Blood From a Stone

by Donna Leon

  The leader spoke to him in a calmer tone, then placed his hand on his shoulder in a gesture that echoed the soothing tone of his voice. The young man, however, remained unpersuaded and let off another stream of fiery words; this time the word ‘police’ was audible twice.

  The leader listened with no sign of impatience until the young man was finished, then turned to Brunetti. ‘He says that we cannot trust the police.’

  It seemed to Brunetti that the young man had had time to say considerably more than that, though Brunetti had to admit that what he said was probably true. They were in Italy illegally and stood on the street during the day, selling counterfeit bags. They lacked the funds to buy or rent shops, restaurants, or bars, so the resulting protection of wealth would not be offered them: no helpful functionary would intervene in obtaining work or residence permits, no assistance would be offered in getting the Finance Police to ignore those pesky rules about the origins of large amounts of cash; no convenient phone call made the night before planned police raids. Without these civic fairy godmothers, the Africans were liable to suffer the abuse and arrogance of the police, and so their lack of trust seemed an intelligent option.

  Brunetti remained silent as he considered all of this, hoping that these men might interpret his silence as a sign of respect for their leader. One of the others, a young man who could not have been much older than Raffi, spoke, but briefly, barely a few words. The leader said something to the next man, the one in the jacket, who answered with a monosyllable, and then to the others, who answered only with quick shakes of their heads.

  After a long silence, the leader turned his attention to Brunetti and said, ‘My friends have told me that they would prefer not to speak about this matter.’

  Brunetti waited a moment and then asked, ‘Even though they know that I could have all of you arrested?’

  The leader smiled, and wrinkles spread across his face in genuine amusement. ‘It is not very clever of you to say that to us, knowing that we could disappear before the other police you call could get here to arrest us.’

  Brunetti returned his smile and asked, ‘And don’t you think I could rise up and arrest you all?’

  ‘And carry us all to prison?’ the African asked amiably. Then, puckishly, he added, ‘All by yourself?’

  As they spoke, it had become evident to Brunetti that this man and the young, thin one were the only ones whose Italian was good enough to follow what was said. The others perhaps followed the major words and phrases, but he doubted they could understand much more than that.

  ‘Where, I am sure,’ Brunetti said with such false menace that it was evident he believed not a word of what he was about to say, ‘we could easily persuade you to tell us everything we want to know.’

  At this, the younger man gasped and took a step towards Brunetti, his left hand rising in the air, his right still lifeless at his side. A glance from the older man stopped him, and he stood there, hand still raised, eyes wide with rage, breathing heavily. Vianello had got to his feet with surprising speed and taken a step towards him, but when he saw that the young man had stopped, he retreated to his chair, but he did not sit down again.

  The older man turned to Brunetti and said, with real regret, ‘Perhaps it would be best for you not to talk of persuading us to tell you things, Signore.’

  Moving very carefully, Brunetti got to his feet and walked over to the young man. Very slowly, he reached up and took his raised hand in his own, bringing it down to waist level. He took his left and covered the back of the young man’s hand with it, holding it prisoner between both of his own. The young man closed his eyes and tried to pull his hand away, but Brunetti held it close.

  Finally, when the young man opened his eyes and looked at him, Brunetti said, ‘I ask your pardon for what I said. I ask it of you and of all of the men in this room, and of your dead friend. I was not thinking when I said it, and I was foolish.’ The man tried to pull his hand away again, but the gesture was weaker.

  Brunetti went on, still trapping his hands and his eyes. ‘Because of what happened to your friend and because no man should die like that, I want to find the men who killed him.’

  He released the young man’s hand and stepped back from him, his own arms at his sides, completely undefended. The young man stared at him but said nothing. At last Brunetti turned to the older man and said, ‘Signor Cuzzoni has given me the keys to the other apartments, and I am going to go and have a look at them.’

  ‘Why do you tell me this?’

