Less than twenty-four hours later, however, Cavanis was lying dead on the floor of his apartment. Brunetti had little faith in coincidence, especially regarding a man who claimed he was going to change his luck and suddenly have lots of money. If there was any truth in what he had said to dalla Lana, he had made no attempt to pursue it, at least not that night and not with his telefonino. And then he had been murdered. ‘Is there a public phone anywhere near his home?’ he surprised Signorina Elettra by asking.
She and Vianello were silent, and Brunetti watched their faces as they tried to picture the calli and campi in that area of Santa Croce. After a moment Vianello said, ‘They’re almost all gone, aren’t they?’
Signorina Elettra held up her hand in a waiter-hailing gesture. ‘Telecom must have a map of where their phones still are,’ she said, looking at her computer as though it were the taxi she had hailed and she were impatient to climb into it.
‘And then what?’ Brunetti asked.
‘If I find a map, I’ll send one of the uniformed men to get the serial numbers of the phones. With that, it should be easy to find the numbers called from the phones.’
‘Ah,’ Brunetti whispered, then ‘find’, as though he were marvelling at some archaic magical formula.
He returned his thoughts to the call that Cavanis might not have wanted to make on his telefonino, but it was impossible to enter into the alcoholic mind. Perhaps not reaching the number he wanted had jolted Cavanis into momentary sobriety. Or by the morning he might have realized that he should not use his own phone for the call he wanted to make.
‘We’ll leave you to look for the map,’ Brunetti said, having thought of another possibility.
Before they could leave, however, Signorina Elettra said, ‘I found the name of Manuela’s family doctor in the medical report you left with me, but he retired soon after the incident and died about five years ago.’ Another dead end. Brunetti thanked her, and they left. Outside, they separated, Brunetti to go down to talk to Bocchese, and Vianello back to the squad room.
When Brunetti reached the laboratory where Bocchese worked, he knocked on the door, didn’t bother to wait, and entered. The technician looked up, then returned his attention to a telefonino that he appeared to be in the process of reassembling.
‘Is that Cavanis’?’ Brunetti said before he could stop himself.
‘No,’ Bocchese answered, then added, ‘You can have his phone now.’
Feeling some satisfaction at being able to tell him, Brunetti said, ‘We’ve already got the numbers he called.’
The technician nodded in approval and said, ‘She’s good,’ then picked up a small screwdriver and placed the tip inside the exposed viscera of the phone. He turned it, removed it, put the tip back inside and turned it again. The phone rang, a normal ring like the one made by most landlines. The technician pushed a key, and the noise stopped.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Fixing the ring signal,’ Bocchese said.
‘Isn’t there an easier way to do that?’ Brunetti, a techno Neanderthal, asked.
‘Yes. But I dropped it and it wouldn’t work. So the only thing to do was fix it by re-establishing the contacts.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said, quite as if he understood what Bocchese meant. He counted six long beats before he said, ‘Have you finished with the things from Cavanis’ apartment?’
‘About an hour ago,’ Bocchese said, tapping a number into the keyboard of his phone.
An instant later, Brunetti’s phone rang, and he reached into his pocket to answer it but removed his hand when he saw Bocchese’s face.
‘Very funny. Very funny,’ Brunetti said in a sour voice, unwilling to reveal his amusement at Bocchese’s trick. ‘Can I have a look?’
Bocchese pointed with his chin towards a table at the back of the lab, its surface covered with many small items. ‘Be my guest,’ he said, slipping the back cover of his telefonino back on, and starting to insert the tiny screws that held the front in place.
Brunetti walked over to the table and circled it, looking down at the objects exposed on the surface. He recognized some of them. There was a toothbrush, bristles tormented to all four sides, a tube of toothpaste that had been squeezed so tightly that Brunetti would not have been surprised to hear it weep. The meagre contents of the medicine cabinet were laid out in a paltry line. He recognized the bar of kitchen soap. Further along were pieces of orange peel and a plastic container that had once held food that itself had contained an inordinate amount of tomato sauce. Next to this was a can that had once held tuna fish and two empty two-litre wine bottles.
Flattened on the table were four pieces of paper and two plastic phonecards, both the worse for wear and no doubt discarded because the time on them had been used up. ‘All right to touch these things?’ Brunetti called over to the technician, who was now talking on his phone. Bocchese nodded and waved his hand, concentrating on his conversation.