Blood From A Stone Part 11

'At home?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Excuse me, sir?'

'Why did they call you?'

'I'm not sure I understand, sir. I suppose they called me because I live closest, or perhaps someone here suggested they call me. I really don't know why.'

'They didn't call me,' Patta said, not without a note of petulance.

After considering what might be the safest answer, Brunetti said, 'I imagine they simply called whatever name came to mind. Or, for all I know, there's a list, and they call us at home in turn when it's necessary for someone to attend the scene of a crime.' Patta turned back to the window and Brunetti added, 'Besides, sir, they probably didn't want to burden someone so senior with the opening stages of an investigation.' He did not mention that it was precisely those stages which often proved most important in solving a case.

When Patta still did not speak, he added, 'After all, sir, your skills surely lie in deciding who is best suited to investigate a particular case.' Brunetti realized how close to the wind he was sailing and decided to say nothing more.

After another long pause, Patta asked, 'And do you think you're particularly well suited to this case?'

Brunetti counted to five, very slowly, before he said, 'No, not particularly.'

As soon as he spoke, Patta was upon him. 'Does that mean you don't want it?'

This time Brunetti made it to seven before he answered, 'I don't want it and I don't not not want it equally, sir,' he lied. 'I am of the opinion that it will turn out to be some story of rivalry between different gangs of blacks and we'll end up questioning dozens of them, who will all say they have no idea who the man was or who he could have been. And in the end, we'll learn nothing and just close the case and send it to the archives.' He tried to sound both disapproving and bored at the same time. When Patta remained silent, Brunetti asked, 'Is that what you wanted to see me about, sir?' want it equally, sir,' he lied. 'I am of the opinion that it will turn out to be some story of rivalry between different gangs of blacks and we'll end up questioning dozens of them, who will all say they have no idea who the man was or who he could have been. And in the end, we'll learn nothing and just close the case and send it to the archives.' He tried to sound both disapproving and bored at the same time. When Patta remained silent, Brunetti asked, 'Is that what you wanted to see me about, sir?'

Patta turned back to him and said, 'I think you'd better take a seat, Brunetti.'

Suppressing any sign of surprise, Brunetti did as he was told. His superior chose not to move away from the window. Clouds were gathering, and the light was rapidly dimming. Patta's face had grown less visible since they entered the room, and Brunetti found himself wishing he dared go over and turn the light on, the better to illuminate his superior's expression.

Finally Patta said, 'I find your lack of interest unusual, Brunetti.'

Brunetti began to speak, decided to show reluctance, and so waited a few seconds before he said, 'I suppose it is, sir. But I'm busy at the moment, and I have a feeling that any investigation here will prove futile.' He glanced at Patta, saw from his stillness how attentive he was, and went on. 'From the little I've heard about the vu c.u.mpra vu c.u.mpra, I'd say they live in a closed world, and there's no way we can get into it.' He tried to think of an appropriate comparison, and the best he could come up with was, 'Like the Chinese.'

'What?' Patta demanded sharply. 'What did you say?'

Startled by his tone, Brunetti said, 'That they're like the Chinese here, sir, in that they're a closed world, a private universe, and we have no understanding of the relationships and rules that operate there, in either case.'

'But why did you mention the Chinese?' Patta asked in a calmer voice.

Brunetti shrugged. 'Because they're the only other large group I can think of here. Ethnic group, that is.'

'The Filipinos? The people from Eastern Europe?' Patta asked. 'Aren't they ethnic groups?'

Brunetti thought about this before he answered, 'I suppose so.' Then he added, 'But if I have to tell the truth, it's because they're so racially different from us, the Africans and the Chinese, that I lump them together. Maybe that makes them seem more alien, somehow.' When Patta made no response, he asked, 'Why do you ask, sir?'

At that, Patta moved away from the window. He did not, however, sit down behind his desk but chose to take a chair opposite Brunetti, a decision that filled Brunetti with a strange disquiet.

