Blood From a Stone

by Donna Leon

  ‘Ah, Commissario,’ Professor Winter said, when he identified himself, ‘I hope you had a happy Christmas.’

  ‘Yes, I did. Thank you. And you?’

  ‘Very. I was in Mali, you see. Didn’t you get my message?’

  ‘Message?’ he asked, sounding stupid.

  ‘Yes. I called to tell you I would be away, and your assistant said he’d tell you I called.’

  Brunetti loosened his hold on the receiver, saw that the money on his phone card was fast disappearing, and said, struggling to sound calm, ‘He must have forgotten to tell me, or he wrote it down and it’s got lost in all the mail that’s come in. Could you tell me again what you told him?’ He tried a quiet little laugh and found it sounded quite convincing, so he asked, ‘Did you tell him what it was about?’

  ‘No, only that I’d be away.’

  ‘Ah, but now you’re back,’ he said, forcing pleasure into his voice but fearing he managed only to sound foolish. ‘And the photos? Did they get to you?’

  ‘Yes. But I’m afraid they came at Italian speed,’ she said with a little – slightly superior – laugh. ‘So I didn’t see them until I got back. In fact,’ she said, ‘when I didn’t hear from you, I assumed you’d simply found it out yourself. It would be in any book about African art, of course.’

  ‘No, nothing like that, Professor,’ Brunetti said, forcing bonhomie into his voice and suppressing his growing anger. ‘Just bureaucratic delay,’ he said, trying, and failing, to fake the easy laugh he thought might be appropriate here. ‘Could you tell me about the design, then?’

  ‘Of course. One moment while I get it,’ she said. ‘I had one of my assistants put it on my computer.’ As he waited, he watched the centesimi running out until he had little more than one Euro left.

  ‘Ah, here it is,’ she said. ‘Yes, that’s what I thought I remembered. The photo you sent is of the top part of what is called a diviner’s or healer’s power stick.’ She paused, then asked, ‘You said the head was about five centimetres high, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then my guess is that the stick was about a metre long, but I’ve no idea how the head could have been broken off,’ she said.

  If that was meant to be a question, Brunetti had no answer, so he said, ‘I don’t know, either.’

  ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter,’ she said, and Brunetti noticed that he had seventy centesimi left on his phone card.

  ‘The sign on the forehead is called a calige,’ she went on, ‘the sign of life. The other figures on the staff would be animals or other figures that represent the attributes of the magician.’ She stopped, as if waiting for Brunetti to speak. When he remained silent, she added, ‘It’s the same sign that’s used in the scar. Is that what you wanted to know?’

  ‘Certainly, Professor, it’s all very interesting, but could you tell me where this sign is from?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? It’s Chokwe. No question about it. They’re among the finest wood carvers in . . .’ she began, but Brunetti cut her off.

  ‘Where are they from, geographically, Professor?’

  If she seemed surprised by his abruptness, she gave no sign and answered, ‘Along the Zambezi River.’

  Brunetti took a long breath and whispered his mother’s favourite prayer for patience in times of adversity, then said, ‘And where would that be politically, if I might put it that way?’

  ‘Ah, sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t understand your question. Angola. Or parts of western Congo. Maybe even Zambia, but it’s not likely that the sub-tribes there would produce an object like that or use that sort of scarring. No, I’d say Angola.’

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said, watching the sum on the phone reach ten centesimi. ‘Thank you for your help, Professor; you’ve been very generous with your knowledge.’

  ‘That’s what it’s for, Commissario. Will it help you, what I told you?’

  The units ran out. Seeing the double zero on the phone counter, Brunetti knew he had only a few seconds to answer. ‘I certainly hope so, Professor Winter,’ he began, but then the line clicked and went dead. Into the dull hiss of a lost connection, Brunetti added, ‘But I doubt it.’

