Donna Leon - Drawing Conclusions

Rizzardi looked at his watch: Brunetti knew the doctor had to put the time she was declared dead on the death certificate, but the pathologist seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time deciding. He finally looked at Brunetti. ‘There’s nothing more for me here, Guido. I’ll send you the report as soon as I can.’

Brunetti nodded his thanks, saw that it was already almost 1 a.m., and thanked the doctor for coming, even though he knew Rizzardi had no choice in the matter. The doctor turned to leave, but Brunetti moved closer to him, placed his hand briefly on his upper arm, saying nothing.

‘I’ll call you when I’m finished,’ Rizzardi said. He moved away from Brunetti’s hand, and left the apartment.

Brunetti closed the door, dissatisfied with his exchange with Rizzardi and disappointed by his own need to make the doctor see things as he wanted him to see them. Before he could speak to Vianello, they heard noise from below: again, a door opening, then an exchange of male voices. Marillo came to the door of the bedroom where he was working with his men and said, ‘The doctor called a while ago for them to come and get her: I guess that’s them.’

Neither Brunetti nor Vianello answered, and the noises of the technicians working in the other room ended. The men in the apartment awaited the arrival of their colleagues who dealt with the dead, their voices and bodies stilled by the magic spell that approached. Brunetti opened the door. The two men who appeared on the landing, however, looked quite ordinary and wore the long blue coats of hospital orderlies. One of them carried a rolled-up stretcher under his arm: all of the men in the apartment knew that a third member of the squad waited downstairs with the black plastic casket into which the body would be placed before they took it outside to the waiting boat.

There were nods and muttered salutations; most of them had met in similar circumstances in the past. Brunetti, who knew their faces but not their names, pointed them down the corridor. After the two men went into the room, Brunetti, Vianello, and Marillo, and behind him the two members of his crew, waited, pretending not to hear, trying not to interpret, the noises from the other room. A short time later, the men emerged with the stretcher, the form on it covered by a dark blue blanket. Brunetti was glad to see that the blanket was clean and freshly ironed, though he knew it made no difference.

With a nod to Brunetti, the two men left the apartment; Vianello closed the door behind them. No one in the room said anything as they listened to the men’s descent. When all sound ended, they took it to mean the dead woman had been taken from the house, but still no one moved. Marillo finally broke the spell by turning away, herding his technicians into the bedroom and back to work.

Vianello went into the smaller guest room, and Brunetti joined him. The bed was neatly made, the white sheet pulled back over a simple grey woollen blanket. They saw no sign of disturbance in the room. It was military – or monastic – in its simplicity. Even the signs that the technicians had checked the room for prints seemed sparse.

Brunetti walked across the room and pushed open the door to the bathroom. Whoever had made the bed must also have ordered things on the shelves here: there were miniature sample bottles of shampoo and a small paper-wrapped bar of soap, the sort one found in hotel rooms; a comb in a plastic wrapper; a similarly wrapped toothbrush. Fresh towels and a washcloth hung on a rack beside the enclosed shower.

A man’s voice called Brunetti’s name. He and Vianello followed the sound into the larger bedroom, where Marillo was standing beside one of the windows. ‘We’re finished here, Commissario,’ he said. As he spoke, one of his men collapsed his tripod, hefted it on to his shoulder, and slipped past Vianello and Brunetti into the corridor.

‘You find anything?’ Brunetti asked, looking around at powder-covered surfaces in the room, almost as if he wanted Marillo to follow his glance and find, just there , whatever it was that would make his search worthwhile and important.

The residue on so many surfaces reminded Brunetti of how hard he found it to believe that any reliable physical evidence could be drawn from the overlying mess of finger and palm prints that covered every surface in every room he had ever searched. Some of the powder had dropped into the bottom drawer, which was open. Faint traces of it could be seen on the silk scarves and sweaters that lay intermingled there.

‘You know I don’t like to talk about that sort of thing, sir,’ Marillo finally answered, speaking with noticeable reluctance. ‘Before I write the report, that is.’

‘I know that, Marillo,’ Brunetti said. ‘And I think it’s the best policy. But I wondered if you could give us some sort of idea about how thorough Vianello and I should be when we…’ he began, then waved his hand around the room, as if asking the handles of the drawers to speak to Marillo about what was to be revealed inside.

The remaining technician, still on his knees beside the bed, looked up from the light he was shining into the space underneath, first at Brunetti and then at his superior. Aware of his glance, Marillo shook his head and turned to walk away.

‘Come on, Stefano,’ the technician said, making no attempt to disguise his exasperation. ‘They’re on our side. And it’ll save them time.’ Brunetti wondered if the technician was simply using a cliché, or if it were now necessary for one policeman to vouch for the integrity of others.

Marillo stiffened, either at being spoken to like this by one of his men in front of his superior or at the thought of having to venture an opinion rather than simply report on what was observed and recorded. ‘All we do is dust the place and take the photos, Dottore. People like you and Vianello have to figure out what the results mean.’ This might have been construed as opposition or obstructionism; in Marillo, it was meant to be simply a declaration of what he took his duties, and theirs, to be.

‘Oh for the love of God,’ the other technician snapped, still on his knees beside the bed. ‘We’ve been in a hundred places, Stefano, and we both know there’s nothing suspicious here.’ He looked as if he was about to continue, but Marillo silenced him with a glare. Some time had passed since Brunetti had been troubled by the sight of the body, and the man’s remark added to his desire to see and interpret facts, not feelings. No thief – at least not the sort that broke into houses in Venice – had been at work here. Anyone in search of gold or jewellery or cash would have pulled out the drawers and dumped their contents on the floor, then kicked them around, the better to separate and see everything. But the bottom drawer, Brunetti realized, looked no worse than his daughter’s after she had hunted for a particular sweater. Or his son’s.

The technician near the bed broke the silence by scuttling across the floorboards to unplug his lamp. Slowly, he got to his feet and wrapped the electric cord noisily around the handle, then slipped the plug under the last loop of cord to anchor it in place. ‘I’m done here, Stefano,’ he said abruptly.

‘That’s it, then,’ Marillo said with audible relief. ‘I’ll give Bocchese the photos and he can check the prints. There’s a lot of them, some of them perfectly clear. He’ll give you a report, sir.’

‘Thanks, Marillo,’ Brunetti said.

Marillo glanced at Brunetti and bobbed his head in an expression that acknowledged his superior’s thanks and his own embarrassment at not having been willing to provide more. The other technician followed him to the door, where the third man stood ready, slipping camera and flash into their case. Together, the three men made quick work of assembling their equipment. When they were finished, Marillo said nothing more than goodnight, and his team, silent, followed him from the apartment.