Anonymous Venetian by Donna Leon Read Free Book Online Page A

scorn when she told him, but
the next day he had begun to pay attention, and, within a week, had realized
just how right she was. Within another week, he had become fascinated by it,
overwhelmed by the frequency with which men on the street brought that hand
down to give an inquisitive pat, a reassuring touch, as if afraid they had
fallen oft Once, walking with him, Paola had stopped and asked him what he was
thinking about, and the fact that she was the only person in the world he would
not be embarrassed to tell just what it was he had been thinking about at that moment
convinced him, though a thousand things had already done so, that this was the
woman he wanted to marry, had to marry, would marry.
     
    To love and want a woman had
seemed absolutely natural to him then, as it continued to do now. But the men
in this file, for reasons he could read about and know, but which he could
never hope to understand, had turned from women and sought the bodies of other
men. They did so in return for money or drugs or, no doubt, sometimes in the
name of love. And one of them, in what wild embrace of hatred had he met his
violent end? And for what reason?
     
    Paola slept peacefully beside
him, a curved lump in which rested his heart’s delight. He placed the file on
the table beside the bed, turned off the light, wrapped his arm around Paola’s
shoulder and kissed her neck. Still salty. He was soon asleep.
     
    When Brunetti arrived at the
Mestre Questura the following morning, he found Sergeant Gallo at his desk,
another blue folder in his hand. As Brunetti sat, the policeman passed the folder
to him, and Brunetti saw for the first time the face of the murdered man. On
top lay the artist’s reconstruction of what he might have looked like, and,
below that, he saw the photos of the shattered reality from which the artist
had made his sketch.
     
    There was no way of estimating
the number of blows the face had suffered. As Gallo had said the night before,
the nose was gone, driven into the skull by one especially ferocious blow. One
cheekbone was entirely crushed, leaving a shallow indentation on that side of
the face. The photos of the back of the head showed a similar violence, but
these would have been blows that killed rather than disfigured.
     
    Brunetti closed the file and
handed it back to Gallo. ‘Have you had copies of the sketch made?’
     
    ‘Yes, sir, we’ve got a stack of
them, but we didn’t get it until about half an hour ago, so none of the men has
been out on the street with it.’
     
    ‘Fingerprints?’
     
    ‘We took a perfect set and sent
them down to Rome and to Interpol in Geneva, but we haven’t had an answer yet.
You know what they’re like.’ Brunetti did know. Rome could take weeks; Interpol
was usually a bit faster.
     
    Brunetti tapped on the cover of
the folder with the tip of his finger. ‘There’s an awful lot of damage to the
face, isn’t there?’
     
    Gallo nodded but said nothing. In
the past, he had dealt with Vice-Questore Patta, if only telephonically, so he
was wary of whoever would come his way from Venice.
     
    ‘Almost as if the person who did
it didn’t want the face to be recognizable,’ Brunetti added.
     
    Gallo shot him a quick glance
from under thick eyebrows and nodded again.
     
    ‘Do you have any friends in Rome
who could speed things up for us?’ Brunetti asked.
     
    ‘I’ve already tried that, sir,
but he’s on vacation. You?’
     
    Brunetti shook his head in quick
negation. ‘The person I knew there has been transferred to Brussels to work
with Interpol.’
     
    ‘Then we’ll have to wait, I
suppose,’ Gallo said, making it clear from his tone that he was not at all
pleased with this.
     
    ‘Where is he?’
     
    The dead man? In the morgue at
Umberto Primo. Why?’
     
    ’I’d like to see him.’
     
    If Gallo thought this a strange
request, he gave no indication of it. ‘I’m sure your driver could take you over
there.’
     
    ‘It’s not very