'We don't trust one another, do we, Brunetti?' Patta finally asked.

Ordinarily, Brunetti would lie about this and insist that they were both policemen and so it was obvious that they had to trust one another if they were to work together in the best interests of the force, but something warned him that Patta was in no mood for such nonsense, and so he said, 'No, we don't.'

Patta considered his answer, glanced at the floor, then back again at Brunetti. At last he said, 'I want to tell you something that I will not explain, but I want you to trust me when I tell you it's true.'

Instantly Brunetti thought of a conundrum proposed by his professor of logic: if a person who always lies tells you he is lying, is he telling you the truth or is he lying? Years had pa.s.sed and he could no longer remember the correct answer, but Patta's remarks sounded suspiciously similar. He remained silent.

'We have to leave this alone,' Patta finally said.

When it was obvious that he was going to say no more, Brunetti asked, 'I a.s.sume this means the murder of the black man?'

Patta nodded.

'Leave it alone how? Not investigate it or only look like we are, and find nothing?'

'We can look like we are. That is, we can question people and make reports. But we are not to find anything.'

'Anything like what?' Brunetti asked.

Patta shook his head. 'That's all I have to say on this matter, Brunetti.'

'You mean we're not to find the men who killed him?' Brunetti asked in a hard voice.

'I mean only what I said, Brunetti, that we are to leave this alone.'

Brunetti's impulse was to shout at Patta, but he suppressed it and, instead, asked in a voice he managed to keep calm, 'Why are you telling me this?'

Patta's was just as calm as he answered, 'To spare you trouble, if I can.' Then, as if provoked to the truth by Brunetti's silence, he added, 'To spare us all trouble.'

Brunetti got to his feet. 'I appreciate the warning, sir,' he said and walked to the door. He waited there for a moment, curious to see if Patta would ask if he understood and would obey, but the Vice-Questore said nothing more. Brunetti left, careful to shut the door quietly.

Signorina Elettra looked up eagerly as he emerged and started to speak, but Brunetti did nothing more than slide the empty folder back on to her desk. He put his forefinger to his lips and then gestured that he was going back upstairs.

As a kind of insurance that he would not give in to Patta, Brunetti called Paola and described the wooden head, asking her to add it to the information to give to her friend at the university and encouraging her to make the call. Then he opened his mind to possibility. The fact that the Vice-Questore should warn him off an investigation meant that he had himself been warned off, and that raised the question of who would deliver such a warning. And from whom would a warning carry sufficient force to persuade him within less than a day? Patta respected wealth and power, though Brunetti was never sure which meant more to him. Patta would always defer to money, but it was power that could compel his obedience, so the admonition must come from some source powerful enough to force Patta into submission.

Patta had hinted that his warning arose from concern for Brunetti's safety, a possibility which Brunetti dismissed out of hand. Its origin was more likely to be found in Patta's fear that Brunetti could not or would not be prevented from continuing the investigation once he began it, even if commanded to do so. The cunning of the snake became evident in Patta's seeming concern, as if his main priority were Brunetti's safety and not his own.

The source of a power so great as to force compliance from a Vice-Questore of police? Brunetti closed his eyes and began to run over the rosary beads of possibility. The obvious candidates fell into the general categories of governmental, ecclesiastical, and criminal; the great tragedy of his country, Brunetti mused, was how equal they were as contenders.

15.

Signorina Elettra's arrival interrupted these reflections. She knocked and came in without waiting to be told to do so, approached his desk, and all but demanded, 'What did he want?' Then, as if aware of the effrontery of her question, she stepped back and added, 'He seemed so eager to talk to you, I mean.'

An impulse Brunetti recognized as protective led him to answer, as calmly as though hers had been a normal question, 'To ask about the murder of the black man.'

'He was in a very strange mood,' she volunteered, prodding for a more satisfactory answer.

Brunetti shrugged. 'He's always upset when there's trouble. It reflects badly on the city.'

'And that reflects badly on him,' she completed.

