Blood from a stone

9

‘He always that sly?’ Vianello asked as they stepped outside.
‘Sly?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Clever. Whatever you want to call it.’ To explain his tone, which was something approaching anger, Vianello said, ‘He knows who the man is. Anyone could see that, and yet he gives you this runaround that he has to ask people before he can tell you.’ He let out an angry puff of breath which both men could see in the cold air. ‘If he knows him, or knew him, he has to tell you,’ he insisted. ‘That’s the law.’
Surprised to find Vianello, of all people, thinking in such legalistic terms, Brunetti temporized. ‘Well, he does and he doesn’t.’
‘Why doesn’t he?’ Vianello asked.
Instead of answering directly, Brunetti swerved across the calle towards a bar. ‘I need a coffee,’ he said as he pushed open the door. The overheated air wrapped around them and, as if on cue, the espresso machine let out a jet of steam that imitated Vianello’s angry huffing of a few moments ago.
At the bar, Brunetti glanced at Vianello and, at his nod, ordered two coffees.
While they waited, he said, ‘He doesn’t have to tell me if he believes what he says will put someone else in danger.’ Before Vianello could cite the law at him, Brunetti added, ‘That is, he knows he has to, legally, but that wouldn’t mean anything to him, not if he thought the information could cause someone harm.’
‘But you promised him not to go to the Immigration Police,’ Vianello insisted. ‘Doesn’t he believe you?’
‘The danger might come from somewhere else,’ Brunetti said.
‘Where?’ asked Vianello.
The coffees came, and they busied themselves with ripping open envelopes of sugar and spilling the contents into the tiny cups. After his first sip, Brunetti set his cup back in the saucer and said, ‘I’ve no idea. But for the moment, all I can do is wait to see what he tells me, or what he doesn’t tell me. And if he doesn’t tell me, then I’ve got to find the reason he won’t.’
Vianello did no more than wave his coffee cup in Brunetti’s direction by way of interrogation.
Brunetti went on. ‘Whatever he does – whether he gives me an answer or not – he’s still giving me information. And now that I have that, I can start thinking about what to do.’
Vianello shrugged and together they left the bar to go back to the launch.
The pilot had kept the motor running all the time they were gone, so they found the cabin comfortably warm. Brunetti had no idea whether it was the warmth or the boost given by the coffee and the sugar, but something lifted his spirits and allowed him to take joy in the beauty of the trip back to the Questura. Palazzi swept by on both sides, the drunken promiscuity of their styles competing for his attention: here a severe Gothic window, there a fa?ade of parti-coloured mosaic, on the left the water-flooded atrium of Ca’ d’Oro, and opposite it the yawning space, deserted now, where Paola had that morning bought fish.
That thought turned his mind to his family and to the tension that had seeped into him during lunch. What to do about Chiara? For a moment, he thought of taking her to the morgue at the hospital and showing her the black man’s corpse, evidence of what could happen when you thought of them as ‘only’ vu cumprà. But this would be nothing more than cheap melodrama, and there was surely no guarantee that Chiara would agree with him that one thing led to the other. And did he know – know for certain – that the one thing had led to the other? This in turn took his thoughts back to Don Alvise.
Palazzo Ducale approached from the left, and its beauty pulled him to his feet. ‘Come on,’ he said to Vianello and went back up on deck. The cold hit him like a blow and the wind pushed tears from his eyes, distorting his vision and transforming the palazzo into a shimmering, shivering form suspended in the light reflected from the dancing waves.
Vianello came up the stairway and stood beside Brunetti. The flags on the tall poles in front of the basilica flapped wildly in the wind; boats and gondolas tied to the moorings bounced up and down and side to side, creating a series of booms so loud they could be heard above the wind. The Piazza seemed filled with huddled, bent shapes; the tourists kept their heads down, as protected from glory as they were from the wind.
