the same week as Trevisan.
Brunetti called down to Signorina Elettra to ask if SIP had yet responded to his request that they supply a record of all of Trevisan's phone calls for the last six months, only to learn that she had placed their report on his desk the previous day. He hung up and began to sort through the papers on the top of his desk, shoving aside personnel reports he had postponed completing for the last two weeks and a letter from a colleague with whom he had worked in Naples, too depressing to be reread or answered.
The phone records were there, a manila folder that contained what turned out to be fifteen sheets of computer print-out. He cast his eye down the first page and saw that only long-distance calls were not' ‘I , both from Trevisan's office and from his home. Each column began with the numerical city code or, where it applied, country code and then listed the number called, the time of the call, and its duration. In a separate column to the right were listed the names of the cities and countries to which those codes corresponded. Quickly, he paged through the report and saw that it listed only outgoing calls made from the phones and bore no listing of those received. Perhaps no request had been made, or perhaps SIP took longer to trace those, or perhaps, just as likely, some new bureaucratic nightmare had been invented for the processing of such a request, and the information would be delayed.
Brunetti ran his eyes down the column of cities on the right No pattern appeared on the first pages, but by the fourth, he could see that Trevisan - or whoever had been calling from Trevisan's phones, as he was careful to remind himself - called three numbers in Bulgaria with some regularity, at least two or three times a month. The same was true of numbers in Hungary and Poland. He remembered that the first country had been named by della Corte, though the others had not been. Interspersed with these were calls to the Netherlands and England, these perhaps explained by the nature of Trevisan's law practice. The Dominican Republic appeared nowhere on the list, and the calls to Austria and the Netherlands, the other countries della Corte had mentioned, seemed not to have been made with any great frequency.
Brunetti had no idea now much of a lawyer's business would be handled by phone, so he had no idea if the list he was reading represented an inordinate number of phone calls.
He called down to the switchboard and asked to be . connected to the number della Corte had given him. When the other policeman answered, Brunetti identified himself and asked to be given the numbers in Padua and Mestre that had been listed in Favero's address book.
After della Corte read them out to him, Brunetti said, 'I've got a list of Trevisan's calls here, but only the long distance, so the Mestre number won't appear. You want to wait while I check it for the Padua number?'
'Ask me if I want to the in the arms of a sixteen-year-old,' della Corte said. 'You'll get the same answer.'
Taking that for a yes, Brunetti ran his eye down the list, pausing wherever he saw the 049 prefix of Padua. The first three pages revealed nothing, but then on the fifth, and again on the ninth, he saw the number. It disappeared for a time, and then appeared on the fourteenth page, called three times in the same week.
Della Corte s answer when Brunetti told him this was a low, two-syllable hum. 'I think I better get someone to cover that phone in Padua.'
'And I'll get someone to go and have a look at the bar,' Brunetti said, interested now, eager to know what the bar was like, who frequented it, but most eager to get his hands on a list of Trevisan's local calls and see if the bar's number appeared on it.
Brunetti's long years and grim experience as a policeman had destroyed whatever belief he might ever have had in coincidence. A number that was known to two men who had been murdered within a few days of one another was not some random fact,
Brunetti called down to Signorina Elettra to ask if SIP had yet responded to his request that they supply a record of all of Trevisan's phone calls for the last six months, only to learn that she had placed their report on his desk the previous day. He hung up and began to sort through the papers on the top of his desk, shoving aside personnel reports he had postponed completing for the last two weeks and a letter from a colleague with whom he had worked in Naples, too depressing to be reread or answered.
The phone records were there, a manila folder that contained what turned out to be fifteen sheets of computer print-out. He cast his eye down the first page and saw that only long-distance calls were not' ‘I , both from Trevisan's office and from his home. Each column began with the numerical city code or, where it applied, country code and then listed the number called, the time of the call, and its duration. In a separate column to the right were listed the names of the cities and countries to which those codes corresponded. Quickly, he paged through the report and saw that it listed only outgoing calls made from the phones and bore no listing of those received. Perhaps no request had been made, or perhaps SIP took longer to trace those, or perhaps, just as likely, some new bureaucratic nightmare had been invented for the processing of such a request, and the information would be delayed.
Brunetti ran his eyes down the column of cities on the right No pattern appeared on the first pages, but by the fourth, he could see that Trevisan - or whoever had been calling from Trevisan's phones, as he was careful to remind himself - called three numbers in Bulgaria with some regularity, at least two or three times a month. The same was true of numbers in Hungary and Poland. He remembered that the first country had been named by della Corte, though the others had not been. Interspersed with these were calls to the Netherlands and England, these perhaps explained by the nature of Trevisan's law practice. The Dominican Republic appeared nowhere on the list, and the calls to Austria and the Netherlands, the other countries della Corte had mentioned, seemed not to have been made with any great frequency.
Brunetti had no idea now much of a lawyer's business would be handled by phone, so he had no idea if the list he was reading represented an inordinate number of phone calls.
He called down to the switchboard and asked to be . connected to the number della Corte had given him. When the other policeman answered, Brunetti identified himself and asked to be given the numbers in Padua and Mestre that had been listed in Favero's address book.
After della Corte read them out to him, Brunetti said, 'I've got a list of Trevisan's calls here, but only the long distance, so the Mestre number won't appear. You want to wait while I check it for the Padua number?'
'Ask me if I want to the in the arms of a sixteen-year-old,' della Corte said. 'You'll get the same answer.'
Taking that for a yes, Brunetti ran his eye down the list, pausing wherever he saw the 049 prefix of Padua. The first three pages revealed nothing, but then on the fifth, and again on the ninth, he saw the number. It disappeared for a time, and then appeared on the fourteenth page, called three times in the same week.
Della Corte s answer when Brunetti told him this was a low, two-syllable hum. 'I think I better get someone to cover that phone in Padua.'
'And I'll get someone to go and have a look at the bar,' Brunetti said, interested now, eager to know what the bar was like, who frequented it, but most eager to get his hands on a list of Trevisan's local calls and see if the bar's number appeared on it.
Brunetti's long years and grim experience as a policeman had destroyed whatever belief he might ever have had in coincidence. A number that was known to two men who had been murdered within a few days of one another was not some random fact,
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