Donna Leon - The Golden Egg

‘That’s not our job, Guido,’ Rizzardi said with unexpected force. ‘We don’t have to identify them, only find the cause of death.’

‘I went to his home,’ Brunetti explained, ‘but his mother refused to talk to me.’

Rizzardi did not comment on that. He stated the rules: ‘Until we have an identification, we have to keep him here.’

‘I know,’ Brunetti answered. Then, thinking of how the man might be identified, he asked, ‘How old do you think he was?’

‘I’d guess he was in his early forties,’ Rizzardi said. Then, as an afterthought, letting the doctor in him speak, ‘He was in excellent physical condition. His teeth showed signs of very little work. No sign of surgery, organs in perfect shape.’

‘Are you sure about the age?’ Brunetti asked, amazed that a face could so long have remained untouched by time and care, but he knew better than to question the pathologist’s judgement.

‘It’s surprising, I know,’ Rizzardi agreed. ‘I’ve seen it before. The less contact people have with the world, the less they age.’

‘He wasn’t a hermit, Ettore,’ Brunetti said, trying for lightness.

‘All I know about him is what you told me, Guido: he was deaf and simple-minded,’ Rizzardi said. ‘I’ve seen cases of it before, and I’m trying to give you an explanation based on experience. With retarded people – or whatever we’re supposed to call them now – and the blind, they don’t seem to age the way the rest of us do, or at least their bodies don’t show it the way ours do.’ When Brunetti failed to comment, the pathologist clarified, ‘From looking at his organs, and his teeth, that’s my estimate.’

In some way Brunetti did not understand, Rizzardi’s explanation made sense. Less contact with the world: less suffering. But less joy. ‘Thanks, Ettore. It might help. I’ll try to confirm at least his name. I’ll call you when I do.’

‘It’s what was on the paper that came with him,’ Rizzardi said. ‘I don’t know anything more than that.’

‘I’ll call.’

‘Good,’ Rizzardi said, and was gone.

Brunetti pulled the cover sheet of a report on an attempted escape from the local prison towards him. Because the escape had failed, he saw no reason to keep or pass on the report. He flipped it over, wrote Cavanella’s name and address at the top, and began to make a list. He’d need to locate a birth certificate, or a baptismal certificate. There was the dead man’s carta d’identità , which would most likely be in his house, and a card for the medical services he was sure to have been receiving. Brunetti doubted that Davide Cavanella would have a criminal record, but he could check that, as well. School records.

He sat and puzzled over the places where a person might be hidden. He had played the game as a boy, he and his friends lurking and disappearing in the calli and entrance ways of his neighbourhood and, as they grew older, farther and farther from home. The memory came to him now of how he had hidden, one spring day, beneath the canvas cover of a boat moored not far from his home and managed to fall asleep under it.

It was a desperate, high-pitched voice calling his name that woke him and catapulted him out from under the cloth. His mother stood on the Fondamenta della Tana, wearing her house slippers and her apron, her hair hanging partly loose on one side. At the sudden sight of her amidst his friends, Brunetti saw the grey in her hair for the first time and noticed how very poorly she was dressed, with a patched apron and a sweater darned at both elbows. For the first time in his life, seeing her there, in front of his friends, Brunetti felt ashamed of her, and then of himself for feeling this.

When she saw him, his mother came to the edge of the riva and reached down a hand to help him scramble back up. Her grip was firm, and he was surprised that she could so easily haul him up beside her.

He stood in front of her, head bowed, almost as tall as she, and muttered, ‘I fell asleep, Mamma . I’m sorry.’

He had seen the looks on the faces of his friends. To be guests of her hospitality was one thing, but to see her out here, dressed for the kitchen and screaming her son’s name . . . that was quite different. What would they think of him? And of her?

He saw her right hand move, and he stood rigid, fearing the blow he knew he deserved. Instead, she ruffled his hair and said, ‘Then it’s a good thing I came and found you, isn’t it, tesoro , or else you might have been baked like a chicken in the oven down there and no one knowing what was happening to you.’ She waited for him to respond, perhaps to laugh, but he was paralysed by love and unable to speak.

‘And no one to baste you with olive oil, either,’ she said with a laugh. Taking his hand in hers, she turned and led him back towards home, inviting all of his friends to come back with them and have a piece of the cake she had just pulled out of the oven.

Had Davide Cavanella’s mother baked for him and his friends? Had she invited them back to the house in San Polo? Brunetti’s train of thought stopped on the riva of his imagination and asked him why he thought Davide Cavanella had friends. Apparently speechless, how could he communicate enough to make a friend other than by using sign, had he known to use it?

Brunetti drew lines from the pieces of information he thought he needed and connected them to the people or places that might provide them. Applications for all of his documents would be – or should be, he reminded himself – kept at the Ufficio Anagrafe. Their own files would have records of any arrests, though Brunetti still found this difficult to believe. Signorina Elettra could certainly find any other indications left to bureaucracy by Cavanella’s passing through this world.

But where could he find out if Davide had had any friends, and if his mother – if the woman who opened the door was his mother – had baked cakes for him or for him and his friends? He got to his feet and went downstairs to start Signorina Elettra in pursuit of the answers to the first questions.

Brunetti began by asking her if the presentation the previous day had been interesting.

Did she sniff? ‘Amateurs,’ she said, then looked up and asked, ‘What is it, Commissario?’

When he had explained that Cavanella was not registered as resident in the city, though he had lived there for decades, he handed her the list of the information he wanted.

She studied it for long moments, then set it to the side of her computer, saying, ‘You know you could do this officially.’ He did not understand the reluctance he sensed in her. Usually a chance to make a visit – an unauthorized visit, it must be admitted – to the database of any city office was to invite Signorina Elettra to a few hours at the fairground. ‘Or perhaps Pucetti, or even Vianello, could find all of this for you,’ she said, moving the list slightly to the left.

‘If you’d rather not,’ Brunetti began, giving voice to the unthinkable.

She placed the very tip of one red-nailed finger at

the centre of the list, smiled up at him, and said, ‘All right, Commissario: I’ll confess.’

He smiled his readiness.

‘A friend,’ she said, using the masculine form of the noun and thus rousing his interest, ‘is arriving at the airport at two, and I thought I might go out to meet him.’

‘Does he know where you work?’ Brunetti surprised them both by asking.

She answered almost without thinking. ‘Yes, I thought it best to tell him from the beginning.’

Interestinger and interestinger, Brunetti thought. The beginning of what? ‘Then perhaps Foa could take you out on the launch.’ Before she could question this, he explained, ‘He can drop you off and wait for you both. I think it’s good that we show the luggage handlers we’re still interested in them.’ The police had failed to stop the theft of property from suitcases for years now, and it was very unlikely that the sight of a police launch moored to the dock would have any effect on their continued depredations, but it was the best excuse he could come up with at such short notice.