Blood from a stone

8

If he had thought to leave uncertainty and unease behind him at the Questura, he was much mistaken, for he found both within the walls of his home. Here they manifested themselves in the aura of moral outrage which both Paola and Chiara carried about with them, much in the fashion of Dante’s usurers, passing through eternity with their money bags hung round their necks. He assumed that both his wife and his daughter believed themselves in the right. When, after all, had a person involved in an argument believed themselves to be in the wrong?
He found his family at table. He kissed Paola’s cheek and ruffled Chiara’s hair, but she pulled her head quickly aside, as if unwilling to be touched by a hand that had rested on her opponent’s shoulder. Pretending not to have noticed, he took his place and asked Raffi how school was. His son, in a manifestation of male solidarity in the face of female moodiness, said things were fine, then began a long explanation of the arcana of a computer program he was using in his chemistry class. Brunetti, far more interested in his linguine with scampi than in anything to do with computers, smiled and asked what he did his best to make sound like relevant questions.
Conversation chugged along through a plate of sole fried with artichoke bottoms and a rucola salad. Chiara pushed her food around on her plate, leaving much of it uneaten, an unmistakable sign that this situation was affecting her deeply.
Upon learning that there was no dessert, she and Raffi evaporated; Brunetti set his empty glass down and said, ‘I have the feeling I ought to have one of those blue helmets the UN peacekeepers wear when there’s danger they might be caught in crossfire.’
Paola poured them both a bit more wine, the Loredan Gasparini his father-in-law had sent him as a birthday present, one he would like to be able to drink in happier circumstances. ‘She’ll get over it,’ Paola said and set the bottle on the table with an authoritative clunk.
‘I have no doubt of that,’ Brunetti answered calmly. ‘I just don’t want to have to eat my lunch in this atmosphere until that happens.’
‘Oh, come on, Guido. It’s not that bad,’ Paola said in a voice that suggested she would be quite happy, if given sufficient provocation, to divert her irritation towards him. ‘She’ll realize what she’s done in a few days.’
‘And then?’ he asked. ‘Apologize?’
‘For starters,’ Paola said.
‘And then what?’
‘Think about what she said and what that says about her as a person.’
‘It’s been a day,’ he said. ‘And she’s not over it.’
Paola allowed a long time to pass before she asked, ‘What does that mean?’
He tried to find a way of saying what he wanted to say without angering her. ‘That I think you’ve offended her,’ he finally offered.
‘Her?’ Paola said with false incredulity. ‘How?’
He poured some more wine into his glass but left it on the table. ‘By assaulting her without giving her a chance to explain.’
Her look was long and level. ‘“Assaulting?”’ she repeated. ‘Does that mean there’s some explanation or justification for ideas like hers, that the death of a man can be dismissed with a cavalier “only”, and that her listener is somehow obliged to let the remark pass unobserved? Or that to object to it is to “assault” the person who made it?’
‘Of course not,’ he said, trained by Paola herself to recognize and dismiss the argumentun ad absurdum. ‘I’m not saying that.’
‘Then what are you saying?’
‘That you might have been better advised to see where she got these ideas and try to reason with her.’
‘Rather than assaulting her, as you put it?’ she asked, beginning to show her anger.
‘Yes,’ he answered calmly.
‘I’m not in the habit of attempting to reason with racial prejudice,’ she said.
‘Then what do you want to do with it, beat it with a stick?’
He saw her start to answer, then bite it back. She took a sip of her wine, then another, then set the glass down. ‘All right,’ she finally said. ‘Perhaps I was a little too severe with her. But it was so embarrassing, to hear her say those things and to think I might have been responsible, in some way, for her having said them.’
‘Are we talking about Chiara here, or about you?’ he surprised her by asking.
She pursed her lips, glanced across at the window that looked off to the north, nodded in acknowledgement of the accuracy of his question, and said, ‘You’re right.’
‘I’m not interested in being right,’ Brunetti said.
‘What are you interested in, then?’
‘Living in peace in my own home.’
‘I suppose that’s pretty much all anyone wants,’ she said.
‘If only it were that simple, huh?’ he asked, got to his feet and leaned over to kiss her on the head, then went back to the Questura and to the investigation of the death of the man who was only a vu cumprà.
The African’s death, or at least the cause of it, was catalogued in the print-out of the autopsy report that lay on Brunetti’s desk. The speed with which it had arrived surprised Brunetti, and he flipped to the back to see if Rizzardi had given a reason. His surprise grew when, instead of the pathologist’s name, he found a blank where the name of the responsible pathologist should have appeared. Deciding to waste no time in attempting to figure out why Rizzardi might have failed to fill this in, he began to read.