Had it been better once, he wondered, when all of this was new and La Serenissima controlled the seas? Or had it been just as easy then to arrange the murder of some nameless Moor, certain that his insignificance and anonymity would serve to protect his killers? He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, the palazzo had given way to the Bridge of Sighs and then to the fa?ades of the hotels that lined the riva. The cold ate at him, worse here on the open water, but he stayed on deck until they docked at the Questura, when he thanked the pilot and asked Vianello to come up to his office with him.
The last part of the ride had chilled both of them to the bone, and it was more than five minutes before they felt sufficiently warm to remove their overcoats. As he was putting his own in the armadio, Brunetti said, ‘Wicked. It’s colder than I can remember its ever being at this time of year.’
‘Global warming,’ Vianello said, tossing his own coat over the back of one of the chairs in front of Brunetti’s desk and sitting down in the other.
Completely at a loss, Brunetti waited until he too was seated before he asked, ‘What do you mean, “global warming”? Isn’t that supposed to make it hotter?’
Vianello, still rubbing his hands together for warmth, said, ‘It is, or it will. That’s little, but it’s certain. But it will also make a mess of all the seasons. Remember how much it rained in the autumn and last spring?’ At Brunetti’s nod, Vianello said, ‘It’s all tied together. It has to do with ocean and air currents.’
Because Vianello sounded so certain, Brunetti asked, ‘Where did you get all this?’
‘I read the UN Report on Global Warming. Well, some of it. It’s all in there. The cherry on the cake is that the last place that will feel the influence – well, at least if all these scientists know what they’re talking about – you know which country, well, which continent will suffer the least and suffer last?’
Brunetti was still entirely lost and shook his head to admit it.
‘North America. That means the Americans. They’re protected on both sides by enormous bodies of water, and the currents are favourable to them, so while the rest of us are choking on their gases or dying from the heat, they’ll be able to go on the same as ever.’
Brunetti was alarmed by Vianello’s tone, which he found uncharacteristically heated. ‘Aren’t you being a bit severe, Lorenzo?’
‘Severe? Severe because they’ll shorten my life and kill my children?’
Too late Brunetti registered that he had once again stepped up and taken a seat on Vianello’s hobby horse: the ecology of the planet. Keeping his voice moderate, he said, ‘None of this is proven, you know, Lorenzo.’
‘I know. But it’s also not proven that, if I started smoking again and smoked three packs a day, I’d die of lung cancer. But the likelihood is pretty high.’
‘You think so? In this case?’
The sincerity of Brunetti’s question was so patent that Vianello answered in a much calmer tone. ‘I don’t know. I’m not an expert on these things. I just know what I read, and I know this report was commissioned by the UN, and the people who wrote it are climatologists from all over the world. So it’s good enough for me, at least until I read something more persuasive.’
‘You think there’s anything to do?’ Brunetti asked. Vianello’s knitted brows caused him to clarify by adding, ‘About this, I mean.’
‘There doesn’t seem to be. It’s probably too late.’
‘Too late for what?’ Brunetti asked, suddenly very interested in what his inspector had to say.
‘To avoid the consequences of what we’ve done in the last half-century.’
‘That’s a gloomy prospect,’ Brunetti said, surprised to hear Vianello speak so seriously about this. For years, people at the Questura had kidded Vianello about his interest in the environment, but Brunetti had always put it on the same level as his own children’s insistence that they not drink mineral water that came in plastic bottles or that they carefully collect all of their waste paper and take it to the ecological bins at Rialto. This, however, was a far more sombre vision than he had ever heard from Vianello.
‘Is there really nothing we can do?’ Brunetti asked.
Vianello shrugged.
For a moment, it looked as though Vianello were going to get up and leave; Brunetti feared that he would. He was very curious to hear Vianello’s answer and so prodded. ‘Well?’
‘Live life and try to do our jobs, I think,’ Vianello said after some time. Then, as if the subject had never been raised, he asked, ‘What about this black guy? How do we find out who he is if your Don Alvise decides not to tell us?’
