‘What?’ Brunetti cried before he could stop himself. He could hear the outrage in his voice but made no attempt to modify it. ‘What do you mean, it doesn’t exist?’

Rossi leaned back in his chair as if to remove himself from the immediate orbit of Brunetti’s anger. He looked as if he found it puzzling to have someone react strongly to his having called into question the very existence of a perceived reality. When he saw that Brunetti had no violent intention, he relaxed minimally, adjusted the papers on his lap, and said. ‘I mean that it doesn’t exist for us, Signor Brunetti.’

‘And what does that mean, not for you?’ Brunetti asked.

‘It means there are no records of it in our office. No requests for building permits, no plans, no final approval of the work that was done. In short, there exists no documentary evidence that this apartment was ever built.’ Before Brunetti could speak, Rossi added, placing his hand upon the file Brunetti had given him, ‘And, unfortunately, you can’t provide us with any.’

Brunetti recalled a story Paola had once told about an English writer who, confronted with a philosopher who maintained that reality did not exist, had kicked a rock and told the philosopher to take that. He turned his mind to more immediate matters. His knowledge of the workings of other city offices was vague, but it was not his understanding that this sort of information would be kept at the Ufficio Catasto, where, as far as he knew, only documents regarding ownership were kept. ‘Is it normal for your office to interest itself in this?’

‘No, not in the past,’ Rossi answered with a timid smile, as if he approved of Brunetti’s being well informed enough to ask. ‘But as the result of a new directive, our office has been commissioned to assemble a comprehensive, computerized file of all of the apartments in the city that have been declared historical monuments by the Fine Arts Commission. This building is one of them. We’re in the process of assembling the papers and files from the various offices in the city. This way, one central office, ours, will have copies of the complete documentation regarding every apartment on the list. In the end, this centralized system will save enormous amounts of time.’