records: no doctor should know how easily they were available to anyone skilled enough to look for them. ‘Could you give me a general idea of her health?’

The doctor’s eyes contracted, as if he had been awaiting a question about the son and not the mother. He appeared to give the question some thought and then answered, ‘I’d say that, for a woman of her age, she’s healthy. She doesn’t smoke and never has, drinks moderately – not even that – and to the best of my knowledge has never taken drugs.’

‘Did you prescribe the sleeping pills, Dottore?’

This question could not have surprised him, yet the doctor failed to disguise his nervousness in answering it. He pulled his eyes away from Brunetti’s and looked at the drawing on the far wall, then said, eyes still on the drawing, ‘Yes, I did.’

‘You seem troubled by the question, Dottore. Why is that?’

‘Because I don’t like being in any way responsible for Davide’s death.’ He looked at Brunetti as he said this.

Brunetti shook his head. His failure to understand was not feigned. ‘That’s too hard a judgement, don’t you think, Dottore?’

‘It’s hard, but it’s not too hard,’ Proni said. ‘She had never needed them before: she’s always been a patient who takes very few medicines. I should have told her to try drinking something hot before she went to bed, or going for a walk in the evening.’ He scratched idly at a point just above the middle of his glasses and then rubbed the tips of his fingers up and down his forehead. ‘I should have thought.’

‘Thought what?’

‘That they come in bright colours and have a slick, sweet covering, like candies. They would be very appealing to someone of Davide’s mental age.’ He scratched again. ‘But I didn’t. I just wrote her the prescription.’

‘What was his mental age?’ Brunetti asked.

Proni shot him a glance, as though he’d invited him into his home and found him ruffling through the drawers. ‘I have no idea.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said mildly. Then, ‘Did you ever treat him as a patient, Dottore?’

‘Do I have to answer this question?’

‘It would save a lot of time.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘That, eventually – but only by our going through channels and getting an order from a magistrate and spending days of work – yes, you can be required to answer that question.’

Proni pushed his chair back from the desk: its legs made an ugly, scraping sound on the tile floor. He rubbed at his forehead again. ‘I went to their home once when he had flu and another time when he had terrible diarrhoea. The first time all I could do was to tell her to keep him in bed and warm and see that he drank lots of liquids. The second time I wrote a prescription. I don’t remember what I prescribed: this was years ago.’

‘Was this done officially?’

‘What do you mean?’ Proni asked, obviously confused.

‘Was the prescription written for him?’

‘Of course it was written for him. He was the one who was sick.’

‘I’m sorry, Dottore. I wasn’t clear enough. Was the prescription written in his name?’

Proni stared at Brunetti as though he had suddenly noticed smoke coming from his ears. ‘I told you this was years ago, Commissario. I don’t remember what I prescribed and I don’t remember whom I prescribed it for. He had symptoms, I wrote a prescription, and that was that.’

There was nothing to lose in being truthful, Brunetti thought. ‘Dottore, I see your irritation, and I think I understand it.’ Embarrassed by having no tool left but honesty, he went on. ‘I saw him for years. He worked in the dry cleaner’s where my wife and I take our clothes. And I’d see him on the street sometimes. He always looked so . . . I don’t know the right word. Vulnerable, perhaps.’ He paused, but Proni said nothing. Some inner sense of propriety or decency kept Brunetti from inventing a lie similar to Pucetti’s and telling the doctor that his son had known and played soccer with Davide.

‘What was wrong with him, Dottore?’ Before Proni could answer, he said, ‘I don’t care if you saw him other times or treated him for other things. I just want to know that: what was wrong with him?’

Proni leaned forward and said, ‘He was born to a stupid woman. He was born to a woman who saw whatever was wrong with him as a curse from God, as though she were living in a hut in a forest and believed in witches. Like most Christians, she knew everything about guilt and nothing about charity, so she kept it hidden – remember, it was a curse – and made no attempt to get him trained or taught, and God knows how she raised him. That’s why he looked so vulnerable: that’s why he seemed so lost and alien.’

‘Did she tell you this, Dottore?’

Proni’s face flushed, because of either the story he was telling or the fact that Brunetti should question it. His mouth tightened and the difference between his eyes grew more marked. ‘She didn’t have to tell me, Commissario,’ he added in a calmer voice. ‘It was implicit in the way she treated him and in everything she said about him.’

Abruptly, Proni got to his feet. ‘That’s all I have to say, Commissario.’

Brunetti stood and leaned over the desk to offer his hand. Proni did not hesitate to take it.

‘Let him rest in peace,’ the doctor said. ‘He had so little of it when he was alive.’

Sensing that there was nothing to be gained by asking anything else, Brunetti turned towards the door. In the waiting room, he paused and nodded at the three drawings, which had changed again to suit the greater distance from which he was seeing them. ‘You said he’s a local artist,’ Brunetti said, pointing at the drawings. ‘Would I recognize his name?’

‘Probably,’ Proni said with a smile that shaved years off his face.

‘What is it?’ Brunetti asked, thinking he was being asked to do so.

‘Davide Cavanella,’ Proni said, moving past him. ‘That should explain my anger at his mother.’ He held the door open, and Brunetti left.