  He took the used phone card from the phone and turned back towards the Questura. Was Angola where bands of children went on drug-induced killing sprees? He stopped, looked across the bacino to the cupola of San Giorgio, then to the sweep of cupolas running up the riva of the Giudecca. There crazed children hack and chop and maim, and here the ferry boat passes in the direction of the Lido just on time.

  Brunetti put out a hand and braced it against the wall of the calle, waiting for this strange dislocation to pass. He had read that people who thought they were going to faint should lower their heads below their knees, but he could hardly do that here. He did, however, close his eyes and lower his head.

  ‘You all right, Signore?’ he heard a man’s voice ask in Veneziano.

  He opened his eyes and saw a short, roly-poly man in a dark jacket, wearing a green plaid tam on what appeared to be a bald head.

  ‘Yes. Fine. Thank you. Too much Christmas, I think,’ Brunetti said and tried to smile. ‘Or maybe it’s these changes of temperature.’

  The man smiled, relieved to hear Brunetti was all right. ‘That’s probably it,’ he said, ‘too much Christmas.’ Then, cheerfully, ‘Time for us all to get back to work, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, ‘I think it is.’

  As he continued towards the Questura, he considered how he could get back to work. The files were gone, the case had been ‘removed’, not only from him, but from the Venice police force as a whole. Brunetti had no idea who the victim was or why he had been in Venice, nor had he any idea of why the man was so important that the Ministry of the Interior and the Foreign Ministry should busy themselves investigating his death or suppressing any investigation of his death. Brunetti had to confront the fact that he had no clues and no evidence. No, that was not entirely true: he still had the diamonds, or Claudio’s bank did, and he still had the man’s body – or assumed he did.

  At that thought, he turned back towards the embankment and returned to the public phone. All he had were some Euro coins, and he put one into the phone, then dialled Rizzardi’s number from memory.

  When the doctor answered, Brunetti said, without introduction, ‘That person we were talking about before Christmas, is he still there?’

  There was a long pause, during which Brunetti could imagine Rizzardi recognizing his voice and then deciphering the question. Finally the pathologist asked, ‘You mean that man from the Christmas fair?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Rizzardi said. ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘No. Nothing. Tell me.’

  Rizzardi’s voice tightened, as if he found this speaking in code to be a game more fit for adolescents than for grown men. But he continued, nevertheless. ‘Some people – I thought you must know about it because they work for the same company you do – they came to get him and decided they’d give him a great send-off.’ Rizzardi paused, perhaps waiting to see if Brunetti was following. When Brunetti asked no questions, the pathologist added, ‘Just like your friend Hector.’

  Now the doctor was being too clever by half. Whatever code Rizzardi was trying to use, Brunetti was completely lost. ‘Ah, Hector. Which one was that, which Hector, I mean?’

  ‘The one in that book you’re always reading, the one about the war.’

  That could only be the Iliad, which ends with the death of Hector. And his funeral pyre.

  ‘Ah, I see. Well, thanks, Lorenzo. I’m sorry I missed him.’

  ‘I imagine you are,’ Rizzardi said and hung up.

  Something close to panic gripped at Brunetti’s throat. He could not have answered if someone had asked him a question. He had lost his coin when Rizzardi hung up; he dug out another one and found he had trouble putting it in the phone. Brunetti had never had much faith in the divine; if he had
, he probably would have tried to make some sort of deal: Claudio’s safety for just about anything: the diamonds, the entire case of the African and his death, Brunetti’s job.

  He dialled Claudio’s number. It rang four, five, six times, and then a woman answered.

  ‘Ciao, Elsa. It’s Guido. How are you?’

  ‘Ah, Guido, how good to hear your voice. I wanted to call Paola over the holidays, but I was always so busy here, with the boys and the grandkids; I never found the time. Is she all right? Did you have a nice Christmas?’

  ‘Yes, the kids, too. And all of you?’

  ‘No reason to complain. We go on.’ Then her voice changed and she said, ‘I suppose you want to talk to Claudio.’

  ‘Oh, is he there?’

