‘On foot?’

‘Yes, sir.’

When Ruberti didn’t continue, Brunetti nodded to him and he went on, ‘When we got there we found the window broken. The alarm was going off like crazy.’

‘Where was it coming from?’ Brunetti asked, though he knew.

‘The back room, sir.’

‘Yes, yes. But from what place?’

‘The travel agency, sir.’

Seeing Brunetti’s response, Ruberti subsided into silence again until Brunetti prodded him by asking, ‘And then?’

‘I went in, sir, and turned off the electricity. To stop the alarm,’ he explained unnecessarily. ‘Then, when we came out, we saw a woman in the campo, like she was waiting for us, and we asked her if she had seen what happened.’ Ruberti looked down at his desk, up at Brunetti, across at Paola and when neither of them said anything, he continued, ‘She said she’d seen who did it and when we asked her to describe him, she said it was a woman.’

Again, he stopped and looked at each of them and again neither said anything. ‘Then, when we asked her to describe the woman she described herself and, when I pointed that out to her, she said she’d done it. Broken the window, sir. That’s what happened.’ He thought for a moment, then added, ‘Well, she didn’t say it, sir. But she nodded when I asked her if she’d done it.’

Brunetti lowered himself into a chair on Paola’s right and folded his hands on the surface of Ruberti’s desk.

‘Where’s Bellini?’ he asked.

‘Still there, sir. He’s waiting for the owner to show up.’

‘How long ago did you leave him?’ Brunetti asked.

Ruberti glanced down at his watch. ‘More than a half-hour, sir.’

‘Does he have a phone?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Call him.’ Brunetti said.

Ruberti reached forward and pulled the phone towards him, but before he could begin to dial they heard footsteps on the stairs and a moment later Bellini came into the office. When he saw Brunetti he saluted, though he was unable to show his surprise at finding the commissario there at that hour.