‘Then let’s get something to eat before we begin watching television,’ he said. He wasn’t sure if she was surprised or relieved by his suggestion, saw only that she got to her feet immediately and started towards the door.
While they ate tramezzini at the bar down at the bridge, Brunetti told Griffoni what he’d been told by Rizzardi and the little that had been in an email from Bocchese, sent in advance of the final report: ‘None of the fingerprints on the knife matches anything on file; the angle of entry suggests the blow was delivered by a person about the same height as the victim, who was 1.75; two more knives like it in the kitchen; lots of DNA traces, but that will take some time to sort out.’
‘Do you remember if the doors were double-locked when you went in?’
‘No, they weren’t, but they lock automatically, so I still needed the keys to open them both. Whoever it was either had the keys, or Cavanis let him in.’
‘And our men?’ she asked.
‘Vianello sent Pucetti and Romani to go door to door to see if anyone noticed anything, but you know the chances of that,’ he said.
When Griffoni made no comment, Brunetti sat back and held up his hand. First finger: ‘He had keys or Cavanis let him in.’ Second finger: ‘There was no sign that the apartment had been searched, and I saw that his wallet was still in his back pocket: so we can forget about theft.’ Again, Griffoni made no comment, so Brunetti concluded by saying, raising his third finger, ‘Either he went there to talk to him and things got out of control, or he went there to kill Cavanis. In that case, he’d take a weapon, I think.’
‘Sounds like impulse to me,’ Griffoni said.
‘There was bread and cheese on a table near the television,’ Brunetti said. ‘But no knife.’
‘Voilà,’ Griffoni said, but with no sense of pleasure at the fact.
‘You’re willing to accept that it was a man?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Women don’t use knives,’ Griffoni answered, reciting it as though she were Euclid listing another axiom.
Although he agreed with her, Brunetti was curious about the basis for her belief. ‘You offering proof of that?’
‘Kitchens,’ she said laconically.
‘Kitchens?’
‘The knives are kept in the kitchen, and their husbands pass through there every day, countless times, yet very few of them get stabbed. That’s because women don’t use knives, and they don’t stab people.’
Brunetti toyed with the idea of trying to work this up into a syllogism, but instead he said, ‘Shall we go back and look at those programmes?’
Because they had no idea of what they might be looking for, Griffoni and Brunetti had no choice but to watch it all and watch it carefully, even the rerun of The Robe, a religious costume meatball that pitted Victor Mature and Richard Burton against Caligula, a fight they were doomed to lose.
Brunetti remembered having seen the film on their old black and white television when he was still a boy, with his father sitting behind him, hooting and laughing at the story and making loud fun of the false piety of the actors while his mother repeatedly asked him to stop mocking her religion. The scene, the one in real life, had ended in tears, and Brunetti had not been able to watch the end of the film.
He watched it now, stony-faced, appalled by the terrible sentimentality, worse acting, and historical nonsense but unable to join in Griffoni’s laughter for fear of betraying his mother’s memory.
When the last saccharine scene had played itself out, followed by the first in a series of commercials, Griffoni buried her face in her hands and wailed, ‘And I thought that was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen the first time I watched it.’
Brunetti leaned forward and stopped his computer, relieved to see the screen grow black. Signorina Elettra had joined them silently to watch the film and had betrayed her presence only by a series of muffled giggles. Into the silence that followed the darkening of the screen, she said, ‘I’ve never been asked to authorize extra pay for life-threatening service, but I think we all deserve it.’
They talked for a while, then decided to watch one more hour of the programmes before going home. They watched the news, and he saw the vaguely remembered story about the fire in an apartment in Santa Croce. He glanced aside and saw Griffoni shoving back the sleeve of her jacket to see what time it was. ‘Only until the end of the news, then I’ll buy you both a drink,’ he said.
Griffoni turned and smiled. Signorina Elettra did not, for tedium had turned her into a pillar of salt. Next came the strike of the vaporetto ticket sellers, and then the newly clean-shaven Vittori-Ricciardi described his project, and then it was over and they were free for the day.
It came upon Brunetti to spread his hands and tell them, ‘Go in peace’, but he resisted the temptation and contented himself with renewing his offer of a drink.
20