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D uring the return trip from the mainland, Gabriel managed to convince himself that he was mistaken.

Yes, there had been a young woman at Bar Dogale on the afternoon in question—an afternoon approximately two weeks earlier—and, yes, Gabriel and the children had been sitting at an adjoining table.

It was half past three, the weather was warm and sultry.

Irene and Raphael were snacking on tramezzini and discussing their day at school.

The young woman, who had arrived before them, was drinking a cappuccino.

She wore jeans, a sleeveless cotton sweater, and canvas trainers.

Her pale blue eyes were searching the campo as though she were expecting someone.

She seemed anxious, not at all like someone who was enjoying her visit to Venice.

Several times she consulted her phone, which she held in her long-fingered right hand.

Gabriel made no mention of the woman at Bar Dogale during the ride across the laguna . Indeed, he spoke not a word. Colonel Baggio finally asked how long it might take him to produce a sketch. Gabriel replied, inaccurately, that he required a week at least.

“The sooner, the better.”

“I’ll do my best.”

They dropped him at the San Tomà vaporetto stop, and he headed straight for the palazzo. Upstairs, he found the apartment deserted. Then he remembered it was Thursday, the day Raphael met with his tutor at the university. Gabriel would have the apartment to himself until nearly six.

He went into his studio and closed the door.

The pathologist had allowed him to keep the three X-ray images of the woman’s skull, along with a single photograph of the head and shoulders of the corpse.

He consulted them only briefly before taking up a Strathmore Series 300 pad and a Faber-Castell pencil.

His method was rudimentary, a simple oval bisected by faint horizontal lines for the eyes and mouth.

Contrary to what he had told Colonel Baggio, it was only a few minutes before he had a finished sketch in hand.

It was the young woman from Bar Dogale.

He tore the sketch from the pad and laid it on his worktable.

Surely, he told himself, it was not possible.

He had simply given the dead woman the face of a woman who had caught his attention.

With his near-perfect recall for visual images, it was entirely understandable.

Besides, what were the chances that the two women were actually one and the same?

It was a question, he thought, only his son could answer.

Somehow he had to clear the anxious young woman from Bar Dogale from his memory.

He did so by concealing her beneath a layer of imaginary obliterating paint.

Next he scrutinized the four photographs at considerable length.

He even laid his hand on the frontal X-ray of the skull and probed the fourteen bones of the face as though he were reading a page of braille.

Finally he reached for the Strathmore pad and began to sketch, the tip of his pencil moving swiftly over the smooth surface of the Bristol paper.

The result was a near-perfect copy of the first sketch.

To produce his third and final sketch he used an assortment of colored pencils.

He gave his subject a simple shoulder-length hairstyle, a spray of freckles across her nose, a beauty mark above her lip, and a circular gold pendant bearing Michelangelo’s image of God imparting the spark of life to his creation.

The expression the woman wore was unsmiling, guarded.

The gap between her two front teeth was hidden from view.

Gabriel photographed the finished sketch with his iPhone, then digitally cropped and darkened the image.

No, he thought as he stared at the screen, he was not mistaken.

Exactly nine days before he fished a woman in her late twenties from the waters of the laguna , the very same woman had been sitting next to him in the Campo dei Frari, waiting anxiously for someone who was running late.

***

Chiara rang a few minutes before six to say that she and the children were leaving the university.

She then declared that she was too exhausted to cook and that they were going out.

Gabriel suggested Vini da Arturo, a trattoria on the opposite side of the Grand Canal in San Marco.

They traveled there by traghetto and feasted on antipasti and veal cutlets.

Irene and Raphael spent the entire meal raving about their father’s bravura performance at the Salute.

His lecture, it seemed, was the talk of the scuola primaria .

Leaving the restaurant, they decided to walk home over the Rialto Bridge rather than utilize the time-saving convenience of a traghetto .

Gabriel encouraged Irene and Raphael to lead the way.

Then, quietly, he told Chiara about his involuntary visit to the mainland, his brief reunion with the corpse he had discovered in the laguna , and the conclusion he had reached regarding the young woman he had seen nine days earlier at Bar Dogale.

“Impossible,” said Chiara.

“Unlikely. But not impossible.” Gabriel handed over his phone. “Have a look at her.”

“Pretty girl,” remarked Chiara.

“Not really. Most people wouldn’t have noticed her.”

“But you did.”

“That’s because I notice everything.”

“Including a beauty mark on her upper lip?”

“And the freckles,” added Gabriel. “I remembered she had a few freckles.”

“What about the pendant?”

Gabriel instructed Chiara to enlarge the image.

“That might be the world’s smallest copy of The Creation of Adam .”

“She was wearing it when she was murdered.”

“Was the woman from Bar Dogale wearing a similar pendant?”

“No,” replied Gabriel. “She was wearing the exact same pendant.”

They had reached the Campo San Bartolomeo. The children paused to take their bearings, then disappeared around a corner. Chiara returned the phone and asked, “What makes you think that she was waiting for someone?”

“Professional instinct.”

“And which profession is that, Maestro Allon?”

“Forensic sketch artist, it seems.” They rounded the corner into the Salizzada Pio X. Gabriel searched the crowds for Irene and Raphael. “It appears we’ve lost our children.”

“This is Venice, darling. It’s impossible to get lost. Besides, they know the way.”

“Where are they going?”

“Venchi, I imagine.”

It was a gourmet chocolate shop and gelateria in the Rialto. “Since when do our children carry money?”

“The children of Maestro Allon don’t need money. The shopkeepers know that you’ll settle their debts.”

“Some life.”

“Yours or theirs?” Chiara held his hand as they walked past the stalls lining the Rialto Bridge. “Let’s say for argument’s sake that you’re right about the woman from Bar Dogale.”

“I am.”

“In that case, it shouldn’t be too difficult to determine who she was. Who knows? We might even be able to learn the name of the person she was planning to meet there.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn’t that the job of the authorities?”

“They were the ones who came to you for help.”

“They asked me to produce a forensic sketch, not to solve the case.”

“Who said anything about solving the case? All I’m suggesting is that we have coffee at Dogale tomorrow morning after we drop the children at school.”

They had reached the San Polo side of the bridge. Irene and Raphael were nowhere in sight.

“Speaking of the children,” said Gabriel.

“Follow me.”

They made their way through the Rialto Market to the Ruga dei Spezieri, where they found Irene and Raphael eating chocolate gelato outside the entrance of Venchi. Chiara pulled a banknote from her bag and handed it to Gabriel.

“And a chocolate gelato for me as well, Maestro Allon.”

The laughter of the children echoed along the narrow street. “And butter cookies, Maestro!” shouted Irene. “Bring us butter cookies for the walk home.”