The Golden Egg Read Online Free PDF Page A

keep them from falling into prostitution? How stupid they must believe us to be; what contemptible sheep we are to them.
    Surely, not all politicians could be like this. Were this the case, Brunetti realized, the only options open to a decent person would be emigration, or suicide.
    His phone was ringing when he entered his office. Believing it might be Patta, suddenly returned to the Questura, he answered with his name.
    â€˜You know the boy who doesn’t talk?’ Paola asked. ‘At the dry cleaner’s?’
    His mind still on politicians and Patta, Brunetti could think of nothing more than, ‘What?’
    â€˜The boy who worked in the dry cleaner’s. The deaf one.’ He could tell from her voice that Paola was troubled, but it took him a moment to recall the boy, who sometimes used to be seen in the back room of the shop, folding things or standing idly, head moving back and forth as his eyes followed the motions of the iron that imposed order on shirts and dresses. Brunetti’s memory of him was hazy, save for the folding and for the odd, arrhythmic way the boy moved.
    â€˜Yes,’ he finally said. ‘Why?’
    â€˜He’s dead,’ Paola said, sounding saddened by the news. But then she said, ‘At least that’s the rumour in the neighbourhood.’
    â€˜What happened?’ Brunetti asked, wondering what sort of accident could have befallen him and how his deafness might have contributed to it. Many of the delivery men who pushed their wheeled metal carts around the city cried ahead to warn people to get out of the way: because he could not hear, the boy might have been run over, crushed, anything. Or knocked down the steps of a bridge or into the water.
    â€˜A man at the bar where I was having coffee said he saw an ambulance in front of a house this morning, and when they came out they were carrying one of those plastic boxes. He knew that’s where he lived – the deaf boy – so he asked the men if that’s who it was. All they told him was that it was someone from the first floor, a man.’ She paused, then asked, ‘They carry dead people in those, don’t they?’
    Brunetti, who had seen too many of them, confirmed this.
    There was a long silence, and then Paola said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’
    Her remark confused Brunetti. If he was dead, there was nothing she, or anyone, could do. ‘I don’t understand.’
    â€˜His family. Do something for them.’
    â€˜Do you even know who his family is?’
    â€˜It’s the people at the dry cleaner’s, isn’t it?’
    Brunetti felt a flash of irritation that his time was being taken up with this, and that was followed by a flash of shame. Was he meant to reprimand his wife for an excess of compassion? ‘I don’t know. I’ve never paid attention.’
    â€˜It must be,’ Paola said. ‘He was pretty useless as a worker. I always figured he was the son of the woman who runs the place or maybe of the one who irons. No one else would have hired him.’ After a moment, she added, ‘Though I haven’t seen him there for a long time. I wonder what happened?’
    â€˜I’ve no idea,’ Brunetti said. ‘You can’t very well ask, can you?’
    â€˜No. No.’
    â€˜Maybe the newsagent?’
    â€˜You know I can’t ask him,’ Paola said.
    Four years ago, Paola and the newsagent had got into a heated discussion when she asked him why he sold a certain newspaper and the man replied that it was because people wanted it. That had led Paola, a woman not known for moderation in argument, to ask if he’d use the same justification if he sold drugs, before putting down the money for her newspapers and walking away.
    It had been Brunetti, after she recounted the incident at dinner, who had told her that the man’s son had died some years before of an overdose, information that had reduced Paola