Vezzani had called Brunetti while he was in the car: the Director was not there, so he had explained to his assistant that two officers from Venice were on their way. She would meet them. When Brunetti conveyed this message to Vianello, the Inspector repeated, ‘she’ and shrugged.
The driver sounded the horn a few times: Brunetti doubted that it would be heard. But after a few seconds, and as in a film, a new sound began, rougher and more mechanical than the other, and the two sides of the gate began to open inwards.
Brunetti waited until the gates had stopped moving to decide whether to get back into the car or to walk through the gate. The metallic odour grew stronger. The gates and the noise of the mechanism propelling them stopped at the same moment, leaving audible only the original sound, now louder. One high-pitched squeal that must have come from a pig rose above all the other noises, then ended as quickly as it had begun, as though the sound had run into a wall. Yet this in no way diminished the level of noise: perhaps it resembled the noise from a playground of excited children let out to play, but there was nothing playful in the sound. And no one was going to be let out.
Brunetti turned towards the car just as Vianello got out of the back seat and walked over to join him. Brunetti was vaguely conscious that something was odd, and it was only when he glanced down and saw that the ground was covered with gravel that he realized Vianello’s footsteps were obliterated by the sounds coming from beyond the open gates.
‘I told the driver to go and get a coffee and that we’d call him when we’re finished,’ the Inspector said. Then, in answer to Brunetti’s expression, he added, neutrally, ‘The smell.’
As they walked towards the gate, Brunetti was amazed that he could feel the gravel slide beneath his feet while he could not hear the sound his feet made. When they passed through the gate, a door opened in the building just to their right, a large rectangle built from cement blocks, roofed with aluminium panels. A small woman paused a moment in the doorway, then came down the two steps and walked towards them, her footsteps also eliminated by the sounds that came from behind her.
Her dark hair was cut close to her head, suggesting a boyishness that was quickly dispelled by her full bosom and the tight-waisted skirt she wore. Her legs, Brunetti noticed, were good, her smile relaxed and welcoming. When she reached them, she raised her hand and offered it, first to Vianello, who was closer to her, and then to Brunetti, then tilted her head back to get a better view of the two men, each so much taller than she.
She indicated the building and turned towards it, not bothering to waste words against the noise.
They followed her up the steps and into the building, where the noise grew less, and even less again when the woman reached behind them to close the door. They now stood in a small vestibule about two metres by three, cement-floored, utterly utilitarian. The walls were white plasterboard, without decoration. The only object in the room was a video camera suspended from the ceiling and aimed at the door, where they were standing. ‘Yes,’ she said, watching the relief on both their faces, ‘it’s quieter in here. If not, we’d all be driven mad.’ She was close to thirty, but not yet there, and had the easy grace of a woman at home in her body and with no anxieties about it.
‘I’m Giulia Borelli,’ she said, ‘I’m Dottor Papetti’s assistant. As I explained to your colleague, Dottor Papetti is in Treviso this morning. He’s asked me to help you in any way we can.’ She gave a small smile, the sort one gives to visitors or prospective clients. How many women would work at a slaughterhouse? Brunetti asked himself.
Then, with a look of open curiosity, she asked, ‘You’re really the police from Venice?’ Her voice was curiously deep for so small a woman, musical with the cadence of the Veneto.
Brunetti said that they were. Closer to her, he saw the freckles sprayed across her nose and cheeks; they added to the general impression of health. She ran the fingers of her right hand through her hair. ‘If you come to my office, we can talk,’ she said.
The iron-rich odour had diminished here, as well. Would air conditioning do that? Brunetti wondered, and, if so, what would happen in the winter, when this part of the building was heated? He and Vianello followed her through a door and into a corridor that led to the back of the building. He was aware that his senses had been both battered and starved since he left the car. His hearing and sense of smell had been overloaded with sensation, shocked into a state where they might not be capable of registering any new smell or sound, while his sense of sight had been heightened by the blank room and corridor.
Signorina Borelli opened a door, then stepped back to let them go in ahead. This room, too, was close to naked. There was a desk with a computer and some papers on it, a chair behind it and three in front, and nothing else. More unsettling, there were no windows: all light came from multiple neon strips in the ceiling that created a textureless, dull illumination that deprived the room of any sense of depth.
She went behind the desk and sat, leaving them to take their places in front. ‘Your colleague said you wanted to talk about Dottor Nava,’ she said in a level voice. She leaned forward, body bent towards them.
‘Yes, that’s correct,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Could you tell me when he came to work here?’ he asked.
‘About six months ago.’
‘And his duties?’ Brunetti asked, continuing to evade the use of either the present or the past tense and hoping he did so naturally. Vianello took out his notebook and began to write.
‘He inspects the animals that are brought in.’
‘For what purpose?’ Brunetti asked.
‘To see if they’re healthy,’ she answered.
‘And if they’re not?’
Signorina Borelli seemed surprised at the question, as though the answer should be self-evident. ‘Then they aren’t slaughtered. The farmer takes them back.’
‘Any other duties?’
‘He inspects some of the meat.’ She sat back and raised one arm to point behind her to the left. ‘It’s refrigerated. Obviously, he can’t inspect it all, but he does look at samples and decides if it’s safe for human consumption.’
‘And if it’s not?’
‘Then it’s destroyed.’
‘How?’
‘It’s burned.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said.
‘Any other duties?’
‘No, only those two things.’
‘How many days a week is he here?’ Brunetti asked, as if he had not already had this information from the dead man’s wife.
‘Two. Monday and Wednesday mornings.’
‘And the other days? What does he do?’
If she was puzzled by the question, she did not hesitate to answer it. ‘He has a private practice. Most of the examining veterinarians do.’ She smiled and shrugged, then said, ‘It would be hard to live on what they earn here.’
‘But you don’t know where?’
‘No,’ she said regretfully, then said, ‘But it’s probably in our files, on his application. I could easily find out for you.’
Brunetti held up a hand both to acknowledge and decline her offer. In a friendly voice, he asked, ‘Could you give me a clearer idea of how things work here? That is, how is it that he inspects animals on only two days?’ He spread his hands in a gesture of confusion.
‘It’s quite simple, really,’ she said, using an expression most commonly chosen to begin an explanation of something that was not simple. ‘Most farmers get their animals here the day before the slaughtering, or the same day. That saves them the cost of keeping and feeding and watering the animals while they wait. Dottor Nava inspects them on Monday and Wednesday, and they’re processed after that.’ She paused to see if Brunetti was following, and Brunetti nodded. He was, as well, mulling over the verb ‘processed’.