He was still considering this when Vianello tapped at his door and came in, followed by a short, deeply tanned man in a wrinkled cotton suit. ‘Commissario,’ the sergeant began in the formal tones he adopted when addressing Brunetti in front of civilians. ‘I’d like to present Luciano Gravi.’
Brunetti approached Gravi and extended his hand. ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Signor Gravi. In what way may I be of help to you?’ He led the man over to his desk and pointed to a chair in front of it. Gravi looked around the office and then took the chair. Vianello sat in the chair beside him, paused a moment to see if Gravi would speak and, when he did not, began to explain.
‘Commissario, Signor Gravi is the owner of a shoe store in Chioggia.’
Brunetti looked at the man with renewed interest. A shoe store.
Vianello turned to Gravi and waved a hand, inviting him to speak. ‘I just got back from vacation,’ Gravi began, speaking to Vianello but then, when Vianello turned to face Brunetti, turning his attention towards him. ‘I was down in Puglia for two weeks. There’s no sense in keeping the store open during Ferragosto. No one wants to shop for shoes, anyway. It’s too hot. So we close up every year for three weeks, and my wife and I go on vacation.’
‘And you just got back?’
‘Well, I got back two days ago, but I didn’t go to the store until yesterday. That’s when I found the postcard.’
‘Postcard, Signor Gravi?’ Brunetti asked.
‘From the girl who works in my shop. She’s on vacation in Norway, with her fiancé. He works for you, I think. Giorgio Miotti.’ Brunetti nodded; he knew Miotti. ‘Well, they’re in Norway, as I said, and she wrote to tell me that the police were curious about a pair of red shoes.’ He turned back to Vianello. ‘I have no idea what they must have been talking about for them to think of that, but she wrote on the bottom of the card that Giorgio said you were looking for someone who might have bought a pair of women’s shoes, red satin, in a large size.’
Brunetti found that he was holding his breath and forced himself to relax and breathe it out. ‘And did you sell those shoes, Signor Gravi?’
‘Yes, I sold a pair of them, about a month ago. To a man.’ He paused here, waiting for the policemen to remark on how strange it was that a man would buy those shoes.
‘A man?’ Brunetti asked obligingly.
‘Yes, he said he wanted them for Carnevale. But Carnevale isn’t until next year. I thought it strange at the time, but I wanted to sell the shoes because the satin was torn away from the heel on one of them. The left one, I think. Anyway, they were on sale, and he bought them. Fifty-nine thousand lire, reduced from a hundred twenty. Really a bargain.’
‘I’m sure it was, Signor Gravi,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘Do you think you’d recognize the shoes if you saw them again?’
‘I think so. I wrote the sale price on the sole of one of them. It might be there.’
Turning to Vianello, Brunetti said, ‘Sergeant, could you go and get those shoes back from the lab for me? I’d like Signor Gravi to take a look at them.’
Vianello nodded and left the room. While he was gone, Gravi talked about his vacation, describing how clean the water in the Adriatic was, so long as you went far enough south. Brunetti listened, smiling when he thought it required, keeping himself from asking Gravi to describe the man who bought the shoes until Gravi had identified them.
A few minutes later, Vianello was back, carrying the shoes in their clear plastic evidence bag. He handed the bag to Gravi, who made no attempt to open it. He moved the shoes around inside the bag, turning first one and then the other upside-down and peering at the sole. He held them closer, smiled, and held the bag out to Brunetti. ‘See, there it is. The sale price. I wrote it in pencil so whoever bought it could erase it if they wanted to. But you can still see it, right there.’ He pointed to faint pencil markings on the sole.
At last Brunetti permitted himself the question. ‘Could you describe the man who bought these shoes, Signor Gravi?’
Gravi paused for only a moment and then asked, voice respectful in the face of authority, ‘Commissario, could you tell me why you’re interested in this man?’
‘We believe he can provide us with important information about an on-going investigation,’ Brunetti answered, telling him nothing.
‘Yes, I see,’ Gravi answered. Like all Italians, he was accustomed not to understand what he was told by the authorities. ‘Younger than you, I’d say, but not all that much. Dark hair. No moustache.’ Perhaps it was hearing himself say it that made Gravi realize how vague his description was. ‘I’d say he looked pretty much like anyone else, a man in a suit. Not very tall and not short, either.’
‘Would you be willing to look at some photos, Signor Gravi?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Perhaps that would help you recognize the man?’
Gravi smiled broadly, relieved to find it all so much like television. ‘Of course.’
Brunetti nodded to Vianello, who went downstairs and was quickly back with two folders of police photos, among which, Brunetti knew, was Malfatti’s.
Gravi accepted the first folder from Vianello and laid it on top of Brunetti’s desk. One by one, he leafed through the photos, placing them face down on a separate pile after he looked at them. As Vianello and Brunetti watched, he placed Malfatti’s picture face down with the others and continued until he reached the bottom of the pile. He looked up. ‘He’s not here, not even someone who looks vaguely like him.’
‘Perhaps you could give us a clearer idea of what he looked like, Signore.’
‘I told you, Commissario, a man in a suit. All these men,’ he said, pointing to the pile of photos that lay before him, ‘well, they all look like criminals.’ Vianello stole a look at Brunetti. There had been three photos of police officers mixed in with the others, one of them of Officer Alvise. ‘I told you, he wore a suit,’ Gravi repeated. ‘He looked like one of us. You know, someone who goes to work every day. In an office. And he spoke like an educated man, not a criminal.’
The political naivety of that remark caused Brunetti to wonder, for a moment, if Signor Gravi was really an Italian. He nodded to Vianello, who picked up the second folder from where he had set it on the desk and handed it to Gravi.
As the two policemen watched, Gravi leafed through a smaller stack of photos. When he got to Ravanello’s, he paused and looked up at Brunetti. ‘That’s the banker who was killed yesterday, isn’t it?’ he asked, pointing down at the photo.
‘He’s not the man who bought the shoes, Signor Gravi?’ he asked.
‘No, of course not,’ Gravi answered. ‘If it had been, I would have told you when I came in.’ He looked at the photo again, a studio portrait that had appeared in a brochure which carried photos of all of the officers of the bank. ‘It’s not the man, but it’s the type.’
‘The type, Signor Gravi?’
‘You know, suit and tie and polished shoes. Clean white shirt, good haircut. A real banker.’
For an instant, Brunetti was seven years old, kneeling beside his mother in front of the main altar of Santa Maria Formosa, their parish church. His mother looked up at the altar, crossed herself, and said, voice palpitant with pleading and belief, ‘Maria, Mother of God, for the love of your Son who gave His life for all of us unworthy sinners, grant me this one request, and I will never ask a special grace of you in prayer for as long as I may live.’ It was a promise he was to hear repeated countless times in his youth, for, like all Venetians, Signora Brunetti always placed her trust in the influence of friends in high places. Not for the first time in his life, Brunetti regretted his own lack of faith, but still he prayed.