Read Online The Golden Egg by Donna Leon - Free Book Online Page B

province?’ Brunetti asked.
    This was the point when most bureaucrats tired of the novelty of answering questions for the police. Usually, they’d happily answer a few questions, do simple research if asked, but once things became complicated and time-consuming, they started naming supervisors and the need to get authorization or citing rules Brunetti always suspected they invented that instant.
    â€˜I’m not authorized to do that, Commissario,’ she answered in a different voice, the voice he knew so well. ‘Not without an order from a magistrate.’
    Brunetti thanked her and hung up.
    Pucetti looked up, pulling his eyebrows together in interrogation.
    â€˜Nothing, neither here nor in Mestre, from 1965 to 1975,’ Brunetti explained. Pucetti shrugged, as if this were the sort of answer bureaucracy always gave. ‘Can you,’ Brunetti began and then foundered on the appropriate verb. Get into? Access? Open? The real verb was ‘break into,’ but Brunetti was reluctant to use it, not wanting the corruption of subordinates added to his conscience. ‘Get further information from the social services?’
    â€˜Of course, sir,’ Pucetti said, and Brunetti didn’t know if he was serving as an occasion of sin or as the person who lightened the weights carried by a racehorse. ‘I can even do it with this thing,’ he said, waving dismissive fingers over the keys and adding a noise that condemned the computer to ignominy. ‘It’s easy to find who’s collecting pensions.’ Then, in a voice from which all boasting was absent, Pucetti added, ‘Once you know how to do it.’ Brunetti nodded, his face impassive. ‘I’ll have a look around, sir,’ Pucetti said and turned to the screen.
    â€˜Yes,’ Brunetti answered and said he would be in his office.
    Upstairs, he turned on his own computer and started a search through the phone books of the provinces of Friuli and Treviso, but there were no listings for anyone with the surname Cavanella.
    He called down to the front desk and asked the man on duty there to connect him with the office that saw to the sending of the hearse.
    This was quickly done, the roster was checked, and within minutes Brunetti found himself talking to the pilot.
    â€˜The call came from the Carabinieri a little before six, Commissario,’ the pilot, Enrico Forti, told him. ‘All they said was that a woman had called to say she had found her son dead in his bed and that we were to pick him up and take him to the hospital. That’s the routine, sir.’
    â€˜And when you got there?’
    â€˜She was at the door. People always are: I guess they hear us coming. The motor, you know.’
    â€˜A woman with red hair?’ Brunetti asked.
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    â€˜How was she?’ Brunetti asked.
    After a moment, Forti said, ‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean, sir.’
    â€˜How did she behave? Was she crying? Did she have trouble talking?’
    The pilot was slow to answer Brunetti’s questions. Finally he said, ‘You have to understand, sir, that we answer all sorts of calls. Death hits people differently. You never know how it’ll affect them.’
    Brunetti waited.
    â€˜She was upset: you could see that. She said she had gone into his room and found him, and he was dead, and she called 118, and they told her we’d come.’
    â€˜And so?’ Brunetti asked, trying to sound interested and not impatient.
    â€˜She was crying. She let us in and took us up to the apartment and back to his room. And he was in his bed, just like she said. It was pretty ugly: it always is when they die like that, sir. So we covered him and put him in the carrier, and we took him down to the boat and to the hospital. For Dottor Rizzardi.’
    â€˜Did she ask to go with you?’ Brunetti asked.
    â€˜No, sir. She just stood there while we took him out, and then she