The Golden Egg by Donna Leon Page B

‘Thanks, Ettore. It might help. I’ll try to confirm at least his name. I’ll call you when I do.’
    â€˜It’s what was on the paper that came with him,’ Rizzardi said. ‘I don’t know anything more than that.’
    â€˜I’ll call.’
    â€˜Good,’ Rizzardi said, and was gone.
    Brunetti pulled the cover sheet of a report on an attempted escape from the local prison towards him. Because the escape had failed, he saw no reason to keep or pass on the report. He flipped it over, wrote Cavanella’s name and address at the top, and began to make a list. He’d need to locate a birth certificate, or a baptismal certificate. There was the dead man’s
carta d’identità
, which would most likely be in his house, and a card for the medical services he was sure to have been receiving. Brunetti doubted that Davide Cavanella would have a criminal record, but he could check that, as well. School records.
    He sat and puzzled over the places where a person might be hidden. He had played the game as a boy, he and his friends lurking and disappearing in the
calli
and entrance ways of his neighbourhood and, as they grew older, farther and farther from home. The memory came to him now of how he had hidden, one spring day, beneath the canvas cover of a boat moored not far from his home and managed to fall asleep under it.
    It was a desperate, high-pitched voice calling his name that woke him and catapulted him out from under the cloth. His mother stood on the Fondamenta della Tana, wearing her house slippers and her apron, her hair hanging partly loose on one side. At the sudden sight of her amidst his friends, Brunetti saw the grey in her hair for the first time and noticed how very poorly she was dressed, with a patched apron and a sweater darned at both elbows. For the first time in his life, seeing her there, in front of his friends, Brunetti felt ashamed of her, and then of himself for feeling this.
    When she saw him, his mother came to the edge of the
riva
and reached down a hand to help him scramble back up. Her grip was firm, and he was surprised that she could so easily haul him up beside her.
    He stood in front of her, head bowed, almost as tall as she, and muttered, ‘I fell asleep,
Mamma
. I’m sorry.’
    He had seen the looks on the faces of his friends. To be guests of her hospitality was one thing, but to see her out here, dressed for the kitchen and screaming her son’s name . . . that was quite different. What would they think of him? And of her?
    He saw her right hand move, and he stood rigid, fearing the blow he knew he deserved. Instead, she ruffled his hair and said, ‘Then it’s a good thing I came and found you, isn’t it,
tesoro
, or else you might have been baked like a chicken in the oven down there and no one knowing what was happening to you.’ She waited for him to respond, perhaps to laugh, but he was paralysed by love and unable to speak.
    â€˜And no one to baste you with olive oil, either,’ she said with a laugh. Taking his hand in hers, she turned and led him back towards home, inviting all of his friends to come back with them and have a piece of the cake she had just pulled out of the oven.
    Had Davide Cavanella’s mother baked for him and his friends? Had she invited them back to the house in San Polo? Brunetti’s train of thought stopped on the
riva
of his imagination and asked him why he thought Davide Cavanella had friends. Apparently speechless, how could he communicate enough to make a friend other than by using sign, had he known to use it?
    Brunetti drew lines from the pieces of information he thought he needed and connected them to the people or places that might provide them. Applications for all of his documents would be – or should be, he reminded himself – kept at the Ufficio Anagrafe. Their own files would have records of any arrests, though Brunetti still found this