At the sight of the dead man, the young woman said, ‘Yes, he’s been here a few times. The last time was about two months ago.’
‘Did you serve him, Signorina?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes, I did. But we didn’t have his size, and he didn’t want anything else.’
Turning to the other woman, Brunetti inquired, ‘Do you remember him, Signora?’
‘No, I don’t. We get so many clients in here,’ she said, and indeed just then two women, their arms laden with bags, entered the shop. Without bothering to excuse herself, the manager went over and asked if she could help them.
Brunetti asked the young woman – really little more than a girl – ‘Do you remember anything about him, Signorina? You said he’d been in before?’
Brunetti’s hopes were still set on a credit card purchase. The young woman thought for a moment and then said, ‘A few times. In fact, once he came in wearing a pair of shoes and bought the same ones.’
Brunetti glanced at Vianello, whose manner was often better at encouraging responses. ‘Do you remember anything special about him, Signorina? Or did he strike you in a particular way?’ the Inspector asked.
‘You mean that he had got so big and was so sad?’
‘Was he?’ Vianello asked with every appearance of deep concern.
Before answering, she seemed to think back to the man’s time in the shop. ‘Well, he’d gained weight: I noticed that, even under his winter jacket, and he didn’t really say anything that would make me think he was lonely or sad or anything. But he seemed it; sort of quiet and not paying much attention to things.’ Then, to make things clear to both of them, she said, ‘He tried on about eight pairs of shoes, and the boxes were lying all around him on the floor and on the chair next to him. When he was finished, and he still couldn’t find the ones he wanted, he said – I guess he felt guilty about making me go and get so many of them. Maybe that’s why I remember him – he said that he’d help me put them back in the boxes. But he put a black one in with a brown one, and then when there was only one shoe left, a black one, and the only box left had a brown shoe in it, we had to open them all up again and put the right shoes in.
‘He was very embarrassed and apologized for it.’ She thought about this for some time and said, ‘No one ever bothers with that, you know. They try on ten, fifteen pairs of shoes, and then they walk out without even saying thank you. So to have somebody who treated me like a real person, well, it was very nice.’
‘Did he give you his name?’
‘No.’
‘Or say anything about himself that you remember?’
She smiled at this. ‘He said he liked animals.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ Brunetti said.
‘Yes, that’s what he said. When I was helping him, a woman came in, one of our regulars. She’s very rich: you can tell it by looking at her – the way she dresses and all, and the way she talks. But she has this really sweet old dog that she got from the shelter. I asked her about it once, and she said she always gets her dogs from the shelter, and she asks for old ones. You’d expect a woman like that to have an, oh, I don’t know, one of those disgusting little things that sits on your lap, or a poodle or something. But she’s got this silly little mutt; maybe it’s part beagle, but you’d never know what the other part is. And she adores it, and the dog loves her. So I guess it’s all right that she’s so rich,’ she said, causing Brunetti to wonder if the revolution was closer to hand than he thought.
‘And why did he say he likes animals?’ Vianello asked.
‘Because when he saw the dog, he asked the woman how old it was, and when she said it was eleven, he asked her if she’d had it checked for arthritis.
‘She said she hadn’t, and he said that, from the way the dog walked, he’d guess it had it. Arthritis.’
‘What did the woman say?’ the Inspector asked.
‘Oh, she thanked him. I told you: she’s very nice. And then, after she left, I asked him, and he said he liked animals, especially dogs, and knew a bit about them.’
‘Anything else?’ Brunetti asked, realizing that this was precious little to be going ahead with.
‘No, only that he was a nice man. People who like animals usually are, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Vianello said. Brunetti limited himself to a nod.
The manager was still busy with the two women, the three of them surrounded by expanding waves of boxes, shoes littering the floor in front of them. ‘Did your colleague speak to him?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Oh, no. She took care of Signora Persilli.’ At their blank looks, she said, ‘The lady with the dog.’
Brunetti took out his wallet and gave her his card. ‘If you think of anything else, Signorina, please call me.’
They turned towards the door, but she called from behind them. ‘Is he really the dead man? In Venice?’
Surprising himself with his frankness, Brunetti turned back and said, ‘I think so.’ Her mouth contracted in a small grimace and she shook her head at the news. ‘So if you think of anything, please call us; it might help,’ he said, not specifying how this might be possible.
‘I’d like to help,’ she said.
Brunetti thanked her again, and he and Vianello left the shop.
14
‘A MAN WITH Madelung who likes animals and knows something about dogs,’ Vianello said as they walked towards the car.
More practically, Brunetti said, ‘We’ll talk to Vezzani. He should be back from Treviso by now.’ He had gone to the shoe shop in the full hope, even expectation, of discovering the man’s name and identity. He felt not a little embarrassed, now, at how he had looked forward to being able to walk into Vezzani’s office with the dead man’s name in his possession. Now, that possibility gone, he accepted the fact that there was nothing to do save what both of them now knew they should have done before: go to the Mestre Questura and ask for their cooperation.
He got into the front seat of the car and asked the driver to take him to the Questura. The driver reminded him about the seat belt, and Brunetti, thinking it foolish to use it for what would prove such a short trip, put it on nevertheless. It was well past four, and the traffic seemed heavy, though Brunetti was hardly an expert on traffic.
Inside the building, he showed his warrant card and said he had an appointment with Commissario Vezzani. They had worked as part of the team investigating the baggage handlers at the airport some years ago – the investigation Pucetti was still involved with – had passed through those fires together and emerged, both of them wiser and more pessimistic, but with a far clearer understanding of the limits to which a clever lawyer could push the rights of the accused.
The officer on duty pointed to the elevator and told them the Commissario’s office was on the third floor. Vezzani was from Livorno originally, but he had lived in the Veneto so long that his speech had taken on the sing-song cadence, and he had once told Brunetti, during a break in the endless interrogation of two men accused of armed robbery, that his children spoke to their friends in the Mestre version of Veneziano.
He rose when they entered, a tall, thin man with prematurely grey hair, cut close to his skull in a vain attempt, perhaps, to disguise the colour. He shook hands with Brunetti, clapped him on the arm in greeting, and extended his hand to Vianello, with whom he had also worked.
‘You find out who he is?’ he asked when they were seated.
‘No. We spoke to the women in the shoe shop, but they couldn’t tell us who he was. All one of them said was that he liked dogs and knew something about animals.’
If Vezzani found this an odd piece of information to divulge during the purchase of a pair of shoes, he did not remark on it and merely asked, ‘And this disease you say he had?’