‘Perhaps it’s no more than my unfamiliarity with the civil codes referred to in your letter,’ Brunetti said smoothly.

Rossi considered this for a moment and then answered, ‘Yes, that’s entirely possible. What is it, though, that you don’t understand?’

‘What it means,’ Brunetti answered directly, no longer willing to pretend that he understood.

Again that puzzled look, so frank that it made Rossi look almost boyish. ‘I beg your pardon.’

‘What it means. I read it, but because I have no idea, as I told you, of the nature of the regulations to which it refers, I don’t know what it means, what it all applies to.’

‘Your apartment, of course,’ Rossi answered quickly.

‘Yes, I understood that much,’ Brunetti said in a voice he had to force to sound patient. ‘Since it came from your office, I gathered at least that. What I don’t understand is what interest your office could take in my apartment.’ Nor, for that fact, did he understand why an employee of that office should choose to visit him on a Saturday.

Rossi looked down at the folder on his lap and then up at Brunetti, who was surprised suddenly to notice how long and dark his lashes were, much like a woman’s. ‘I see, I see,’ Rossi said, nodded, and looked back down at the folder. He opened it and pulled out a smaller one, studied the label on its cover for an instant, and handed it across to Brunetti, saying, ‘Perhaps this will help to make it clear.’ Before he closed the folder that was still on his lap, he carefully aligned the papers that lay inside.

Brunetti opened the folder and removed the papers from it. Seeing how close-set the type was, he leaned to the left and picked up his glasses. At the top of the first page was the address of the building; below it appeared plans of the apartments beneath his own. On the next page was a list of past owners of each of those spaces, beginning with the storerooms on the ground floor.