Friends in High Places by Donna Leon

could tell him. ‘He must have hit his head when he fell.’
     
    ‘How far was it that he fell? Do you know?’
     
    She shook her head and pushed a door open with her hand, holding it to allow him to pass through and into a large open area at one side of which there was a desk, empty now.
     
    When he sensed that she was not going to answer his question, he asked, ‘Was there much damage?’
     
    She started to speak and then said, ‘You’ll have to ask one of the doctors.’
     
    ‘Is that what caused his death, the wound to his head?’
     
    He didn’t know if he was imagining it, but it seemed that she drew herself up straighter with his every question, as her voice became more professional and less warm. ‘That’s something else you’ll have to ask the doctors.’
     
    ‘But I still don’t understand why he was brought up here,’ Brunetti said.
     
    ‘Because of his arms,’ she said.
     
    ‘But if his head . . .’ Brunetti started to say, but the nurse turned away from him and toward another swinging door to the left of the desk.
     
    Just as she reached it, she turned and called back over her shoulder, ‘Perhaps they could explain things to you downstairs. In Emergency. Ask for Dottor Carraro,’ and she was gone.
     
    He did as she suggested and went quickly downstairs. In the Emergency Room he explained to the nurse that he was a friend of Franco Rossi, a man who had died after being seen in the ward, and asked if he could speak to Dottor Carraro. She asked his name and told him to wait while she spoke to the doctor. He went over to one of the plastic chairs that lined one wall and sat, suddenly grown very tired.
     
    After about ten minutes, a man in a white jacket pushed his way through the swinging doors that led to the treatment room and walked a few steps toward Brunetti before he stopped. Standing with his hands jammed into the pockets of his jacket, it was obvious that he expected Brunetti to come toward him. He was short, with the swinging, aggressive walk many men of his stature adopt. He had wiry white hair that he wore slicked to his head with oily pomade, and reddened cheeks that spoke of drink rather than good health. Brunetti rose politely to his feet and walked over toward the doctor. He stood at least a head taller than the other man.
     
    ‘Who are you?’ Carraro asked, looking up at the other man and showing a lifetime’s resentment at having to do so.
     
    ‘As the nurse may have told you, Dottore, I’m a friend of Signor Rossi,’ Brunetti began by way of introduction.
     
    ‘Where’s his family?’ the doctor asked.
     
    ‘I don’t know. Have they been called?’
     
    The doctor’s resentment turned to irritation, no doubt provoked by the thought that there existed a person so ignorant as to think he had nothing better to do than sit around making phone calls to the relatives of dead people. He didn’t answer and, instead, asked, ‘What do you want?’
     
    ‘I’d like to know the cause of Signor Rossi’s death,’ Brunetti answered in an equable voice.
     
    ‘What business is it of yours?’ the doctor demanded.
     
    They were understaffed at the hospital, Il Gazzettino often reminded its readers. The hospital was overcrowded, so many doctors ended up working long hours.
     
    ‘Were you on duty when he was brought in, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked by way of reply.
     
    ‘I asked you who you were,’ the doctor said in a louder voice.
     
    ‘Guido Brunetti,’ he answered calmly. ‘I learned that Signor Rossi was in the hospital from the newspaper, and I came to see how he was. The porter told me he’d died, and so I came here.’
     
    ‘What for?’
     
    ‘To learn the cause of his death,’ Brunetti said, and then added, ‘among other things.’
     
    ‘What other things?’ the doctor demanded, his face suffusing with a colour it would not take a doctor to realize was dangerous.
     
    ‘To repeat myself, Dottore,’ Brunetti said with an unctuously polite