'Probably more than normal.'

'Any diseases?'

'Not that I know of. He was in perfect health, well in very good health, until about two weeks before he died.'

'What did he die of?'

'He was shot'

'Was he alive when he was shot?' Sergio asked. 'Of cour...' Brunetti started to say, but then he stopped. He didn't know. 'We've a.s.sumed so' 'I'd check,' Sergio said. 'I don't know that we can,' Brunetti said. 'Why? Don't you have the body?' 'There wasn't much of it left' 'The Lorenzoni boy?'

'Yes,' Brunetti answered, and into the expanding silence he finally asked, 'What does all that mean, the numbers I gave you for those tests?'

'You know I'm not a doctor,' Sergio began, but Brunetti cut him off.

'Sergio, this isn't a trial. I just want to know. Me, for myself. What do they mean, all those tests?'

1 think if s radiation poisoning,' Sergio said. When Brunetti didn't respond, he explained, 'The spleen. It can't have been that damaged if he had no organic disease. And the blood count is horribly low. And the lung capacity. Was much of them left?'

Brunetti remembered the doctor saying that they looked like the lungs of a heavy smoker, of a man far older than Roberto, who had smoked for decades. At the time, Brunetti had not questioned or pursued the contradiction between that and the fact that Roberto didn't smoke. He explained this to Sergio, then asked, 'What else?'

'All of it - the spleen, the blood, the lungs.'

'Are you sure, Sergio?' he asked, forgetting that this was his older brother, just back from a triumph at an international congress about radioactive contamination at Chern.o.byl.

'Yes.'

Brunetti's mind was off far from Venice, following the trail of Roberto's credit cards across the face of Europe. Eastern Europe. To the breakaway republics of the former Soviet Union, rich in natural resources that lay hidden beneath their soil and just as rich in the armaments which the hastily departing Russians had left behind as they fled in advance of their collapsing empire.

'Madre di Dio' he whispered, afraid at what he understood. he whispered, afraid at what he understood.

'What is it, Guido?'his brother asked.

'How do you transport that stuff?' Brunetti asked.

'What stuff?'

'Radioactive things. Material, whatever it's called.' 'That depends.' 'On what?'

'On how much of it there is and what kind it is.'

'Give me an example,' Brunetti demanded and then, hearing his own insistent voice, added, 'It's important.'

'If it's the sort we use, for radiotherapy, ifs shipped in individual containers' 'How big?'

'The size of a suitcase. Perhaps even smaller if it's for a smaller machine or dosage'

'Do you know anything about the other kind?'

'There are lots of other kinds, Guido' The kind for bombs. He'd been in Belorussia.'

No sound came through the phone, only the well-crafted silence achieved by Telecom's new laser network, but Brunetti thought he could hear the gears meshing in Sergio's mind.

'Ah' was all his brother said. And then, 'So long as the container is lined with enough lead, it can be very small. A briefcase or suitcase. It'd be heavy, but it can be small.'

This time it was from Brunetti's lips that the sigh escaped. 'That would be enough?'

'I'm not sure what you've got in mind, Guido, but if you mean enough for a bomb, then yes, that would be more than enough.'

That left very little for either of them to say. After a long pause, Sergio suggested, 'I'd check the place where he was found with a Geiger counter. And the body.'

'Is this possible?' Brunetti asked, not having to explain what he meant.

'I think so, yes' Sergio's voice blended the certainty of the expert and the sadness of the man. 'The Russians left them nothing else to sell.'

'G.o.d help us all, then' said Brunetti.

26.

Brunetti's work had long accustomed him to horror and the various indignities humans inflict upon one another, indeed, upon anything near them, but nothing in his experience had prepared him for this. To contemplate what his phone call to Sergio had revealed was to contemplate the unthinkable. It was not difficult for Brunetti to imagine traffic in armaments on however grand a scale; indeed, he could easily accept the fact that guns would be sold, even to those the sellers knew to be killers. But this, if what he suspected - or feared - was true, then it went beyond any potential for evil he had formerly witnessed.

Not for an instant did Brunetti doubt that the Lorenzonis were involved with the illegal transport of nuclear material, and not for an instant did he doubt that the material would be used for armaments: there is no such thing as an illegal X-ray machine. Further, it was impossible for him to believe that Roberto could have organized it. Everything he had learned about the boy spoke of his dullness and lack of initiative: he was hardly the sort to mastermind a traffic in nuclear material.

Who better to do so than Maurizio, the bright young nephew, the better choice of heir? He was ambitious, a young man who looked forward to the commercial possibilities of the next millennium, to the vast new markets and suppliers in the East. The only obstacles to his leading the Lorenzoni business and fortunes to new triumphs was his dull cousin Roberto, the boy who could be sent to fetch and carry, rather in the manner of the friendly family dog.

