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left the bar without it, both of them were liable to fines
of as much as hundreds of thousands of lire. The boys from Finance often waited
outside bars, shops, and restaurants, watching through the windows as business
took place, then stopped emerging clients and demanded to be shown their
receipts. But Venice was a small town, and all the men from Finance knew him,
so he’d never be stopped, not unless they brought in extra police from outside
the city and had what the Press had taken to calling a ‘blitz’, staking out the
entire commercial centre of the city and, in a day, taking in millions of lire
in fines. And if they stopped him? He’d show them his warrant card and say he’d
stopped to use the toilet. Those same taxes paid for his salary; this was true.
But that no longer made any difference to him, nor, he suspected, to the majority
of his fellow citizens. In a country where the Mafia was free to murder when
and whom it pleased, the failure to produce a receipt for a cup of coffee was
not a crime that interested Brunetti.
     
    Back at his desk, he
found a note telling him to call Doctor Rizzardi. When Brunetti did, he found
the Coroner still at his office on the cemetery island.
     
    ‘Ciao, Ettore. It’s Guido. What
have you got?’
     
    ‘I took a look at his
teeth. All the work is American. He has six fillings and one root canal. The
work stretches back over years, and there’s no doubt about the technique. It’s
all American.’
     
    Brunetti knew better than
to ask him if he was sure.
     
    ‘What else?’
     
    ‘The blade was four
centimetres wide and at least fifteen long. The tip penetrated the heart, just as
I thought. It slipped right between the ribs, didn’t even scrape them, so
whoever did it knew enough to hold the blade horizontally. And the angle was
perfect.’ He paused for a moment, then added, ‘Since it was on the left side, I’d
say that whoever did it was right-handed or at least used his right hand.’      
                     
     
    ‘What about his height?
Can you tell anything?’
     
    ‘No, nothing definite;
But he had to be close to the dead man, standing face to face.’
     
    ‘Signs of a struggle?
Anything under his nails?’
     
    ‘No. Nothing. But he’d
been in the water about five or six hours, so if there was anything to begin
with, it’s likely it would have been washed away.’
     
    ‘Five or six hours?’
     
    ‘Yes. I’d say he died
about midnight, one o’clock.’
     
    ‘Anything else?’
     
    ‘Nothing particular. He
was in very good shape, very muscular.’
     
    ‘What about food?’
     
    ‘He ate something a few
hours before he died. Probably a sandwich. Ham and tomato. But he didn’t drink
anything, at least not anything alcoholic. There was none in his blood, and
from the look of his liver, I’d say he drank very little, if at all.’
     
    ‘Scars? Operations?’
     
    ‘He had a small scar,’
Rizzardi began, then paused and Brunetti heard the rustle of papers. ‘On his
left wrist, half-moon shaped. Could have been anything. Never been operated on
for anything. Had his tonsils, his appendix. Perfect health.’ Brunetti could tell
from his voice that this was all Rizzardi had to give him.
     
    ‘Thanks, Ettore. Will you
send a written report?’
     
    ‘Does His Superiorship
want to see it?’
     
    Brunetti grinned at
Rizzardi’s title for Patta. ‘He wants to have it. I’m not sure he’s going to
read it.’
     
    ‘Well, if he does, it’s
going to be so filled with medical school jargon that he’ll have to call me to
interpret it for him.’ Three years ago, Patta had opposed Rizzardi’s
appointment as Coroner because the nephew of a friend of his was just then
finishing medical school and was in search of a government job. But Rizzardi,
with fifteen years’ experience as a pathologist, had been appointed instead,
and ever since then he and Patta had conducted guerrilla warfare against one
another.
     
    ‘I’ll