Falling in Love by Donna Leon

she is singing there, this other woman?’
    ‘Of course,’ Brunetti said, as if the entire city were lined up and asking for her autograph. ‘We were there for a performance a few nights ago, and Signora Petrelli’s enthusiasm seems justified.’ Brunetti left it at that: at least one of these was unquestionably true.
    ‘In that case . . .’ Patta began, and Brunetti waited as his superior pulled out some mental calculator that only he knew how to operate and worked out the relationship between the importance of the victim and the amount of police time that he should order to be spent on her. As Brunetti watched, Patta returned the calculator to a pocket in his mind, then said, ‘Can you look into it?’
    Brunetti took his notebook from his pocket and paged through it. ‘I have a meeting at two’ – this was a lie – ‘but after that I’m free.’
    ‘All right, then. See what you can find out,’ Patta said. ‘We can’t have this sort of thing happening.’ The head of the Tourist Office could not have phrased it more clearly.
    Brunetti got briskly to his feet, nodded at the Vice-Questore, and left the office. He found Signorina Elettra alone in front of her computer, doing for him what he refused to learn to do.
    ‘Lorenzo?’ he asked.
    ‘He had to meet someone.’
    ‘Anything?’ he asked.
    ‘Before he left, he told me he called the Carabinieri and they do have a camera on the other side of the bridge where the girl was found: it shows the right side leading to San Rocco.’ She pushed her chair back and pointed at the screen, saying, ‘They just sent me this.’
    Making no attempt to disguise his astonishment, Brunetti said, ‘The Carabinieri actually sent this?’
    ‘He’s done them some favours in the past.’
    Brunetti had no idea what they might have been, nor did he want to know. ‘I’ll never tell another Carabinieri joke,’ he lied.
    Giving him a sceptical glance, Signorina Elettra rolled her chair to one side to create space for him.
    He moved behind her and leaned down, the better to view the screen. The image at first reminded him of an X-ray: grey, grainy, and utterly without definition. He made out – but only because he knew he was looking at a bridge – the parapet, at the top of the screen, and the back wall of the Scuola di San Rocco, though it could have been the wall of any building. Motion appeared: a small, round, wavy dark grey shape at the bottom right of the screen. Very quickly, it grew shoulders, a torso, legs, feet, moved away, and then disappeared in reverse order as the person walked down the other side of the bridge. ‘That’s all?’ he asked, unable to disguise his disappointment.
    Signorina Elettra shrugged and slid her chair forward. She clicked a few keys; other grey shapes hurried across the bridge as if they were skating over the steps. He watched two of them, three, crossing the bridge in both directions, then he lost count. There was a long blankness on the screen: only the parapet and the wall at the back. Signorina Elettra touched a key, but nothing changed.
    Suddenly a shape crashed into the screen, startling a gasp from both of them. Brunetti watched as something thin projected down from the shape and poked at the stairs, then gave way, after which the whole shape collapsed on top of it, bringing with it another of those small round shapes, though this one bounced against a step, and then it all stopped moving.
    Time passed. Signorina Elettra said, ‘I’ll speed it up again.’ Nothing changed on the screen: nothing moved for a time.
    Suddenly two round shapes appeared at bottom right; by now Brunetti recognized them as heads and watched as the bodies caught up with the heads, and then the men hurried up the steps to the unconscious woman. One knelt beside her while the other moved his arm and held something to his ear. The kneeling one took off his jacket and spread it over the shape on the ground, then both of them got to their feet and stood