His wife put her hand on top of his and said, as if Brunetti weren’t there, ‘Nothing we could have done, Fred. Those two men knew what they were doing.’

She couldn’t have been more offhand about it: ‘those two men’.

‘What two men?’ Brunetti asked, striving to keep his voice as calm as possible. ‘Could you tell me more about them?’

‘There was the man in the overcoat,’ she said. ‘He was on my right, just a little bit behind me. I didn’t see the other one, but because the noise came from my left, he had to have been on the other side. And I’m not even sure it was a man. I just assume that because the other one was.’

Brunetti turned to the husband, ‘Did you see them, Doctor?’

The man shook his head. ‘Nope. I was looking at the things on the sheet. I didn’t even hear the noise.’ As if to prove this, he turned to the side and showed Brunetti the beige snail of the hearing aid in his left ear. ‘When I heard Martha call me, I didn’t have any idea what was going on. Truth to tell, I thought something might have happened to her, so I pushed right past those people to get to her, and when I saw her down on the ground like that, even though she was kneeling, well, I won’t tell you what I thought, but it wasn’t good.’ He paused as if in pained memory and gave a nervous smile.

Brunetti knew better than to prod him, and after a few moments, the man spoke again. ‘And, as I said, as soon as I touched him, I knew he was gone.’

Brunetti turned his attention back to the woman. ‘Could you describe this man for me, Doctor?’

Just at that moment the waitress came by and asked if she could bring them anything. Brunetti looked at the two Americans, but both shook their heads. Though he didn’t want it, he ordered a coffee.