Accepting that the subject of global warming was closed, Brunetti answered Vianello’s question. ‘Gravini says he knows one of the Africans; he lives down by his mother in Castello. He’s going to see if he can get anything from him. And I’ve asked Signorina Elettra to ask around to see if she can find the people who rent to them.’
‘Good idea. He’s got to have lived somewhere.’ Then, realizing just how silly that sounded, Vianello added, ‘That is, here in the city, if he didn’t have anything on him except a pair of keys.’
‘Did you read the autopsy report?’ Brunetti asked, surprised at himself for having forgotten to ask Vianello about it on the way to Don Alvise’s.
‘No.’
‘It says he was in his late twenties and in good health, and that either of two of the shots would have killed him.’
‘God, what a world,’ Vianello answered. He looked across at Brunetti, pulled his lips together in a gesture of confusion, and added, ‘It’s strange, that we don’t know anything at all about them, or about Africa, isn’t it?’
Brunetti nodded but said nothing.
‘Enough that they’re black, huh?’ Vianello asked with an ironic raising of his eyebrows.
Brunetti ignored Vianello’s tone and added, ‘We don’t look like Germans, and Finns don’t look like Greeks, but we all look like Europeans.’
‘And?’ Vianello asked, obviously not much impressed by Brunetti’s observation.
‘There must be someone who knows more about them,’ Brunetti said.
It was at this point that Signorina Elettra came into the office, carrying a sheet of paper Brunetti hoped would shed light on the identity of the vu cumprà. Even as he heard this term reverberating in his mind, he told himself to substitute it with ambulante.
‘I found two of them,’ she said, nodding a greeting to Vianello. He stood and offered her his chair, pulled the other one over and moved his parka to the back, then sat down again.
‘Two what?’ asked an impatient Brunetti.
‘Landlords,’ she said, then explained, ‘I called a friend of mine at La Nuova.’ She saw their response to the name of the newspaper and said, ‘I know, I know. But we’ve been friends ever since elementary school, and Leonardo needed the job.’ Having excused her friend’s choice of employer, she added, ‘Besides, it allows him to meet some of the famous people who live here.’ That was too much for Vianello, who let out a deep guffaw. She waited a moment and joined him. ‘Pathetic, isn’t it? Famous for living here? As if the city were contagious.’
Brunetti had often reflected on this, finding it especially strange in foreigners, this belief that some cachet adhered to their address, as if living in Dorsoduro or having a palazzo on the Grand Canal could elevate the tone of their discourse or the quality of their minds, render the tedium of their lives interesting or transmute the dross of their amusements into purest gold.
If he thought about it, he felt happiness in being Venetian, not pride. He had not chosen where to be born or what dialect his parents spoke: what pride to be taken in those things? Not for the first time, he felt saddened by the vanity of human wishes.
‘. . . over near Santa Maria Materdomini,’ he heard Signorina Elettra saying when he tuned back into her conversation with Vianello.
‘Bertolli?’ Vianello asked. ‘The one who used to be on the city council?’
‘Yes, Renato. He’s a lawyer,’ Signorina Elettra said.
‘And the other one?’ Vianello asked.
‘Cuzzoni. Alessandro,’ she said, then waited to see if the name meant anything to either of them. ‘He’s originally from Mira, but he lives here now and has a shop.’
‘What sort of shop?’
‘He’s a jeweller, but most of the stuff he sells is factory made,’ she said with the easy dismissal of a woman who would never wear a piece of machine-made jewellery.
‘Where’s the shop?’ Brunetti asked, not because he was particularly interested but to show them that he really was listening.
‘Off Ventidue Marzo. On that calle that goes up towards the Fenice, down from the bridge.’
Brunetti sent his memory walking towards Campo San Fantin, down the narrow calle towards the bridge, past the antique shop. ‘Opposite the bar?’ he asked.
‘I think so,’ she answered. ‘I haven’t checked the address, but it’s the only one there, I think.’
