It was well after four when he reached the Questura. On the second landing he met Signorina Elettra coming down. When she stopped above him, he asked, ‘Has he told you?’
‘No. Nothing,’ she said, her curiosity evident.
‘He’s going to request an order to open an investigation,’ Brunetti told her.
She leaned back against the railing. Brunetti, only just recovering from his own experience leaning out the window of his apartment building, involuntarily put a hand on her arm.
‘What is it?’ she asked, unable to hide her surprise. She didn’t exactly pull her arm away but she did free herself from his grasp.
‘Sorry. It makes me nervous when anyone leans against a railing like that.’ He braced both hands on the railing and extended his head over the void. He estimated the metres: eleven? twelve? Surely enough.
Signorina Elettra stepped away from the railing and moved up one step. She shifted to the other side and turned to lean against the wall. ‘Is that better?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Much. Thank you.’
‘Not a pleasant feeling to have if you work on the third floor,’ she said.
Brunetti shrugged. ‘I always walk close to the wall; then it doesn’t bother me so much.’
She nodded, acknowledging the good sense of this. ‘You were saying?’ she asked in an ordinary voice.
‘The Vice-Questore thinks we should take a closer look at what happened,’ he said.
‘And he’s going to have you do the looking?’
It made him uncomfortable to hear Signorina Elettra hold so close to the truth. ‘There are certain social advantages that are to be had from this.’
‘How lucky that Contessa Lando-Continui is so well known. Would you like me to be involved in this investigation?’ she asked, conveniently ignoring the fact that she already was.
‘Of course.’ Whatever would prompt such a question, he wondered. From her? ‘You know how to deal with the Vice-Questore should his enthusiasm begin to waver or should he begin to offer . . . ?’
‘Resistance?’ she suggested.
‘Once again, you follow my thoughts exactly, Signorina.’
‘The duty of every woman, Dottore,’ she answered.
He smiled, relieved that they had so easily slipped back into easy banter. He continued up the steps, suddenly aware that what he had said was true: he did stay close to the wall.
Nothing on his desk needed his attention, so he took his phone and called the number he had listed for Leonardo Gamma Fede.
‘How’d you know I was back home?’ Lolo said when he answered.
‘Remember, I’m a commissario di polizia,’ Brunetti said and added what he hoped sounded like a wicked laugh. ‘You’re never safe from us.’
‘Don’t say it, even as a joke,’ Lolo said, not as a joke.
‘Trouble?’
‘Nothing I’m not used to,’ Lolo answered ambiguously, then asked, ‘You free for a drink before dinner?’
‘That’s why I called.’
‘Good.’ Then, ‘You at work?’
‘Yes.’
Silently, they shared geographic calculation as both tried to think of a conveniently located bar somewhere between them where they could sit and have a drink and be left in peace.
‘There’s a place in Campo San Filippo e Giacomo,’ Brunetti said.
‘The one on the corner?’
‘Yes. I’ll see you there in half an hour.’
‘Good,’ Lolo agreed and hung up.
Left with time to kill, Brunetti read reports until the tedium drove him to the window to study the traffic in the canal below his window. A heavy-bodied transport boat went slowly past, forcing a caorlina to hug the side of the narrow canal until they passed one another; a taxi cruised by, passengers invisible in the cabin; two men in white rowed a sàndolo towards the entrance to the bacino.
There had been a time in his life when Brunetti’s hands were calloused over by the months he’d spent rowing in the laguna. It was the only thing his father had ever taught him, taking him out in his puparìn from the time his son was seven years old. Brunetti still remembered the joy of feeling his father’s body bent over his, his rough hands on top of his as he showed him just where to put them on the oar.