Donna Leon - The Golden Egg

Brunetti was about to snap back at him when he recalled the mantra Paola had been beating into his head for two decades: ‘This is the only power this man has, and it is the only power he will ever have in his life. Either you show him that you respect it, or he will cause you more trouble than it’s worth.’

‘Ah, sorry,’ Brunetti said, putting his card back in his wallet. ‘I forgot.’

The man nodded, apparently mollified. ‘She’s in the third room on the left.’

‘One of our men in uniform should be here soon. Would you send him down to us?’ Brunetti asked and then, invoking the wisdom of Paola, added, ‘Please.’

The man raised his hand, glad now to help. ‘Of course, Signore.’

Brunetti knocked at the door, waited a few seconds, and went in. Rizzardi was standing at the foot of the bed, reading a form attached to a thick plastic clipboard. How strange, Brunetti thought, to see Rizzardi with a live patient; but then he remembered that he was, after all, a doctor.

Rizzardi glanced at Brunetti and used the clipboard to wave him forward.

Brunetti approached. Rizzardi held up the clipboard to indicate it was the source of whatever he could tell

him. Speaking softly, the doctor said, ‘She might have a concussion, but very slight, a lot of bruising on her face, a cut over her left eye. Two fingers on her left hand are crushed, and there’s a hairline fracture to one of her ribs.’

Brunetti looked at the woman in the bed and was shocked to see how much smaller she had grown. She hardly seemed as long as she had been tall; the sheet dipped down at her shrunken waist. She was asleep; her eyes were curiously deep-set, a reddish-grey halo already in place around the left one. Her cheeks seemed to have collapsed into her mouth, or perhaps it was a trick of light that played the clear skin of her cheeks against the darker skin around and under her eyes. He recognized her chiefly by her hair, the only thing that had not changed.

Her left hand lay outside the covers, two fingers splinted and taped.

‘What happened?’ Brunetti asked.

Rizzardi lowered the clipboard and returned it to its place at the foot of the bed. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘All I’ve seen is this.’ He tapped the paper. Taking Brunetti by the arm, he moved him away from the bed.

‘Favaro said it looked as if she had been beaten. Her injuries are consistent with that idea.’ His voice was soft, cool, instructive.

Brunetti glanced across the room and took another look at the woman’s face and hand. ‘And if I said it, too?’ he asked, having seen the results of many beatings in his career.

Rizzardi gave a relaxed shrug and said, voice warming in response to Brunetti’s question, ‘I’d agree with you.’

Before Brunetti could add anything, the door opened and Pucetti came in. He looked at the two men, at the woman, then back at Rizzardi. The doctor nodded to him, reminding Brunetti they had met that morning, when Pucetti had accompanied Signora Cavanella to the morgue.

‘What happened, Dottore?’ the young officer asked, voice lowered. ‘Is she all right?’ His concern could not have been more audible.

‘The ambulance crew brought her in three hours ago. She might have a concussion: she hit her head. You see her fingers: they’ve been crushed. And she hit her face,’ Rizzardi said. ‘She might have fallen.’ Brunetti was interested in the description he gave, which was utterly devoid of reference to human agency of any sort.

‘ Oddio ,’ Pucetti said. He remained motionless, just inside the door. Then, with a shake, as if bringing himself back to normal, he asked Brunetti, ‘Should I go and talk to the crew?’

‘Good idea,’ Brunetti said, then to Rizzardi, ‘Is she all right alone?’

‘Of course,’ Rizzardi said, with that complete confidence with which doctors comment on uncertain things.

Realizing it would be difficult to talk in the same room as the woman, Brunetti said, ‘Let’s get a coffee,’ then, to Pucetti, ‘Come and find us in the bar after you talk to them, all right?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Pucetti said and, with one more glance in the woman’s direction, was gone as hurriedly as he had entered.

Both men left the room very quietly, as people always do when they are in a hospital. As they went along the hallway, back towards the bar in the entrance corridor, Brunetti asked, his voice returned to normal volume, ‘What do you think happened?’ Rizzardi said nothing for a while until Brunetti added, ‘Between us, that is.’

Rizzardi smiled and answered, ‘I don’t mind telling you. I’m thinking about the possibilities, not about the risk of giving an opinion.’ He paused when they reached the courtyard, where the rain had grown even heavier.

The trees were still fully leaved; the rain had not succeeded in bringing down many of them. It occurred to Brunetti that the leaves should all be on the ground by this time of year.

‘I suppose you’ve seen similar cases,’ Rizzardi said, standing with his hands in his pockets and watching two cats sleeping on the low stone wall. ‘They could be defence wounds, or perhaps she hurt her fingers trying to break her fall. There’s the blow to the head, but it could be that her head hit the wall, or a step, when she fell. There are the wounds on her face: on the left side, which means they came from a right-handed person – if someone did hit her – but that sort of bruising is common in a fall.’

One of the cats opened its eyes, stood, and arched its back before lying down again and lapsing instantly into profound sleep. ‘There might be some other explanation. The ambulance crew might know something, or she might tell us when she wakes up.’ Turning to Brunetti, he asked, ‘What’s it look like to you?’

Brunetti ran his right hand through his hair and found it still damp. He wiped his hand on his trousers and continued towards the bar. ‘I’ve seen enough of them, usually women who get beaten by their boyfriends or husbands. This could be one of scores of cases. It’s got all the signs: the head, the face, the fingers.’

In the bar he ordered two coffees without having to ask Rizzardi what he wanted.

When the coffee came, Rizzardi took a sip, then said, ‘I hit a man once. Once in my life. But I can’t imagine hitting a woman.’

‘Why’d you hit him?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Oh, it was just a thing,’ Rizzardi said.

Brunetti turned and stared at him. ‘Everything’s a thing , Ettore. Why’d you hit him?’

‘I was on a vaporetto,’ Rizzardi began. He picked up his coffee, studied what was left in the cup, swirled it around a few times, and finished it. ‘There was a man standing to my left. And in front of him was a little girl. Well, maybe not so little. She was maybe thirteen, so, yes, she was still a little girl. When he thought no one was looking, he leaned sideways and put his hand on her ass and squeezed it. And he left his hand there. I watched her, pretty little girl, wearing a dress. It was summer, so it was a light dress.’

Rizzardi set his cup back in the saucer and turned to look at Brunetti. ‘The girl looked at him, but he kept his hand there and smiled at her. She was terrified, embarrassed, ashamed.’ He turned to the barman and asked for a glass of mineral water, then turned back to Brunetti. ‘So I hit him. Made a fist and hit him in the stomach. I’m a doctor, so I didn’t want to risk hitting his head or his face: didn’t want to break anything, or my hand, so I guess I didn’t hit him very hard. But hard enough.’

The water came. Rizzardi picked it up and drank half. ‘He doubled over, and when his head was about the level of my knees, I bent down and said, “You ever do that again, I’ll kill you.”’ He sighed. ‘I never did anything like that in my life, let myself lose control.’