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Ramusio’s Delle Navigationi et Viaggi and a Latin edition of Montalboddo’s Paesi noua from 1508.’ She spoke as she would to a fellow librarian or archivist, assuming that he would know the books and have an idea of their value.
    She saw his incomprehension and said, ‘The Montalboddo is a collection of different travellers’ accounts of what they saw. Ramusio did the same thing, put together a collection of reports.’
    Brunetti took out his notebook and wrote down the authors and what he thought the titles to be. Five-hundred-year-old volumes, and someone had simply waltzed into the place and walked out with them.
    ‘Dottoressa,’ he said, returning to the more immediate problem, ‘I’d like you to show me the information you have about this man.’
    ‘Gladly,’ she said. ‘I hope … I hope …’ she began but forgot about the sentence and stopped.
    ‘Can you see that no one else touches these books?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Some of my men will be here this afternoon to check them for fingerprints. If this comes to trial, we’ll need that evidence.’
    ‘If?’ she asked. ‘If?’
    ‘We have to find him and we must have proof that he took them.’
    ‘But we know he did,’ she said, looking at Brunetti as though he had taken leave of his senses. ‘It’s obvious.’
    Brunetti said nothing. The obvious was sometimes impossible to prove, and what people knew to be true was often of no use to a judge: not in the absence of proof. He did not want to have to say this to her. Instead, he put a mild expression on his face and waved a hand towards the door.
    He followed her down the corridor and into her office. On the desk was a blue cardboard folder which she handed to him silently, then went to stand at one of thethree windows that looked across at the Redentore. He wondered if anyone was going to be able to redeem these books for her. He opened the folder on the desk and began to read through it.
    Joseph Nickerson, born in Michigan thirty-six years ago, currently living in Kansas. This much the passport told him; the photo told him that the man had light hair and eyes, a straight nose a bit too big for his face, and a small cleft in his chin. His expression was neutral and relaxed, the face of a man without secrets, someone you could sit next to on a plane on a short flight and talk about sports or how terrible things were in Africa. But not, he thought, about antiquarian books.
    Nickerson could be any man of Anglo-Saxon or Northern heritage, could surely change his appearance by putting on a pair of glasses and letting his hair grow, perhaps adding a beard. So little was notable that it would be difficult to recall anything about him other than a vague memory of his direct, honest expression.
    This suggested to Brunetti that the man was a professional and was possessed of that quality that the great confidence men had: the appearance of easy, innate honesty. He would never brag, never make a statement about right or wrong, but his manner, the trust he put in you, his undisguised interest in what you had to say and curiosity to learn more would make him irresistible. Brunetti had known two men who had that quality, and even while interrogating them, he had felt uncertain about what he knew to be true of both of them. He had, over the years, come to see it as a gift, the way great beauty is, or intelligence. It was simply there, and the possessors could do with it as they chose.
    Touching the paper lightly on one corner, he slid it to the left and read the next. The letter of recommendationcame from the Provost of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, stating that Joseph Nickerson was Assistant Professor of European History with a specialization in Maritime and Mediterranean Trade History, which class he taught, and that he hoped the library would put their collection at the Professor’s disposal. His name was typed below an illegible signature.
    He took the letter by its top two corners and held it