Then he called Griffoni on her telefonino. She had already heard about Cavanis, and Brunetti spent some time telling her about the circumstances of his death and the conversation with the men in the bar. He explained that he’d requested the information from the television station and asked if she’d be willing to spend a few hours the next day watching the programmes with him: she might notice something he did not.
‘Local television?’ she asked. ‘An entire evening of it?’ She breathed heavily a few times and then said, ‘All right, I’ll do it, but I expect your first grandchild to be named Claudia.’ Then, voice suddenly serious, she asked, ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes, one thing. I’d like you to go and see Manuela’s mother tomorrow and ask if she knew about the sexual violence.’
‘If she didn’t open the report, then she didn’t know,’ Griffoni said, surprising Brunetti by how certain she sounded.
‘The doctors might have told her.’
‘In that case, she would have told you.’
‘Perhaps. Or maybe she hoped that if it didn’t get talked about, then it hadn’t happened.’ Brunetti had seen stranger behaviour when parents discovered things they did not want to know about their children.
He gave her as much time as she needed to think about this. He looked out of the window and then at his watch: in a week, it would be even darker at this time, and nothing would improve until springtime.
‘All right,’ Griffoni conceded, choosing not to argue the point with him, ‘I’ll talk to her.’ Before he could inquire, she added, ‘Before movie-time.’
He thanked her and hung up and then, because he had been on the phone, dialled Rizzardi’s number. The pathologist answered with his name.
‘It’s me, Ettore,’ Brunetti said. He stopped there, not sure how to ask the doctor if he had done his job.
‘As I said, the body is a miracle. Signor Cavanis was proof. He was fifty-four years old, according to his carta d’identità. But according to his body, the state it was in, he was at least fifteen years older. He had advanced cirrhosis: I don’t know how much longer he would have lived or could have lived. But I don’t know, either, how he lived as long as he did. Because of the cirrhosis, blood vessels had grown around his oesophagus, so there was much more bleeding.’
He paused after this, and Brunetti heard a page turning.
‘The knife was an ordinary kitchen knife,’ the pathologist went on. ‘Bocchese has it now to check for fingerprints. He asked me to tell you they’ll have them within two days and will run them through the system to see if anyone turns up, but he has to send it out for DNA tests.’ Rizzardi paused, but Brunetti knew better than to question Bocchese’s work rhythms.
‘The person who used it was right-handed,’ Rizzardi continued, ‘at least the same height as his victim, definitely standing behind him, and was strong enough to drive the blade through the oesophagus. He was stabbed only once and, because of the cirrhosis, more blood vessels were present and enlarged, so the damage was greater. My best guess is that he died some time on Sunday evening.’
Then, changing tack, he added, ‘He would have survived no more than a few minutes. He had so much alcohol in his urine – he’d been dead too long for me to get an accurate reading from his blood – that he might not even have been fully conscious of what was happening.’
‘Thanks, Ettore,’ was all Brunetti could think of to say before he replaced the phone. Suddenly overcome by the awareness of how much of his day he had spent in the company of death, he left the Questura and went home.
Paola had told him that the kids would be out that evening, so Brunetti stayed in the kitchen and told her about the events of the day as she baked slices of melanzane in the oven, then fried them with onions and tomatoes to make sauce. He’d told her he wasn’t very hungry when he came in, but as he sat and drank a glass of Gewürztraminer and watched her cook, he felt his appetite sharpen, and he suggested she add a second aubergine.
Seeing that it would be some time before dinner was ready, Brunetti said he’d like to go and lie down on the sofa and read for a while, sure in the knowledge that Paola, whose religion was books, would find this a fine and proper thing to do.
He went into the bedroom and retrieved Apollonius of Rhodes, abandoned on his bedside table. What better companions for the darkening evening hours than Jason and the Argonauts? They’d always seemed like pals from liceo to Brunetti: no one too serious, no one too adult, all of them out in search of adventure. Before he got to their adventures, however, Brunetti had to read through the expansive genealogies of the characters, major and minor, as well as of the gods and goddesses – the usual cast, the usual weaknesses.
When the genealogies were finished, the women began to wish the soldiers on their way but paused long enough to lament with Jason’s mother. And then he read it, ‘Would that the dark wave, where the maiden Helle perished . . .’ He stopped reading and stared straight ahead. Another drowning girl. His reflections were interrupted by Paola, who came to the door to say that dinner was ready.