The figures disappeared from the screen, and it was as if the little boy had suddenly been released to feel his grandmother's rage. He turned and put his arms around her neck. 'Good nonna, good nonna,' he said and began to stroke both her cheeks, pressing his face closer to hers.
'See?' she said, looking across at Brunetti. 'See what you've made me do?'
He saw that the woman was emotionally exhausted and was unlikely to answer any more questions, and so he said, 'I'd still like to speak to your son-in-law, Signora.' He pulled out his wallet and handed her one of his cards, then took out a pen and said, 'Could you give me his number so I can get in touch with him?'
'You mean the number of his telefonino?' she asked with an abrupt laugh.
Brunetti nodded.
'He doesn't have a telefonino,' she said, this time her voice carefully restrained. 'He won't use one because he believes the waves that come out of it are bad for his brain.' From her voice, it was evident how little credence she gave this opinion. "That's another idea he got from his books,' she said. 'It's not enough that he thinks he's contaminated; he's got to think telefonini are dangerous.'
'Can you believe that?' she asked with real curiosity. 'Can you believe they'd let that happen, that rays could come out and hurt you?' She made the spitting motion again, though what emerged was really little more than a puff of disbelief. She gave him the phone number of the house, and Brunetti wrote it down.
The woman's agitation finally registered with the little girl, who began to squirm around on the sofa. She made a noise, but it was nothing like the peeping noise her brother had made in time to the motions of the dancing figures. It was a bleat, a wail, the voice of anguish in a very high register. It started, it went on, and then the woman said, 'You better go now. Once she starts like this, it can go on for hours, and I don't think you want to hear it.'
Brunetti thanked her, did not offer her his hand, and did not pat the little boy on the head, as he would have done had the girl not begun to wail. He left the apartment, went down the stairs, and out into the light.
8
As he walked back towards the Questura, Brunetti found himself dwelling on a noise and a confusion. The noise was the one made by the little girclass="underline" something prevented him from referring to it as her voice. The other was the strangely parallel conversation he had had with the grandmother: he spoke of threats, and she said they were meaningless, nothing, all the while suggesting that De Cal was a potentially violent man. He tried to remember everything they had said and could come up with only one alternative interpretation: it was Tassini who had made the threats, perhaps provoked into them by De Cal's violence. If not this, then the old woman was talking nonsense, and that was something Brunetti was convinced this particular woman would not do. Lie, perhaps; evade, certainly; but she would always talk sense.
His phone rang, and when he stopped walking to answer it he heard Pucetti's voice asking, 'Commissario?'
'Yes. What is it, Pucetti?'
'You had lunch yet, sir?'
'No’ Brunetti answered, suddenly reminded that he was hungry.
'Would you like to go out to Murano and talk to someone?'
'One of your relatives?' Brunetti asked, pleased that the young man had worked so fast.
'Yes. My uncle.'
'I'd be happy to’ Brunetti said, changing direction and starting back towards Celestia, where he could get a boat to Murano.
'Good. What time do you think you could be there?'
'It shouldn't take me more than half an hour.'
'All right. I'll tell him to meet you at one-thirty.'
'Where?'
'Nanni's’ Pucetti answered. It's on Sacca Serenella, the place where all the glass-workers eat. Anyone can tell you where it is.'
'What's your uncle's name?'
'Navarro. Giulio. He'll be there.'
'How will I know him?'
'Oh, don't worry about that, sir. He'll know you.'
'How?' Brunetti asked.
'Are you wearing a suit?'
'Yes.'
Did he hear Pucetti laugh? 'He'll know you, sir', he said and broke the connection.
It took Brunetti more than half an hour because he just missed a boat and had to wait at the Celestia stop for the next and then again at Fondamenta Nuove. As he got off the boat at Sacca Serenella, he stopped a man behind him and asked where the trattoria was.
'You mean Nanni's?' he asked.
'Yes. I've got to meet someone there, but all I know is that it's the place where the workers go.'
'And where you eat well?' the man asked with a smile.
'I wasn't told that’ Brunetti answered, 'but it wouldn't hurt.'
'Come with me, then,' the man said, turning off to the right and leading Brunetti along a cement pavement that ran beside the canal towards the entrance to a shipyard. 'It's Wednesday,' the man said. 'So there'll be liver. It's good.'
'With polenta?' Brunetti asked.
'Of course,' the man said, pausing to glance aside at this man who spoke Veneziano yet who had to ask if liver was served with polenta.
The man turned to the left, leaving the water behind them, and led Brunetti along a dirt trail that crossed an abandoned field. At the end, Brunetti saw a low cement building, its walls striped with what looked like dark trails of rust running down from leaking gutters. In front of it, a few rusted metal tables stood around drunkenly, their legs trapped in the dirt or propped up with chunks of cement. The man led Brunetti past the tables and to the door of the building. He pushed it open and held it politely for Brunetti to enter.
Inside, Brunetti found the trattoria of his youth: the tables were covered with sheets of white butcher paper, and on most tables lay four plates and four sets of knives and forks. The glasses had once been clean, perhaps even still were. They were squat things that held little more than two swigs of wine; years of use had scratched and clouded them almost to whiteness. There were paper napkins, and in the centre of each table a metal tray that held suspiciously pale olive oil, some white vinegar, salt, pepper, and individually wrapped packets of toothpicks.
Brunetti was surprised to see Vianello, in jeans and jacket, sitting at one of these tables, accompanied by an older man who bore no resemblance whatsoever to Pucetti. Brunetti thanked the man who had led him there, offered him un'ombra, which the man refused, and walked over to greet Vianello. The other man stood and held out his hand. 'Navarro,' he said as he took Brunetti's hand. 'Giulio.' He was a thick man, with a bull-like neck and a barrel chest: he looked like he had spent his life lifting weight, rather than lifting weights. His legs were slightly bowed, as if they had slowly given way under decades of heavy burdens. His nose had been broken a few times and badly set, or not set at all, and his right front tooth had been chipped off at a sharp angle. Though Navarro was surely more than sixty, Brunetti had no doubt that he would have no trouble lifting either him or Vianello and tossing them halfway across the room.
Brunetti introduced himself and said, "Thanks for coming to talk to us’ including Vianello, though he had no idea how the Inspector happened to be there.