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violence had been brought against the police and the Carabinieri in recent years that some commanders insisted on filming actions with a potential for violence.
    ‘And check with Televeneto,’ he added. ‘They had a crew out there, so they should have something: see if they’ll give you a copy.’
    ‘Was RAI there?’
    ‘I don’t remember. But the local people would know if the big boys showed up. If so, see if you can get them to send you copies of whatever they shot, as well.’
    ‘What does this man look like?’
    ‘He’s big, very thick around the shoulders and neck. Beard: he had it then, too. Dark hair, light eyes.’
    She nodded. ‘Thank you, sir. I’ll tell them that so they can sort through the shots before they send me any.’
    ‘Good, good,’ Brunetti said.
    ‘He was stabbed, wasn’t he?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes. But Rizzardi said he had water in his lungs. They found him in a canal.’
    ‘Did he drown?’
    ‘No, the knife killed him.’
    ‘How old was he?’ she asked.
    ‘In his forties.’
    ‘Poor man,’ she said, and Brunetti could but agree.

6
    THAT LEFT PATTA . The obligation to deal with his superior often filled Brunetti with an anticipatory weariness, as if he were a swimmer who had miscounted laps and suddenly realized he still had ten to do in water that grew increasingly chilly. Also, like any athlete in competition, Brunetti had made a study of the track record of his opponent. Patta was quick off the block, had no compunction about obstructing the path of other competitors so long as he could get away with doing so, but lacked staying power and often dropped back in any long competition. Unfortunately, no matter how far behind he might fall in a race, he could be depended upon to appear at the award ceremony, and the force did not exist that could prevent him from hauling himself up on to the podium the instant that medals started to be handed round.
    To know this was to be forewarned, but to be forewarned served little purpose when one’s opponent was Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, Sicily’s best gift to the forces of order , kept for more than a decade at his position in Venice in anomalous defiance of the rule that high police officials were transferred every few years. Patta’s tenacity in his post had puzzled Brunetti until he realized that the only policemen who were systematically transferred away from the cities where they combated crime were those who met with success, especially those who were successful in their opposition to the Mafia. To manage the arrest of the highest members of a Mafia clan in a major city was to guarantee transfer to some backwater in Molise or Sardegna, where major crimes included the theft of livestock or public drunkenness.
    Thus perhaps Patta’s professional longevity in Venice, where the mounting evidence of Mafia infiltration did nothing to spur his efforts to combat it. Mayors came and went, all of them pledging to correct the ills their predecessors had ignored or encouraged. The city grew dirtier, hotels proliferated and rents increased, every available inch of sidewalk space was rented out to someone wanting to sell unusable junk from a portable stall, and still the waves of promises to sweep away all these ills rose up ever new and ever higher. And there, becalmed at a safe distance behind the breaking wave, was Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, friend to every politician he had ever met, the now-almost-permanent face of the forces of order in the city.
    Brunetti, however, a tolerant and moderate man, had trained himself to count his superior’s virtues rather than his faults, and so he acknowledged that there was no proof that Patta was in the pay of any criminal organization; he had never ordered the mistreatment of a prisoner; he would upon occasion believe incontrovertible evidence of the guilt of a wealthy suspect. Had he been a judge, Patta would surely have been a thoughtful one, always ready to weigh the social position of the