Dressed for Death (5 page)

‘What about his clothing?’ he
asked Gallo.

‘Red dress, some sort of cheap
synthetic material. Red shoes, barely worn, size forty-one. I’ll have them
checked to see if we can find the manufacturers.’

‘Are there any photos?’ Brunetti
asked.

‘They won’t be ready until
tomorrow morning, sir, but from the reports of the men who brought him in, you
might not want to see them.’

‘That bad, eh?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Whoever did it to him must
really have hated him or been out of his mind when he did it. There’s no nose
left.’

‘Will you get an artist to make a
sketch?’

‘Yes, sir. But most of it’s going
to be guesswork. All he’ll have is the shape of the face, the eye colour. And
the hair.’ Gallo paused for a moment and added, ‘It’s very thin, and he’s got a
large bald spot, so I’d guess he wore a wig when, ah, when he worked.’

‘Was a wig found?’ Brunetti
asked.

‘No, sir, there wasn’t. And it
looks like he was killed somewhere else and carried there.’

‘Footprints?’

‘Yes. The technical team said
they found a set of them going towards the clump of grass and coming away from
it.’

‘Deeper when going?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So he was carried out there and
dumped under that clump of grass. Where did the footprints come from?’

‘There’s a narrow paved road that
runs along the back of the field behind the slaughterhouse. It looks like he
came from there.’

‘And on the road?’

‘Nothing, sir. It hasn’t rained
in weeks, so a car, or even a truck, could have stopped there, and there’d be
no sign of it. There’s just those footprints. A man’s. Size forty-three.’
Brunetti’s size.

‘Do you have a list of the
transvestite prostitutes?’

‘Only those who have been in
trouble, sir.’

‘What sort of trouble do they get
into?’

‘The usual. Drugs. Fights among
themselves. Occasionally, one of them will get into a fight with a client.
Usually over money. But none of them has ever been mixed up in anything
serious.’

‘What about the fights? Are they
ever violent?’

‘Nothing like this, sir. Never
anything like this.’

‘How many of them are there?’

‘We’ve got files on about thirty
of them, but I’d guess that’s just a small fraction of them. A lot of them come
down from Pordenone or in from Padova. It seems business is better for them
there, but I don’t know why.’ The first place was the nearest big city to both
American and Italian military installations: that would account for Pordenone.
But Padova? The university? If so, things had changed since Brunetti took his
law degree.

‘I’d like to take a look at those
files tonight. Can you make me copies of them?’

‘I’ve already had that done, sir,’
Gallo said, handing him a thick blue file that lay on his desk.

As he took the folder from the
sergeant, Brunetti realized that, even here in Mestre, less than twenty
kilometres from home, he was likely to be treated as a foreigner, so he sought
for some common ground that would establish him as a member of a working unit,
not the commissario come in from out of town. ‘But you’re Venetian, aren’t you,
Sergeant?’ Gallo nodded and Brunetti added, ‘Castello?’ Again, Gallo nodded,
but this time with a smile, as if he knew the accent would follow him, no
matter where he went.

‘What are you doing out here in
Mestre?’ Brunetti asked.

‘You know how it is, sir,’ he
began. ‘I got tired of trying to find an apartment in Venice. My wife and I
looked for two years, but it’s impossible. No one wants to rent to a Venetian,
afraid you’ll get in and they’ll never be able to get you out. And the prices
if you want to buy - five million a square metre. Who can afford that? So we
came out here.’

‘You sound like you regret it,
Sergeant.’

Gallo shrugged. It was a common
enough fate among Venetians, driven out of the city by skyrocketing rents and
prices. ‘It’s always hard to leave home, Commissario,’ he said, but it seemed
to Brunetti that his voice, when he said it, was somewhat warmer.

Returning to the issue at hand,
Brunetti tapped a finger on the file. ‘Do you have anyone here they talk to,
that they trust?’

‘We used to have an officer,
Benvenuti, but he retired last year.’

‘No one else?’

‘No, sir.’ Gallo paused for a
moment, as if considering whether he could risk his next statement. ‘I’m afraid
many of the younger officers, well, I’m afraid they treat these guys as
something of a joke.’

‘Why do you say that, Sergeant
Gallo?’

‘If any of them makes a
complaint, you know, about being beat up by a client - not about not being
paid, you understand. That’s not something we have any control over - but about
being beat up, well, no one wants to be sent to investigate it, even if we have
the name of the man who did it. Or if they do go to question him, usually
nothing happens.’

‘I got a taste of that, even
something stronger, from Sergeant Buffo,’ Brunetti said.

At the name, Gallo compressed his
lips but said nothing.

‘What about the women?’ Brunetti
asked.

‘The whores?’

‘Yes. Is there much contact
between them and the transvestites?’

‘There’s never been any trouble,
not that I know of, but I don’t know how well they get on. I don’t think they’re
in competition over clients, if that’s what you mean.’

Brunetti wasn’t sure what he
meant and realized that his questions would have no clear focus until he read
the files in the blue folder or until someone could identify the body of the
dead man. Until they had that, there could be no talk of motive and, until
that, there could be no understanding what had happened.