  ‘Yes, he’s helping Riccardo’s youngest with a jigsaw puzzle. We have the kids today.’

  ‘Ah, then don’t bother him, Elsa. Really, I just wanted to know how you and everyone were. Just tell him I called, and give him my love. And to all of you, as well.’

  ‘I will, Guido. And the same to Paola and the kids. From all of us.’

  He thanked her and hung up, folded his arms on the top of the telephone and rested his head on them.

  After a few minutes, someone banged roughly on the door to the phone booth. It was one of the vendors from the stalls of tourist junk that lined the riva, a much-tattooed man with long hair, a man known to Brunetti in his professional capacity.

  He apparently failed to recognize Brunetti and said, ‘You all right, Signore?’

  Brunetti stood up straight and let his arms drop to his sides. ‘Yes,’ he said, pushing open the door. ‘I just had some good news.’

  The man gave him a peculiar look and said, ‘Strange way to react to it.’

  ‘Yes, yes, it is,’ Brunetti said. He thanked the man for his concern, words that the man shrugged off as he turned back to his stall. Brunetti started back to the Questura.

  On the way he decided to tell no one. Signorina Elettra’s computer had been wiped clean: let it stay that way. Vianello’s was gone from the Questura: let it stay where it was. The body was gone, but Claudio was safe. If the powers that ruled them wanted to investigate the death on their own, then let them do it. They’d get no more of him. All the way back, he washed his hands of the case, raged at what he referred to as his former, unreformed self for daring to put his friend in jeopardy and for having risked the jobs and, for all he knew, the safety of the two people he loved at the Questura.

  Part of his mind had moved on before the other part registered what it had heard. His steps slowed. He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked at his shoes, almost surprised to see that he was wearing shoes that were not soaked. ‘The two people I love at the Questura.’

  ‘Maria Santissima,’ he said, echoing the exclamation with which his mother had always recognized happy surprises.

  26

  DURING THE NEXT few days, Brunetti fell into a torpor in which he failed to find the will or the energy either to work or to care that he was not working. He interviewed various professors and students at the university and judged them all to be lying, but he could not bring himself to care overmuch that they were. If anything, he took a grim delight in the fact that corruption and dishonesty should manifest themselves in the Department of the Science of Law.

  The children sensed that something was wrong: Raffi occasionally asked him for help with his homework, and Chiara insisted on having him read her essays for Italian class, then asked his opinion of what she had written. Paola stopped complaining about school; in fact, she stopped complaining about everything, to such a point that Brunetti began to suspect that his wife had been the victim of alien abduction and a replicant left in her place.

  One night at two in the morning, the drug addicts who had committed the rash of burglaries were discovered in the home of a notary, found there by the owner’s son, who had just come back from a party at a friend’s home. The boy had had too much to drink, made a great deal of noise entering the apartment, and when he saw the two men in his parents’ living room, rashly attacked one of them. The father, awakened by the noise, came into the living room carrying a gun, and when the thieves saw him, one of them raised a hand. The notary shot him in the face and killed him. The other one panicked and tried to flee, but when he broke loose from the son, the notary shot him in the chest, also killing him instantly. He put the gun down and called the police.

  Brunetti, reading the reports the following morning, was appalled by the waste and stupidity. They might have taken a radio, a television at worst, maybe some jewellery. The notary was the sort of person who would have insurance; nothing would be lost. And now these two poor devils were dead. The uncle of one of them was a tailor at the shop where Brunetti bought his suits and came to the Questura to ask him if anything would happen to the notary. Brunetti had to tell him that there was every likelihood that it would be declared a case of legittima difesa, in which case no blame would fall upon the killer.

  ‘But is that right?’ the man demanded. ‘He shoots Mirko in the face like he was a dog and nothing happens to him?’

  ‘Legally he did nothing we can charge him with, Signor Buffetti. He had a permit for the gun. His son says your nephew tried to attack him.’

