‘Tired. I’ve fed them and they’re trying to stay awake until ten. I think they still believe it’s only little kids who go to bed before that.’
‘Oh, to be a little kid,’ Brunetti exclaimed.
‘All right. Make the sauce and eat. Then go to bed. It will be well after ten by then.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I hope it stays sunny and cool enough to make you wear a sweater all the time.’
‘How is it there?’
‘Hot.’
‘Go and eat, Guido.’
‘I will,’ he answered, said goodbye and hung up the phone.
18
The next day, if anything, was hotter, and Brunetti woke shortly after six to damp sheets and a muddled sense of having been awake often in the night. In the absence of the representatives of the Water Police, he permitted himself the luxury of a long shower, first hot and then cold and then hot again. Worse, he allowed himself to shave in the shower, an act of ecological excess which would have earned him the loud condemnation of both his children.
He didn’t bother with coffee at home but stopped in the first bar he passed, then went into Ballarin for a cappuccino and a brioche. He had picked up the papers at his edicola and laid the second section of Il Gazzettino on the round table in the pasticceria. Sipping, he studied the headline, ‘Courthouse Clerk Found Murdered’. Well, that was fair enough. The article was surprisingly clear: it gave the time of the discovery of the body and the probable cause of death.
But then it slipped into what Brunetti thought of as ‘Gazzettino Mode’. The victim’s fellow workers spoke of his many virtues, his seriousness, his devotion to the cause of justice, his poor mother, a widow who had now to bear the death of her only son. And then, as ever, there came the sly insinuation — oh so carefully draped in the sober garb of innocent speculation — about what might have caused this terrible crime. Could the victim have been involved in some practice that had brought his death upon him? Had his job at the Tribunale provided him with access to information that had proven dangerous? Nothing was stated, but everything was implied.
Brunetti refolded the paper, paid, and continued through the growing heat to work. When he got there, well before eight, he made a list of things he needed to check: the first was the autopsy, which should have been done the previous day. Then there was the question of the relatives on Fontana’s side: perhaps Vianello had managed to find them. He also needed to know the names of the people involved in the various cases where Judge Coltellini had so long delayed her decisions. And how was it that Fontana and his mother were asked to pay Signor Puntera such a derisory rent?
He went to his open window, where the curtain hung limp, dead, and consulted with the façade of the church of San Lorenzo about how best to begin.
Suddenly overcome with impatience, Brunetti called the Ospedale Civile and learned that Dottor Rizzardi would be there all morning. He asked that the doctor be told he was on his way, and left the Questura. By the time he reached Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo, his jacket and shirt were glued to his back, and the sides of his feet rubbed uncomfortably against the inside of his shoes. To traverse the open campo was to question his own sanity at having decided to walk.
He went to Rizzardi’s office but was told that the doctor was still in the morgue. The very word dispersed some of the heat; the air that swirled around him when he pushed open the door drove off the rest of it. His shirt and jacket still clung to him, but the sensation was now coolly sinister instead of irritating.
Rizzardi, he was relieved to see, stood at a sink, already washing his hands. The fact that the sinks in the room were so deep and their fronts so low had always filled Brunetti with a vague uneasiness, but he had never wanted to ask about it.
‘I thought I’d come over,’ Brunetti said. He glanced around: three draped figures lay in a row to Rizzardi’s left. ‘I wanted to ask you about Fontana.’
‘Yes,’ Rizzardi said, wiping his hands on a thin green towel. Carefully, he wiped each finger on one hand separately, then transferred the towel to the other hand and repeated the task. ‘He was killed by three blows to the head, so if anyone over there is thinking he died in a fall, they can forget about it: he didn’t fall three times.’ The doctor stopped drying his hands. ‘There’s a bruise on his left temple suggesting that he was hit there, perhaps even with a fist.’
‘Was it the statue?’ Brunetti asked.
‘That killed him?’ Rizzardi asked. When Brunetti nodded, the doctor said, ‘Beyond question. There was blood and brain matter on it, and the shape of the wounds perfectly matches the configuration of the head of the statue.’ Brunetti shied away from asking where the statue had ended up. Rizzardi folded the towel in half horizontally and laid it over the edge of the sink. ‘One reconstruction could be that someone hit him — that would account for the bruise — and he fell against the statue.’ Rizzardi bent down and held his hand about forty centimetres above the ground. ‘The head of the lion is only about this high, so he would have fallen against it with some force.’
He stood up, adding, ‘Then all he’d have to do is lift his head again and hit it against the statue. It would have been easy enough.’
‘How long would it have taken him to die?’ Brunetti asked.
‘From what I saw, any of the blows could have killed him, but it would have taken some time for the blood to fill the brain and block off body function.’
‘No chance at all?’
‘Of what?’
‘If he’d been found sooner?’
Rizzardi turned and leaned back against the sink, crossed his ankles, then folded his arms across his chest. Because Rizzardi was wearing only a light cotton shirt and trousers under his cotton gown, Brunetti, almost painfully conscious of the cold, wondered if he was trying to keep himself warm by standing like that. He watched Rizzardi process his question as if he were reviewing the information that would provide an answer.
‘No,’ the doctor said. ‘Not likely. Not after the second, and third, blows. There are marks — really a faint bruising — on both sides of the chin and neck where he was held.’ To illustrate, Rizzardi held his hands up and made as if to crush something between them. ‘But either the killer was wearing gloves or he covered his hands with something, I’d say.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The bruises. If he’d been barehanded, the bruises would have been deeper, cleaner at the edges, but there was a kind of padding effect. If he’d been barehanded, the nails would have broken the skin, no matter how short they were.’ He raised his hands, as if to repeat the gesture, but let them fall to his sides.
He pulled off his lab coat and draped it over the sink, aligning it perfectly with the towel. ‘There’s something else,’ Rizzardi said.
His voice caught Brunetti’s attention.
‘Semen.’ As he said this, Rizzardi turned his eyes in the direction of the three draped forms, but since it was also the same direction as the door to the refrigerated room where bodies were kept, Brunetti ignored the gesture.
He had read historic accounts of the spontaneous ejaculation of hanged men; perhaps this was a similar case. Or perhaps he had been with a woman before returning home. Given his mother’s character, it would make sense that Fontana, poor thing, would keep such things far from her.
When Brunetti’s silence had gone on sufficiently long, Rizzardi said, ‘It was in his anus.’