The following morning, Brunetti stopped in the squad room before going to his office. Vianello greeted him with a friendly smile. He wanted to talk with Vianello about the African before telling him about his conversation with Contessa Lando-Continui, so he asked the Inspector if he knew of any complaints from people being asked for money on the streets.
‘Who’d bother to come to us?’ Vianello asked. There was no sarcasm, only puzzlement at the question: come to the police to complain about beggars? The Inspector shifted a pile of papers to the side of his desk, stared proudly at the empty space it left, and asked Brunetti, ‘Why are you asking?’
It was only now, having to explain, that Brunetti realized how vague his understanding was. ‘There’s a man who keeps asking Chiara and some of her friends for money. Over near her school. She says he’s very insistent.’
‘Insistent how?’ Vianello asked.
‘She said he puts his hand on “your arm”. And she sounded . . . troubled.’
‘Is it one of the new Africans?’ Vianello asked.
‘Am I the last one to know about them?’
As if to prepare himself for a longer conversation, Vianello got to his feet so as not to have his superior remain standing while he sat behind his desk as they talked. ‘Hard not to notice them,’ Vianello said, leaning back to half-sit on his desk.
‘How are they new?’ Brunetti asked.
‘They don’t come from Senegal, so the vu cumprà want no part of them. They don’t seem to work, don’t speak much Italian, and they have a very insistent way of asking for money. The Mafia’s trained the vu cumprà because that’s who they work for, so they’ve learned not to insist, and they certainly don’t put their hands on people. They don’t cause trouble.’ Vianello nodded in appreciation of their behaviour and added, ‘The new ones look different, too. The Senegalesi are tall and thin, but these guys are shorter and thicker. And rougher looking.’ Reflecting on all of this, Vianello added, ‘I’ve never had trouble with the vu cumprà.’
It bothered Brunetti that he had not noticed these new Africans, or perhaps had noticed them but not paid special attention to them. They’d hardly approach a man in a suit to ask for charity. Women and tourists would be their chief objects, he assumed, the first rendered generous by sympathy, the second perhaps by shame. Or fear?
‘Is there anything we can do about him?’ Brunetti asked, aware that, in the absence of a legal option, their only choice was to attempt persuasion. Both of them remained silent for a long time, considering possibilities.
‘My God,’ Brunetti burst out, ‘this is how ordinary people feel.’
‘Excuse me?’ Vianello asked.
‘If you have no official power, there’s nothing you can do when someone bothers you. Chiara can ask me, but as a father I can’t do anything to make him stop if he doesn’t want to.’
Vianello picked up the ball and ran with it. ‘We can tell him he has to pay a fine.’ He gave a snort of grim laughter. ‘Or tell him he’ll have to leave the country if he does it again.’ Vianello stood up and set the file of papers on another desk.
When he came back, Brunetti had his hands in his pockets and was studying his shoes. Vianello sat in his chair.
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ Brunetti continued. ‘And we’re the police, for God’s sake.’
Vianello shrugged, as though to suggest to Brunetti that they were discussing the self-evident. ‘You wonder why people vote for the Lega?’ he asked. He pulled a smaller pile of files towards him, looked up at Brunetti, and said, ‘I’ll walk by the school this afternoon and have a word with him.’ The Inspector opened the next file.
Brunetti thanked him, then went slowly back to his own office. He had forgotten about the Contessa. By virtue of his authority, he could send a police officer to speak to the man and suggest to him that he stop bothering the girls at the school. If he succeeded, the African would simply go and bother someone else, somewhere else: a different group of schoolgirls, women on their way to do the shopping, people trying to shop for fish at Rialto.
It didn’t matter how he had entered the country: the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants had long since been abandoned by the press, as had the term ‘clandestina ’. Brunetti assumed that most of these men wanted work, and he similarly assumed that they would not find it. The state had given them places to stay and paid them a minimum daily sum, enough to survive, but it couldn’t provide them with something to do.