'Like the one at Santi Apostoli?' Brunetti asked neutrally, mentioning a church which was used for meetings of a group of particularly unb.u.t.toned Christians: Brunetti, who sometimes walked past as the sound of their evening services emerged, could think of no better adjective.

'In the city, but not that group,' Antonin said.

'Was this other man also a member?' Brunetti asked.

'I don't know,' Antonin said quickly, as though this were an irrelevant detail. 'But what I do know is that, within a month of their meeting, Roberto was already giving him money.'

'Would you tell me how you know this?' Brunetti asked.

'Patrizia told me.'

'And how did she know?'

'Her son's companion, Emanuela, told her.'

'And did she know because there was some sort of decline in the family's finances?' Brunetti asked, wondering why the man couldn't simply tell him what was going on and have done with it. Why did he wait for these repeated, minute questions? The memory flashed into Brunetti's mind of the last confession he had made, when he was about twelve. As he counted out his poor, miserable little-boy sins to the priest, he had become conscious of a mounting eagerness in the priest's voice as he asked Brunetti to explain in detail just what he had done and what he had felt while doing it. And an atavistic warning of the presence of something unhealthy and dangerous had sounded in Brunetti's mind, driving him to excuse himself and leave the confessional, never again to return.

And here he was, decades later, in a parody of that same situation, though this time it was he who was asking the niggling questions. His mind wandered off to a consideration of the concept of sin and the way it forced people to divide action into good or bad, right or wrong, forcing them to live in a black and white universe.

He had not wanted to provide his own children with a list of sins that had to be mindlessly avoided and rules that could never be questioned. Instead, he had tried to explain to them how some actions produced good and some bad, though he had been forced at times to regret that he had not chosen the other option with its easy resolution of every question.

'... He's put it on the market. I told you: he says he wants to give the community the money and go and live with them.'

'Yes, I understand that,' Brunetti lied. 'But when? What happens to this woman Emanuela? And their daughter?'

'Patrizia has said that they can go and live with her -she owns her own apartment - but it's small, only three rooms, and four people can't live in it, at least not for very long.'

'Isn't there anywhere else?' Brunetti asked, thinking of the apartment that belonged to IRE and the lease that was now in this woman Emanuela's name.

'No, not without creating terrible problems,' the priest said, offering no explanation.

Brunetti took this to mean the people living in the apartment had some sort of written agreement with her or were the sort who were sure to cause trouble if told to leave.

Brunetti put on his friendliest smile and asked, in his most encouraging tone, 'You said this woman Patrizia's father is in the hospital where you're chaplain.' When Antonin nodded, he went on. 'What about his home? Is there a chance that they could live there? After all, he's the grandfather' Brunetti said, as if to name the relationship was to make the offer inevitable.

Antonin shook his head but gave no explanation, forcing Brunetti to ask, 'Why?'

'He married again after his wife - Patrizia's mother -died, and she and Patrizia have never ... they've never got on.'

'I see,' Brunetti murmured.

To him, it seemed a relatively common story: a family was in danger of losing its home and had to find a place to live. Brunetti saw this as the major problem: a homeless child and her mother, an apartment which they might have to leave and another one to which they could not return. The solution was to find them a home, yet this seemed not to concern Antonin, or if it did concern him, it seemed to do so only because it was related to the sale of the young man's house.

'Where is this apartment he inherited?'

'In Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini. You look straight across at it when you come down the bridge. Top floor.'

'How big is it?'

'Why do you want to know all this?' the priest asked. 'How big is it?'

'About two hundred and fifty square metres.'

Depending on the condition, the state of the roof, the number of windows, the views, when the last restoration had been done, the place could be worth a fortune, just as easily as it could be a pit greatly in need of major work and major expenditure. But still worth a fortune.

'But I have no idea what it could be worth. I don't know that sort of thing' Antonin said after a long time.

Brunetti nodded in apparent belief and understanding, though the discovery of a Venetian ignorant of the value of a piece of real estate would ordinarily trigger a phone call to Il Il Gazzettino. Gazzettino.

'Have you any idea how much money he's already given this man?' Brunetti asked.

'No' the priest answered instantly, then added, 'Patrizia won't tell me. I think it embarra.s.ses her.'

'I see' Brunetti said. Then, trying to sound solemn, he went on, 'Too bad. Too bad for all of them.' The priest created two more creases in the cloth of his tunic. 'What is it you'd like me to do, Antonin?' Brunetti asked.