‘And these two rent to extracomunitari?’ Brunetti asked.
‘That’s what Leonardo tells me. No long-term contracts, no questions about how many people will eventually live in the apartment, and everything paid in cash.’
‘Furnished or unfurnished?’ Vianello asked.
‘Either, I think,’ Signorina Elettra replied. ‘If you can call it furnished. Leonardo said they did a story once, about two years ago, about one of the apartments they were living in. He said you wouldn’t believe the place: seven of them sleeping in the same room, roaches all over the place. He said the kitchen and bathroom were unlike anything he’d ever seen, and when I asked him what it was like, he made it clear that I didn’t want to know.’
‘And was one of these two the landlord?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I don’t know, and he didn’t say. But Leonardo told me they probably rent to extracomunitari.’
‘Did he know where the apartments are?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No. As I say, he’s not even absolutely sure that they do rent to them, but he says he’s heard their names when people talk about who’s willing to rent to extracomunitari.’
‘Is this his office?’ Brunetti asked, looking at the address listed for Renato Bertolli and trying to calculate where it might be.
‘Yes. I checked it in Calli, Campielli e Canali, and I think he’s got to be just before the fabbro, the one who makes keys.’ This was enough for Brunetti. He had been over there a few times, about five years ago, to have a metal banister made for the final flight of stairs leading to their apartment. He knew the area, though it seemed a strangely out of the way location for a lawyer’s office.
‘I’m not sure how to approach them,’ Brunetti said, taking the paper and waving it gently in the air. ‘If we ask about the apartments, they’ll worry that we’ll report them to the Finanza. Anyone would.’ It did not for an instant occur to him that either man would be declaring the rent on the apartments and thus paying taxes on the money. ‘Can you think of anyone who might be able to get them to talk to us?’
‘I’ve some friends who are lawyers,’ Signorina Elettra said cautiously, as if admitting to some secret vice. ‘I could ask if anyone knows them.’
‘You, Vianello?’ Brunetti asked.
The inspector shook his head.
‘What about the other one, Cuzzoni?’ Brunetti asked.
This time both Signorina Elettra and Vianello shook their heads. Seeing Brunetti’s disappointment, she said,’ I can check at the Ufficio del Catasto and see what apartments they own. Once we know where they live, then we just have to check if there are rental contracts for their other apartments.’
Brunetti’s uncle, who lived near Feltre, used to go hunting, and with him went Diana, an English setter whose greatest joy, aside from gazing adoringly at his uncle as he stroked her ears, was to chase birds. In the autumn, when the air changed and the hunting season began, a wild restiveness came over Diana, who knew no peace until the day his uncle could finally take down his shotgun and open the door that led to the woods behind his home.
Looking at Signorina Elettra poised on the edge of her chair, Brunetti was struck by how much she resembled Diana: there were the same liquid dark eyes, the flared nostrils, and the badly restrained nervousness at the thought of prey that was to be seized and brought back. ‘Can you find everything with that thing?’ he asked, not needing to name her computer.
She turned towards him and she sat up straighter. ‘Perhaps not everything, sir. But many things.’
‘Don Alvise Perale?’ he asked. He sensed, rather than saw, Vianello’s start of astonishment, but when he turned to look at him, Brunetti saw that the inspector had managed not to display his surprise. Brunetti permitted himself a half-smile, and after a moment Vianello was forced to shake his head in rueful appreciation of Brunetti’s inability to trust anyone fully.
He remembered that Diana needed no encouragement or explanation: a flutter of motion and she was off, like the wind. Signorina Elettra wasted no time with questions or clarifications. ‘The ex-priest, sir?’
‘Yes.’
She rose to her feet in a single graceful motion. ‘I’ll go and see what I can find.’
‘It’s almost eight, Signorina,’ he reminded her.
‘Just a quick look,’ she said and was gone.
When the door closed behind her, Vianello said, ‘Don’t worry, sir. She doesn’t have a bed here. So she’ll go home eventually.’