Anonymous Venetian by Donna Leon Read Free Book Online Page B

far, is it?’
     
    ‘No, only a few minutes,’ Gallo
answered. ‘Might be a bit longer, with the morning traffic.’
     
    Brunetti wondered if these people
ever walked anywhere, but then he remembered the blanket of tropical heat that
lay like a shroud across the whole Veneto area. Perhaps it was wiser to travel
in air-conditioned cars to and from air-conditioned buildings, but he doubted
that it was a method with which he would ever feel comfortable. He said nothing
about this, however, but went downstairs and had his driver - he seemed to rate
his own driver and his own car - take him to the Hospital of Umberto Primo, the
major of the many hospitals of Mestre.
     
    At the morgue, he found the
attendant at a low desk, with a copy of the Gazzettino spread out in
front of him. Brunetti showed his warrant card and asked to see the murdered
man who had been found in the field the day before.
     
    The attendant, a short man with a
substantial paunch and bowed legs, folded his paper closed and got to his feet.
‘Ah, him, I’ve got him over on the other side, sir. No one’s been to see him
except that artist, and all he wanted to do was see the hair and eyes. Too much
flash on the pictures, so he couldn’t get them right. He just took a look at
him, peeled back the lid and had a look at the eye. Didn’t like looking at him,
I’d say, but, Jesus, he should have seen him before the autopsy, with all that
make-up on him, mixed in with the blood. It took forever to clean him up.
Looked like a clown before we did, I’ll tell you. He had that eye stuff all
over his face. Well, over what was left of his face. It’s funny how some of
that stuff is so hard to wash oft Must take women the devil’s own time to clean
themselves up, don’t you think?’
     
    During all of this, he led
Brunetti across the chilly room, stopping occasionally to address Brunetti
directly. He finally stopped in front of one of the many metal doors that
formed the walls of the room, bent down and turned a metal handle, then pulled
out the low drawer in which the body lay. ‘Is he good enough for you here, sir,
or would you like me to raise him up for you? Nothing to it. Just take a
minute.’
     
    ‘No, this is good enough,’
Brunetti said, looking down. Unasked, the attendant pulled back the white sheet
that covered the face, then looked up at Brunetti to see if he should continue.
Brunetti nodded, and the attendant pulled the sheet from the body and folded it
quickly into a neat rectangle.
     
    Though Brunetti had seen the
photos, nothing had prepared him for the wreckage in front of him. The
pathologist had been interested only in exploration and cared nothing for
restoration; if a family were ever found, they could pay someone to attend to
that.
     
    No attempt had been made to
restore the man’s nose, and so Brunetti looked down at a concave surface with
four shallow indentations, as if a retarded child had made a human face with
clay but instead of a nose had simply punched a hole. Without the nose,
recognizable humanity had fled.
     
    He looked at the body, seeing if
it could give him an idea of age or physical condition. Brunetti heard his own
intake of breath when he realized that the body looked frighteningly like his
own: the same general build, a slight thickening around the waist, and the scar
from a childhood appendectomy. The only difference seemed to be a general
hairlessness, and he leaned down closer to study the chest, brutally bisected
by the long incision of the autopsy. Instead of the wiry, grizzled hair that
grew on his own chest, he saw faint stubble. ‘Did the pathologist shave his
chest before the autopsy?’ Brunetti asked the attendant.
     
    ‘No, sir. It’s not heart surgery
he did on him, only an autopsy.’
     
    ‘But his chest has been shaved.’
     
    ‘His legs, too, if you look.’
     
    Brunetti did. They were.
     
    ‘Did the pathologist say anything
about that?’
     
    ‘Not while he was working, sir.
Might