Through a Glass Darkly (18 page)

‘What else did he have to do?'

Again, Grassi paused to try to remember what the dead man's duties would have been. ‘Check the filters and maybe shift the barrels around.'

‘What filters?' Brunetti asked.

‘From the grinding wheels. It all gets filtered, the water they use when they're grinding, and then the gunk that's collected gets put in barrels. It's filtered a couple of times,' Grassi said without interest. ‘I don't know about that stuff, really, only about glass.'

Grassi gave Brunetti a speculative look, as if weighing his audience, and then said, ‘It's crazy, isn't it? They let Marghera pump any crap it wants to into the air or the
laguna
: cadmium, dioxin, petro this and petro that, and no one says a word about it. But if we let a cupful of powdered glass drain into the
laguna
, they're all over us with inspectors and fines. Some of them are so big it would put you out of business.' He considered what he had said and then added, ‘No wonder De Cal's thinking about selling the place.'

Brunetti set this remark aside for future reference and returned to Tassini. ‘Were these the sort of things Tassini said? About the environment?'

Grassi rolled his eyes. ‘It's all he'd talk about. All you had to do was start him talking about
these things and he was off, sometimes until we had to tell him to shut up. Poison this and poison that, and not only at Marghera. Even here, and it was poisoning us all.' He delved into memory, then said, ‘I tried to talk to him a couple of times. But he wouldn't listen.' He leaned towards Brunetti and put a hand on his arm. ‘I've seen the numbers, and I know we don't die the way they do in Marghera: they die like flies over there.' He moved back and removed his hand. ‘Maybe it's the currents: maybe they take things away from here. I don't know. I tried to tell Giorgio this, but he wouldn't listen. He had his mind made up that we were all being poisoned, and that's what he was going to believe, no matter what anyone said.'

Grassi stopped talking for a moment, then added, with a note of real sadness in his voice. ‘He had to believe it, didn't he? Because of the little girl.' He shook his head, at the thought of the child or at the thought of human frailty, Brunetti had no idea. Grassi spoke with a complete absence of disapproval; in fact, Brunetti could hear little but affection in his voice, the sort one has for a person who always manages to get everything wrong yet who never manages to alienate anyone in the process.

‘I think your boat's coming,' Grassi said.

Brunetti's question was no more than a tilting of his head.

‘I don't recognize the engine, and it's coming fast, out from the city,' the
maestro
said. He pulled some money from his pocket and left it
on the counter; Brunetti thanked him and they headed for the door.

When they reached the canal, Grassi was right: the police boat was pulling up to the ACTV
embarcadero
. On board were Bocchese and the crime team.

BRUNETTI WAVED TO
them from his side of the canal and crossed the bridge to meet them. Apart from Bocchese, there were two photographers and two technicians, all with the usual amount of equipment, which the men were busy unloading from the boat.

Brunetti introduced Bocchese to Grassi and explained to the technician that Grassi was one of the
maestri
who worked at the
fornace
where the dead man was. Bocchese and Grassi shook hands and then Bocchese turned and said something to one of his crew, who waved a lazy hand in acknowledgement. Boxes and bags piled up on the dock; Brunetti waited until it seemed everything had been unloaded and then led them down the dirt path towards
the metal doors of the factory. He was surprised to see two men standing outside, one of them a man in police uniform – he recognized Lazzari from the Murano squad – and the other De Cal, who was waving his arms and speaking loudly.

De Cal saw Brunetti and stormed towards him, shouting, ‘What the hell is it now? First you let that bastard out of jail, and now I can't even go into my own factory.'

More familiar with De Cal than the others, Grassi stepped forward and, gesturing at the technicians, who were now struggling into their disposable scene-of-crime suits, said, ‘I think they want to go in there alone, sir.'

‘Remember who you work for, Grassi,' De Cal spat with effulgent rage. ‘For me. Not for the police. I give the orders here, not the police.' He put his face close to Grassi's. Brunetti could see that the tendons of his neck were swollen. ‘You understand that?'

