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‘It would have to be at least ten centimetres long,’ he said, his hand still flat on the paper. ‘Most handles are.’ Then, surprising Brunetti with the irrelevance of it, he added, ‘Even potato peelers.’
    He removed his hand and looked at Brunetti for the first time. ‘You need at least ten to get a grip of any sort. Why’d you ask?’
    ‘Because he’d have to carry it, and if the blade’s twenty and the handle ten, then it would be an awkward thing to walk around with.’
    ‘Folded in a newspaper, in a computer case, briefcase; it would even fit in a Manila folder if you put it in on the slant,’ Bocchese said. ‘Make a difference?’
    ‘You don’t walk around with a knife that long unless you have a reason to. You have to think about how to carry it so no one will see it.’
    ‘And that suggests premeditation?’
    ‘I think so. He wasn’t killed in the kitchen or the workshop or wherever else a knife might be lying around, was he?’
    Bocchese shrugged.
    ‘What does that mean?’ Brunetti asked, leaning one hip against the desk and folding his arms.
    ‘We don’t know where it happened. The ambulance report says he was found in Rio del Malpaga, just behind the Giustinian. Rizzardi’s says he had water in his lungs, so he could have been killed anywhere and put in the water, then drifted there.’ Seeing some invisible imperfection in the drawing, Bocchese picked up his pencil and added another faint line halfway down the blade.
    ‘It’s not an easy thing to do,’ Brunetti said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Slip a body into a canal.’
    ‘From a boat, it might be easier,’ Bocchese suggested.
    ‘Then you’ve got blood in a boat.’
    ‘Fish bleed.’
    ‘And fishing boats have motors, and no motors are allowed after eight at night.’
    ‘Taxis are,’ Bocchese volunteered.
    ‘People don’t hire taxis to dump bodies in the water,’ Brunetti said easily, familiar with Bocchese’s manner.
    After only a second’s hesitation, the technician said, ‘Then a boat without a motor.’
    ‘Or a water door from a house.’
    ‘And no nosey neighbours.’
    ‘A quiet canal, a place where there are no neighbours, nosey or otherwise,’ Brunetti suggested, starting to examine the map in his head. Then he said, ‘Rizzardi’s guess was after midnight.’
    ‘Cautious man, the Doctor.’
    ‘Found at six,’ Brunetti said.
    ‘“After midnight”,’ Bocchese said. ‘Doesn’t mean he went in at midnight.’
    ‘Where behind the Giustinian was he found?’ Brunetti asked, needing the first coordinate on his map.
    ‘At the end of Calle Degolin.’
    Brunetti made a noise of acknowledgement, glanced at the wall behind Bocchese, and sent himself walking in an impossible circular path, radiating out from that fixed point, jumping over canals from one dead-end
calle
to another, trying, but failing, to recall the buildings that had doors and steps down to the water.
    After a moment, Bocchese said, ‘Better ask Foa about the tides. He’d know.’
    It had been Brunetti’s thought, as well. ‘Yes. I’ll ask him.’ Then he asked, ‘Can I have a look at his things?’
    ‘Of course. They should be dry by now,’ Bocchese said. He walked over to the table where the two men were still listing the things taken from the box, passed them, and opened the door to a storeroom to their left. Inside, Brunetti was struck by the heat and by the smell: fetid, rank, a combination of earth and mould and abandoned things.
    Neatly folded over an ordinary household drying rack were a shirt and a pair of trousers, a set of men’s underwear and a pair of socks. Brunetti bent to look more closely and saw nothing peculiar about them. Underneath stood a single shoe, brown, about Brunetti’s size. A small table held a gold wedding ring and a metal watch with an expandable metal band, a few coins, and a set of keys.
    Brunetti picked up the keys without bothering to ask if he could touch them. Four of them looked like ordinary door keys,