Blood from a stone

Though Signorina Elettra had told him that Cuzzoni came from Mira, Brunetti thought it better to seem to know nothing about him and so asked, making a gesture that encompassed the room, ‘Is it your family home?’

‘No, nothing like that. I’ve only been in here for about eight years. But it’s become precious to me, and I hate to see something like this happen to it.’ He smiled and shook his head as if apologizing for his sentimentality, then said, ‘But surely the police aren’t here to ask about my neighbour’s washing machine.’

Brunetti smiled in return and said, ‘No. Hardly. I’m here to ask about a house you have down at the end of Via Garibaldi.’

‘Yes?’ Cuzzoni asked, curious but nothing more.

‘I’d like to know if you’ve rented it to extracomunitari.’

Cuzzoni sat back in the chair, rested his elbows on the arms, and brought his fingers together in a triangle beneath his chin. ‘May I ask why you want to know this?’

‘It has nothing to do with rent or taxes,’ Brunetti assured him.

‘Signor Brunetti,’ Cuzzoni said, ‘I have little fear that an officer of the police would busy himself with whether or not I pay taxes on the rent for my apartments. But I am curious to know why it is you’re interested.’

‘Because of the man who was killed,’ Brunetti said, deciding that he would trust Cuzzoni at least this far.

Cuzzoni lowered his head and rested his mouth on the top of his laced fingers. After some time, he looked back at Brunetti and said, ‘I thought so.’ He allowed more time to pass and then went on, ‘Yes, there are extracomunitari in the building. In all three apartments. But I don’t know if one of them was the man who was killed.’ Brunetti knew that the newspaper account of the killing had not given a name, nor had it supplied a photo of the dead man.

‘Do you know who they are, the men who live there?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I’ve seen their papers, their passports and, in one case, a work permit. But I have no way of knowing if the passports are legitimate or, for that matter, if the work permit is.’

‘And yet you rent to them?’

‘I let them stay in my apartments, yes.’

‘Even though it might be illegal?’ Brunetti asked, his voice curious but entirely without censure.

‘That is not for me to determine,’ Cuzzoni answered.

‘May I ask why you do this?’ Brunetti asked.

Cuzzoni let the question hang in the air for a long time before he answered it with another question, ‘May I ask why you want to know this?’

‘Because I’m curious,’ Brunetti said.

Cuzzoni smiled and unlatched his fingers. He put his hands on the arms of the chair and said, ‘Because we are too rich and they are too poor. And because a friend of mine who works with them told me that the men asking to live in those apartments were decent men in need of help.’ When Brunetti didn’t respond to this, Cuzzoni asked, ‘Does that make sense to you, Signor Brunetti?’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said without hesitation, and then he asked, ‘Would it be possible for me to go and see these apartments?’

‘To see if the dead man was one of the men living there?’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said and then added, because he thought it would make a difference, ‘No harm will come to the men living there because of me.’

Cuzzoni considered this and finally asked, ‘How do I know you’re telling me the truth?’

‘You can ask Don Alvise,’ Brunetti said.

‘Ah,’ Cuzzoni answered and sat looking at Brunetti for what seemed a long time. Finally he pushed himself to his feet and said, ‘I’ll get you the keys.’

11

Brunetti left Cuzzoni’s apartment, uncertain as to whether he should go back down to Castello immediately and take a look at the apartments to which the other man had given him the keys. The three separate sets each had two keys, presumably one to the front door of the building and one to each apartment. All the way to the Rialto bridge, he wavered between going and not going. When he reached the top of the bridge, a sudden gust of wind, sent, he was sure, from Siberia and directed specifically and with malice towards him, swept by with such force that he temporarily lost his footing. This could have served as an excuse not to go, had it not occurred to him that this time of day, when the shops were open, was precisely the time when the men who lived in the apartments were likely to be at home and thus able to answer his questions.

He took out his telefonino and dialled the direct line to the officers’ room. Alvise answered and passed the phone to Vianello. ‘Can you meet me at the end of Via Garibaldi in about twenty minutes?’ he asked.

‘Where are you now?’

‘At Rialto, just going to the 82.’

‘Right. I’ll be there,’ the inspector said and hung up.

Better than that, Vianello got on the boat at the San Zaccaria stop, again padded and muffled to twice his normal girth. Briefly, Brunetti told him about his conversation with Cuzzoni and added that he preferred having someone with him when he went to talk to the Africans.

‘You afraid of them?’ Vianello asked.

‘I don’t think so. But they’re likely to be afraid of me.’

‘And you think reinforcements will help?’ Vianello asked.

‘No, not necessarily. But it will limit the ways they can show their fear.’

‘Meaning they won’t get away?’ Vianello asked, indicating with his mittened hands the front of his body, as if to demonstrate the unlikelihood of his being able to give successful chase to far younger and far slimmer men.

Brunetti smiled at the gesture and said, ‘No. Hardly.’ He didn’t know how to tell Vianello that he thought his presence would have a calming influence on the Africans, as it so often did on witnesses. Nor did he know how to tell Vianello that he would himself find his company comforting when going into the presence of an unknown number of young men, most of them illegal immigrants working at illegal jobs and now somehow caught up in a murder investigation.

They got off at Giardini and started down Via Garibaldi; as they walked, Brunetti recounted his conversation with Cuzzoni, though he said nothing more about the man than that he seemed undisturbed to learn that the police were interested in his tenants and indeed seemed almost proud to have them living in his apartments.

‘A do-gooder?’ Vianello asked.

Hearing the term used that way, Brunetti was struck by the paradox that it had become a pejorative. However had that come about, that it was now wrong to want to do good? ‘Not at all,’ he answered, ‘but I think he might be a good man.’

Vianello, as prone as Brunetti to making snap judgements about people’s characters, said nothing.

Brunetti followed the same path he had that morning but this time stopped in front of one of the buildings on the left of the narrow calle. ‘Do we ring and tell them we’re coming or just go in?’ Vianello asked.

‘It’s their home,’ Brunetti said. ‘Seems to me we have to ask them to let us in.’ There were three doorbells; Brunetti rang the lowest one.

After a few moments, a man’s voice inquired, ‘Si?’

‘We’ve come from Signor Cuzzoni,’ Brunetti answered, deciding it was true enough. After all, he had the keys to prove it.

There was a long pause, and then the voice asked, ‘What do you want?’

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Who?’

‘All of you.’

There followed a long pause. The man at the other end of the speaker phone didn’t bother to cover the