Brunetti moved up beside Grassi. ‘Your factory is the scene of a death, Signor De Cal,' he said, noticing that Lazzari seemed relieved by his having taken over. ‘The technical crew will be here for a few hours, and then the scene will be opened and your men can go back to work.'

De Cal came suddenly closer, forcing Brunetti to move back one step. ‘I can't afford a few hours.' De Cal noticed, as if for the first time, the technicians and their equipment. ‘These fools will be in there all day. How can my men work with them there?'

‘If you prefer, Signore,' Brunetti said with his most official voice, ‘we can get an order from a judge and sequester the site for a week or two.' He smiled. Grassi, he noticed, had taken the opportunity to disappear.

De Cal opened his mouth, then closed it and backed away, muttering. Brunetti heard ‘bastard' a few times, and worse, but he chose to ignore the old man.

The technicians, who had set down their bags while all this was going on, now picked them up and moved towards the doors. Brunetti held up a hand to stop them. Turning to Bocchese, he said, ‘If you have masks, you better use them.' The men set their bags down again and one of them hunted around until he found a stack of cellophane-wrapped surgical masks, which he passed out to the other men. Brunetti put out his hand and accepted one, ripped it open, and pulled the elastics over his ears. He adjusted the mask over his nose and mouth, then took a pair of plastic gloves from the same man and slipped them on.

One of the crew humped a long bag on to his shoulder: lights and tripods. He went in first and started looking around for an electrical socket. To no one in particular, Brunetti said, ‘He's down by the free-standing furnace', and then joined the technicians entering the building.

His eyes had barely adjusted to the dimmer light when he heard his name called from the entrance and turned to see Vianello, wearing
gloves but no mask. Brunetti held up a hand to Vianello and went over to the technician to ask for another mask. He took it over to the Inspector and said, ‘You'll need this.'

Side by side, Brunetti fortified by the other man's presence, they went towards the third furnace but stopped a few metres from it and waited for the photographer to finish. Brunetti glanced at the gauges and saw that
Forno
III had risen to 1348 degrees. He had no idea what the temperature just outside and below the door would be.

The photographer finished taking photos of the floor and moved in to take photographs of the dead man from all angles.

‘Which doctor's coming?' Brunetti asked.

‘Venturi,' Vianello answered with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

To Brunetti's right stood a row of the iron tools the glass-blowers used: rods and pipes of all lengths and diameters. The work desk of the
maestro
was covered with clippers and pincers and straight-edged tools: none of them showed any signs of traces of blood. On the wall hung posters of naked women with enormous breasts, casting looks of sexual invitation at the dead man and the men who moved silently around him.

Brunetti stood to one side and studied Tassini's bearded face. He looked away, not wanting to see any more of the soiled body than he had to. The flash of the photographer drew his eyes back, and he saw that the end of one of
the metal rods was trapped under Tassini's body.

He heard a noise behind him and turned to see Dottor Venturi, who had just set his leather case on top of the tools on the
maestro
's workbench. A pair of pliers fell to the ground. Brunetti walked over, bent down, and replaced them, saying nothing to Venturi. The doctor opened his bag, took out a pair of gloves and put them on. He glanced at the dead man, sniffed, and made a face rich with disgust. Brunetti noticed that the lapels of his overcoat were hand-stitched. His black shoes reflected the light from the furnace.

‘That him?' the young doctor asked, pointing at the dead man. No one answered him. He reached back into his bag and pulled out a gauze mask, then extracted a bottle of 4711 toilet water, opened it, and sprinkled it liberally on the gauze. He replaced the cap on the bottle and slipped it into place in his bag. He put the mask to his face and slipped the elastics behind his ears.

There was a dark green sweater folded over the back of the
maestro
's chair; Venturi picked it up and carried it over to the dead man and let it drop on to the floor beside him. He hiked up the left knee of his trousers and lowered himself beside the body, careful to place his knee on the sweater. He picked up the dead man's wrist, held it for a second, and then let it fall back to the ground. ‘Not cooked yet, I'd say,' Venturi muttered, not under his breath, but at
the volume a student might use to say something about the teacher during class.