The only doubt Brunetti had was the extent of the Count's involvement in the business. Brunetti doubted that something like this, an endeavour which could put the entire Lorenzoni empire at risk, could have been carried out without his knowledge and consent. Had he chosen to send his son to Belorussia to bring back the deadly material? Who better and more invisible than the playboy with the credit-card wh.o.r.es? If he drank enough champagne, would anyone question what he had in his briefcase? Who inspects the luggage of a fool?

Brunetti doubted that Roberto would even have known what he was carrying. His picture of the boy did not permit that. How, then, had it happened that he was exposed to the deadly emanation of the materials?

Brunetti tried to imagine this boy he had never seen, pictured him in some flashy hotel, wh.o.r.es gone home, alone in his room with the suitcase he was to take back to the West. If there had been some leakage,, he would never have known, would have brought back with him no more than the strange symptoms of malaise that had driven him from doctor to doctor.

He would have spoken, not to his father, but to his cousin, the boy who had shared youth and innocence with him. And Maurizio would certainly have come quickly to suspect what Roberto was describing, would have recognized the symptoms for what they were: Roberto's death sentence.

For a long time, Brunetti sat at his desk and looked at the door to his office, thinking about moral goodness and beginning to understand the relationships between one phenomenon and another and the consequences of each. What he did not understand, not yet, was how the Count had come to learn of this.

Cicero advised that the pa.s.sions be restrained. If someone murdered Raffi, his own son, in cold blood, Brunetti knew he would not be able to restrain his pa.s.sions, that he would be savage, relentless, ruthless, would forget all policeman, be only father, and hunt them down and destroy them. He would seek vengeance at any cost. Cicero allowed no exceptions to his rules concerning moral goodness, but surely a crime like this would free a father from the injunction to behave considerately and understandingly and would give him the human right to seek vengeance.

Brunetti pondered all of this as the sun set, taking with it what little light filtered into his office. When it was almost fully dark in the room, Brunetti switched on the light. He went back to his desk, pulled out the folder from the bottom drawer, and read through it again, very slowly. He took no notes, though he often glanced up from it and across at the now-darkened windows, as if he could see reflected therein the new shapes and patterns that his reading was creating. It took him a half hour to read it all, and when it was finished, he placed it back in the drawer, closed the drawer softly, with his hand, not his foot. Then he left the Questura, heading towards Rialto and the Lorenzoni palazzo. palazzo.

The maid who answered the door said that the Count was not receiving visitors. Brunetti asked her to carry up his name. When she came back, her face tight with irritation at this interruption upon familial grief, she said the Count had repeated his message: he was not receiving visitors.

Brunetti asked, then told, the maid to carry up the message that he was now in possession of important information concerning Roberto's murder and wanted to speak to the Count before reopening the official investigation of his death which, if the Count still refused to speak to him, would begin the following morning.

As he expected, this time the maid, when she returned, told him to follow her, and she led him, an Ariadne without a string, up the staircases and through the corridors to a new part of the palazzo palazzo, a part Brunetti had never seen before.

The Count was alone in what must have been an office, perhaps Maurizio's, for it was filled with computer terminals, a photocopier, and four telephones.

The clear plastic tables on which all of these machines stood seemed out of place with the velvet curtains, with the view from the ogival windows and the rooftops that lay beyond those windows.

The Count sat behind one of the desks, a computer terminal to his left. He looked up when Brunetti came in and asked, 'What is it?' not bothering to stand or offer Brunetti a seat.

'I've come to discuss some new information with you' Brunetti answered.

The Count sat rigid, hands before him. 'There is no new information. My son is dead. My nephew killed him. And now he's dead. After that, nothing follows. There's nothing more I want to know'

Brunetti gave him a long look, making no attempt to disguise his scepticism at what he'd just heard. 'The information I have might shed light on why all of this happened.'

'I don't care why any of it happened' the Count shot back. 'For me and my wife, it is enough that it did happen. I want nothing more to do with it'

'I'm afraid that's no longer possible' Brunetti said.

'What do you mean, not possible?'

'There's evidence that something far more complicated than kidnapping was going on.'

Suddenly remembering his duties as host, the Count waved Brunetti to a seat and switched off the soft purr of the computer. Then he asked, 'What information?'

'Your company, or companies, have a great deal to do with Eastern Europe'

'Is that a statement or a question?' the Count asked.

'I think it's both. I know you have dealings there, but I don't know how extensive they are.' Brunetti waited a moment, just until the Count was going to speak, and then added, 'Or just what sort of dealings they might be.'

'Signor ... I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name,' the Count began.

'Brunetti.'

'Signor Brunetti, the police have been investigating my family for almost two years. Surely, that's enough time for them, even the police, to have discovered everything about the nature and extent of my dealings in Eastern Europe.' When Brunetti didn't respond to his provocation, the Count asked, 'Well, isn't that true?'

'We've discovered a great deal about your dealings there, yes, but I've learned something else, something that was never mentioned in any of the information you, or your nephew, supplied to us.'

