He glanced back at the counter, but the widow was still there. He heard her talking to Signora Follini, but her voice was too low for him to hear what she was saying, not that he was sure he'd understand her if he could. A thin film lay on top of the irregularly stacked boxes of detergent; one had been chewed open at a corner, and a small mound of tiny white and blue beads had spilled out on to the shelf.
His watch told him he'd been inside the store for more than five minutes. Signora Follini had added nothing to the candles and flour, which sat on the counter in front of the old woman, but still they stood there and still they talked.
He retreated further into the back of the shop and directed his attention to a row of bottles of pickles and olives that stood at the height of his chest. One bottle of what appeared to be mushrooms caught his attention because of a small oval of white mould that had edged from beneath the lid and begun to make its way slowly down the side of the bottle. Next to it stood a tiny can that had no label. It sat there, looking curiously lost and useless, yet faintly menacing.
Brunetti heard the bell and turned towards the counter. The old woman was gone, and with her had disappeared the candles and flour. He walked towards the front of the store and said again, 'Buon giorno.'
She smiled in response, but the smile had little warmth; perhaps the old woman had taken some of it with her or had left behind a cool warning about how women with no visible husbands were meant to behave in the presence of strange men.
'How are you today, Signora?'
'Fine, thank you,' she answered with some formality. 'How can I help you?' On his previous visit, she would have asked this with the clear suggestion that what she would be willing to provide contained at least the promise of sensuality. This time, however, the list suggested by her voice went no further than dried peas, salt and a bottle of anchovies.
Brunetti gave her his warmest smile. 'I've come back to speak to you, Signora,' he began, wondering if this would cause her to respond. When it did not, he went on, ‘I wanted to ask if you'd remembered anything else about the Bottins that might be useful to us.' Her face remained expressionless. 'You suggested, the last time we spoke, that you knew at least the son very well, and I wondered if you'd thought of anything else that might be important.'
She shook her head but still didn't speak.
'By now I suppose it's common knowledge that they were murdered,' he began and waited.
'I know,' she finally said.
'But what people don't know is that it was a particularly vicious crime, especially what was done to Marco.'
She nodded at this, to acknowledge either that she had heard him or that even this detail was now known to the people of Pellestrina.
'And so we need to learn as much about them as possible so that we can begin to get an idea of who would want to do this.' When she didn't respond, he asked, 'Do you understand, Signora?'
She looked up and met his eyes. Her mouth remained frozen in the smile the surgeons had given her, but Brunetti could not mistake the sadness in her eyes. 'No one would want to do Marco any harm. He was a good boy.'
She stopped here and glanced away from him, towards the empty back of the store.
'And his father?' Brunetti asked.
'I can't tell you anything,' she said in a tight voice. 'Nothing.'
Something in Brunetti responded to the nervousness in her voice. 'Nothing you tell me will be repeated, Signora.'
The immobility of her features made her expression impossible to read, but he thought he sensed her relax.
'They couldn't have wanted to kill Marco,' she said.
'They?' he asked.
The nervousness swept back. 'Whoever it was,' she said.
'What sort of man was he, Giulio?' Brunetti asked.
Her sculpted chin moved back and forth in absolute denial of any further information.
'But, Signora . . .' Brunetti began but was interrupted by the sound of the bell. He saw her eyes shoot in the direction of the door. She stepped back from the counter and said, 'As I've told you, Signore, you'll have to buy matches at the tobacco shop. I don't sell them.'
'Sorry, Signora. When I saw the candles you sold the old lady, I thought you'd be selling them, too,' he answered seamlessly, paying no attention to the sound of footsteps behind him.
Brunetti turned away from the woman and moved towards the door. As is the custom in small villages, he nodded in acknowledgement of the presence of the two men who stood there and, while paying no evident attention to them, registered every detail of their appearance. As he approached the door, they stepped to either side of it, a motion that filled Brunetti with a vague sense of menace, though the men made it clear that they took as little interest in him as he did in them.
The little bell tinkled as he opened the door, and when he stepped into the sunlight, his back gave an answering shiver as he heard the door close gently behind him.
He turned to the right, his mind absorbing the faces and forms of the two men. Though he recognized neither, Brunetti knew too well the type of men they were. They might have been related, so similar were the red, roughened complexions of their faces and so similar their thick, hardened bodies. But both of these things might just as easily have come from years of heavy work outside. The younger man had a narrow face, and dark hair slicked back with some sort of oily pomade. The older wore his in the same fashion, but as it was much thinner, it ended up looking as if it had been painted on to his skull, though a few greasy locks managed to dangle limply on the collar of his shirt. Both wore jeans that gave signs of heavy wear and the thick boots common to men who did heavy work.
The men had studied Brunetti with eyes framed by a multitude of small lines, the lines that came with years of life in the sun, and both had given him the sort of attention that is usually given to prey: motionless, watchful, eager to make a move. It was this sense of contained aggression that had set off alarms in Brunetti's body, regardless of the fact that the Signora was there as a witness, regardless of the fact that the men probably knew he was a policeman.
He walked down the narrow street and into the tobacco shop. It was as dim and grimy as Signora Follini's store, another place where failure had come to nest.
The man behind the counter raised his attention from the magazine he was reading and looked at him from behind thick glasses. 'Yes?' he asked.
'I'd like some matches,' Brunetti said, maintaining Signora Follini's story.
The man pulled open a drawer beneath the counter and asked, 'Box or booklet?'
'Box, please,' Brunetti said, reaching into his pocket for some small change.
The man set a small box of matches in front of Brunetti and asked for two hundred lire. As Brunetti placed the coins on the counter, the man asked, 'Cigarettes?'
'No,' Brunetti answered. 'I'm trying to stop. But I like to have matches in case I can't stand it any more and ask someone to give me one.'
The man smiled at that. 'Lot of people trying to stop,' he said. "They don't want to, not really, most of them, but they think it's good for them, so they try.'
'And do they succeed?'
'Beh,' the man exclaimed in disgust. 'They manage it for a week or two, or a month, but sooner or later they're all back in here, buying cigarettes.'
'Doesn't say much for people's willpower, does it?' Brunetti asked.
The man picked up the coins and dropped them one by one into the wooden cash drawer. 'People are going to do what they want to do, no matter what you tell them and no matter how bad they know it is for them to do it. Nothing can stop them; not fear or law or promises.' He saw Brunetti's expression and added, 'You spend a lifetime selling cigarettes, and that's one thing you learn. Nothing will ever stop them, not if they want to badly enough.'