The victim was estimated to have been in his late twenties, and although there was evidence he had been a heavy smoker, he was in excellent health, as were his organs. He was 1.82 metres tall and weighed 68 kilos. A set of his fingerprints had been forwarded to Lyon for possible identification.
In total, five bullets had struck him, a number which corresponded to the number of sounds the Americans had heard. Either of two of them would have sufficed to kill him: one had severed his spine, and one had perforated the left ventricle of the heart. The remaining three had pounded into his torso; one had lodged in the liver, while two had simply buried themselves in his flesh without damaging any organs. The fact that all five shots had struck him spoke to Brunetti of proximity as much as marksmanship, for from what the Americans had described, the killers had been little more than a metre from their victim. The angles of the paths of the bullets suggested that one man was taller than the other; the fact that the bullets had lacked the force to emerge from the body suggested that the guns were of low calibre. The bullets had been extracted and sent to the lab for analysis, though a layman’s guess was that the gun that fired them would turn out to be a .22, a weapon Brunetti knew was not unknown to paid killers.
‘Layman,’ Brunetti said aloud, setting the report to one side. Rizzardi, who had worked in Naples a decade ago, had probably seen more signs of violent death than anyone else in the city, so he would hardly have used such a term when writing an autopsy report.
The report had arrived by email, which meant that the photos would be on view in Signorina Elettra’s computer. Brunetti, however, had no desire to see them: the sight of wounds had always caused him pain and disgust. It was only the idea of the motivation that had caused them that interested him. He admitted to himself that he had little real knowledge of Africa, thought of the continent as a vague, amorphous mass where things went wrong and people suffered and starved while they lived amidst a wealth of natural resources that had been strewed about them with nature’s most prodigal hand.
He had read of the colonial past of the continent, but the closer history moved towards the present, the less interest he took in it. But this, he realized, was true of his interest in history in general.
Brunetti gazed out of the window of his office at the crane that still, after years, towered over the casa di riposo of San Lorenzo. A man who made his living selling counterfeit bags. A man who had been executed by a pair of professional killers. The first could be said of all of the vu cumprà: that was what they did, sell bags. The second, however, most decidedly could not: in the cases he could recall of violent death involving extracomunitari, none had been Africans, neither the victims nor the killers.
Brunetti tried to consider the factors that might bear on the murder and could come up with nothing more helpful than the man’s origins and past behaviour or something he might be involved in now. As for his past, Brunetti admitted he knew nothing, not even the man’s country of origin, though Senegal was a safe guess. And for the present, he imagined possibilities only to exclude them immediately: jealous husbands did not in general send killers to vindicate their honour; and the wholesalers of the bags, so far as Brunetti knew, hardly needed the example of murder to keep their employees in line. The Africans were surely only too grateful for any chance of work to risk losing their jobs through attempting to cheat their employers. Beyond these thoughts, the possibilities stretched out, both unknown and unlimited.
He took a copy of that week’s staff assignments and flipped it over. On the back he began a list of the things they needed to know about the dead man: ‘Name, nationality, profession, criminal record, how long in Italy, address, family, friends.’ He thought about how to begin to penetrate the mystery of the man’s existence, remembered someone who might be able to help him, picked up the phone and called down to the officers’ room.
As he had hoped, Vianello answered.
‘You free?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Two minutes,’ Brunetti said and added, ‘We’ll need a boat.’
It took him more than that time to put on his overcoat and find a spare pair of gloves, which were stuffed into the pockets of a down vest that had been forgotten in his closet. He went down to the entrance hall.
Vianello was waiting at the front door, wearing so many layers of sweaters and vests under his coat as to seem almost twice his normal size. ‘We’re not going to Vladivostok, you know,’ Brunetti said in greeting.
‘Nadia’s got flu, the kids have colds, and I don’t want to get sick and have to stay at home.’
‘Who’s with them?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Nadia’s mother. You know how close she lives, so she’s in and out all day.’ Vianello waved the officer on duty aside and pulled open the front door, allowing a gust of frigid air to sweep around them and into the hall. He stuffed his gloved hands into the pockets of his parka and stepped outside.
The pilot stood on deck, no more of his face visible than a small triangle of eyes and nose swaddled in the fur-lined hood of his jacket. Stepping on board, Brunetti said, ‘Could you take us over to San Zan Degolà?’ before hurrying down the steps and into the cabin.
Vianello followed him inside, allowing the double doors to slap closed behind him. The cabin was cold, but at least they were out of the wind that buffeted the doors. When he was seated opposite Brunetti, Vianello asked, ‘What’s over there?’
‘Don Alvise.’
