Free Falling in Love by Donna Leon Page A

girls with a broken arm and stitches in her head would be in the cardiology ward?
    Indeed she was the only one, lying on a trolley in an empty corridor, apparently parked – Brunetti’s choice of word – until they managed to find a room where there was space for her. He approached her. A pale-faced young woman lay on her back, apparently asleep, her left arm in a cast on her stomach, palm open on her hip. Her head was bandaged, and he saw that a swathe of hair had been shaved away to allow the tape to hold.
    He went to the nurses’ station and found someone. ‘I’ve come to see the young woman over there. May I see her chart?’ he asked.
    ‘Are you a doctor?’ the nurse asked, looking him up and down.
    ‘No, I’m a policeman.’
    ‘Has she done something?’ the nurse asked, shooting a quick look in the girl’s direction.
    ‘No, quite the opposite, it would seem.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘She may have been pushed down the bridge,’ Brunetti said, curious to see how the nurse would respond to his confidence.
    ‘Who’d do something like that?’ the woman asked in a voice now warmed by concern, as she glanced back at the young woman. Obviously, her colleague Clara had told her nothing.
    ‘That’s what I’ve come to find out.’ Brunetti smiled when he said this.
    ‘Ah, take it, then,’ she said and passed him a file lying on the counter that separated them.
    ‘“Francesca Santello”,’ Brunetti read. ‘Is she Venetian?’
    ‘She sounds it,’ the woman answered. ‘Well, in the little I heard her say. They gave her something when they set her arm and did the stitches, and she’s been groggy or asleep since then.’
    ‘What did she say?’
    ‘She asked me to call her father,’ the nurse answered, then added, ‘but she was asleep before she could tell me his name.’
    ‘I see,’ Brunetti said and looked through the file. Her name and date of birth, residence in Santa Croce. The X-rays of her skull had clipped to them a note saying they showed no sign of fracture or internal bleeding. The examining physician wrote that the fracture of her arm was a simple one, and the cast could be removed in five weeks.
    ‘I looked,’ the nurse said forcefully, as if to deny some accusation from Brunetti.
    ‘Excuse me,’ he said, looking up from the file.
    ‘Santello. In the phone book. But there’s a dozen of them.’
    Brunetti thought to ask if she had checked the addresses but limited himself to a smile.
    ‘How long has she been here?’
    The nurse looked at her watch. ‘They brought her up after they put in the stitches.’
    ‘I’d like to stay here for a while to see if she wakes up,’ Brunetti said.
    Perhaps because his explanations had transformed the young woman from a suspect to a victim, the nurse raised no objection, and Brunetti went back to the side of the trolley. When he looked down at her, he saw that she was staring at him.
    ‘Who are you?’ she asked.
    ‘Commissario Guido Brunetti,’ he answered. ‘I came because one of the nurses said you think you were pushed down the steps.’
    ‘I don’t think it,’ she said. ‘I know it.’ Her voice used too much breath, as if she had to pump out the words to get them free. She closed her eyes, and he saw her lips press together in frustration or pain.
    He waited.
    She looked at him with clear, almost translucent blue eyes. ‘I know it.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper, but the pronunciation was diamond-sharp.
    ‘Would you tell me what happened?’ Brunetti asked.
    She moved her head minimally, but even that caused her a sudden gasp of pain. She lay still and then said, speaking very softly, as if to keep the pain from noticing, ‘I was going home. After dinner with friends. When I was going up the bridge behind the Scuola, I heard footsteps behind me.’ She studied his face to see if he was following.
    Brunetti nodded but said nothing.
    She lay still for some time, gathering more breath to enable herself to