The man's glance was level, a combination of suspicion and insolence. 'Do I have to answer your question?'

he asked.

'No,' Brunetti said. 'You don't have to serve me a coffee, and you don't have to answer my question.'

The barman put the saucers on the counter and turned away. He disappeared into a narrow space to the right of the bar, leaving the red curtain open behind him.

'I don't think there's any sense staying here,' Griffoni said beside him. She put two Euros on the counter and they left. Neither of them had touched the coffee.

They spent another hour in the neighbourhood, going into a hardware store, a grocery, a shop that sold buttons and underwear, a gloomy place that sold food and products for pets, even into a shop that sold handbags, but there the saleswoman was Chinese and spoke no Italian except, it seemed, numbers.

Though they realized early on that no one was going to talk to them, they still persisted. Most people said they did not know Ana Cavanella or her son, but some of them repeated a variation of the response of the man at the bar, a fact that led Brunetti to suspect that phones had been ringing ever since they left the bar.

As they walked out of the last shop, Griffoni said, 'It's just like being at home.'

'Where nobody talks to the police?' Brunetti asked.

'Yes.'

'Why should it be any different?'

She could not disguise her surprise, as if she had never considered the possibility that Venetians, too, might be suspicious of the police and have strict ideas about omerta.

Deciding that it was futile to continue, Brunetti dialled Foa's number and asked him if he was still in the area. Sounding relieved to hear his superior's voice, Foa said he was and, without being asked, said he'd be at the boat in ten minutes.

Just as they started walking down the bridge to the side of the canal where the boat was moored, Foa appeared in the calle ahead of them, his smile visible even at this distance. The three of them arrived at the boat at the same time. 'I talked to my aunt, Commissario,' he said, his smile now even broader.

'And she knows Ana Cavanella, I assume?' Brunetti said, unable to hide his own smile.

'Yes, sir. Or at least she knows her to see and knows what's said about her.'

'Which is?'

Foa looked around the small campiello, as if he had picked up the neighbourhood's nervousness about talking to a policeman. 'Let's go on board,' he suggested, turning towards the boat. He jumped on to the deck, which now lay lower in the water than when they arrived. He held out his hand, first for Griffoni and then for Brunetti, who took it gladly as he stepped down.

Foa switched on the engine and pulled away from the riva, then put the motor into reverse and backed up and into the canal on the right to turn back the way they had come. When they emerged into the Grand Canal, he slowed and Brunetti and Griffoni moved up to stand on either side of him.

With no urging, Foa began. 'The story is that the mother moved here ages ago, when Ana was a little girl. The mother rented a house, but then later Ana got hold of it, no one knows how.' How very Venetian, Brunetti thought, to begin a story like this with talk of real estate.

'When she was still a young girl, Ana got a job as a servant somewhere else in the city and went to live there during the week, though she came home to visit her mother when she could. Then after a couple of years she came home to live with her.' Foa paused and said, 'You have to understand, my aunt's almost ninety.' He saw their surprise and added, 'She's my father's aunt, really. But she's still an aunt.' He laughed, 'My father's always said she was his eredita from that side of the family, and I guess I've inherited her.'

'And Ana?' Brunetti prodded, not interested in the particulars of Foa's relationship with his great-aunt.

'The story that's told is that she went away on a trip and came back with this son of hers.'

'What?' Griffoni asked.

Foa glanced at her, perhaps relieved to find someone else who found the story strange. 'That's what she told me. She said it's what the local people say: she went away for some time my aunt didn't know how long I think they didn't have a lot of friends in the neighbourhood and came back with the son.'

'How old was he?' Griffoni asked.

'No one knew. Exactly, that is. He wasn't a young child any more, though. Maybe twelve or so. And deaf. That's what my aunt said Ana and her mother told people, but most people thought something else was wrong with him because he was so simple.'

'Wait a minute,' Griffoni said. Foa, confused, slowed the boat. She laughed. 'No, I mean wait a minute with this story. Did she have this boy stuck in a parking lot somewhere, and when he reached a certain age, she went and picked him up?' She shook her head repeatedly. 'It doesn't make any sense.'

'My aunt said she told people he lived with relatives in the country, and then when he was old enough, she brought him home.'

'Old enough for what?' Brunetti asked in a soft voice, as if speaking to himself. The others heard him, but neither had any suggestion to make.

Surprising both men, Griffoni asked, 'Why don't we try the Lembos?' When neither opposed her suggestion, she said, 'She worked for them for years. Lucrezia's a few years older than she is, so she would have been a teenager then, and maybe she remembers her.'

Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was after six. 'You can drop us off there, Foa, if you like, then take the boat back.'

'Do you want to hear what else my aunt said?' Foa asked, failing to disguise how much he was offended by their having cut off his story.

Brunetti put a hand on his arm and said, 'Of course. I'm sorry. What else did she say?'

'That she was a beautiful girl, and all the boys in the neighbourhood were crazy for her. But she never had anything to do with them, like she thought she was too good for them or something.' He reflected on this, then asked, as though the question had no suitable answer, 'She's a girl from San Polo, and she's too good for the local boys?'

