‘I’m afraid I haven’t the authority to answer that, Signore,’ Rossi said, handing the file back to Brunetti. He leaned down and picked up his briefcase. Holding it, he got to his feet. ‘My responsibility is only to visit home-owners and see if the missing papers are in their possession.’ His face sobered, and Brunetti thought he saw real disappointment there. ‘I’m sorry to learn that you don’t have them.’

Brunetti stood. ‘What happens now?’

‘That depends upon the Commission of the Ufficio Catasto,’ Rossi said and took a step toward the door.

Brunetti moved to the left, not quite blocking Rossi’s exit, but certainly creating an obstacle between Rossi and the door. ‘You said you think the floor below was added in the nineteenth century. But if it was added later, at the same time as this one was, would that change things?’ Try as he might, Brunetti could not disguise the raw hope in his voice.

Rossi considered this for a long time and eventually said, his voice a study in caution and reserve, ‘Perhaps. I know that floor has all the permits and approvals, so if this floor could be shown to have been added at the same time, that could be used to argue that permits must once have been granted.’ He thought about this, a bureaucrat presented with a novel problem. ‘Yes, that might change things, though I’m certainly not in a position to judge.’

Momentarily buoyed by the possibility of a reprieve, Brunetti stepped over to the door to the terrace and opened it. ‘Let me show you something,’ he said, turning to Rossi and waving his hand through the open door. ‘I’ve always thought the windows on the floor below were the same as ours.’ Without looking back toward Rossi, he went on, ‘If you just have a look, down here on the left, you can see what I mean.’ With the ease of long familiarity, Brunetti leaned out over the waist-high wall, bracing himself on broad-spread palms, to look at the windows of the apartment below. Now that he studied them, however, he could see that they were not at all the same: those below had carved lintels of white Istrian marble; his own windows were nothing more than rectangles cut in the brick of the wall.