mouthpiece, so Brunetti and Vianello heard questions and answers being fired about in some language neither of them recognized. One voice was raised angrily, but then it seemed as if someone talked it into silence. After some time, the first voice returned and said, ‘Come in.’
The door opened for them and they stepped inside. There was a single flight of steps in front of them; at the top, three black men stood abreast, barring the way. Brunetti went first, Vianello behind him. When he was two steps from the top, Brunetti stopped and looked up at the men. The one in the centre was both taller and older than the others, with a broad nose that looked as if it had been made even broader by having been broken. The one on the left was short and stocky and wore a heavy jacket, as though he had just come in or was just going out. The third was painfully thin; his narrow-cut jeans billowed out around his legs. Though his skin was darker than that of the others, his features were finer, with an almost European nose and a thin mouth, tight with disapproval.
‘Thank you for agreeing to talk to me. My name is Commissario Guido Brunetti, from the police,’ Brunetti said.
The man on the right, the thin one, wheeled away from the other two. As he turned, his right arm swung out from his body and around to his back, where his hand banged against his buttock. The one in the centre stepped back, making room on the landing. Brunetti paused at the top of the steps, waited until Vianello was standing beside him, and then put out his hand. ‘
Surprised, both of them extended their hands, though they remained silent. Then Vianello stepped forward, gave his name, and also shook hands with both men. That seemed to leave them with no choice but to respond with the habit of politeness. The tall one stepped towards the door and made a graceful gesture, inviting them to enter.
Brunetti went inside but not before muttering a courteous request to do so; Vianello did the same. The first thing Brunetti noticed was the smell: the strong odours of meat and spices — mutton, perhaps, though he could not identify the spices. The other smell was that of men, men who lived close together and who did not or could not wash their clothing often enough.
The man with the limp arm had moved to the back of the room. Four others stood inside, waiting for them. Two of them smiled in Brunetti’s direction while the others nodded; their greeting was cordial and entirely without menace. Brunetti and Vianello nodded towards them and waited to see who would speak.
The tall man, who had followed them inside, seemed to be their leader, or at least the others kept glancing back and forth between him and the white men. Brunetti was conscious of the spareness of the room, which seemed to serve as both kitchen and dining room. A linoleum-topped counter ran along the back wall. On it stood a double gas ring, a rubber tube running down to a squat gas canister. He remembered this sort of stove from the apartment they had lived in when he was a child and wondered where on earth you could still buy those canisters today.
Large cooking pots stood on top of the burners, and the sink, which appeared to have only one tap, was filled with dishes. The counters, however, were clean, as was the table.
‘What is it you want?’ the tall man asked. His Italian was accented in a way Brunetti could not identify, his voice deep but not at all loud.
‘I want to know whatever you can tell me about the man who was killed last night,’ Brunetti said.
Before the tall one, to whom Brunetti had addressed the question, could answer, the one who had turned away on the stairs said, ‘And we must know about him because we’re black, too?’ Though he was knife-thin, his voice was even deeper than the other man’s, a resonant bass, a voice that could fill a concert hall or hold an audience.
How quickly people learn resentment, Brunetti thought. Who did they expect him to ask about the death of an African, the Chinese? He bit back this question, and turned his attention once again to the older man. ‘I came to you because I thought you might work with him or know him.’
Before he answered, the older man pulled a plastic chair away from the linoleum-topped table, another relic from Brunetti’s youth, and turned it towards Brunetti. He indicated another chair, and the man in the jacket pulled it out for Vianello.
When both men were seated, the older man said something in a language Brunetti did not understand, and one of the others opened a wall cabinet and took down two glasses. He opened a drawer and pulled out a dish towel and wiped the glasses, then set them on the table. From another cabinet he took out a plastic bottle of mineral water, unscrewed the cap, and filled both glasses.
Brunetti thanked him, nodded to the man he now thought of as the leader, and drank half of the water. Vianello did the same. He put the glass down, rested his hands on the edge of the table, and looked at the leader, saying nothing.
At least two minutes passed during which none of the men in the room spoke. Finally the leader said, ‘You say you are a policeman?’
‘Yes,’ answered Brunetti.
‘And you want to know about him?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘I would like to know his full name and where he came from. I would like to know where he lived and what he did for work before he came here. And I would like to know if any of you can think of a person who would want to do him harm or some reason why this could have happened to him.’
The leader considered the series of questions and finally said, ‘It seems like you want to know everything.’
‘No,’ Brunetti said in a normal voice. ‘It’s not everything. I have no interest in how he got here or what sort of papers he had, not unless you think it might have something to do with his death. And I have no official interest in any of you or how you got here or what you do to make a living, so long as it has nothing to do with this man’s death.’
‘No official interest?’ the man asked.
‘As a policeman, I have no interest in those things.’
‘And as a man?’
‘As a man, I know nothing about any of you. I don’t know for certain where you come from or why you chose to come here, and I have no idea how long you intend to stay. I do know, however, that you are said not to be men who have come here to steal or rob or to cause trouble, but that you are here to work, if you can find work.’
‘That is a lot of information to have,’ the man said, ‘for someone who takes no interest.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Brunetti admitted. ‘But you have been here, you or colleagues of yours, for years, and so I know, or I think I know, some things.’ Quickly Brunetti added, ‘I don’t know about your culture, but ours is one where most information passes from mouth to mouth, and each time it passes, something is added to it or taken away from it, so each time it is passed on, the information is changed. So there is no way to know if what you are told, or what you think you know, is true.’ He watched to see that this long speech had been understood. ‘So I have no idea, really, if what I think I know about you, or your friends, is true or not,’ Brunetti said and finished his glass of water. When the man who had poured him the first glass of water stepped forward to refill it, he thanked him and said he had had enough.
The leader turned to the other men in the room and asked them something. While he waited to see what response they would make, Brunetti allowed himself to settle into the room and pay attention to it. He noticed, first, that it was cold, so cold that he was glad he had kept his coat on, and that, for all the disorder, it was clean. The linoleum of the floor was grey, but it appeared to have been recently swept. And from what he had been able to tell, his glass had been wiped as an act of respect, not of necessity. For a long time, none of them spoke, and then the young man in the too-big jeans said something. No one else said a word, and so he went on, his voice growing more heated as he spoke. At one point, he raised his left hand and pointed at Brunetti and Vianello while he said something that could have been ‘police’, but the word was buried in a long sentence that went on for some time and then ended abruptly on an angry note. During all of this, his right arm remained immobile at his side.
The leader spoke to him in a calmer tone, then placed his hand on his shoulder in a gesture that echoed the soothing tone of his voice. The young man, however, remained unpersuaded and let off another stream of fiery words; this time the word ‘police’ was audible twice.
The leader listened with no sign of impatience until the young man was finished, then turned to Brunetti. ‘He
