Drawing Conclusions Read Online Free PDF Page A

saw that it was already almost 1 a.m., and thanked the doctor for coming, even though he knew Rizzardi had no choice in the matter. The doctor turned to leave, but Brunetti moved closer to him, placed his hand briefly on his upper arm, saying nothing.
    ‘I’ll call you when I’m finished,’ Rizzardi said. He moved away from Brunetti’s hand, and left the apartment.

4
    Brunetti closed the door, dissatisfied with his exchange with Rizzardi and disappointed by his own need to make the doctor see things as he wanted him to see them. Before he could speak to Vianello, they heard noise from below: again, a door opening, then an exchange of male voices. Marillo came to the door of the bedroom where he was working with his men and said, ‘The doctor called a while ago for them to come and get her: I guess that’s them.’
    Neither Brunetti nor Vianello answered, and the noises of the technicians working in the other room ended. The men in the apartment awaited the arrival of their colleagues who dealt with the dead, their voices and bodies stilled by the magic spell that approached. Brunetti opened the door. The two men who appeared on the landing, however, looked quite ordinary and wore the long blue coats of hospital orderlies. One of them carried a rolled-up stretcher under his arm: all of the men in the apartment knew that a third member of the squad waited downstairs with the black plastic casket into which the body would be placed before they took it outside to the waiting boat.
    There were nods and muttered salutations; most of them had met in similar circumstances in the past. Brunetti, who knew their faces but not their names, pointed them down the corridor. After the two men went into the room, Brunetti, Vianello, and Marillo, and behind him the two members of his crew, waited, pretending not to hear, trying not to interpret, the noises from the other room. A short time later, the men emerged with the stretcher, the form on it covered by a dark blue blanket. Brunetti was glad to see that the blanket was clean and freshly ironed, though he knew it made no difference.
    With a nod to Brunetti, the two men left the apartment; Vianello closed the door behind them. No one in the room said anything as they listened to the men’s descent. When all sound ended, they took it to mean the dead woman had been taken from the house, but still no one moved. Marillo finally broke the spell by turning away, herding his technicians into the bedroom and back to work.
    Vianello went into the smaller guest room, and Brunetti joined him. The bed was neatly made, the white sheet pulled back over a simple grey woollen blanket. They saw no sign of disturbance in the room. It was military – or monastic – in its simplicity. Even the signs that the technicians had checked the room for prints seemed sparse.
    Brunetti walked across the room and pushed open the door to the bathroom. Whoever had made the bed must also have ordered things on the shelves here: there were miniature sample bottles of shampoo and a small paper-wrapped bar of soap, the sort one found in hotel rooms; a comb in a plastic wrapper; a similarly wrapped toothbrush. Fresh towels and a washcloth hung on a rack beside the enclosed shower.
    A man’s voice called Brunetti’s name. He and Vianello followed the sound into the larger bedroom, where Marillo was standing beside one of the windows. ‘We’re finishedhere, Commissario,’ he said. As he spoke, one of his men collapsed his tripod, hefted it on to his shoulder, and slipped past Vianello and Brunetti into the corridor.
    ‘You find anything?’ Brunetti asked, looking around at powder-covered surfaces in the room, almost as if he wanted Marillo to follow his glance and find, just there , whatever it was that would make his search worthwhile and important.
    The residue on so many surfaces reminded Brunetti of how hard he found it to believe that any reliable physical evidence could be drawn from the overlying mess of