'And what is that?' the Count demanded, dismissing with his tone any interest he might have in what this policeman could have to say.

Traffic in nuclear arms,' Brunetti said calmly, and only as he heard himself say the words did he realize just how paltry was his evidence and how impulsive the haste with which he had come halfway across the city to confront this man. Sergio was not a doctor, Brunetti had not bothered to check either Roberto's remains or the place where they were found to see if there were traces of nuclear contamination, nor had he tried to learn more about the Lorenzonis' involvement in the East. No, he had jumped up, like a child at the sound of the bells of the ice cream truck in the street, and had come bustling across the city to posture and play policeman in front of this man.

The Count's chin shot up, his mouth tightened, and he started to speak, but then his eyes shifted away from Brunetti and to the left, to the door to the room, where his wife had suddenly and silently appeared. He stood and went towards her, and Brunetti got to his feet to acknowledge her presence. But when Brunetti looked more closely at the woman who stood in the door, he was not certain that this was the Countess, this bent, curved, frail old woman who supported herself with a wooden cane which she clutched in a hand that seemed a paw, or a claw. Brunetti could see that her eyes had gone cloudy, as if the sudden onslaught of grief had blown smoke into them.

'Ludovico?' she said in a tremulous voice.

'Yes, my dear?' he said, taking one arm and leading her a few steps into the room.

'Ludovico?' she said again.

'What is it, dear?' he asked, bending down over her, bending down more now that she seemed to have grown so small.

She paused, placed both hands on the top of the cane, and looked up at him. She glanced away, then back. 'I 'I forget,' she said, started to smile, but then forgot about that, too. Suddenly her expression changed, and she looked at her husband as though he were a strange, ominous presence in the room. She raised one arm in front of her, her palm splayed open towards him as if to protect herself from a blow. But then she seemed to forget about that, as well, turned and, cane finding the way for her, left the room. Both men listened to the tap of the cane as it disappeared down the corridor. Then a door closed and they were conscious of being alone again. forget,' she said, started to smile, but then forgot about that, too. Suddenly her expression changed, and she looked at her husband as though he were a strange, ominous presence in the room. She raised one arm in front of her, her palm splayed open towards him as if to protect herself from a blow. But then she seemed to forget about that, as well, turned and, cane finding the way for her, left the room. Both men listened to the tap of the cane as it disappeared down the corridor. Then a door closed and they were conscious of being alone again.

The Count went back to his seat behind the desk, but, when he sat down and faced Brunetti, it seemed that the Countess had somehow managed to infect him with her age, for his eyes had grown duller, his mouth less firm than when she came in.

'She knows,' the Count said, voice black with despair. 'But how did you learn?' he asked Brunetti in a voice as tired as his wife's had been.

Brunetti sat down again and dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. 'It doesn't matter.'

'I told you that,' the Count said. When he saw Brunetti's puzzled expression, he said, 'Nothing matters.'

'Why Roberto died matters,' Brunetti said. The only response he got for this was a quick shrug of one shoulder, but he continued, 'Why he died matters because then we can find the people who did it.'

'You know who did it,' the Count said.

'Yes, I know who sent them. We both know that. But I want them,' Brunetti said, half rising from his chair and surprising himself with the pa.s.sion with which he spoke but unable to restrain it. 'I want their names.' Again that fervent tone. He lowered himself back into his chair and looked down, embarra.s.sed at his own anger.

'Paolo Frasetti and Elvio Mascarini,' the Count said simply.

For a moment, Brunetti didn't know what he was hearing, and then when he understood, he didn't believe; and then when he believed, the entire pattern of the Lorenzoni killings that had started to form with the discovery of those tattered remains in a ditch shifted again and came into a strange new focus, one far more grotesque and horrible than those rotting fragments of his son. Brunetti reacted instantly, but instead of staring up at the Count in astonishment, he pulled his notebook from the inner pocket of his jacket and made a note of the names. 'Where can we find them?' He forced his voice to remain calm, entirely casual, while his mind raced ahead to all the questions he had to ask before the Count realized how fatal his misunderstanding had been.

'Frasetti lives over near Santa Marta. I don't know about the other one.'

Brunetti had sufficient control over his emotions and his face, and so he looked up and across at the Count. 'How did you find them?'

'They did a job for me four years ago. I used them again.'

This was not the time to ask about that other job; he had only to find out about the kidnapping, about Roberto. 'When did you learn about the contamination?' There could be no other reason.

'Soon after he got back from Belorussia.'

'How did it happen?'

The Count folded his hands in front of him and looked down at them. In a hotel. It was raining, and Roberto didn't want to go out. He couldn't understand the television: it was all in Russian or German. And this hotel couldn't - or wouldn't -find him a woman. So he had nothing to do, and so he started to think about what we had sent him for.'

He glanced across at Brunetti. 'Do I have to tell you all of this?'

'I think I need to know about it' Brunetti said.