Unto Us a Son Is Given (Guido Brunetti) by Donna Leon

Author:Donna Leon [Donna Leon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802146823
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2019-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

16

About an hour later, Signorina Elettra came into Brunetti’s office to say goodbye. He lacked the courage to ask her where she was going and contented himself with nothing more than to wish her ‘Buone vacanze .’ She failed even to suggest she’d be in touch during the next three weeks, and he did not presume to ask if she would be reachable by SMS. He thought of going over to the door to shake her hand but did not. Impervious to his awkwardness, she gave a small wave and wished him ‘Buon lavoro. ’

As if crime had decided to take advantage of her absence, towards the end of the first week, thieves managed to remove three pieces of jewellery on exhibition in the Palazzo Ducale from under the amiable gaze of one of the video cameras set up to protect the objects. The video from one surveillance camera showed the two thieves idly gazing at the cabinets, keeping close attention on the other people in the room. Then, when they were alone, a camera on the other side of the room showed one of them opening the display case with surprisingly little effort, slipping the three pieces into his pocket, and following his accomplice from the room. They ambled to the main exit and mingled with the other visitors, hands in their pockets – calm, calm, calm – even when the alarms began to sound.

The personnel at the Palazzo shut some of the exits and tried to stop the flood of tourists from leaving the building. This all served no good: the two men and the three objects were gone, subsumed into the crowds of tourists strolling along the Riva degli Schiavoni or pushing their way through the crowds of other tourists on their way to the Rialto, or to the Accademia, or down to Florian’s for a coffee.

Vianello and Pucetti took charge of all communication and exchange of information with the staff of the Palazzo. Within hours, they had photos of the missing pieces, photo stills of the two thieves taken from the video cameras trained on all of the display cases, and copies of the provenance and insurance documentation for every object in the show. They worked in the officers’ staff room, no one daring to use Signorina Elettra’s desk. Her computer sat abandoned, and a rumour circulated that she had extracted the hard disk before she left, although no one could be found to admit to knowing this for a fact. Nor was anyone willing to approach her desk to check, far less to seek a way to insert their hand into the side of her computer to verify the presence or absence of the hard disk; and of course there were those like Brunetti who would not have recognized it had it appeared in a vision and spoken to them. The investigation, handed over entirely to experts from the Art Fraud squad in Rome, continued; it did not advance.

The third week was to bring death, but apparently not crime.

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