  ‘Of course he’d say that,’ the man shouted. ‘He’s his son.’

  ‘I know how it must seem to you,’ Brunetti said. ‘But there’s no legal case that can be brought against him.’

  The tailor tried to control his anger. Accepting the validity of Brunetti’s judgement, he got to his feet and went to the door. Before he left, he turned and said, ‘I can’t argue with you, not in a legal way, Dottore. But I know that the police shouldn’t let a man be shot and do nothing about it.’ He closed the door quietly as he left.

  Brunetti was not a man given to belief in signs and portents: the real had always seemed sufficiently marvellous to him. But he could recognize the truth when someone presented it to him.

  Signorina Elettra, perhaps sobered by the ease with which her computer had been violated, had not asked about the case and had made no suggestion that she resume making inquiries. Vianello had taken his family to the mountains for two weeks. When Buffetti had gone, Brunetti used Signor Rossi’s telefonino to call Vianello on his.

  ‘Lorenzo,’ Brunetti said when the inspector answered, ‘when you get back, I think we have to attend to some unfinished business.’

  ‘That’s not going to make some people happy,’ Vianello answered laconically.

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘I’ve still got all the information,’ Vianello said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I’m very glad you called,’ Vianello said and broke the connection.

  Two nights later the phone rang just before eleven. Paola answered with the cool, impersonal curiosity she directed at anyone who called after ten. A moment later, her tone changed, and she spoke to the person using the familiar ‘tu’. Brunetti listened, wondering which of her friends it might be, but then she turned to him and said, ‘It’s for you. It’s my father.’

  ‘Good evening, Guido,’ the Count said when Brunetti took the phone.

  ‘Good evening,’ answered Brunetti, doing his best to sound normal.

  The Count surprised him by asking, ‘Do you get CNN?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The television, CNN?’

  ‘Yes. The kids watch it for their English,’ he answered.

  ‘I think you should turn on their news at midnight.’

  Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was only a few minutes after eleven. ‘Not until then?’

  ‘It won’t be on until then, what I want you to see. I’ve just had a phone call from a friend.’

  ‘But why CNN?’ Brunetti asked. He thought RAI had a midnight newscast, but he wasn’t sure.

  ‘You’ll understand when you see it. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow, but I think you’d better see the way it’s going to be presented.’
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  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘You will,’ the Count said and hung up.

  He told Paola about the conversation, but she could make no sense of it, either. Together they went into the living room and turned on the television. Paola took the remote and switched from channel to channel. They flicked past people trying to sell mattresses, women reading tarot cards, an old film, another old film, two people of indeterminate gender engaged in an activity that was perhaps meant to be sexual, another fortune teller, until finally they came upon the faintly alien face of the CNN news-reader.

  ‘They never have two matching eyes,’ Paola remarked as she sat on the sofa. ‘And I think they all wear wigs.’

  ‘You mean you watch this?’ asked an astonished Brunetti.

  ‘Sometimes, with the kids,’ she said defensively.

  ‘He said midnight,’ Brunetti reminded her and took the remote control from her hand. He pushed the mute button.

  ‘There’s time for something to drink, then,’ Paola said and got to her feet. She disappeared towards the kitchen, leaving Brunetti to wonder whether she would emerge with something real to drink or a cup of tisane.

  His eyes turned to the screen and he watched what appeared to be a programme about the stock market: a man and a woman, equally other-worldly in appearance, chatted amiably, occasionally reducing each other to peals of not very convincing silent laughter, while below the picture scrolled stock prices that would reduce any thinking person to tears.

  After about ten minutes Paola came back with two mugs, saying: ‘The best of both worlds: hot water, lemon, honey, and whiskey.’

  She handed him one, then joined him on the sofa to observe the two not-talking heads. Soon she too registered the disparity between the hilarity of the presenters and the misery of the numbers that continued their tidal flow below them. ‘It’s like watching Nero playing the lyre while Rome burns,’ she observed.