Though he hadn’t seen della Corte for some years, he recognized him the instant he walked into the Padova Questura: same dark eyes and unruly moustache.
Brunetti called to him and the policeman turned towards the sound of his name. ‘Guido,’ he said and walked over quickly. ‘How good to see you again.’
Talking of what they’d done during the last few years, they walked down to della Corte’s office. There, the talk of old cases continued over coffee and, when it was finished, they started to discuss the plans for that night. Delia Corte suggested they wait until after ten to leave Padova, which would get them to Castelfranco by eleven, when they were supposed to meet the local police, who had been told about Palmieri and had insisted they come along.
When they got to the Castelfranco Questura a few minutes before eleven, they were met by Commissario Bonino and two officers wearing jeans and leather jackets. They had prepared a map of the area surrounding the apartment where Palmieri lived, complete down to every detaiclass="underline" spaces in the parking lot beside the house, location of all of the doors in the building, even a floor plan of his apartment.
‘How did you get this?’ Brunetti asked, letting his admiration speak in his voice.
Bonino nodded to the younger of the policemen. ‘The building is only a few years old,’ he explained, ‘and I knew the plans would have to be down at the ufficio catasto, so I went there this afternoon and asked for a blueprint of the second floor. He’s on the third, but the layout is the same.’ He stopped talking and looked down at the blueprint, calling their attention back to it.
It appeared simple enough: a single staircase led up to a corridor. Palmieri’s apartment was at the end of the hall. All they had to do was place two men below his windows, one at the bottom of the stairs, and that left two to go in and two to work as back-up in the hallway. Brunetti was about to observe that seven seemed excessive, but then he remembered that Palmieri might have killed four men and said nothing.
Two cars parked a few hundred metres beyond the building and they all got out. The two young men in jeans had been chosen to go up to the apartment with Brunetti and della Corte, who would make the actual arrest. Bonino said he’d cover the stairs and the two from Padova moved off to take their places under the three fat pines that stood between the apartment building and the street, one man with a view of the front entrance, the other of the rear.
Brunetti, della Corte, and the two officers took the stairs. At the top they split up. The men in jeans stayed inside the stairwell, one propping open the door with his foot.
Brunetti and della Corte walked to Palmieri’s door. Silently, Brunetti tried the handle, but the door was locked. Delia Corte knocked twice, not loudly. Silence. He knocked again, louder this time. Then he called, ‘Ruggiero, it’s me. They sent me to get you. You’ve got to get out. The police are on the way.’
Inside, something fell over and smashed, probably a light. But none came from under the door. Delia Corte banged on it again. ‘Ruggiero, per l’amor di Dio, would you get out here. Move.’
Inside, there were more noises; something else fell, but this was heavy, a chair or a table. They heard shouts coming from below, probably the other policemen. At the sound of their voices both Brunetti and della Corte moved away from the doorway and stood with their backs against the wall.
And not a moment too soon. One, two more, then two further bullets tore through the thick wood of the door. Brunetti felt something sting his face and when he looked down he saw two drops of blood on the front of his coat. Suddenly the two young officers were kneeling on either side of the door, their pistols in their hands. Like an eel, one of them flipped over on to his back, pulled his legs up to his chest and, with piston-like force, slammed his feet into the door, just where it joined the jamb. The wood gave and his second kick sent it slamming open. Even before the door hit the inside wall, the man on the floor had spun himself like a top into the room.
Brunetti had barely raised his pistol when he heard two shots, then a third, ring out. After that, nothing. Seconds passed, then a man’s voice called, ‘All right, you can come in.’
Brunetti slipped through the doorway, della Corte following close behind. The policeman knelt behind an overturned sofa, his pistol still in his hand. On the floor, his head visible in a wedge of light that spilled in from the hallway, lay a man Brunetti recognized as Ruggiero Palmieri. One arm was flung ahead of him, fingers aimed at the door and the freedom that once lay behind it; the other was crumpled invisibly under him. Where his left ear should have been was only a red hole, the exit wound from the second of the policeman’s bullets.
23
Brunetti had been a policeman too long and had seen too many things go wrong to want to waste time in trying to figure out what had happened or attempting to devise an alternate plan that might have worked. But the others were younger and hadn’t learned yet that failure taught very little, so he listened to them for a while, not really paying attention but agreeing with whatever they said while he waited for the lab crew to arrive.
At one point, when the officer who had shot Palmieri lay on the floor to study the angle at which he had entered the apartment, Brunetti went into the bathroom, moistened his handkerchief with cold water, and wiped at the small cut on his cheek where a sliver of wood from the shattering door had sliced off a piece of flesh about the size of one of the buttons on his shirt. Still holding his handkerchief, he opened the small medicine chest, looking for a piece of gauze or something to stop the bleeding, and found that it was full, but not with plasters.
Guests were said to explore the medicine cabinets in the bathrooms they used; Brunetti had never done it. He was amazed at what he saw: three rows of all manner of medicines, at least fifty boxes and bottles, vastly different in packaging and size, but all carrying the distinctive adhesive label with the nine-digit number from the Ministry of Health. But no bandages. He pushed the door closed and went back into the room where Palmieri lay.
During the time Brunetti had been in the bathroom, the other policemen had arrived and now the young ones were gathered at the door, where they replayed the shooting, with, it seemed to a disgusted Brunetti, the same enthusiasm they’d give to rewatching an action video. The older men stood separately and silently in various parts of the room. Brunetti went over to della Corte. ‘Can we begin to search the place?’
‘Not until their crime crew gets here, I think.’
Brunetti nodded. It didn’t make any difference, really. Only in time, and now they had all night to do it. He just wished they would hurry, so that the body would be taken away. He avoided looking at it, but as time passed and the young men ceased their retelling of the tale, that grew harder. Brunetti had just moved over towards the window when he heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to see the familiar uniforms come into the apartment: technicians, photographers, the minions of violent death.
He went back to the window and studied the cars in the parking lot and those few that still drove by at this hour. He wanted to call Paola, but she believed him safely in bed in some small hotel, so he did not. He didn’t turn round when the photographer’s flash went off repeatedly, nor at the arrival of what must be the medico legale. No secrets here.