'Even if the victim isn't one of us,' Brunetti said, conscious as he spoke of how much he sounded like Chiara. Before Signorina Elettra's universalist sympathies were offended, he explained, 'A Venetian, I mean.'

She appeared to accept this and asked, 'But why one of those poor devils? They never cause any trouble. All they want to do is stand there and sell their bags and try to have a chance at a decent life.' She drew herself from these sentiments and asked, 'Did he a.s.sign it to you?'

'No, not specifically. But he didn't say he wanted anyone else to handle it, so I a.s.sume I'm to continue.' As he said these bland things, his mind kept attempting to follow the trail that led from Patta's warning back to its source: if Patta had been threatened to warn Brunetti away, then those who continued the investigation would be in danger.

How had Patta phrased it? 'We have to leave this alone'? How typical that was of him, to make the statement as though it were the result of long consideration and general a.s.sent. And 'have to', as if it were a truth universally acknowledged that the case was to be abandoned, the man's murder forgotten or quietly a.s.signed to the realm of forgetting, that overcrowded land.

A Patta who had never existed might have said, 'I'm being threatened into silencing you, and the thought of losing my job or being hurt fills me with such fear that I will do whatever I can to corrupt the system of justice and stop you from doing your job, just to keep myself safe.' This phantom Patta's voice was so real that it all but blocked out Signorina Elettra's speaking one. Brunetti blinked a few times and drew his attention back in time to hear her ask, '... still report to you?'

'Yes, of course,' he answered, as if he had heard the first half of her question. 'I'll go on as though I were in charge until I'm told otherwise.'

'And then?' she asked.

'And then I'll see who he puts in charge and either help that person or else continue to do things on my own.' It was not necessary to name the person whose appointment would lead to the latter possibility: even in an organization that did not often hunger and thirst for justice's sake, Lieutenant Scarpa's contempt for it was noteworthy. Some of the other commissari were unlikely to achieve success in a case that presented difficulties or complexities, but under the direction of a competent magistrate, they would at least make an attempt to apprehend the guilty and would be handicapped only by inexperience or lack of imagination. Scarpa, however, knew no motivation save self-advancement, and even a whisper from his superior or from forces Brunetti was reluctant to name that the case not be pursued would suffice to guarantee its doom.

Luckily, the case could not be given to Scarpa, still only a lieutenant, in spite of all of Patta's efforts to have him promoted. A commissario would still be the chief police officer in charge of the investigation, though nothing could prevent Patta, should he choose to do so, from a.s.signing Scarpa to the case, as well.

'If only we didn't have to worry about him,' Brunetti said, knowing it was unnecessary to p.r.o.nounce Scarpa's name and bemused to hear himself sounding so much like an English king trying to resolve a personnel problem.

Her smile began in her eyes, then progressed across the rest of her face. Finally she said, 'Don't tempt me, sir.'

'Only in the sense of transferring him, Signorina,' he said with exaggerated emphasis, never quite sure where his suggestions might take her.

She gazed out of the window in contemplation of the facade of the church of San Lorenzo. 'Ah,' she breathed in a sigh that seemed to go on for ever, and then silence. She tilted her head to one side, as if adjusting her vision to the contemplation of some object only she could see, and then at last she smiled.

'The Interpol cla.s.s on technological surveillance,' she said.

Amazed, Brunetti asked, 'The one in Lyon?'

'Yes.'

'But isn't that open only to officers who have been selected by them, before they're transferred to Interpol?'

'Yes,' she answered. 'He's been applying to Interpol for years.'

'But always unsuccessfully, I thought.'

With her most minimal smile, Signorina Elettra remarked, 'So long as Georges runs the personnel office there, Lieutenant Scarpa's application will remain unsuccessful.'

'Georges?' Brunetti inquired, as if they had discovered they had the same accountant.

'I was much younger then,' she offered by way of explanation.

Brunetti, as if he understood exactly what this meant, said only, 'Of course,' and then, trying to reel her back, 'Scarpa?'