  ‘Because you are living in these apartments with the permission of the owner, who has given me the keys and told me I can go into them. It would not be correct of me not to tell you what I am going to do.’

  ‘To ask us?’ the older man said.

  ‘No,’ Brunetti said, shaking the idea away. ‘Tell you.’

  Brunetti glanced in Vianello’s direction and walked towards the door. He turned when he got to it and said, speaking to all of them, ‘My name is Brunetti. If you want to speak to me, you can call me or find me at the Questura.’

  The men looked at him, silent as obsidian statues, and then he and Vianello left the apartment.

  12

  ‘WELL, I HANDLED that brilliantly,’ Brunetti said as they stepped out into the hall.

  ‘I didn’t realize what you’d said, that is, how threatening it would sound to them, until I saw him raise his hand,’ Vianello said by way of consolation. ‘It sounded pretty much in line with the conversation you were having with the capo.’

  ‘But if I had thought about what it would mean to them, to be threatened . . .’ Brunetti began.

  ‘If my grandfather had wheels, he’d be a bicycle,’ Vianello answered, then, turning back to the business at hand, asked, ‘Upstairs?’

  As Brunetti started up the stairs he felt relieved that Vianello had cut him off. He knew what the police in various countries were capable of doing to the people they arrested and had heard even more from a friend who worked for Amnesty International. He simply had not been thinking when he spoke. Regretting the effect on the men’s willingness to trust him was a waste of time, though he did regret offending them by his seeming callousness. He left these thoughts behind him as they climbed to the next floor.

  Brunetti had brought the keys from the dead man’s pocket, some instinctive caution having told him not to fill out a request for them in the evidence room but simply to open the envelope and take them. At the door to the apartment on the second floor, he tried them and then the first set of keys Cuzzoni had given him, but none of the keys fitted. Then one of the keys on Cuzzoni’s second set did turn. He pushed open the door and was greeted by the same heavy male smell that had been so strong in the other apartment, though because this apartment was not heated at all, the smell was slightly less powerful. The kitchen had only cups and glasses in the sink, suggesting that they ate communally in the apartment downstairs. The sitting room had two camp-beds placed against one wall, and the bedroom held five single beds lined up against the walls. The small wardrobe was stuffed with jackets and jeans folded over hangers; its bottom was crowded with countless pairs of running shoes. The smell that seeped out when he opened the door was so strong that Brunetti quickly closed it and moved towards the bathroom.

  It was, not to put too fine a point on it, disgusting. The small bathtub was grey and crusted, and a long green-blue streak ran down one side under the dripping tap. Towels, none of them clean, were bunched over the side of the tub, and more of them hung from nails in the back of the door. The toilet had lost its seat, which leaned against a wall. The sink was filthy with hair and dried shaving cream and other substances Brunetti did not want to think about. White spots and countless fingerprints blurred the surface of the mirror. A tin pot sprouted toothbrushes.

  ‘You want to go back and look through the closet?’ Brunetti asked Vianello, who had been looking under the beds.

  ‘I’d rather not, if that’s all right,’ he said. ‘After all, we don’t
even know what we’re looking for.’

  Brunetti was forced to agree. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘let’s try the next floor.’

  They went back into the hall, locked the door behind them, and went up to the third floor. The steps were wooden and very narrow, while the ones below had been stone and considerably wider. From the outside of the building, Brunetti had seen no sign of a third floor, but perhaps this one had been added, like his own apartment, as an afterthought and without permissions.

  At the top, there was no landing. The last step simply stopped at a wooden door. Brunetti took the set of keys from the evidence room and tried the lock. The first one turned. When he opened the door, light filtered in from behind him. He leaned inside and patted the wall on the left, found a switch, and flicked on the light.

  A forty-watt bulb hung naked from the ceiling of what must once have been a storage room. There were no windows, and above them they saw the terracotta tiles of the roof set on a lattice-work of beams. No insulation shielded the room from the outside: both Brunetti and Vianello saw their breath turn to vapour as they stepped inside.

