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F or the next two days, life in Venice moved at more or less a normal rhythm.

The tourists tramped and traipsed, the stalls of the Rialto Market filled and emptied, the tides rose and receded, leaving no new horrors in their wake.

A lengthy story about the grisly discovery in the laguna appeared on the front page of Il Gazzettino ’s print edition on Thursday morning, but by Friday the coverage had been relegated to the Venezia section.

Police were acting under the assumption there was foul play involved, though they had yet to determine the identity of the decedent.

A request for assistance from the public had so far turned up nothing.

Gabriel passed those two otherwise tranquil autumn days atop his work platform in the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute.

The Titian proved a welcome distraction, as did the noisy patrons who filled the nave for five hours each day.

He had no wish to discuss his dubious heroics with the barman at Caffè Poggi, so he brought along a thermos flask of coffee each morning and forwent his usual midday break.

He worked late on Thursday, but on Friday afternoon he had drinks with Chiara on the terrace of the Monaco.

She informed him that the number of marchers for tomorrow’s climate demonstration had risen to one hundred and twenty-five.

“How are we possibly going to feed them?”

“Don’t worry, darling. The caterers will take care of everything.”

“What caterers?”

They arrived at eight the following morning and began erecting circular tables throughout the apartment.

Gabriel, after locking the door of his studio, accompanied Chiara and the children to the Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, where no fewer than eighty young schoolchildren had already gathered.

By nine o’clock, the scheduled start time of the march, their number had swelled to one hundred and fifty.

Irene somehow organized them into two orderly columns.

Then a loud cheer went up, and they were off.

Twelve parents kept watch over the marchers, with Chiara at the sharp end of the noisy procession and Gabriel, who knew a thing or two about surveillance and protection techniques, in a trailing position.

Their route took them westward along the busy Strada Nova, where, with the exception of a few cross words from a Fratelli-supporting shopkeeper, they were well received.

They paused briefly in the Campo Santa Fosca for a protective head count, then set off along the Rio Terà San Leonardo toward Santa Lucia.

They arrived only fifteen minutes behind schedule.

Another quick count, this one conducted by Gabriel, confirmed that they had suffered no losses.

Next they filed over the Ponte degli Scalzi and followed a circuitous route to the Accademia, where they chanted a slogan at the museum’s entrance before crossing the Grand Canal a second time.

After a final head count, they marched past the luxury boutiques lining the Calle Larga XXII Marzo and entered the Piazza San Marco as the giant bell atop the campanile tolled midday.

Confident they had spared the planet a climate apocalypse, they traveled in a succession of vaporetti from San Marco to San Tomà.

The luncheon, like the march before it, proceeded without incident, and by four o’clock the children and the caterers had departed, and a deep and abiding silence settled once more over the rooms of the Allon family’s piano nobile .

They were in agreement that the entire enterprise, despite the unfortunate circumstances that brought it about, had been a resounding success.

Gabriel spent the remainder of the afternoon working on the Florigerio, and the next morning, after consulting the forecast, he coaxed Chiara and the children onto his Bavaria 42 sailboat for a daylong cruise on the Adriatic.

They returned to the marina at sunset by the same route they had left it—through the busy Lido Inlet.

If the woman’s body had arrived in Venice on a morning tide, it would have traveled the same route.

Gabriel, as he surveyed his surroundings, thought it improbable.

The woman, he reckoned, had died a Venetian death, probably within the city’s six historic sestieri .

By Monday morning she had vanished from the pages of Venice’s daily newspaper, but the terrible image of her faceless corpse remained lodged in Gabriel’s memory.

He was not at all displeased, therefore, when Dottoressa Saviano suggested that the children drop by the Salute on Thursday for the promised demonstration and lecture.

Gabriel arranged for the visit to begin at noon, when the basilica was closed to the public.

His audience was attentive throughout the presentation, though Gabriel was distracted by the persistent vibration of his phone.

He waited until the children had departed before returning the call.

“What took you so long?” asked Luca Rossetti.

“I was in the middle of something. What’s so urgent?”

“The Arma dei Carabinieri requires your assistance.”

“I’d love to help, Luca. But I’m unavailable.”

“Great,” said Rossetti before killing the connection. “Colonel Baggio and I will pick you up in front of the Salute in twenty minutes.”

***

The patrol boat was configured like a typical Venetian water taxi, low and sleek, with an open forward helm station and a cabin aft.

Gabriel sat next to Rossetti on one of the upholstered benches, and Colonel Baggio sat opposite.

After leaving the Salute, the vessel had rounded the Punta della Dogana and turned into the Giudecca Canal.

They were now headed westward across the laguna toward the mainland.

“Would you mind telling me where we’re going?” asked Gabriel.

“ Terraferma ,” replied Baggio.

“I gathered that. But why?”

“It is my understanding that Capitano Rossetti explained the situation.”

“He said you required my assistance.”

“That about covers it,” said Baggio.

They put in at a small marina near the airport and climbed into a waiting unmarked Alfa Romeo, which ferried them at high speed across Mestre, the largest of Venice’s four mainland boroughs.

Eventually it delivered them to a drab official building above which hung a limp Italian tricolor.

Inside, Gabriel followed Rossetti and Baggio into a small conference room.

They were soon joined by a man clad in pale blue scrubs who carried with him a case file and the smell of death.

Baggio introduced him as Dottore Massimo Ravello, the Veneto’s top medical examiner.

The pathologist opened the case file and addressed Gabriel with courtroom formality.

