Beastly Things by Donna Leon Read Free Book Online Page B

conversation with her: their exchanges of personal information were usually cushioned by irony or masked by indirection.
    ‘For a number of years, yes.’
    ‘Until?’ he asked, wondering if he was about to unravel the secret that had rumbled through the Questura for years and aware that, should she tell him, he could never repeat it.
    Her smile changed and began to remind him of a famous one, last seen disappearing amidst the branches of a tree. ‘Until it began to rot my soul.’
    ‘Ah,’ Brunetti said, deciding that was all the answer he was going to get and probably all he wanted.
    ‘Will there be anything else, Signore?’ Before he could respond, she said, ‘They’ve sent the photos and videos from the protest.’
    Brunetti could not disguise his astonishment. ‘So fast?’
    Her smile was as compassionate as that of a Renaissance Madonna. ‘By computer, sir. They’re in your email.’ She glanced over his shoulder and studied the wall behind him for a few seconds, then added, ‘I have a friend who works in the central health office for the Veneto. I can ask him to have a look to see if there’s some central record kept of cases of this disease …’
    ‘Madelung,’ Brunetti supplied. The look she gave him showed him that the repetition was not necessary.
    ‘Thank you,’ she said to show there were no hard feelings, and then, ‘There might be numbers for the Veneto, if people are being treated.’
    ‘Rizzardi said he’d call someone he knows in Padova,’ Brunetti said, hoping to spare her the effort.
    She made a dismissive noise. ‘They might want an official request. Doctors often do,’ she said, as though she were a biologist speaking of some lower order of insect. ‘It could take days. Even longer.’ Brunetti appreciated her discretion in not bothering to say how quickly her friend might do it.
    ‘He was in the lane coming south when I saw him,’ he suddenly said.
    ‘Which means?’
    ‘He might have been coming down from Friuli. Could you ask your friend if they have the same sort of records, too?’
    ‘Of course,’ she said amiably. ‘The men who blocked the road were protesting about the new milk quotas, weren’t they?’ she asked. ‘Lowering production?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Greedy fools,’ she said with emphasis that surprised him.
    ‘You seem sure of that, Signorina,’ he remarked.
    ‘Of course I am. There’s too much milk, there’s too much cheese, there’s too much butter, and there are too many cows.’
    ‘Compared to what?’ he asked.
    ‘Compared to common sense,’ she said heatedly, and Brunetti wondered what he had stumbled into.
    Paola cooked with oil, not butter; he’d be sick if he had to drink a glass of milk, they did not eat much cheese, and Chiara’s principles had long since sent beef fleeing from their table, so Brunetti was – in terms of behaviour – on Signorina Elettra’s side of whatever principle was under discussion here. What he did not understand, however, was the force underlying her fervour, nor did he want to stand there and discuss it.
    ‘If you receive anything from your friend, let me know, would you?’
    ‘Of course, Commissario,’ she said with her usual warmth and turned to her computer. Brunetti decided to go and have a look for the dead man in the films they had been sent of the incident last autumn.
    Brunetti climbed the stairs to his office, reminding himself he could now access any video file that had been put into the new system.
    He opened his mail account and found the link. Within seconds, the screen showed him, first, the original report and the written notes of the individual officers who had been there. After he read those, he had no trouble opening the file containing the police videos and those from the television station. When he watched the first clip and saw the flames consuming the minivan bearing the Televeneto logo, he understood the station’s eagerness to cooperate.
    He watched the first two clips, each