A number of cardboard boxes were stacked just below the windows; as he crossed the room towards them, grime crunched under his feet. He pulled open the one on top of the first pile, relieved it was not taped shut, and found nothing but old shoes. He lifted it off the pile and set it on the floor, then opened the second. This seemed to hold the detritus of kitchen drawers: a carving knife with a mould-flecked bone handle, a corkscrew, a jumble of unmatched silverware, two dirty potholders, and pieces of metal the purpose of which he could not fathom. The third, heavier than the other two, was filled with small clumps of newspaper. He unwrapped one and saw that the date was from two weeks before. Inside, nestling in the sports pages, was a badly painted statue of the Madonna, appearing displeased that she was destined to spend at least the immediate future wrapped up in the latest cycling drug scandal. Beside her, in the first page of the Economy section of the Gazzettino, he found another triumph of what Paola called 'ChiesaKitsch', a Plexiglas sphere in which snow fell on a plastic Nativity scene. He rewrapped the ball and set the box aside.
The next box contained doilies and antimacassars, all bearing faint stains, cloths that must have come from the kitchen, as well as tea towels he was reluctant to touch. The one below that held a dozen or so cotton shirts, all white and all meticulously ironed and folded. Beneath them were six or seven dark coloured striped ties, each in a separate cellophane envelope. The next box was heavier and when he opened it he found papers of all sorts: old magazines, newspapers, envelopes that appeared still to contain letters, postcards, receipts for bills, and other pieces of paper he could not make out in the dim light. There was no way Brunetti could hope to carry it all away with him, so he had no choice but to sort through it and take what looked interesting.
The heat covered him, pressed against his skin, crawled up his nose, carrying dust with it. He dropped the papers back into the box and started to remove his jacket, which clung to him through his shirt, both of them soaked. Just as he pulled it clear of his shoulders, he heard the sound of a door closing below him, and he froze, the jacket halfway down his upper back.
He heard voices, one high-pitched – either a woman or a child – and the deeper resonance of a man. The voices drowned out whatever noise their feet made on the steps. He tried to remember if he had turned off the light and closed the door to the apartment behind him. It had the kind of lock that clicked shut without the key. He knew he'd left it open when he first came up to the attic and could only hope he'd thought to close it the second time.
The voices grew nearer, each answering the other with sufficient frequency for him to abandon the idea that the first voice was that of a child. He heard a door open, then close, and the voices stopped. He closed his eyes, the better to hear them. He had no idea which apartment they had entered, the one directly below him or Signora Battestini's one floor down. He had not been at all conscious of the noise his feet made on the wooden floor, but now he tested it by shifting minimally to one side and froze again at the protest from the boards.
He pulled his jacket back on and leaned forward to set the papers back in the box. He looked at his watch and saw that it was five minutes before two. At five past, he leaned over to pick up the papers and turned them to the light to try to read them. He soon realized the impossibility of concentrating on the papers, not with two people in the apartment downstairs, so he placed them in the box once more. Before long, his back began to stiffen, and he swivelled around at the waist a few times to relieve tension.
Another quarter of an hour passed before he heard the voices again, the door having opened silently. What story could he give, should they decide to come up the stairs and find him in the attic? Technically, it was still a crime scene, so he could argue his right to be there. But the picked lock and the jemmied door to the attic suggested something beyond regular police procedure and were sure to cause trouble.
The voices remained at the same level for a while, then gradually grew fainter. Finally, he heard the front door close, and as the silence spread through the building, Brunetti took two steps backward and stretched his arms high above his head, catching his right hand in a spider's web. He pulled it back instantly, wiping it on the front of his jacket. He turned and walked to the door of the attic and then back to the boxes, shaking his hands in front of him to rid himself of accumulated stress.
Something caught in his memory, and he went back to the box of kitchen linens, opened it and pulled out a plastic string shopping bag of a kind that had been popular in his childhood but had long since disappeared. He slipped the large round handles over his left wrist, wiped his hands on a towel, and tossed it into one of the boxes.
He went back to the box of papers and quickly sorted through them, leaving behind magazines and newspapers and choosing only what looked like letters or documents. He pulled open the mouth of the bag and put the papers inside carelessly, suddenly overwhelmed by the desire to be free of this enclosed space, this heat, and the permeating smell of dust and unwashed objects.
Outside the attic, he used the kitchen knife to screw the flange back into place, then slipped the knife into the pocket of his jacket. On the landing, he tried the door of the apartment, but it was shut: he didn't bother to use the picks to see if it was double-locked.
Downstairs, he pulled open the outside door and stepped into the full heat of the afternoon sun, soothed by the sense that its rays would burn him clean of the smell and dirt of the attic.
When he arrived at the Questura, shortly after three, the first person he saw was Lieutenant Scarpa, just pulling up in one of the police launches. Because they could not avoid reaching the entrance at the same time, Brunetti prepared some innocuous greeting, keeping the string bag to the side away from Scarpa.
'Have you been in a fight, Commissario?' Scarpa asked with seeming concern when he saw the stains on Brunetti's jacket and shirt.
'Oh, no. I tripped when I was walking past a building site and fell against a wall,' Brunetti said with equally false sincerity. 'But thank you for asking.'
Holding the string bag so that it remained largely out of sight behind him, Brunetti nodded to the guard who opened the door for them, nodded to him in return and snapped out a crisp salute for the lieutenant. Not thinking it necessary to say anything further to Scarpa, Brunetti walked across the foyer and started up the steps. From behind him, he heard the lieutenant say, ‘I haven't seen a bag like that for ages, Commissario. It's just like the ones our mothers used to use,' and then, after a long pause, he added, 'when they could still do the shopping.'
The faltering of Brunetti's step was so slight as not to be evident, as had been the first signs of the madness which had seized his mother a decade ago and still held her prisoner. He had no idea how Scarpa had learned about her, indeed, had no proof that he knew, but then why else the lieutenant's frequent references to their mothers? And why his repeated, and falsely humorous, suggestion that any lapse of memory or efficiency on the part of anyone at the Questura must be a sign of senility?
Ignoring the remark, Brunetti continued up to his office. He closed the door, set the bag on his desk, removed his jacket and held it up to look at the front. Grey linen and one of his favourites, it had broad black stains running horizontally across the front; he doubted that any cleaning could remove them. He draped it on the back of his chair and loosened his tie. It was only then that he noticed how filthy his hands were, so he went down to the bathroom on the floor below and washed them, then splashed water on his face and ran his wet hands around the back of his neck.