She returned to the present and explained the future. 'He could be invited to Lyon and do the course, but then when it's finished, someone could discover that the invitation was meant to go to some other Lieutenant Scarpa.'

'What other Lieutenant Scarpa?' Brunetti asked.

'I've no idea,' she said impatiently. 'Surely there must be a score of them in the police.'

'And if there aren't?'

'Then surely there has to be a Lieutenant Scarpa in the Army, or the Carabinieri Carabinieri, or the Finanza or the Polizia di Frontiera.'

'Don't forget the Railway Police,' Brunetti reminded her.

'Thank you.'

'How long does this course last?' he asked.

'Three weeks, I think.'

'And Interpol will pay for it?'

'Of course.'

'Are you sure Georges will do it?'

If she had been an antinomian questioned about the importance of faith, she could have looked no more surprised, but still she did not deign to answer. When Brunetti said no more, she moved towards the door. Pausing there, she said, 'J'appellerai Georges,' and left.

Brunetti took the thought of who might be behind the warning given to Patta to a lunch of fellow police officials from the Veneto, and it kept him silent company as he talked amiably with his colleagues and listened to the usual speeches about the need to protect the social order from the forces which menaced it from all sides. Idly, Brunetti flipped over his menu and took a pen from his pocket. As the minutes and then the quarter-hours pa.s.sed, he made a list of the concrete nouns that were most frequently invoked as well as any proposal for a specific course of action. As the second hour began, he had three nouns on his paper, 'home', 'family', and 'security', but no note of a specific project or plan beyond 'decisive action' and 'swift intervention'. Why can we never talk in the concrete? he asked himself. Why must we always speak in generalities as glowing as they are meaningless?

Back in his office, Brunetti remembered that this was one of the days when Paola did not have to go back to the university after lunch, leaving her free to spend the afternoon at home, reading or commenting on student papers or, for all he knew, lying on the sofa and watching soap operas. How wonderful it would be, he thought, to have such a job. Five hours a week in the cla.s.sroom, seven months a year, and the rest of the time free to read. Paola was expected to attend various faculty meetings and sit on two separate committees, though she had never succeeded in communicating to him just what it was these committees were meant to do, nor did she seem ever to attend the meetings.

He had once asked her, years ago, why she bothered to keep the job, and she had explained that, if nothing else, her active partic.i.p.ation in cla.s.ses exposed the students to at least one professor who did something more than stand in front of them and read from a textbook she had herself written some years before. At this accurate description of his own years at university, Brunetti realized how long he had harboured the hope that, at least in the humanities, these days things would somehow be different.

He looked over the papers on his desk, filled to the point of pain with the awareness that all he would do, if he were to remain in the office, would be to add to their quant.i.ty. He longed to be away from there: in the mountains, the tropics, some island where he could walk on the beach, ankle deep in warm water. He put out a hand to draw some papers towards him, a phantom hand rejecting the temptation to get up and leave. But after a while he realized how meaningless the words beneath his eyes were and gave in to his desire for freedom. Telling no one what he was doing, he left the Questura and took the first vaporetto to San Silvestro and home.

Biancat was open, so he went in and asked for a dozen irises. While the salesman was selecting them, Brunetti decided to take flowers to Chiara, as well, and asked for a dozen yellow tulips. When he got home, he went into the kitchen and set the tulips on the counter, then went down to Paola's office, carrying the irises.

She smiled when he came in, refrained from asking why he was home so early, and said, 'Guido, how sweet.'

Warmed by her smile and hoping for another, he said, 'I brought some tulips for Chiara, too.'

Her smile disappeared. 'Bad move,' she said, getting to her feet. She kissed his cheek, and took the flowers from him.

'What?' he asked of her retreating back, following her towards the kitchen.

She started to remove the paper from the bouquet and said, 'She read an article about the way they're shipped all over the world.'

'And?' he asked, utterly at a loss.