At the mention of the former priest’s name, Vianello nodded in immediate understanding. Alvise Perale had for years been a parish priest in Oderzo, a small, torpid town north of Venice. In his time as parroco of the local church, he had dedicated his considerable energies not only to the spiritual well-being of his parishioners but also to the material well-being of the many people whom the currents of war, revolution, and poverty had washed up on the banks of the Livenza river. Among these people were Albanian prostitutes, Bosnian mechanics, Romanian gypsies, Kurdish shepherds, and African shopkeepers. To Don Alvise, regardless of their nationality or religion, they were all children of the god he worshipped and thus worthy of his care.
His parishioners responded to his activities with mixed feelings: some believed he was right to divide the wealth of the Church with these poorest of the poor, but others preferred to worship a less open-handed god and eventually protested to their bishop when Don Alvise invited a family from Sierra Leone to move into the rectory with him. In his letter to Don Alvise, ordering him to tell the family to leave, the bishop explained his motives by stating that ‘some of these people worship stones’.
Upon receipt of this letter, Don Alvise went to the local bank and withdrew the bulk of the money from the parish account. Two days later and before responding to the bishop’s letter, he used the money to buy a small apartment in the nearby town of Portogruaro, title to which was given to the father of the family from Sierra Leone. That same evening, Don Alvise wrote to his bishop, explaining that he saw no other course open to him than to renounce his vocation, for to continue to live it as he thought it should be lived was clearly to create perpetual strife with his superiors. In closing, he added, in the most respectful terms, that he would prefer the company of people who worshipped stones to that of people who had them in place of hearts.
The many friends he had accumulated over the years rose to his aid, and within weeks he had a position as a social assistant in Venice, the city of his birth, where he was given charge of a hostel that provided lodging and food for people claiming political asylum in Italy. Though he was a civil servant and no longer a member of the clergy, the people with whom he worked persisted in using his honorific in addressing him, and so he was never referred to as ‘Signor Perale’ but always as ‘Don Alvise’. He could wear jeans, he could grow a moustache that any macho would envy, he could even be seen in the company of women: nothing could take the title from him. Don Alvise he had been and Don Alvise he would remain.
Brunetti had met him some years before, when he was investigating the disappearance of a woman from Kosovo who was believed to be involved in the drug trade. The woman had never been found, but he and Don Alvise had remained in friendly contact since then, each occasionally able to do the other a favour or provide information that could be of use in the pursuit of their different goals.
Brunetti knew that there was an official, governmental structure that would provide him with information about the extracomunitari; the Questura certainly had ample documentation on them. But he knew that Don Alvise’s information, though it could not be considered in any way official, would be far more accurate. Perhaps the difference lay in the fact that, to the public administration, these people were problems, while to Don Alvise they were people with problems.
As the boat made its way slowly up the Grand Canal, Brunetti explained to Vianello why he wanted to see the former priest. ‘They trust him,’ he said, ‘and I know he helps find houses for a lot of clandestini.’
‘The Senegalesi?’ Vianello asked. ‘I always thought they were a sort of closed community. And I think they’re Muslim, most of them.’
Brunetti had heard the same, but Don Alvise was the only person he could think of at the moment who might be able to help, and he knew that the former priest cared little what god a person chose to worship. ‘Maybe,’ he temporized. ‘That is, maybe he knows them or some of them.’ When Vianello did not offer agreement, Brunetti asked, ‘Can you think of anyone else?’
Vianello didn’t answer.
The launch turned left into Rio di San Zan Degolà. Brunetti got to his feet and, lowering his head as he left the cabin, went up on deck. ‘Up there, before the bridge,’ he told the pilot, who pulled the boat to the side of the canal, flipped the motor into reverse, and drew silently up to the moss-covered steps. Brunetti studied them for a moment, but before he could decide whether to risk stepping from the bobbing boat, the pilot walked around behind him and, towrope in hand, jumped up on to the riva and pulled the front of the boat tight to the wall. He tied the end of the rope to a metal ring in the pavement and leaned across to offer Brunetti, and then Vianello, a hand.
Brunetti suggested the officer go and get himself a coffee and said they shouldn’t be more than half an hour. As the officer headed for a bar that stood to the right, Brunetti led Vianello around to the left of the fa?ade of the church and down a narrow calle.
‘Calle dei Preti,’ the ever-observant Vianello read. ‘Seems the right place for him to live.’
Brunetti, turning left at the end of the street and heading back towards the Grand Canal, said, ‘Well, almost, except that we’re on the Fontego dei Turchi.’
‘He probably helps them, too,’ Vianello began, ‘so it’s probably just as good a name.’
