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speaks Italian very well – you’d never know – and we got into the habit of chatting if I was on the desk while he was waiting for the books to come down.’ He paused, and when he saw Brunetti’s expression, went on. ‘We have a break in the afternoon, but I don’t smoke and I can’t drink coffee,’ he said, then added, ‘Stomach. Can’t handle it any more. I drink green tea, but none of the bars around here has it, well, not a kind that I’d drink.’ Before Brunetti could ask why he was being told all of this, Sartor said, ‘So I have a half-hour and don’t much want to go out, so I started to read. Some of the people who come to do research mention books, and sometimes I try to read them.’ He smiled nervously, as if conscious of having overstepped some sort of class barrier. ‘That way I have something interesting to tell my wife when I get home.’
    Brunetti had always taken a special delight in the surprising things he learned from people: they did and said the most unexpected things, both good and bad. Acolleague had once told him how, when his wife was in the seventeenth hour of labour with their first child, he had grown tired of listening to her complain, and Brunetti had fought down the impulse to slap him. He thought of his neighbour’s wife, whose cat was set free from the kitchen window every night to roam the rooftops of the neighbourhood, and who came home every morning with a clothes peg, not a mouse, in his mouth, a gift not unlike the interesting story Sartor took home to his wife.
    Brunetti, interested in what he had to say, asked, ‘Hernán Cortés?’
    ‘Yes,’ Sartor answered. ‘He conquered that city in Mexico they called the Venice of the West.’ He stopped and added, afraid perhaps that Brunetti might think him a fool, ‘That’s what the Europeans called it, not the Mexicans.’
    Brunetti nodded to show he understood.
    ‘It was interesting, although he was always thanking God when he killed a lot of people: I didn’t like that very much but he was writing to the King, so maybe he had to say things like that. But what he said about the country and the people was fascinating. My wife liked it, too.’
    He looked at Brunetti, whose approving smile to a fellow reader was enough to encourage him to continue. ‘I liked how things were so different from how they are now. I read some of it, and I wanted to finish it. Anyway, I recognized the title – Relación – when I saw it in front of the place where he usually sits and brought it downstairs because I thought a book like that shouldn’t be lying around up there.’
    Brunetti assumed this unnamed ‘he’ was the man believed to have cut the pages from the book, so he asked, ‘Why did you bring it down if he was working with it?’
    ‘Riccardo, from the first floor, told me he’d seen him going down the stairs when I was at lunch. He never did that before. He always comes in soon after we open and staysuntil the afternoon.’ He considered that for a moment and then added, sounding genuinely concerned, ‘I don’t know what he does about lunch: I hope he hasn’t been eating in there.’ Then, as if embarrassed to have confessed such a thing, he added, ‘So I went up to see if he was coming back.’
    ‘How would you know that?’ Brunetti asked with genuine curiosity.
    Sartor gave a small smile. ‘If you work here for a long time, Signore, you learn the signs. No pencils, no markers, no notebook. It’s hard to explain, but I just know if they’re finished for the day. Or not.’
    ‘And he was?’
    The guard nodded emphatically. ‘The books were stacked in front of where he had been sitting. His desk light was turned off. So I knew he wouldn’t come back. That’s why I took the book back down to the main desk.’
    ‘Was this unusual?’
    ‘For him it was. He always packed up everything and took the books back himself.’
    ‘What time did he leave?’
    ‘I don’t know the exact time, sir. Before I came back