Blood from a stone

the two was the first to fire, though the only sound the gun made was a dull thwack, thwack, thwack, accompanied by two similar noises from the pistol of his companion. The buskers had worked their way towards the end of the allegro, and their music plus the shouts and squeals of the encircling crowd all but covered the sound of the shots, though the Africans to either side turned instantly towards them.

Momentum continued to carry the bag seller away from the people in front of his sheet; then gradually his motion slowed. The men, their guns now in their pockets, backed through the crowd of tourists, who politely moved out of their way. The men separated, one moving towards the Accademia bridge and the other towards Santo Stefano and Rialto. Quickly they disappeared among the people hurrying in both directions.

The bag seller cried out and threw one arm out in front of him. His body completed its half-circle, then sprawled to the ground beside his bags.

Like gazelles who panic and take flight at the first sign of danger, the other black men froze for an instant and then exploded with frightening energy. Four of them abandoned their wares and took off, running for the calle that led towards San Marco; two paused long enough to grab four or five bags in each hand, then disappeared over the bridge that led towards Campo San Samuele; the four remaining men left everything and fled towards the Grand Canal, where they alerted the men whose sheets were spread at the bottom of the bridge, over which they all ran, separating at the bottom and disappearing into the calli of Dorsoduro.

A white-haired woman was standing in front of the trader’s sheet when he collapsed. When she saw him fall, she called out to her husband, who had been separated from her, and knelt beside the fallen man.

She saw the blood that seeped out from under him, staining the sheet red. Her husband, alarmed by her cry and her sudden sinking to the ground, pushed roughly through their friends and knelt beside her. He moved to put a protective arm around her shoulder, but then he saw the man on the sheet. He placed his hand at the man’s throat, kept it there for long seconds, then removed it and got to his feet awkwardly, his knees reluctant with age. He bent and helped his wife to stand.

They looked around and saw only the people in their group, all gaping back and forth between each other’s confused faces and the man who lay at their feet. On either side of the broad street extended the rows of outspread sheets, most still covered with neatly positioned bags. As the crowd in front of them turned away one by one, the buskers stopped playing.

It was another few minutes before the first Italian approached, and when he saw the black man, the sheet, and the blood, he pulled his telefonino from the pocket of his coat and dialled 113.

2

The police arrived with a speed that astonished the Italian bystanders as much as it scandalized the Americans. To Venetians, half an hour did not seem a long time for the police to organize a boat and a squad of technicians and officers and reach Campo Santo Stefano, but by that time most of the Americans had drifted away in exasperation, telling one another that they would meet back at the hotel. No one bothered to keep an eye on the crime scene, so by the time the police finally did arrive, most of the bags had disappeared from the sheets, even from the one on which the body lay. Some of those who stole the dead man’s bags left red footprints on his sheet; one set disappeared towards Rialto in a bloody trail.

The first officer on the scene, Alvise, approached the small crowd that still stood near the dead man and ordered them to move back. He walked over to the man’s body and stood, looking down at him as if confused as to what to do now that he could see the victim. Finally, a lab technician asked him to move aside while he set up a wooden stanchion, and then another, and then another until they ringed the sheet. From one of the boxes the technicians had brought to the scene he took a roll of red and white striped tape and ran it through slots in the tops of the wooden stanchions until a clear demarcation had been created between the body and the rest of the world.

Alvise went over to a man who was standing by the steps of the church and demanded, ‘Who are you?’

‘Riccardo Lombardi,’ the man answered. He was tall, about fifty, well-dressed, the sort of person who sat behind a desk and gave orders, or so thought Alvise.

‘What are you doing here?’

Surprised at the policeman’s tone, the man answered, ‘I was walking by, and I saw this crowd, so I stopped.’

‘Did you see who did it?’

‘Did what?’

It occurred to Alvise only then that he had no idea what had been done, only that the Questura had received a call, saying that a black man was dead in Campo Santo Stefano. ‘Can you show me some identification?’ Alvise demanded.

The man took out his wallet and extracted his carta d’identita. Silently, he handed it to Alvise, who glanced at it before handing it back. ‘Did you see anything?’ he asked in the same voice.

‘I told you, officer. I was walking by, and I saw these people standing around here, so I stopped to look. Nothing more.’

‘All right. You can go,’ Alvise said in a tone that suggested the man really had no choice. Alvise turned away from him and went back to the crime team, where the photographers were already packing up their equipment.

‘Find anything?’ he asked one of the technicians.

Santini, who was on his knees, running his gloved hands over the paving stones in search of shell casings, looked up at Alvise and said, ‘A dead man,’ before returning to his search.

Not deterred by the answer, Alvise pulled out a notebook from the inside pocket of his uniform parka. He flipped it open, took out a pen, and wrote ‘Campo Santo Stefano’. He studied what he had written, glanced at his watch, added ‘20.58’, capped the pen, and returned both notebook and pen to his pocket.

From his right, he heard a familiar voice ask, ‘What’s going on, Alvise?’

Alvise raised a languid hand in something that resembled a salute and said, ‘I’m not sure, Commissario. We had a call, saying there was a dead man here, so we came over.’

His superior, Commissario Guido Brunetti, said, ‘I can see that, Alvise. What happened to cause the man to be dead?’

‘I don’t know, sir. We’re waiting for the doctor to get here.’

‘Who’s coming?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Who’s coming where, sir?’ Alvise asked, utterly at a loss.

‘Which doctor is coming? Do you know?’

‘I don’t know, sir. I was in such a hurry to get the team here that I told them at the Questura to call and have one of the doctors sent.’

Brunetti’s question was answered by the arrival of Dottor Ettore Rizzardi, medico legale of the city of Venice.

‘Ciao, Guido,’ Rizzardi said, shifting his bag to his left hand and offering his right. ‘What have we got?’

‘A dead man,’ Brunetti said. ‘I got the call at home, saying someone had been killed here, but nothing more than that. I just got here myself.’

‘Better have a look, then,’ Rizzardi said, turning towards the taped-off area. ‘You speak to anyone?’ he asked Brunetti.

‘No. Nothing.’ Talking to Alvise never counted.

Rizzardi bent and slipped under the tape, placing one hand on the pavement to do so, then held the tape up to make it easier for Brunetti to join him. The doctor turned to one of the technicians. ‘You’ve taken pictures?’

‘Si, Dottore,’ the man answered. ‘From every side.’

‘All right, then,’ Rizzardi said, setting down his bag. He turned away, took out two pairs of thin plastic gloves and gave one pair to Brunetti. As they slipped them on, the doctor asked, ‘Give me a hand?’

They knelt on either side of the dead man. All that was visible was the right side of his face and his hands.