  A single bed piled with shabby woollen blankets stood against the far wall. There was room only for a small table on which was a single electric hot plate, its wire running to the light switch beside the door, where someone had attached it with a great deal of tape and very little skill. Next to the hotplate were a metal cup and a box of tea bags; under the table stood a metal bucket, covered with a towel. A single step took Brunetti to the table. He lifted the towel and saw that the top of the water was covered with a thin sheet of ice.

  He had only to lean towards the door to be near enough to shove it closed. On the back, a pair of jeans and a red sweater hung from two nails. Almost without thinking, Brunetti slipped his hand into the pockets of the jeans. He felt something hard at the bottom of the right pocket and pulled it out. The object, about the size of an egg, was wrapped in a clean white cloth. He set it on the table and unwrapped it.

  He exposed a wooden carving of a human head, an object that Brunetti could easily have cradled in his hand were it not for the jagged pieces of wood sticking out from the bottom, suggesting that it had been broken off from the rest of the statue.

  ‘What’s that?’ Vianello asked, coming over and standing beside him.

  ‘I don’t know. A woman, I think.’ Brunetti picked it up to bring it closer to both of them. The woman’s nose was a pinched triangle, her eyes narrow slits carved within perfect ovals. The workmanship of the hair was particularly fine and suggested tight braiding arranged in elaborate, symmetrical patterns. In the centre of her forehead was carved an odd geometric pattern, four triangles arranged around and pointing towards a central diamond, all of it carved in one continuous line.

  ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘Yes, wonderful,’ Brunetti agreed. He turned it upside down, exposing the rough edges of wood on the bottom.

  ‘Snapped off at the neck, I’d say,’ Brunetti said. He rewrapped the head and slipped it into his own pocket.

  Vianello went over to the bed and knelt down to push aside the edges of the blankets. He pulled out a cardboard box, got to his feet, and set it on the bed.

  There was nothing else in the room: no toilet, no source of water, no cabinet or wardrobe of any sort. Brunetti pointed to the metal cup. Turning to Vianello, he said, ‘He must have heated water in this.’

  Vianello gave no sign that he thought this worthy of comment. He looked down at the box, pushed the contents around with his forefinger, and said, ‘Nothing here.’ He knelt beside the bed again and reached for the box.

  ‘What’s in it, Vianello?’

  ‘Just some food.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Brunetti said. Vianello sat back on his heels.

  Brunetti bent over the box and saw a packet of plain biscuits, a bag of shelled peanuts, an open box of rough cooking salt, four tea bags, a piece of cheese he thought might be Asiago, two oranges, and a transparent bag filled with the paper envelopes of sugar that bars served with coffee.

  ‘Why salt?’ he asked.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Brunetti used the same hand to gesture around the room. ‘Why would he have a box of salt? There are no pans. He doesn’t cook. So why does he have salt?’

  Vianello said, ‘Maybe he uses it to brush his teeth,’ then stuck his forefinger in his mouth and made a scrubbing motion to show how it could be done.

  Brunetti leaned forward and picked up the box of salt. ‘No, look at it. It’s sale grosso, for cooking. You can’t brush your teeth with this: the pieces are too big.’ The top of the box had been sliced open on three sides and the top partly pulled back to allow easy pouring. Brunetti saw the clumsy grains, the size of lentils, on the top. He licked his finger and stuck it into the salt, pulled it out and tasted it. Saltiness filled his mouth.

  Brunetti set the box on the bed, pulled out his handkerchief and spread it smooth on top of the blanket. Then he poured the salt slowly out on to his handkerchief. Towards the middle of the box, the size and colour of the grains began to change: they lost the dull opacity of salt and, as if the subject of some beneficent transformation, grew in clarity and size until they fell from the box absolutely clear, some of them almost the size of peas.

  ‘Dio mio,’ Vianello said involuntarily.

