She met his gaze directly. ‘Yes. I thought you’d come in uniform, and I wanted him to be prepared for that,’ she said too quickly, as if she had been waiting for his question. Perhaps encouraged by their silence, she finally got to it: ‘And I was afraid when you asked about Andrea. He usually called once or twice during the week. But I hadn’t heard from him since he left.’ She placed her palms on her thighs and studied them. ‘I suppose I knew what you were going to tell me.’
Ignoring this, Brunetti said, ‘You told us that his behaviour changed after he started the other job.’ Brunetti knew he had to go carefully here, find a way to work himself through the tangle of her emotions. ‘You said that you and he were close, Signora.’ He paused to let that sink in. ‘Do you remember how soon after he began to work there he showed signs of being worried?’
He read in the stiffness of her mouth that she was close to the end of what she would accept and answer. She started to speak, coughed lightly, then went on: ‘He hadn’t been there long; maybe a month. But by then the disease had grown worse.
‘He’d started eating less to try to lose weight, and that made him cranky, I’m afraid.’ She frowned at the memory of this. ‘I couldn’t get him to eat anything except vegetables and pasta, and bread and some fruit. He said that would work. But it didn’t do any good: he kept getting bigger.’
‘Did he ever talk about a problem?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Other than the disease.’
She had grown visibly restless, so Brunetti forced himself into a more relaxed posture, hoping it would prove contagious.
‘He didn’t like the new job. He said it was hard to do both, especially now that the disease had got worse, but he couldn’t leave because we needed the extra money.’
‘That’s quite a burden for a man who isn’t in good health,’ Vianello offered sympathetically.
She looked at him and smiled. ‘That’s the way Andrea was,’ she said. ‘He worried about the people who worked for him at the clinic. He felt responsible and wanted to keep it open.’
Brunetti left this alone. Years ago, less versed in the ways of emotions, he might have pointed to the dissonance between her behaviour towards her husband and these remarks, but the years had worn away his desire to find consistency, and so he never assumed it nor questioned its absence. She was aboil with emotions: Brunetti suspected the most powerful of them might be remorse, not anger.
‘Could you tell us where his clinic is, Signora?’ Brunetti asked. Vianello pulled a notebook from his pocket.
‘Via Motta 145,’ she said. ‘It’s only five minutes from here.’ Brunetti thought she looked embarrassed. ‘They called me yesterday and told me Andrea hadn’t come in. I told them I didn’t… didn’t know where he was.’ In the manner of a person not accustomed to lying, she looked down at her hands, and Brunetti suspected she had also told them she didn’t care.
She forced herself to look at him and went on. ‘He was living in a small apartment on the second floor of the building. Should I call them and tell them you’re coming?’ she asked.
‘No, thank you, Signora. I think I’d like to go there unannounced.’
‘To see if anyone tries to run away when they hear you’re policemen?’ she asked, only half joking.
Brunetti smiled. ‘Something like that. Though if your husband hasn’t been there for two days, and we show up without an animal, they’ll probably guess who we are.’
It took a few moments for her to decide that he was exaggerating. She did not smile.
‘Is there anything else?’ she asked.
‘No, Signora,’ Brunetti said, then added, speaking with great formality, ‘I’d like to thank you for being generous with your time.’ Speaking as a father, he said, ‘I hope you can find a way to tell your son,’ unconsciously using the plural when he spoke.
‘He is, isn’t he?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Ours.’
Vezzani was waiting for them in the bar, watching an afternoon cooking programme, the Gazzettino open on the table in front of him, a coffee cup placed to its side.
‘Coffee?’ he asked.
They nodded, and Vezzani waved to the barman and asked for two coffees and a glass of water.
They came and sat at his table. He folded the newspaper and tossed it on the empty fourth chair. ‘What did she tell you?’
‘That he was having an affair with a woman at work,’ Brunetti answered.
Vezzani opened his mouth in a gasping O and held up both hands. ‘Well, who ever heard of such a thing? What’s the world coming to?’ The waiter approached with the coffees and a glass of water for Vezzani.
They drank and then Vezzani, in a more serious voice, asked, ‘What else?’
‘He was also working at the slaughterhouse,’ Vianello began.
‘The one at Preganziol?’ Vezzani asked.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Are there others?’
‘I think there’s one in Treviso, but that’s a different province. Preganziol’s the closest one to us.’
Vezzani asked, ‘Why do they need a vet at a slaughterhouse? It’s not as if he’s there to save the lives of the animals, is it?’
‘To check that they’re healthy, and I imagine he also has to see that they slaughter them in a humane way,’ Brunetti said. ‘There’s got to be some EU regulation about that.’
‘Name the activity about which there is no EU regulation and win a prize,’ Vezzani said, gave a mock toast with his glass, and took a sip of water. Then, his glass still held in the air in front of him, ‘Did he have any trouble with clients at his practice?’
‘His wife didn’t know of any,’ Brunetti said, but then added, ‘She did say that some people were unhappy with the way their animals were treated. But that’s not trouble.’
‘I’ve heard people say awful things,’ Vianello jumped in to say. ‘Some of them would be capable of violence to anyone who hurt their animals. I think they’re nuts, but we don’t have a pet, so maybe I don’t understand.’
‘It does seem exaggerated,’ Vezzani agreed, ‘but I’ve lost the ability to understand what people do. If they’ll kill you because you damage their car,’ he said, referring to a recent case, ‘think what they’d do if you hurt their dachshund.’
‘You know where his clinic is?’ Brunetti asked. He put some coins on the table and got to his feet. ‘Via Motta 145. It seems he was living there, too.’
Vezzani stood, saying, ‘Yes, I know the place. Let’s go and talk to them.’
At one time, the clinic must have been a two-floor suburban residence large enough for two families. Similar houses stood on either side of it, each surrounded by a broad expanse of grassed land. As they slowed in front of it, they could hear the sound of a dog barking from behind the building, then another one answering: a human voice intervened; a door slammed, and then silence.
Vezzani had trouble parking the car. He drove ahead a hundred metres or so, but there were cars everywhere and no chance of finding a space. Is this, Brunetti wondered, what it is to live out here on terraferma? He turned to Vianello in the back seat; the two men exchanged a glance, but neither said a word.
With an irritated noise, Vezzani pulled the car into a sudden U-turn and drove back to the clinic. He parked on the wrong side of the road directly in front. He pulled down a plastic ticket from the windscreen, set it on the dashboard and got out of the car, slamming the door behind him. Brunetti and Vianello got out but did not slam the doors.
The three men walked up the short pavement to the front door. To one side a metal plaque bore the name ‘Clinica Amico Mio’, with below it the hours of operation. Dott. Andrea Nava was listed as the director.
Vezzani opened the door without ringing and entered; Brunetti and Vianello followed him inside. There was nothing, Brunetti realized, that could be done to eliminate the smell of the animals. He had smelled it before in the homes of friends of theirs who had pets, in the apartments of people he arrested, in abandoned buildings, and once in an antique shop where he had gone to question a witness. Sharp, rich with the tang of ammonia, it gave him the feeling that it would sink into his clothing and linger for hours after he left. And Nava had been living for some time above this.