‘I told you, officer. I was walking by, and I saw these people standing around here, so I stopped to look. Nothing more.’

‘All right. You can go,’ Alvise said in a tone that suggested the man really had no choice. Alvise turned away from him and went back to the crime team, where the photographers were already packing up their equipment.

‘Find anything?’ he asked one of the technicians.

Santini, who was on his knees, running his gloved hands over the paving stones in search of shell casings, looked up at Alvise and said, ‘A dead man,’ before returning to his search.

Not deterred by the answer, Alvise pulled out a notebook from the inside pocket of his uniform parka. He flipped it open, took out a pen, and wrote ‘Campo Santo Stefano’. He studied what he had written, glanced at his watch, added ‘20.58’, capped the pen, and returned both notebook and pen to his pocket.

From his right, he heard a familiar voice ask, ‘What’s going on, Alvise?’

Alvise raised a languid hand in something that resembled a salute and said, ‘I’m not sure, Commissario. We had a call, saying there was a dead man here, so we came over.’

His superior, Commissario Guido Brunetti, said, ‘I can see that, Alvise. What happened to cause the man to be dead?’

‘I don’t know, sir. We’re waiting for the doctor to get here.’

‘Who’s coming?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Who’s coming where, sir?’ Alvise asked, utterly at a loss.

‘Which doctor is coming? Do you know?’

‘I don’t know, sir. I was in such a hurry to get the team here that I told them at the Questura to call and have one of the doctors sent.’

Brunetti’s question was answered by the arrival of Dottor Ettore Rizzardi, medico legale of the city of Venice.