Blood from a stone

‘Good, I’ll do that,’ the barman said just as one of the men at the table called for more wine, and he turned away to take down a clean glass.

Outside, Brunetti retraced his steps until he was back on Via Garibaldi. He went into the fruit and vegetable shop on the left, saw that the endive was described as coming from Latina, and asked for a kilo. While the woman was selecting the stalks, he asked, still in dialect, ‘Is Alessandro still renting to the vu cumpra?’ He jerked his head back in the direction of the Cuzzoni address.

She looked up, surprised by his leap from endive to real estate. ‘Alessandro. Cuzzoni,’ Brunetti clarified. ‘A couple of years ago, he tried to sell me that house of his back there, around the corner, but I bought a place in San Polo. Now my nephew’s getting married, and they’re looking for a place, and so I thought of Alessandro. But someone told me he was renting to the vu cumpra, and I wondered if he still was. Before I say anything to my nephew, that is.’ Then, before she could grow suspicious of his question and of him, he said, ‘My wife told me to get some melanzane, but the long ones.’

‘All I’ve got are the round ones,’ she said, clearly more comfortable talking about vegetables than about the business of her customers.

‘All right. I’ll tell her it was all I could find. Give me a kilo of the round ones, then, as well.’

She pulled out a second paper bag and selected three plump melanzane. As if comforted by their solidity, she said, ‘I don’t think it’s for sale any more, that house.’

‘Ah, all right. Thank you,’ Brunetti said, understanding that she had answered his question without seeming to. She handed him the plastic bag of vegetables and he paid, hoping that Paola could find some use for them.

He decided to go home, where Paola was pleased at the quality of the endive and said they’d have it that evening. She made no comment on the aubergines, and he forbore to explain that they were, in a certain sense, part of his investigative technique.

Because the children were not home for lunch, the meal was, at least by Brunetti’s standards, spartan, nothing more than risotto with radicchio di Treviso and a plate of cheese. Seeing his badly concealed disappointment at the sight of the selection of cheeses, Paola came and stood close beside him. ‘All right, Guido. I’ll make the pork tonight.’

Brunetti cut a piece of taleggio and set it on his plate. Interested, he looked up at her and asked, ‘Which one?’

‘The one with olives and tomato sauce.’

‘And the endive?’

She looked away from him and addressed, it appeared, the light fixture, ‘How did this happen to me? I married a man, and I find myself living with an appetite.’

‘With butter and parmigiano?’ he asked, spreading a thick layer of the cheese on a slice of bread.

Deciding to ignore his promise to Gravini, he left the apartment at three-fifteen and walked up to Sant’ Aponal, then back towards Fondamenta Businello, where the apartment had to be. He found the number, where the only doorbell bore the name Cuzzoni. He rang, waited a moment, then rang again.

‘Si?’ a man’s voice finally asked.

‘Signor Cuzzoni?’

‘Yes. What do you want?’

‘To talk to you. It’s the police.’

‘Talk to me about what?’ the voice went on calmly.

‘Some property of yours,’ Brunetti said with equal calm.

‘Come up, then,’ the man said, and the door snapped open.

Brunetti pushed it back and stepped into a large garden that gave evidence, even in its winter sleep, of being the pampered recipient of considerable care. Two Norfolk pines stood on either side of a brick path flanked by waist-high hedges still bearing their tiny leaves. Other bricks had been set into the grass to create two diamond- shaped gardens, where Brunetti saw flowers that looked like pansies huddled under large sheets of milky plastic sheeting. At the far end of the garden was a single door, flanked by enormous windows protected by a thick metal grating.

The door was open, and he went in and then up the broad flight of low marble steps that led to the piano nobile. As he reached the top of the steps, the door opened inward and he found himself looking at a face that had been familiar to him for years.

The man was a few years younger than he, though his hair, Brunetti was satisfied to notice, was far thinner than his own, something he had suspected in the past but could now confirm. As tall as Brunetti, though thinner, Cuzzoni had an elegant nose and large brown eyes, perhaps too large for his face. He was as surprised as Brunetti to find himself confronted by a face he recognized.

Recovering sooner than Brunetti, he extended his hand and said, ‘Alessandro Cuzzoni.’ Brunetti took the offered hand, but before he could say his name, Cuzzoni went on, ‘It’s very strange to meet you, after seeing you pass on the street all these years. It’s as though we know one another already.’

‘Brunetti, Guido,’ he said and followed Cuzzoni into the apartment. The first thing he noticed was a tremendous water stain on the back wall of the entrance hall and an equally dark circle on the ceiling above it. His eyes followed it down to the floor, where he saw strips of parquet lying about in concave ruin.

‘My God. What happened?’ he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

Cuzzoni looked at the wreckage of ceiling, wall, and floor and quickly away, as if to spare himself a painful experience. He raised a finger to the centre of the ravished ceiling. ‘It happened four days ago. The woman upstairs put a wash in her washing machine and went out to Rialto. The tube that’s supposed to drain the water came loose, so the entire cycle ended up coming down my wall. I had already gone to work, and she was out all morning.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Brunetti said. ‘Water. Nothing’s worse.’

Cuzzoni shrugged and tried to smile, but it was obvious that his heart was not in it. ‘Luckily — for her, at least — the building’s all lopsided, so the water ran towards the wall and came down here. She didn’t have much damage at all.’

As the other man spoke, Brunetti studied the far wall, where he thought he saw rectangles of darker paint. The other walls held paintings and, ominously, prints and drawings, one of which might have been a Marieschi. ‘What was on the wall?’ he finally asked.

Cuzzoni took a deep sigh. ‘The title page of the Carceri. The first impression, and with a signature added that was probably his. And a small Holbein drawing.’

As when someone spoke of serious illness in their family, Brunetti didn’t know how to ask or what to say. ‘And?’ was the best he could think of.

‘Better not to ask.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Brunetti said. He knew better than to mention insurance. Even if Cuzzoni had it or the woman above had it, some things could not be repaired, nor could they be replaced. Besides, insurance companies never paid.

‘Come into my study. We can talk there,’ Cuzzoni said, turning to the right and opening a door. It was only then that Brunetti realized how hot the apartment was. Cuzzoni saw him start to unbutton his overcoat and said, ‘Here, let me take that. I have to keep the heat as high as possible until it’s dried out. The painters can’t do anything until the walls are dry.’

‘And the parquet?’ Brunetti asked, handing over his coat.

Cuzzoni hung it on a coat rack and waved Brunetti towards a long sofa against one wall. Cuzzoni seated himself in a comfortable looking old armchair that faced him and said, ‘The parquet is what I mind most, in a way. It’s cherry, eighteenth century, and I’ll never be able to replace it.’

‘Can it be saved?’

Cuzzoni shrugged. ‘Maybe. I’ve talked to someone who’s worked for me in the past, a retired carpenter, who said he’d come and have a look. If he thinks there’s anything he can do, he’ll pull it up and take it to his workshop. His son’s running the business now, but he still works. He may be able to soak it and put it under a press until it comes straight again. But he said it would be discoloured and he’d probably have trouble getting the same patina back.’

He shrugged again. ‘I keep telling myself it’s just a thing. They’re all just things. But they’ve survived hundreds of years, it seems a shame for anything to happen to them now.’