Eyes still lowered, the priest answered, 'I'd like you to see what you can find out about this man.'

'The one from Umbria?'

'Yes. Only I don't think he is'

'Where do you think he's from, then?'

'The South. Maybe Calabria. Maybe Sicily'

'Um-hum' was all Brunetti was willing to hazard.

The priest looked at him, letting the cloth drop on to his lap. 'It's not that I recognize anything or know the dialects down there, only he sounds like the actors I hear in the films who are meridionali meridionali or who are playing the parts of men who come from there.' He tried to find a better way to explain this. 'I was out of the country so long, maybe I'm not an accurate judge any more. But that's what he sounds like, though only at times. Most of the time, he speaks standard Italian.' He gave a self-effacing snort and added, 'Probably better than I do.' or who are playing the parts of men who come from there.' He tried to find a better way to explain this. 'I was out of the country so long, maybe I'm not an accurate judge any more. But that's what he sounds like, though only at times. Most of the time, he speaks standard Italian.' He gave a self-effacing snort and added, 'Probably better than I do.'

'When did you have a chance to listen to him?' Brunetti asked, wondering if he had phrased the question innocuously enough.

'I went to one of their meetings' the priest answered. 'It was in the apartment of one of them, a woman whose whole family has joined. Over near San Giacomo dell'Orio. It started at seven. People came in. They all seemed to know one another. And then the leader, this man I mentioned, came in and greeted them all'

'Was your friend's son there?'

'Yes. Of course.'

'Did you go with him?'

'No,' Antonin answered, obviously surprised by the question. 'He didn't know me then.' Antonin paused a moment, then added, 'And I didn't wear my habit when I went'

'How long ago was this?'

'About three months.'

'No talk of money?'

'Not that night. No.'

'But some other time?'

'The next time I went,' Antonin began, apparently having forgotten saying he had gone to only one meeting, 'he spoke, this Brother Leonardo, about the need to help the less fortunate members of the community. That's what he called them, "less fortunate", as though it would hurt them to be called poor. The people there must have been prepared for this because some of them had envelopes, and when he said this they pulled them out and pa.s.sed them forward to him.'

'How did he behave when this happened?' Brunetti asked, this time with the real curiosity that was beginning to stir in him.

'He looked surprised, though I don't see why he should have been'

Brunetti asked, 'Is it like this at all the meetings?'

Antonin raised a hand in the air. 'I went to only one more, and the same thing happened then'

'I see, I see' Brunetti muttered and then asked, 'And your friend's son, is he still going to these meetings?'

'Yes. Patrizia complains about it all the time.'

Ignoring the accusatory tone, Brunetti asked, 'Can you tell me anything more about this Brother Leonardo?'

'His surname is Mutti, and the mother house - if that's what it's called, and if there really is one - is somewhere in Umbria.'

'Are they a.s.sociated with the Church in any way, do you know?'

'You mean the Catholic Church?' Antonin asked. 'Yes.'

'No, they're not.' His response was so absolute that Brunetti didn't pursue it.

After some time, Brunetti asked, 'What is it, precisely, that you'd like me to do?'

'I'd like to know who this man is and whether he's really a monk or a friar or whatever he says he is.' Brunetti kept to himself his surprise that the priest should want to farm out this research: wouldn't it be easier for a person who was, as it were, in the business to attend to something like this?

'Do they have a name?'

'The Children of Jesus Christ.'

'Exactly where in San Giacomo do they meet?'

'You know that restaurant to the right of the church?'

'The one with the tables outside?'

'Yes. There's a calle calle by the restaurant, first door on the left. The name on the bell is Sambo.' by the restaurant, first door on the left. The name on the bell is Sambo.'

Brunetti jotted this down on the back of an envelope on his desk. The man had sprinkled water on his mother's casket, and he had also gone to visit her in her last days, and so Brunetti felt himself in the priest's debt. 'I'll see what I can do,' he said and got to his feet.

The priest rose and put out his hand.

Brunetti took it, but the memory of the priest's fingernails made him glad that the handshake was brief and perfunctory. He took the priest to the door, then stood at the top of the steps and watched him walk down and out of sight.

5.

Brunetti went back to his office, but instead of returning to his chair, he went and stood by the window. After a few minutes, the priest appeared two floors below, at the foot of the bridge leading over to Campo San Lorenzo, easily recognizable even from this acute angle by his long black skirts. As Brunetti watched, he started slowly up the steps of the bridge, lifting his skirts with both hands, reminding Brunetti of the way his grandmother fussed with the ap.r.o.n she sometimes wore. The priest reached the top of the bridge and let the hem of his tunic drop. He put one hand on the parapet and stood there for some time.