He got to his feet and turned to Brunetti. Stripping off his gloves, he dropped them beside his bag on the
maestro
's workbench. ‘He's dead,' Venturi said. He snapped his bag closed and picked it up by the handle. He turned towards the door.

‘Excuse me,' Venturi said, then added, ‘gentlemen.'

‘You forgot the sweater,' Brunetti said, and then, after an even longer pause, added, ‘
Dottore.
'

‘What?' Venturi demanded, his voice unusually loud, even in here, with the fierce competition of the howling furnaces.

‘The sweater,' Brunetti repeated. ‘You forgot to pick up the sweater.' While he was saying this, Brunetti sensed Bocchese move to stand at his right, Vianello to his left.

Venturi ran his eyes across their faces, saw the sweat on Vianello's, Bocchese's narrowed eyes. He stepped back and reached down for the sweater. He picked it up by one sleeve and made as if to drop it in the centre of the workbench, but Vianello shifted his weight. The doctor leaned to his right and draped it across the back of the
maestro
's chair. He picked up his bag.

None of the three men moved. Venturi took two steps to the left and walked around Bocchese. None of them bothered to watch him leave, so none of them saw him tear off his mask and drop it on the floor.

Bocchese called over to the photographers. ‘You guys got it all?'

‘Yes.'

Brunetti did not want to do it, and he was sure that neither Bocchese nor Vianello wanted any part of it. But the sooner they had some idea of what might have happened to Tassini, the sooner they could . . . they could what? Ask him more questions? Bring him back to life?

Brunetti banished these thoughts. ‘You don't have to,' he said to the two men and walked over to Tassini's soiled body. He knelt down. The smell of urine and faeces grew stronger. Vianello walked over to the other side and Bocchese knelt beside the Inspector. Together, the three men put their hands under the body. It was hot under there, and Brunetti had the feeling that what he touched was slippery. He tasted the grappa in his mouth.

They turned the man over slowly. His face was swollen, and Brunetti saw a mark on the side of his forehead, just where his hair began. His left arm had been trapped under his body, and when they turned him over, it fell free and slapped to the ground, the sound muffled by the thick heat-resistant glove and arm protector he wore. Vianello and Bocchese got to their feet and walked towards the door. Brunetti willed himself to go through all of Tassini's pockets, took one more look at him, and abandoned the idea. Outside, he found Vianello leaning his back against the wall of the building. Bocchese stood on the edge of the grass, leaning over and
bracing his hands on his knees. Neither man wore a mask.

Brunetti stripped off his mask. ‘There's a bar on the other side of the canal,' he said in what he hoped was a normal voice. He led the way, along the canal, up and down the bridge, and then towards the bar. By the time they got there, Vianello's face had returned to its normal colour and Bocchese had his hands in his pockets.

The lingering aftertaste of the grappa warned Brunetti against another one, so he asked for a camomile tea. Bocchese and Vianello exchanged a glance and then asked for the same. They remained silent until the three small pots of tea were set on the bar in front of them, when they each spooned sugar directly into the pots and took them and their cups over to a table by the window.

‘Could be anything,' Bocchese finally broke the silence by suggesting.

Vianello poured out his tea and blew softly on the surface a few times and then said, ‘He hit his head.'

‘Or his head was hit,' said Brunetti.

‘He could have stumbled on that rod,' Bocchese suggested.

Brunetti remembered the precision with which the factory implements were ordered. ‘Not unless he was using it. The place is too neat: nothing else was left lying around, and there was glass at the end of it,' Brunetti said. ‘So he was using it to make something. Or was just beginning.' He recalled what Grassi had
said about Tassini, that he did not have the talent to be a glass-blower. But that might not have stopped him from trying.

‘Maybe he did it to try to keep himself awake,' Bocchese suggested. ‘Worked the glass.'

‘He read,' Brunetti said. Both men gave him strange looks.

Bocchese finished his cup of tea and refilled it from the pot. ‘That's not how you learn to make glass, playing with it alone in a factory at night.'