'My daughter's a girl from San Polo,' Brunetti said lightly, 'and I certainly think she's better than most of the boys I've seen in the neighbourhood.'

It took a moment, but when Foa understood, he laughed and increased the speed to get them to the Lembo palazzo.

22.

Foa pulled up at the place where he had taken Brunetti the last time but showed no desire to linger, perhaps still smarting from their apparent lack of interest in his aunt's story. He helped them up from the boat, waved, and proceeded on towards the Canale of the Giudecca.

The wind had dropped, but it had grown colder, and Brunetti wished he had brought a scarf with him or had thought to wear a heavier jacket. Griffoni, he noticed, wore a padded coat that came to just above her knees and seemed not to notice the cold at all.

As they walked up the calle, she asked, 'How do we play this?'

'We see what happens and we react to that,' was the only thing he could think of suggesting.

There was no response. A boat was passing in the canal at the end of the calle, and he waited to ring the bell again until it passed out of hearing. He pushed and kept his finger on the bell; both of them heard the far-off echo from inside.

If no one comes, he told himself, then that's it, and I'll forget all about it. Let the dead rest. Let them all rest. He allowed a full minute to pass and then rang the bell again, holding his finger there for a long time.

Inside, a door slammed, and Brunetti flushed with relief. Someone was there, and he could go on with this.

Suddenly the door was pulled open. No warning, no sound from inside: it was closed, and then it was open. A tall woman who might have been the older sister of the woman who had been wearing the bikini in the photos Signorina Elettra had shown him stood before them. She wore a grey tracksuit that appeared to have been bought for a thinner person.

Time had passed since the photos had been taken, but more time had passed for her, or harder time. One glance told Brunetti that her face had been lifted, perhaps a number of times, but at some point she had abandoned the attempt or the trouble and had accepted the inevitable. Wrinkles had accumulated under her chin like thick batter poured too slowly from a bowl. Her hair was a rusty red, pulled back in a ponytail, frayed hairs curling away from her head.

Little rivulets, looking like something between a U and a V, hung below her eyes, the flesh above them darker than the skin of her face. She stared, first at the man

and then the woman, with eyes devoid of curiosity or interest. 'S?' she asked. Had they been coming to collect the rent or to tell her the house was on fire, her response to their presence would have been the same.

'Signora Lembo?' Brunetti asked.

'S,' she answered neutrally.

'I'm Commissario Brunetti, and this is Commissario Griffoni. We'd like to speak to you.'

'About what?'

'Ana Cavanella.'

Her eyes changed, came alive, though not in a manner Brunetti found particularly appealing. She looked at Griffoni, and when Brunetti glanced aside at her he saw that his colleague had assumed a slumped posture that took centimetres off her height. Her posture had also managed to become graceless and awkward, her face so reduced in expression or signs of interest as to be almost plain; certainly not attractive.

'What do you want to know about her?' Lucrezia Lembo for this must be Lucrezia asked. She moved her hand from behind her and took a deep pull on her cigarette, almost as if she had thought, until then, that she had to hide it. Tilting her head back, she blew a long line of perfect smoke rings into the air. Brunetti could not repress a smile of appreciation, which she saw.

'Come with me,' she said. 'It's cold out here.'

She turned and went across the small courtyard to a door, opened it, and climbed stiffly up a single steep flight of steps. They followed, Brunetti averting his eyes from the sight of her broad buttocks ahead of him on the steps. The hallway they entered was even colder than the courtyard had been. The only sound was their footsteps, his and Griffoni's: when he did look, he saw that the woman wore bedroom slippers. No wonder they had not heard her cross the courtyard.

At the end of the corridor she opened a door that led to another corridor. She left it to them to follow her and close it, which Brunetti did. He thought of how many times he had watched this scene in films, both good and bad: the innocent welcomed into the home of the killer; the killers coming into the home of the innocent.

The woman paused in front of another door long enough to poke her cigarette into a brimming ashtray that stood on a walnut table. This door led to a dimly lit room that must once have been a library. Most of the shelves were empty, and what books remained lay like rectangular drunks, any which way, on the shelves. There was even a rolling wooden ladder attached to the shelves, leading up to the highest, they too almost completely devoid of books.

There was no smell of cigarettes in the room. No dust lingered on the books; the carpet was so freshly vacuumed that their shoes left prints on the pile. What little light remained in the day came effortlessly through the windows, which showed no trace of dirt or grime.

Lucrezia lowered herself into the middle of a plush sofa, her feet flat on the floor in front of her. She motioned them to the chairs which sat opposite. 'What about her?' she asked.

'She worked for your family, didn't she?' Brunetti asked. Griffoni had, to all intents and purposes, become a deaf mute.

'Yes. Many years ago.'

It was only then, hearing the way her voice pounded the words, that Brunetti realized she was drunk or drugged, at least enough for her speech to be affected. She moved her ponderous glance to Griffoni but seemed to find her as inert as Brunetti had. Was this all that was left of drugs, sex, and rock and roll? Surely no one could have imagined this.