Moisture had condensed on the bridge that morning, and the dampness would surely cling to his long skirt. As Brunetti watched him walk down the other side and into the Campo, he recalled an observation Paola had once made, after a train trip from Padova to Venice when they had sat opposite a long-gowned mullah, busy with his prayer beads for the entire trip. His robes has been whiter than any businessman's shirt Brunetti had ever seen, and even Signorina Elettra would have envied the perfection of the pleats in his skirt.

As they walked down the steps of the station, the mullah moving gracefully off to his left, Paola said, 'If he didn't have a woman to take care of his costume for him, he'd probably have to go out and work for a living.' In response to Brunetti's observation that she was displaying a certain lack of multi-cultural sensitivity, she replied that half the trouble and most of the violence of the world would be eliminated if men were forced to do their own ironing, 'which word I use as a metonym for all housework, please understand,' she had hastened to add.

And who would disagree with her, he wondered? Brunetti, like most Italian men, had been spared the necessity of housework by the tireless labour of his mother, a background panel of his childhood, seen every day but never noticed. It was only when he did his military service that he had confronted the reality that his bed did not make itself each morning, nor did the bathroom clean itself. He had been lucky enough, after that, to marry a woman much given to what she called 'fair play', who conceded that her paltry hours of teaching allowed her sufficient time to see to some things in the house as well as the hiring of a cleaning woman to do the things she did not care for.

Brunetti gave himself a mental shake, and when the figure of the priest disappeared between the buildings on the other side of the ca.n.a.l, he went back to his desk. He looked at the top sheet of paper there, but soon his gaze drifted off as idly as did the clouds above the church of San Lorenzo. Who would know about this group or about their leader, Leonardo Mutti? He tried to think of anyone in the Questura who was of a religious persuasion, but something in him balked at asking them to make some sort of involuntary betrayal. He tried to summon up the name of anyone he knew who could be considered a believer or who had anything to do with the Church, but could think of no one. Was this a statement about his own lack of faith or of an intolerance he felt towards people who did believe?

He dialled his home number.

'p.r.o.nto' Paola responded on the fourth ring. Paola responded on the fourth ring.

'Do we know anyone religious?'

'In the business itself or a believer?'

'Either.'

'I know a few who are in the business, but I doubt they'd talk to someone like you,' she said, never one to spare his feelings. 'If you want someone who believes, you might try my mother.'

Paola's parents had been in Hong Kong when Brunetti's mother died; he and Paola had decided not to inform them or summon them home, not wanting to ruin what was said to be a holiday. Somehow, however, the Faliers had learned of Signora Brunetti's death but had succeeded in arriving only the morning after the funeral; Brunetti had seen them both and been warmed by the sincerity of their sympathy and the warmth of its expression.

'Of course,' Brunetti said. 'I'd forgotten.'

'I think she forgets sometimes, too,' Paola said and set the phone down.

From memory, he dialled the home number of Count and Countess Falier and spoke to one of the Count's secretaries. After a few minutes' delay, he heard the Contessa say, 'How lovely to speak to you, Guido. What can I do for you?'

Did everyone in his family, he wondered, think that he could have no interest in them aside from police business? For a moment, he was tempted to lie and tell her he had called simply to say h.e.l.lo and ask how they were adjusting to jet lag, but he feared she would see through that and so he answered, 'I'd like to speak to you.'

He had come, after some years of hesitation and diffidence, to use the familiar tu tu when speaking to her and the Count, but it did not fall trippingly from his tongue. It was certainly less difficult with the Contessa, a fact which reflected his greater ease in dealing with her in every way. when speaking to her and the Count, but it did not fall trippingly from his tongue. It was certainly less difficult with the Contessa, a fact which reflected his greater ease in dealing with her in every way.

'Whatever for, Guido?' she said, sounding interested.

'Religion,' he answered, hoping to surprise her.

Her answer was long in coming, but when she spoke, it was in an entirely conversational voice. 'Ah, from you, of all people.' And then silence.

'It has to do with an investigation,' he hastened to explain, though really this was not strictly the truth.

She laughed. 'Good heavens, you hardly have to tell me that, Guido.' Her voice disappeared for a moment, as though she had covered the receiver with her palm. Then she was back, saying, 'I've got someone here, but I could see you in an hour, if that's convenient.'