  Brunetti looked at the pile on the handkerchief, silenced by possibility. In the dull light from the single bulb, the stones lay there, inert and clear. Perhaps sunlight would bring them to life: he had no idea. He was not even certain what they were: no facets had been cut or ground into them to give them recognizable shape or lustre as gemstones. For all he knew, they could have been the castoffs of some Murano glass-blower, little chunks of clarity meant to form, say, the ears of glass bears or the noses of transparent bunnies.

  But if that was all these glassy things were, they were unlikely to be hidden in the room of a murdered man.

  Vianello got to his feet. ‘What do we do with them?’ he asked. Brunetti thought of some of his colleagues at the Questura and how, were one of them to ask the question, he would interpret it as an inquiry into the best way of pocketing the stones. From Vianello, however, the question was no more than an echo of his own concern about how to keep them from falling into those other hands. How many villas had sprung from police evidence rooms? How many vacations had been paid for by sequestered drugs and money?

  ‘Give me your mittens,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘What?’ asked a startled Vianello.

  ‘Your mittens. We can put them in there to carry them out of here.’

  ‘We’re going to take them?’

  ‘Would you leave them here?’ Brunetti asked. ‘When the men downstairs know we’re interested in him, and when Cuzzoni knows?’

  ‘You said you trusted him.’

  Brunetti pointed at the squat pyramid on the bed. ‘Until I know if these are real, I don’t trust anyone.’

  ‘And when you do know? Who will you trust then?’ Vianello asked, pulling his mittens from the pockets of his jacket.

  Ignoring the question, Brunetti picked up the handkerchief by the four corners and jiggled it until he created a chute that would allow it to pour easily. The salt and stones hung heavily, a fat lump at the bottom of a not entirely clean white handkerchief. Vianello held the first mitten under it, and Brunetti poured until they came within a few centimetres of the top. Vianello shook the stones until the thumb stood out rigid from the side. He set it on the bed while he slipped his watch off and tried to wrap the expandable band around the stuffed mitten, but it did not work, so he replaced the watch and contented himself with giving the mitten a few more shakes. He slipped it into the right pocket of his jacket and zipped the pocket closed.

  They did the same with the second mitten, which went into Vianello’s left hand pocket. That left Brunetti with a pile the size of an orange at the bottom of his handkerchief. He tied the corners together, then slipped it into th
e inside pocket of his jacket and buttoned the pocket.

  Careful of the box now that it might carry fingerprints, he used the keys to slit open the bottom flap, then pressed the box flat and slid it into the outside pocket of his jacket. When that was done, he took out his telefonino and called the number of the technical squad at the Questura. He told them where the apartment was, said it might be the home of the man who was murdered, and asked them to send someone over to fingerprint the room. He was not to be in uniform and was to ring the top bell in front of the house. Yes, he and Vianello would wait.

  When he hung up, Vianello said, ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  ‘Which one?’ asked a distracted Brunetti.

  ‘Who you’ll trust, once you find out if they’re real?’

  For the first time since they had entered the building, Brunetti smiled. ‘No one.’

  The technician took almost an hour to get there, which left Brunetti and Vianello to sit side by side on the bed in the freezing room and discuss possibilities. When the cold became too intense, they went down one floor to the other apartment and let themselves in again. There, at least, it was minimally warmer, and one of them could stand at the partially open door to see that no one went past it and up to the next floor.

  Brunetti went into the kitchen and came out with two plastic bags. At his request, Vianello unzipped his pockets and put both mittens in one of the bags. Brunetti tied the neck of the bag closed and slipped it into the other. While they did all this, they talked about what they had found, but neither of them could come up with a satisfactory explanation, though Brunetti did think of someone whom he could ask about the stones. While Vianello stood at the door, he called Claudio Stein and asked if he could come and talk to him the following morning.

  Claudio, like most people Brunetti knew, believed that a telephone was an open conduit to various offices of the government, and so he asked no questions and said that he would be in his office after nine and would, of course, be delighted to see Brunetti. When Brunetti hung up, Vianello asked, ‘Who is he?’