‘Yes, you’re right,’ Brusca said, striving to sound as though they were discussing the quality of a soccer team and not the corruption of the judicial system. ‘But I don’t think that’s likely,’ he added

‘Then why did you give them to me?’ Brunetti made no attempt to disguise his irritation.

For a long time, there was no response from Brusca’s end of the line, and then he said, ‘I thought you might be able to think of something to do. And I hoped you’d be outraged by it.’

‘That’s putting it a bit too strongly,’ Brunetti said.

‘All right, all right, not outrage. Hope, then. Perhaps that’s what I admire in you, that you can still hope that things will turn right and the Augean Stables will be cleansed.’

‘That’s unlikely, as you say,’ Brunetti agreed. Then, turning back to the original purpose of the call and with the voice of friendship restored, he asked, ‘Really, why did you give them to me?’

‘It’s true. I hoped you’d be able to do something,’ Brusca answered. Then, in a voice Brunetti suspected his friend was deliberately making sound lighter, he added, ‘Besides, it’s always nice to be able to cause one of them a bit of trouble.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Brunetti said, knowing as he spoke how little chance there was of that.

Brusca said a quick goodbye.

Brunetti propped his left elbow on his desk and rubbed his thumbnail back and forth along his lower lip. His shirt felt clammy under his arms and across his back. He went to the window and looked down at the water of the canal, black in the day’s harsh reflection. Campo San Lorenzo had been baked free of life; even the cats who lived in the multi-storey cat condominium erected against the façade of the church had disappeared; he wondered if they had fled the city to go on vacation.

For a moment, he let himself indulge in a fantasy about cats on vacation in the mountains or at the seaside, sent there by DINGO, the city’s cooperative society of animal lovers.