Blood from a stone

visa regulations or selling without a licence. There had been one rape, six years ago, but the attacker turned out to be a Moroccan, not a Senegalese. In the only arrest involving violence, a Senegalese had chased an Albanian pickpocket halfway up Lista di Spagna before bringing him to the ground with a running tackle. The African had sat on the pickpocket’s back until the police responded to the call one of his friends made on his telefonino and arrived to make the arrest. A handwritten note in the margin explained that the Albanian had turned out to be only sixteen, and so, although he had been repeatedly arrested for the same crime, he had been released the same day after being given the usual letter ordering him to leave the country within forty-eight hours.

The last file contained a speculative report on numbers: there had been days during the previous summer when an estimated three to five hundred ambulanti had lined the streets; repeated police round-ups had caused a temporary attrition, but the number was now estimated to have crept back to close to two hundred.

When he finished the report, Brunetti glanced at his watch and reached for the phone. From memory, he dialled the number of Marco Erizzo, who answered on the second ring. ‘What now, Guido?’ he asked with a laugh.

‘I hate those phones,’ Brunetti said. ‘I can’t sneak up on anyone any more.’

‘Very James Bond, I know,’ Erizzo admitted, ‘but it lets me do a lot of filtering.’

‘But you didn’t filter me,’ Brunetti said, ‘even though you knew I’d be likely to ask a favour.’ Brunetti made no attempt at small talk about Marco’s family, nor did he expect such questions: long friendship would already have alerted Marco that Brunetti’s voice was not the one he used for a social call.

‘I’m always interested in knowing what the forces of order are up to,’ Erizzo said with mock solemnity. ‘In case I can be of service to them in any way, of course.’

‘I’m not the Finanza, Marco,’ Brunetti said.

‘No jokes about them, Guido, please,’ Erizzo said in a decidedly cooler tone. ‘And try to remember never to use their name when you’re talking to me, especially if you call me on the telefonino.’

Unwilling to address himself to Marco’s unshakeable conviction that all phone calls, to make no mention of emails and faxes, were recorded, especially by the Finance Police, Brunetti instead asked, ‘It’s not as if you ever use any other telephone, is it?’

‘Not one I answer. Tell me what it is, Guido.’

‘The vu cumpra,’ he said.

Marco wasted no time by asking the obvious question of whether this were related to last night’s killing and said instead, ‘Never been anything like it here in the city, has there, at least not since they shot that carabiniere in, when was it, 1978?’

‘Something like that,’ Brunetti agreed, aware of how long ago those awful years seemed now. ‘You know anything about them?’

‘That they take nine and a half per cent of my business away from me,’ Erizzo said with sudden heat.

‘Why so exact?’

‘I’ve calculated what I sold in bags before their arrival and after, and the difference is nine and a half per cent.’ He cut off the last syllable with his teeth.

‘Why don’t you do something about it?’

Erizzo laughed again, a sound utterly lacking in humour. ‘What do you suggest, Guido? A letter of complaint to your superiors, asking them to concern themselves with the welfare of their citizens? Next you’ll be asking me to send a postcard to the Vatican to ask them to concern themselves with my spiritual welfare.’ Bitter resignation had joined anger in Erizzo’s voice. ‘You people,’ Erizzo went on, presumably referring to the police, ‘you can’t do anything except shake them up for a day or so and let them out again. You don’t even bother to slap their wrists any more, do you?’ He paused, but Brunetti refused to venture a response into that silence.

‘There’s nothing I can do about them, Guido. The only thing I can hope is that they don’t lay down their sheets in front of one of my shops, the way they do in front of Max Mara, because if they do, the only thing that will happen is that I’ll lose more money. The politicians don’t want to hear about them, and you guys can’t — or won’t — do anything.’

Brunetti again thought it expedient not to express an opinion. He persisted, ‘But what do you know about them?’

‘Probably not much more than anyone else in the city,’ Erizzo said. ‘That they’re from Senegal, they’re Muslims, they mostly live in Padova, some of them here, they don’t cause much trouble, and the bags are of good quality and the prices are right.’

‘How do you know about the quality of the bags?’ Brunetti asked, hoping to divert his friend from his anger.

‘Because I’ve stopped on the street and looked at them,’ he said. ‘Believe me, Guido, even Louis Vuitton himself, if there is such a person, couldn’t tell the difference between the real ones and the ones these guys are selling. Same leather, same stitching, same logo all over the place.’

‘Do they sell imitations of your bags?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Of course,’ Erizzo snapped.

Brunetti chose to ignore the warning in his friend’s tone and went on, ‘Someone told me that the factories are in Puglia. Do you know anything about that?’

Voice no warmer, Erizzo said, ‘That’s what I’ve been told. The factories are the same. They work for the legitimate companies during the day, then they turn the fake ones out at night.’

‘“Fake” doesn’t have much meaning any more, not if it’s the same factories, I’d say,’ Brunetti observed, trying to lighten the mood that had come over their conversation.

There was to be no jollying Marco. ‘I suppose so,’ was his only comment.

‘Do you have any idea of who’s behind it?’ Brunetti persisted.

‘Only an idiot wouldn’t be able to figure that out, it’s so big and so well organized.’ Then, in a voice grown minimally less cool, Erizzo added, ‘They’ve got only one problem.’

‘What?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Distribution,’ Erizzo surprised him by answering.

‘Huh?’

‘Think about it, Guido. Anyone can produce. That’s the easy part: all you need is raw materials, a place to assemble them, and enough people who are willing to work for what you pay them. The real problem is finding a place to sell whatever it is you’ve made.’ Brunetti remained silent, so he proceeded, ‘If you sell it in a shop, you’ve got all sorts of expenses: rent, heat, light, a bookkeeper, salespeople. Worst of all, you’ve got to pay taxes.’ Brunetti wondered when he had ever had a conversation with Marco in which the subject of taxes had not been mentioned.

‘That’s what I do, Guido,’ his friend went on, voice veering back towards anger. ‘I pay taxes. I pay them on my shops, and for my employees, and on what I sell, and on what I manage to keep. And my employees pay taxes on what they earn. And some of it stays here, in Venice, Guido, and what they earn they spend here.’ The warmth in Marco’s voice was not that of friendship or returning intimacy.

‘You tell me how the city profits from what the vu cumpra earn,’ Marco demanded. ‘You think any of that money stays here?’ Even though it was a rhetorical question, Erizzo paused, as if daring Brunetti to answer. When he did not, Erizzo said, ‘It all goes south, Guido.’ There was no need for him to say more about the destination of this money.

‘How do you know that?’ Brunetti demanded.

Brunetti heard him take a deep breath. ‘Because no one bothers them, that’s why. Not the Guardia di Finanza, and not the Carabinieri, and not you people, and because they seem to come into this country pretty much as they please, and no one bothers to stop them at the borders. That means that no one wants to be bothered or that someone doesn’t want them to be bothered.’ The pause after this last sentence was so long that Brunetti thought Marco had finished, but his voice came back, ‘And if I thought you had the stomach to listen to any more of this, I’d add that they also enjoy the protection of everyone who refuses to see them as illegal immigrants who spend their days breaking the law while the police stroll back and forth in front of them.’