Uniform Justice Read Online Free PDF Page B

by invading the privacy of his home. The first thing Brunetti did was to open the front drawer of the desk and remove the papers he found there. Most of them were notes, what appeared to be rough drafts for essays the boy was writing; some were letters.
    ‘
Dear Giuliano
,’ Brunetti read, entirely without shame or scruple. ‘
Your aunt came to see me last week and told me you were doing well in school
.’ The calligraphy had the neat roundness of the generation previous to his own, though the lines wandered up and down, following an invisible path known only to the writer. It was signed ‘Nonna’. Brunetti glanced through the other papers, found nothing of interest, and put them all back into the drawer.
    He opened the doors of the closet next to Ruffo’s desk and checked the pockets of the jackets hanging there; he found nothing but small change and cancelled vaporetto tickets. There was a laptop computer on the desk, but he didn’t even waste his time turning it on, knowing he would have no idea what to do with it. Under the bed, pushed back against the wall, he saw what looked like a violin case. The books were what he would have expected: textbooks, a driver’s manual, a history of AC Milan and other books about soccer. The bottom shelf held musical scores: Mozart’s violin sonatas and the first violin part of one of the Beethoven string quartets. Brunetti shook his head in bemusement at the contrast between the music in the Discman and the music on the shelf. He opened the door to the closet that must belong to Ruffo’s roommate and cast his eye across the surface of the second desk, but he saw nothing of interest.
    Struck again by the neatness of the room, the almost surgical precision with which the bed was made, Brunetti toyed for a moment with the idea of drugging his son Raffi and having him brought down here to be enrolled. But then he remembered what it was that had brought him to this room, and levity slipped away on silent feet.
    The other rooms were empty or, at least, no one responded to his knocking, so he went back towards the bathroom where the boy had been found. The scene of crime team was at work, and the body still lay there, now entirely covered with the dark woollen cloak.
    ‘Who cut him down?’ Santini asked when he saw Brunetti.
    ‘Vianello.’
    ‘He shouldn’t have done that,’ another of the technicians called from across the room.
    ‘That’s exactly what he told me,’ Brunetti answered.
    Santini shrugged. ‘I would have done it, too.’ There were affirmative grunts from two of the men.
    Brunetti was about to ask what the crew thought had happened, when he heard footsteps. He glanced aside and saw Dottor Venturi, one of Rizzardi’s assistants. Both men nodded, as much acknowledgement of the other’s presence as either was willing to give.
    Insensitive to most human feelings that were not directed towards him, Venturi stepped up close to the body and set his medical bag by the head. He went down on one knee and drew the edge of the cloak from the boy’s face.
    Brunetti looked away, back into the showers, where Pedone, Santini’s assistant, was holding a plastic spray bottle up towards the top of the right-hand wall. As Brunetti watched, he squirted cloud after tiny cloud of dark grey powder on to the walls, moving carefully from left to right and then back to his starting point to repeat the process about twenty centimetres below.
    By the time all the walls were coated, Venturi was back on his feet. Brunetti saw that he had left the boy’s face uncovered.
    ‘Who cut him down?’ was the first thing the doctor asked.
    ‘One of my men. I told him to,’ Brunetti answered and bent down to draw the edge of the cape back across the boy’s face. He rose up again and looked at Venturi, saying nothing.
    ‘Why did you do that?’
    Appalled at the question, Brunetti ignored it, irritated that he had to speak to a man capable of asking it. He asked, ‘Does it look like