Brunetti remembered the door, a heavy green portone with twin brass handles in the shape of lions’ heads. He rang the bell and waited. When a voice from the answerphone asked who it was, he gave his name, and the door snapped open, allowing them to enter a long narrow courtyard with a capped well at one end, wooden doors lining both sides. Without hesitating, Brunetti went to the second door on the left, which was open. At the top of the first flight of steps was another open door, where a short, stooped figure stood waiting for them as they climbed to the top.
‘Ciao, Guido,’ Perale said, taking Brunetti by the elbows and rising up on his toes to kiss him on both cheeks.
Moved by real affection for the man, Brunetti embraced him and took his right hand in both of his. Turning away from the priest, he said, ‘This is Lorenzo Vianello, my friend.’
No stranger to the forces of order, Don Alvise recognized a policeman when he saw one but extended his hand and shook Vianello’s warmly. ‘Welcome, welcome. Come inside,’ he said, pulling on Vianello’s hand to bring him into the apartment.
He turned just inside the door and closed it after them, then asked for their coats, which he hung on two hooks on the back of the door. He was at least a head shorter than Brunetti, though his stoop made him appear shorter still. His mop of grey hair looked a stranger to both comb and barber, lopped off unevenly on the sides and growing well below his collar at the back. He wore glasses with black plastic frames and lenses so thick they distorted his eyes. His nose resembled nothing so much as a lump of clay that had been pressed on to his face, and his mouth, lurking under the macho moustache, was small and round as a baby’s.
His appearance would have made him faintly ridiculous, even grotesque, were it not for the aura of sweetness that radiated from his every word and glance. He seemed a man who gazed on all he saw with approval and affection, who began every interchange with deep and abiding regard for the person in front of him.
He led them into a room which, because of the desk that stood at an angle in a corner, might have been an office, were it not for the bed set against one wall and the long board above it that served as a shelf and on which lay a few pairs of faded jeans, a pile of sweaters, and neatly folded underwear. Don Alvise pulled the chair behind the desk around in front and set it beside the single chair that stood there. He gestured to them and went to the desk and sat on it, though he had to give a little hop to get up, and his feet hung in the air as he sat.
‘How may I help you, Guido?’ he asked when his guests were seated.
‘It’s about the man who was murdered last night,’ Brunetti answered.
Don Alvise nodded, ‘I thought it would be,’ he said.
‘I thought you might know him or know about him.’ Brunetti kept his eyes on the priest’s as he spoke, looking for some flicker of recognition, but he saw none. He stopped there, waiting for the priest to answer his unspoken question.
‘You didn’t bring a photo,’ Perale said.
Brunetti gave him a long look before he answered. ‘I didn’t think it would be necessary. If people know that you knew him, they would have told you about it.’ Some impulse of charity, as well, had kept him from bringing the photo.
Don Alvise said, ‘That’s true.’
Brunetti allowed a pause to elapse before he said, ‘And?’
Like a small child under examination or observation, Perale looked down at the floor and began to bang his heels, one after the other, softly against the front of the desk. One two, one two, one two, his feet counted out, while his face remained hidden from the other men. Finally he looked at Brunetti and said, ‘I have to think about this and ask some questions before I say anything to you.’
‘Before you say anything or before you can say anything?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Isn’t it the same thing?’ the priest asked innocently.
Brunetti was uncertain how to greet the priest’s prevarication. ‘Come on, Don Alvise,’ he finally said then, laughing, added, ‘you weren’t a Jesuit when I first met you. Don’t start acting like one now.’
Tension and reticence vanished; ease slipped back into the room to take up its place among the three men. ‘All right, Guido, I understand. But I still need to speak to some people before I can talk to you.’
‘And if they tell you not to talk to me?’
Again, the small feet began to tap out their rhythm, as if their certainty could help Don Alvise resolve his own lack of it. ‘Then I’ll have to think about it,’ he said.
‘For whatever it’s worth,’ Brunetti said, ‘the Immigration Police aren’t involved in this, and, no matter what you tell me, they won’t be.’
The drumming stopped and the priest looked over at him. ‘Doesn’t that depend on what I tell you?’ he asked.
Brunetti decided to risk it. ‘If I give you my word that, no matter what you tell me, I won’t tell them, will you believe me?’
The tiny mouth broadened into a smile and Don Alvise said, ‘Guido, if you gave me your word that politicians are honest men, I’d believe you.’ Then, seeing Brunetti and Vianello’s astonishment, he added, ‘Though I’d still keep my hand on my wallet in their company.’
Brunetti decided to leave it at that. He knew that Don Alvise would tell him what he decided was wisest for him to know, and there would be no changing that. He could do nothing more than trust in the former priest’s wisdom. Having decided that, Brunetti got to his feet, and the three men exchanged polite farewells before Brunetti and Vianello left.