'A bit, I suppose. But not as interesting,' Brunetti said.
She looked at the card again, then handed it back to him. 'I'll go and tell him, all right, Commissario?' she asked and got to her feet. Thicker in the waist than he had expected, she was still pleasant to watch as she crossed the room and pushed open a door without bothering to knock.
In a moment she was back at the door. 'Signor Repeta can see you now, Commissario,' she said.
When Brunetti entered, a man about his own age was just getting to his feet behind his desk. He came towards Brunetti. Like the girl in the outer office, he had a large mouth; her dark eyes, as well.
'Your daughter?' Brunetti asked, waving towards the door, which was now shut.
The man smiled. Is it that obvious?' he asked. Like her, his entire face softened when he smiled, and he had the same thickness of build.
'The mouth and eyes’ Brunetti said.
' "Signor Repeta," she always calls me when we're working,' the man said with a smile. He wore a pair of black woollen trousers and a pink shirt with sleeves rolled back to the elbows, exposing the thick forearms of a worker. He motioned Brunetti to a chair, retreated behind his desk and asked, 'What can I do for you, Commissario?'
'I'd like to know what sort of work you do for the Vetreria Regini,' Brunetti said.
It was obvious that the question puzzled Repeta. After a moment, he answered, 'What I do for all of the vetrerie I have a contract with,' he said.
'Which is?'
'Oh, of course,' Repeta said. 'There's no way you'd know that, is there? Sorry.' He brushed his right hand through his greying hair, leaving part of it standing up in spikes. 'We service their water systems and dispose of the waste from the grinding room.'
Brunetti gave a layman's smile and held up his palms, men asked, 'What does that mean to someone like me, Signore?'
Like many men wrapped up in their work, Repeta struggled to find the words with which to make things clear. 'I suppose all the service part means is that we make sure they can turn the water in the factory on and off and adjust the rate of flow in the grinding shop.'
'Doesn't sound very complicated’ Brunetti said, but he said it gently, as though both of them took the same delight in its simplicity.
'No,' Repeta admitted with a smile, 'it's not complicated, not at all. But the tanks are.'
'Why?'
'We've got to see that the water flows from one to the next slowly enough to allow for sedimentation.' He saw the look on Brunetti's face and picked up a letter lying on his desk. He glanced at it, flipped it over, and picked up a pencil. 'Here, look’ he said, and Brunetti moved his chair over next to the desk.
Quickly, with the ease of familiarity, Repeta drew a row of four equally sized rectangles. A line, presumably meant to indicate a pipe, led from a point near the top of one to the next, and then another led to the third; after the last one, it slanted down and disappeared off the bottom of the drawing.
Pointing to the first rectangle, Repeta said, 'Look, the water from the molatura flows out of the grinding shop and into the first tank, carrying away everything that's been ground off. The heavy particles begin to sink to the bottom, while the water flows to the next one, where more of it drops down and is deposited. And so on and so on’ he said, tapping the point of the pencil against the third and fourth rectangles.
'At the end of it, all of the particles have settled to the bottom of the tanks, and the water that flows out of the last one’ he said, trailing the pencil along the diagonal line that flowed off the page, 'goes into the drain.'
'Clean water?' Brunetti asked.
'Clean enough.'
Brunetti studied the drawing for a moment and then asked, 'What happens to the sediment in the tanks?'
'That's the second part of what we do,' Repeta said, pushing the paper away from him and returning his attention to Brunetti. 'They call us when they've drained the tanks and we go out and take the sediment away.'
'And?'
'And deliver it—well, it's really a kind of heavy sludge—we deliver it to the company that disposes of it.'
'How?'
"They fuse it, melt the glass particles and the minerals get fused into the glass’
'What minerals are there?' Brunetti asked, interested now.
'As many as are used in making glass’ answered Repeta. 'Cadmium, cobalt, manganese, arsenic, potassium.'
'How do they get into the water?'
'Because they're in the glass. When it's ground, the particles are carried away by the water and out into the tanks.' He put the paper back in front of him and pointed with the pencil to the first rectangle, then tapped it all along the row. 'The water also keeps the powder from getting into the lungs of the men doing the grinding.'
'How many vetrerie do you do this for?'
'More than thirty, I'd say, but I'd have to look at my client list.'
'And how often do you make pick-ups?'
"That depends on how much work they have. Maybe every three months, maybe six. We go out whenever they call us. It depends.'
'Does that mean the same day?' Brunetti asked, thinking of a plugged sink in the kitchen, running over.
'No,' Repeta said and laughed. "They usually call us and make an appointment a week before they need us. That also gives us the chance to schedule five or six pick-ups in one day.' Repeta glanced across to see that Brunetti was following and added, 'Saves us money, doing it that way. The charge for the trip is standard, no matter how much we pick up. I mean, we charge according to the weight of what we take away, but the charge for the pick-up is always the same, so it's best for them to have us come only when their tanks are full.'
'One of the men I spoke to said he saw one of your boats out at the Vetreria Regini two months ago,' Brunetti said. 'Was it a pick-up?'
Repeta shook his head at that. 'I don't know,' he said, shoving his chair back and moving around the desk. 'Let me ask Floridana.' He was gone before Brunetti could say anything.
While he waited for Repeta, Brunetti looked around the office: travel posters, no doubt from an agency; a window so dusty it allowed only minimal light and sound to filter in; and three metal filing cabinets. No computer and no phone, which surprised Brunetti.
Repeta came in, a sheet of paper in his hand. 'No’ he said as he approached Brunetti. It seems they needed someone to fix a leak.'
'What sort of leak?'
He passed the paper to Brunetti. 'One of the tanks. That's why they called us.' The words on the paper meant little to Brunetti, and he handed it back.
Repeta went back behind his desk. He closed his eyes, saying, 'Let me think about the way their tanks are.' His face became completely expressionless and remained that way for some time, and then he opened his eyes. 'Yes, I remember. The tanks are raised up on metal feet, about five centimetres from the ground, but they're flush against the wall at the back.' He looked at the receipt again. 'From this, I'd guess that a seam, probably at one of the angles, came loose or corroded.' He showed Brunetti the paper again, saying, 'See? It says they had to solder a leak in the back of the third tank. That's probably what it was.'
'Does your invoice say who did the work?' Brunetti asked.
'Yes. Biaggi. He's one of our best.' Brunetti, who had once paid a plumber one hundred and sixty Euros to replace a faucet, was unsure what that might mean.
'Would it be possible for you to ask him exactly what he did?' Brunetti asked, remembering Tassini's coordinates.
Repeta gave him a strange look but got to his feet again and went to the outer office. Brunetti returned to the study of the travel posters, aware of how little desire he had to spend time on a tropical beach.