'What services did she perform for your family?'

A sudden flash of anger lit Lucrezia's eyes and her hands drew themselves involuntarily into fists. But, within a second, her face was calm and her hands relaxed. 'She was a maid, if that's what you mean,' she said stolidly.

'For your mother?' Brunetti asked, remembering a time when wealthy women had what were called 'ladies' maids'.

Again, that lightning flash, the involuntary motion of her hands followed by the instant calm. 'No. She was the maid for the entire family.'

'She was very young, wasn't she?'

'She was fifteen when she came here,' she said. Her displeasure hit harder on the words this time, again giving voice to whatever she had drunk or used. 'It depends on how young you consider that.' Brunetti thought the age uninteresting; it was her response to it that struck him: why would she remember something like that from half a century ago?

'It's a dangerous age,' Griffoni stunned him by saying, not so much for the words as by the fact that he had all but forgotten about her, sitting there, humble, plain, silent. Waiting.

Lucrezia's eyes swivelled in the direction of the woman next to Brunetti and she studied this suddenly vocal thing. Griffoni was looking at the hands clasped in her lap, but enough of her face was visible for the other woman to see the suddenly furrowed brow and tightened mouth.

'Dangerous,' Lucrezia repeated with no expression at all. It might as easily have been a shoe size she was giving. With no explanation, she got to her feet, crossed the room, and went out, leaving the door open behind her.

Brunetti turned to his colleague with an inquisitive glance, but she, perhaps thinking of Lucrezia's silent feet, held a finger to her lips and shook her head. He looked around the room again, made uncomfortable by the contrast between the spotless cleanliness and the disorderly state of the books.

Griffoni apparently incommunicado, he turned his thoughts to Davide Cavanella. He had no determinable age: he could have been born when Ana Cavanella worked here, or after. The family had watched her grow up, ripen, mature. He recalled, as if he had photographed them, Lucrezia's tight hands, replayed the scene of her slowly relaxing them, forcing them, perhaps, to open and look natural. He recalled the look in her eyes when he asked what Ana's services such an inopportune choice of word to the family had been. Who could know if she had been a ladies' maid or a maid of all work, or what she had been? Or what her services were? And for whom?

Lucrezia Lembo came back into the room. Both Brunetti and Griffoni could see the difference: she was calmer, her body relaxed and her walk more fluid. Her hair, Brunetti thought, was the same, as was her body, but she looked refreshed, even younger; certainly happier.

She returned to her place on the sofa and lowered herself into it with another sigh. 'We were saying?' she asked, trying to smile in Brunetti's direction but unable to keep her attention from returning to the silent Griffoni.

'I was asking you about Ana Cavanella, who once worked for your family,' Brunetti reminded her.

'Yes, I think I remember her,' Lucrezia said in a voice that had grown almost languid. 'Pretty girl, wasn't she?'

'I didn't know her then,' Brunetti said, not thinking it expedient to tell her that he had been a child at the time. Then, deciding to lie, he added, 'But my father might have.'

Her eyes turned to him, and only then came into focus. 'How is that?' she asked.

'He ran a boat service, a kind of taxi, but he also transported precious objects for antique dealers.' Brunetti put on his easiest smile, one filled with the remembrance of past times, happier times, in his father's case, times that had never existed. 'He had a delicate touch. That's what the dealers said. So they trusted him to move things.' Again, that smile. 'I remember him speaking of your father.' Given his age at the time, this was highly unlikely, but he doubted she would consider this.

Lucrezia's mouth put on a smile. 'My father bought a lot of things,' she said, listened to the echo of her own words, and smiled again, but this smile, though real, was not pretty. She waved her hands at the almost empty shelves, and Brunetti looked at them admiringly. 'So your father might have worked for him,' she concluded, speaking as though the words were somehow meaningful and related to their previous conversation.

Brunetti repeated the smile that greets good times recalled. 'He said your father was always very generous to him, and to the men who worked with him,' Brunetti invented. Generosity was so appealing that everyone wanted it to be attributed to them, unlike a sense of justice or probity: those unwieldy, uncomfortable virtues.

'Oh, he was very generous, my father,' she said so slyly that Brunetti was left feeling they were not having the same conversation or not talking about the same thing.

'That's dangerous, too,' Griffoni said with sibylline indifference. 'Generosity.' She followed this with a half-mocking snort.

Lucrezia started, as though she had no idea where that voice could be coming from. She turned the vague attention of her eyes towards Griffoni, but she had gone still again. Lucrezia's confusion splashed across her face. Then, surprising them both, she said, 'It was my mother who wasn't generous.' Her eyes moved to the shelves of the bookcase and then, as if the echo of her words had spent time there before coming back to her, suddenly slapped her hand across her mouth. 'No. That's not right. She was good. She made us say the rosary. Every night, before we went to bed, we had to kneel down with her and say the rosary: Monday the Joyful Mysteries, Tuesday the Sorrowful Mysteries, Wednesday the Glorious Mysteries.' She closed her eyes and brought her hands together, as though holding the beads.