“The woman you discovered in the laguna was probably in her late twenties, thirty at most. She was 170 centimeters in height and wore a size thirty-eight shoe. At some point during her brief life, she suffered a fracture to her left wrist. The shape of her skull indicates that she was of Northern European ethnicity.”

“Cause of death?”

“Determining the manner of death is always difficult in cases where the body is discovered in water. But in my opinion, she died by drowning.”

“When?”

“A week ago, I’d say. Perhaps a day or two earlier.”

“Was it an accident?”

“Unlikely.” Ravello removed a photograph from the file and placed it before Gabriel.

It showed the lower portion of the woman’s right leg—or what remained of it.

“It appears as though someone tied a line around her ankle. Whether it was before or after her death I cannot say. It was undoubtedly attached to something heavy.”

Gabriel returned the photograph to Ravello. “What does any of this have to do with me?”

The medical examiner deferred to Colonel Baggio. “As you probably know, Signore Allon, we have been unable to identify the woman, in part because no one seems to realize that she is missing. We were hoping you might agree to help us discover who she was and why she was killed.”

“How?”

“By giving her a face.”

“A forensic sketch?” Gabriel shook his head. “I’m sorry, Colonel Baggio, but I have no training in that sort of thing. You require a professional.”

“We have one on retainer. She feeds precise measurements of the skull in question into a computer program, and the program produces digital sketches. None of which,” Baggio added pointedly, “has ever led to the identification of a set of human remains.”

“What makes you think I would have any better luck?”

Baggio exchanged a look with Rossetti before answering. “My colleague tells me that you are an unusually gifted painter, especially when it comes to human anatomy.”

“That might explain why I was hired to restore the Titian.”

“From what I hear, you could paint a copy of that Titian, and no one would ever be able to tell the difference.” Baggio shot another glance in Rossetti’s direction. “Isn’t that right, Capitano?”

Rossetti delivered his reply to Gabriel. “Would you at least try?”

Gabriel looked at Ravello and asked, “May I see the X-rays of the skull?”

The pathologist extracted three images from the file—one frontal, two lateral—and handed them over.

Gabriel examined them at length with a practiced eye.

As a young art student he had spent countless hours drawing human skeletons.

Later he had learned how to draw skeletons inside his nudes or, conversely, nudes around his skeletons.

He was more than confident in his ability to produce a portrait that bore at least a passing resemblance to the woman of Northern European ethnicity whom he had found in the waters off Dorsoduro.

It would, however, require him to spend a few moments with his subject.

“You mentioned something about a broken wrist.”

Dottore Ravello handed Gabriel another X-ray image. The fracture was clearly visible in the left radius. “How old was she when it happened?”

“Eight or nine, I’d say.”

The same age as Irene. “Is there anything else you can tell me about her?”

“She was wearing no jewelry other than a pendant.”

“What sort of pendant?”

“It’s in the pathology lab,” said Ravello. “Perhaps we should have a look at it.”

***

Gabriel followed the medical examiner down a flight of stairs to the basement level of the building. The lab was located behind a pair of locked doors. Only one of the three stainless-steel postmortem tables was occupied. The body was shrouded in white.

Ravello gently drew back the sheet, exposing the head and shoulders of the corpse.

Gabriel was slow in looking down. The first thing he noticed was the significant gap between the two front teeth.

She would have smiled, he thought, without parting her lips.

Her remaining hair was shoulder length and the color of flax.

Gabriel reckoned that her eyes had been pale blue.

“You had a look inside her lungs, I take it?”

“I’m afraid the sea scavengers didn’t leave me much to work with.”

“Was she a smoker?”

“I’d say not.”

“Pregnant?”

“No.”

“Health problems? Nasty habits?”

“Drugs or alcohol, you mean?” Ravello shook his head. “The remaining tissue of her liver looked normal. She was a good girl, this one. She didn’t deserve to end up like this.”

No one did, thought Gabriel, least of all the young woman stretched out before him. “May I see the pendant?” he asked.

It was zipped into a plastic evidence bag, a circular, gold-plated rendering of a male hand reaching toward an outstretched finger.

Gabriel recognized it at once. It was the iconic image from Michelangelo’s ceiling fresco in the Sistine Chapel, the instant that God imparted the spark of life into Adam.

The engraving on the back of the pendant indicated that it had been purchased at a gift shop in the Vatican Museums.

Gabriel photographed both sides of the pendant before returning it to Ravello. “I need to touch her.”

The pathologist opened a cabinet and removed a pair of flesh-colored autopsy gloves. Gabriel pulled them on, then said, “Please leave the room, Dottore.”

“That body is evidence in a criminal investigation. I must remain with you at all times.”

“Five minutes,” said Gabriel.

The pathologist emitted a sigh of resignation, then started toward the door.

“Dottore Ravello?”

He paused.

“Turn off the lights on your way out.”

The snap of a switch extinguished the overhead fluorescent lights. Then the door closed, and the darkness was absolute. They were alone now, just the two of them. Five minutes was all the time they would have together. It was all the time Gabriel required.

He reached down and laid his gloved hand on the portion of exposed bone and ligature where a face should have been.

His examination was thorough but gentle, as though his subject could feel his every touch.

The bones of the forehead and nose, the orbital bones of the eyes, the zygomatic bones of the cheeks, the mandible bone of the lower jaw.

She appeared to him at once and with photographic clarity, a plain and pale girl in her late twenties with shoulder-length blond hair, deeply set blue eyes, an upturned nose, and a pronounced dimple in her chin.

She was sitting alone at a café in Venice, a circular gold pendant around her neck.

The café was Bar Dogale in the Campo dei Frari.

Gabriel and the children had been sitting at the next table.