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asked when he said
nothing.
     
    ‘He’s got problems,’ Brunetti
said.
     
    ‘Then it’s true?’ she asked. ‘I’ve
been dying to call you all day and ask you if it was. Tito Burrasca?’
     
    When Brunetti nodded, she put her
head back and made an indelicate noise that might best be described as a hoot. ‘Tito
Burrasca,’ she repeated, turned back to the sink and grabbed another tomato. ‘Tito
Burrasca.’
     
    ‘Come on, Paola. It’s not all
that funny.’
     
    She whipped around, knife still
held in front of her. ‘What do you mean, it’s not that funny? He’s a pompous,
sanctimonious, self-righteous bastard, and I can think of no one who deserves
something like this better than he does.’
     
    Brunetti shrugged and poured more
wine into his glass. So long as she was fulminating against Patta, she might
forget Mestre, though he knew this was only a momentary deviation.
     
    ‘I don’t believe this,’ she said,
turning around and apparently addressing this remark to the single tomato
remaining in the sink. ‘He’s been hounding you for years, making a mess of any
work you do, and now you defend him.’
     
    ‘I’m not defending him, Paola.’
     
    ‘Sure sounds like it to me,’ she
said, this time to the ball of mozzarella she held in her left hand.
     
    ‘I’m just saying that no one
deserves this. Burrasca is a pig.’
     
    ‘And Patta’s not?’
     
    ‘Do you want me to call Chiara?’
he asked, seeing that the salad was almost ready.
     
    ‘Not before you tell me how long
this thing in Mestre is likely to take.’
     
    ‘I have no idea.’
     
    ‘What is it?’
     
    ‘A murder. A transvestite was
found in a field in Mestre. Someone beat in his face, probably with a pipe,
then carried him out there.’ Did other families, he wondered, have pre-dinner
conversations as uplifting as his own?
     
    ‘Why beat in the face?’ she
asked, centring on the question that had bothered him all afternoon.
     
    ‘Rage?’
     
    ‘Um,’ she said, slicing away at
the mozzarella and then interspersing the slices with the tomato. ‘But why in a
field?’
     
    ‘Because he wanted the body far
away from wherever he killed him.’
     
    ‘But you’re sure he wasn’t killed
there?’
     
    ‘Doesn’t seem so. There were
footprints going up to the place where the body was, then lighter ones going
away.’
     
    ‘A transvestite?’
     
    ‘That’s all I know. No one has
told me anything about age, but everyone seems sure he was a prostitute.’
     
    ‘Don’t you believe it?’
     
    ‘I have no reason not to believe
it. But I also have no reason to believe it.’
     
    She took some basil leaves, ran
them under cold water for a moment, and chopped them into tiny pieces. She
sprinkled them on top of the tomato and mozzarella, added salt, then poured
olive oil generously over the top of everything.
     
    ‘I thought we’d eat on the
terrace,’ she said. ‘Chiara’s supposed to have set the table. Want to check?’
When he turned to leave the kitchen, he kept the bottle and glass with him.
Seeing that, Paola set the knife down in the sink. ‘It’s not going to be
finished by the weekend, is it?’
     
    He shook his head. ‘Not likely.’
     
    ‘What do you want me to do?’
     
    ‘We’ve got the reservations at
the hotel. The kids are ready to go. They’ve been looking forward to it since
school got out.’
     
    ‘What do you want me to do?’ she
repeated. Once, about eight years ago, he had managed to evade her questions
about something; he couldn’t remember what it was. He’d got away with it for a
day.
     
    ‘I’d like you and the kids to go
to the mountains. If this finishes on time, I’ll come up and join you. I’ll try
to come up next weekend at any rate.’
     
    ‘I’d rather have you there,
Guido. I don’t want to spend my vacation alone.’
     
    ‘You’ll have the kids.’
     
    Paola didn’t deign to grace this
with rational opposition. She picked up the salad and