Anonymous Venetian by Donna Leon Page B

is the vice-questore in
charge of this?’
     
    ‘Nasci.’
     
    ‘Is she liable to ... I mean,
will she think this a good idea?’
     
    ‘I’m sure that if the request
came from a commissario, she’d agree, sir. Especially as you’re coming out here
to give us a hand.’
     
    ‘Good. Get someone to write up a
request, and I’ll sign it before lunch.’ Gallo nodded, made a note on a piece
of paper in front of him, then looked up at Brunetti and nodded again. ‘And get
your people working on the clothing and shoes he was wearing.’ Gallo made
another note.
     
    Brunetti flipped open the blue
file that he had studied the night before and pointed to the list of names and
addresses stapled to the inside cover. ‘I think the best thing we can do is to
begin asking these men questions about the victim, if they know who he is or if
they recognize him or know anyone who might have known him. The pathologist
said he must be in his early forties. None of the men in the file are that old,
few of them are even in their thirties, so if he’s a local, he’d stand out
because of his age, and people would certainly know about him.’
     
    ‘How do you want to do this, sir?’
     
    ‘I think we should divide the
list into three, and then you and I and Scarpa can start showing them the
picture and asking them what they know.’
     
    ‘They aren’t the sort of people
who are willing to talk to the police, sir.’
     
    ‘Then I suggest we take along a
second picture, one of the photos of what he looked like when we found him out
in the field. I think if we convince these men that the same thing could happen
to them, they might be less reluctant to talk to us.’
     
    ‘I’ll get Scarpa up here,’ Gallo
said and reached for the phone.
     
    * * * *
     
    Chapter Seven
     
     
    They
decided, even though it was still morning - probably more like the middle of the
night to the men on the list - to talk to them now. Brunetti asked the other
men, because they were familiar with Mestre, to arrange the addresses into some
sort of geographic order, so they wouldn’t have to traverse the city repeatedly
as they went through the names.
     
    When this was done, Brunetti took
the list he was given and went downstairs to find his driver. He doubted the
wisdom of arriving to question the men on this particular list in a blue and
white police car with a uniformed policeman at the wheel, but he had only to
step out into the mid-morning air of Mestre to decide that mere survival
overrode any consideration of caution.
     
    The heat wrapped itself around
him, and the air seemed to nibble at his eyes. There was no breeze, not the
slightest current; the day lay like a filthy blanket upon the city. Cars snaked
past the Questura, their horns bleating in futile protest against changing
lights or crossing pedestrians. Whirls of dirt and cigarette packages flying
back and forth across the street marked their passing. Brunetti, seeing it,
hearing it, and breathing it, felt as though someone had come from behind and
wrapped tight arms around his chest. How did human beings live like this?
     
    Brunetti fled into the cool
cocoon of the police car and emerged from it a quarter of an hour later in
front of an eight-storey apartment building on the western edge of the city. He
looked up and saw that lines of washing hung extended between it and the
building on the opposite side of the street. A faint breeze blew here, so the
particoloured strata of sheets, towels, and underwear undulated above him and,
for a moment, raised his spirits.
     
    Inside, the portiere sat
in his cage-like office, arranging papers and envelopes on a desk, sorting the
mail that must just have been delivered for the inhabitants of the building. He
was an old man with a thin beard and silver-framed reading glasses hovering on
the end of his nose. He raised his eyes over the tops of the lenses and said
good morning. The humidity intensified the sour smell of the room, and a fan on
the