Blood from a stone

‘I read the UN Report on Global Warming. Well, some of it. It’s all in there. The cherry on the cake is that the last place that will feel the influence — well, at least if all these scientists know what they’re talking about — you know which country, well, which continent will suffer the least and suffer last?’

Brunetti was still entirely lost and shook his head to admit it.

‘North America. That means the Americans. They’re protected on both sides by enormous bodies of water, and the currents are favourable to them, so while the rest of us are choking on their gases or dying from the heat, they’ll be able to go on the same as ever.’

Brunetti was alarmed by Vianello’s tone, which he found uncharacteristically heated. ‘Aren’t you being a bit severe, Lorenzo?’

‘Severe? Severe because they’ll shorten my life and kill my children?’

Too late Brunetti registered that he had once again stepped up and taken a seat on Vianello’s hobby horse: the ecology of the planet. Keeping his voice moderate, he said, ‘None of this is proven, you know, Lorenzo.’

‘I know. But it’s also not proven that, if I started smoking again and smoked three packs a day, I’d die of lung cancer. But the likelihood is pretty high.’

‘You think so? In this case?’

The sincerity of Brunetti’s question was so patent that Vianello answered in a much calmer tone. ‘I don’t know. I’m not an expert on these things. I just know what I read, and I know this report was commissioned by the UN, and the people who wrote it are climatologists from all over the world. So it’s good enough for me, at least until I read something more persuasive.’

‘You think there’s anything to do?’ Brunetti asked. Vianello’s knitted brows caused him to clarify by adding, ‘About this, I mean.’

‘There doesn’t seem to be. It’s probably too late.’

‘Too late for what?’ Brunetti asked, suddenly very interested in what his inspector had to say.

‘To avoid the consequences of what we’ve done in the last half-century.’

‘That’s a gloomy prospect,’ Brunetti said, surprised to hear Vianello speak so seriously about this. For years, people at the Questura had kidded Vianello about his interest in the environment, but Brunetti had always put it on the same level as his own children’s insistence that they not drink mineral water that came in plastic bottles or that they carefully collect all of their waste paper and take it to the ecological bins at Rialto. This, however, was a far more sombre vision than he had ever heard from Vianello.

‘Is there really nothing we can do?’ Brunetti asked.

Vianello shrugged.

For a moment, it looked as though Vianello were going to get up and leave; Brunetti feared that he would. He was very curious to hear Vianello’s answer and so prodded. ‘Well?’

‘Live life and try to do our jobs, I think,’ Vianello said after some time. Then, as if the subject had never been raised, he asked, ‘What about this black guy? How do we find out who he is if your Don Alvise decides not to tell us?’

Accepting that the subject of global warming was closed, Brunetti answered Vianello’s question. ‘Gravini says he knows one of the Africans; he lives down by his mother in Castello. He’s going to see if he can get anything from him. And I’ve asked Signorina Elettra to ask around to see if she can find the people who rent to them.’

‘Good idea. He’s got to have lived somewhere.’ Then, realizing just how silly that sounded, Vianello added, ‘That is, here in the city, if he didn’t have anything on him except a pair of keys.’

‘Did you read the autopsy report?’ Brunetti asked, surprised at himself for having forgotten to ask Vianello about it on the way to Don Alvise’s.

‘No.’

‘It says he was in his late twenties and in good health, and that either of two of the shots would have killed him.’

‘God, what a world,’ Vianello answered. He looked across at Brunetti, pulled his lips together in a gesture of confusion, and added, ‘It’s strange, that we don’t know anything at all about them, or about Africa, isn’t it?’

Brunetti nodded but said nothing.

‘Enough that they’re black, huh?’ Vianello asked with an ironic raising of his eyebrows.

Brunetti ignored Vianello’s tone and added, ‘We don’t look like Germans, and Finns don’t look like Greeks, but we all look like Europeans.’

‘And?’ Vianello asked, obviously not much impressed by Brunetti’s observation.

‘There must be someone who knows more about them,’ Brunetti said.

It was at this point that Signorina Elettra came into the office, carrying a sheet of paper Brunetti hoped would shed light on the identity of the vu cumpra. Even as he heard this term reverberating in his mind, he told himself to substitute it with ambulante.

‘I found two of them,’ she said, nodding a greeting to Vianello. He stood and offered her his chair, pulled the other one over and moved his parka to the back, then sat down again.

‘Two what?’ asked an impatient Brunetti.

‘Landlords,’ she said, then explained, ‘I called a friend of mine at La Nuova.’ She saw their response to the name of the newspaper and said, ‘I know, I know. But we’ve been friends ever since elementary school, and Leonardo needed the job.’ Having excused her friend’s choice of employer, she added, ‘Besides, it allows him to meet some of the famous people who live here.’ That was too much for Vianello, who let out a deep guffaw. She waited a moment and joined him. ‘Pathetic, isn’t it? Famous for living here? As if the city were contagious.’

Brunetti had often reflected on this, finding it especially strange in foreigners, this belief that some cachet adhered to their address, as if living in Dorsoduro or having a palazzo on the Grand Canal could elevate the tone of their discourse or the quality of their minds, render the tedium of their lives interesting or transmute the dross of their amusements into purest gold.

If he thought about it, he felt happiness in being Venetian, not pride. He had not chosen where to be born or what dialect his parents spoke: what pride to be taken in those things? Not for the first time, he felt saddened by the vanity of human wishes.

‘. . over near Santa Maria Materdomini,’ he heard Signorina Elettra saying when he tuned back into her conversation with Vianello.

‘Bertolli?’ Vianello asked. ‘The one who used to be on the city council?’

‘Yes, Renato. He’s a lawyer,’ Signorina Elettra said.

‘And the other one?’ Vianello asked.

‘Cuzzoni. Alessandro,’ she said, then waited to see if the name meant anything to either of them. ‘He’s originally from Mira, but he lives here now and has a shop.’

‘What sort of shop?’

‘He’s a jeweller, but most of the stuff he sells is factory made,’ she said with the easy dismissal of a woman who would never wear a piece of machine-made jewellery.

‘Where’s the shop?’ Brunetti asked, not because he was particularly interested but to show them that he really was listening.

‘Off Ventidue Marzo. On that calle that goes up towards the Fenice, down from the bridge.’

Brunetti sent his memory walking towards Campo San Fantin, down the narrow calle towards the bridge, past the antique shop. ‘Opposite the bar?’ he asked.

‘I think so,’ she answered. ‘I haven’t checked the address, but it’s the only one there, I think.’

‘And these two rent to extracomunitari?’ Brunetti asked.

‘That’s what Leonardo tells me. No long-term contracts, no questions about how many people will eventually live in the apartment, and everything paid in cash.’

‘Furnished or unfurnished?’ Vianello asked.

‘Either, I think,’ Signorina Elettra replied. ‘If you can call it furnished. Leonardo said they did a story once, about two years ago, about one of the apartments they were living in. He said you wouldn’t believe the place: seven of them sleeping in the same room, roaches all over the place. He said the kitchen and bathroom were unlike anything he’d ever seen, and when I asked him what it was like, he made it clear that I didn’t want to know.’

‘And was one of these two the landlord?’ Brunetti asked.