He stood, glanced at his watch. ‘I’d
like your driver to pick me up at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. And I’d like
the artist to have the sketch ready by then. As soon as you have it, even if it’s
tonight, get at least two officers to start making the rounds of the other
transvestites, to see if any of them know who he is or if they’ve heard that
anyone from Pordenone or Padova is missing. I’d also like your men to ask the
whores - the women, that is, if the transvestites use the area where he was
found or if they know of any of them who ever has in the past.’ He picked up
the file. ‘I’ll read through this tonight.’

Gallo had been taking notes of
what Brunetti said, but now he stood and walked with him to the door.

‘I’ll see you then tomorrow
morning, Commissario.’ He headed back towards his desk and reached for the
phone. ‘When you get downstairs, there’ll be a driver waiting to take you back
to Piazzale Roma.’

As the police car sped back over
the causeway towards Venice, Brunetti looked out to the right, at the clouds of
grey, white, green, yellow smoke billowing up from the forest of smokestacks in
Marghera. As far as the eye could see, the pall of smoke enveloped the vast
industrial complex, and the rays from the declining sun turned it all into a
radiant vision of the next century. Saddened by the thought, he turned away and
looked off towards Murano and, beyond it, the distant tower of the basilica of
Torcello, where, some historians said, the whole idea of Venice had begun more
than a thousand years ago, when the people of the coast fled into the marshes
to avoid the invading Huns.

The driver swerved wildly to
avoid an immense camper-van with German plates that suddenly cut in front of
them then swerved off to the parking island of Tronchetto, and Brunetti was
pulled back to the present. More Huns, and now no place to hide.

He walked home from Piazzale
Roma, paying little attention to what or whom he passed, his mind hovering over
that bleak field, still seeing the flies that swarmed around the spot under the
grass where the body had been. Tomorrow, he would go and see the body, talk to
the pathologist, and see what secrets it might reveal.

He got home just before eight,
still early enough for it to seem like he was returning from a normal day.
Paola was in the kitchen when he let himself into the apartment, but there were
none of the usual smells or sounds of cooking. Curious, he went down the
corridor and stuck his head into the kitchen; she was at the counter, slicing
tomatoes.

‘Ciao
, Guido,’ she said, looking up
and smiling at him.

He tossed the blue folder on the
kitchen counter, walked over to Paola, and kissed the back of her neck.

‘In this heat?’ she asked, but
she leaned back against him as she said it.

He licked delicately at her skin.

‘Salt depletion,’ he said,
licking again.

‘I think they sell salt pills in
the pharmacies. Probably more hygienic,’ she said, leaning forward, but only to
take another ripe tomato from the sink. She cut it into thick slices and added
them to the ones already arranged in a circle around the edge of a large
ceramic plate.

He opened the refrigerator, took
out a bottle of
acqua minerale,
and reached for a glass from the cabinet
above his head. He filled the glass, drank it down, drank another, then capped
the bottle and replaced it in the refrigerator.

From the bottom shelf, he removed
a bottle of Prosecco. He ripped the silver foil from the cap, then slowly
pushed the cork up with both thumbs, moving it slowly and working it back and
forth gently. As soon as the cork popped from the bottle, he tilted it to one
side to prevent the bubbles from spilling out. ‘How is it that you knew how to
keep champagne from spilling when I married you and I didn’t?’ he asked as he
poured some of the sparkling wine into his glass.

‘Mario taught me about it,’ she
explained, and he knew immediately that, from the twenty or so Marios they
knew, she was talking about her cousin, the vintner.

‘Want some?’ he asked.

‘Just give me a sip of yours. I
don’t like to drink in this heat; it goes right to my head.’ He reached his arm
around her and held his glass to her lips while she took a small sip. ‘
Basta
,’
she said. He took the glass and sipped at the wine.

‘Good,’ he murmured. ‘Where are
the kids?’

‘Chiara’s out on the balcony.
Reading.’ Did Chiara ever do anything else? Except maths problems and beg for a
computer?

‘And Raffi?’ He’d be with Sara,
but Brunetti always asked.

‘With Sara. He’s eating dinner at
her house, and then they’re going to a movie.’ She laughed with amusement at
Raffi’s doglike devotion to Sara Paganuzzi, the girl two floors down. ‘I hope
he’s going to be able to pry himself away from her for two weeks to come to the
mountains with us,’ Paola said, not meaning it at all: two weeks in the
mountains above Bolzano, an escape from the grinding heat of the city, were
enough to lure even Raffi away from the delights of new love. Besides, Sara’s
parents had said she could join Raffaele’s family for a weekend of that
vacation.

Brunetti said nothing to this,
poured himself another half glass of wine. ‘
Caprese?’
 he asked, nodding
at the ring of tomatoes on the plate in front of Paola.

‘Oh, supercop,’ Paola said,
reaching for another tomato. ‘He sees a ring of tomatoes with spaces left
between each slice, pieces just big enough to allow a slice of mozzarella to be
slipped in between them, and then he sees the fresh basil standing in a glass
to the left of his fair wife, right beside the fresh mozzarella that lies on a
plate. And he puts it all together and guesses, with lightning-like induction,
that it’s
insalata caprese
for dinner. No wonder the man strikes fear
into the heart of the criminal population of the city.’ She turned and smiled
at him when she said this, gauging his mood to see if she had perhaps pushed
too far. Seeing that, somehow, she had, she took the glass from his hand and
took another slip. ‘What happened?’ she asked as she handed the glass back to
him.