Blood from a stone

I’ve last seen such things.’ With the tweezers he touched a few of the stones lying in the pile, though there was nothing at all special about them, so far as Brunetti could see.

‘Could you give me some idea of what they’d be worth, no matter how vague?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Just look at them,’ Claudio said, his eyes aglow with what Brunetti recognized as passion. Then, sensing the urgency in his friend’s voice, the old man brought himself back to the world where diamonds had value, not just beauty. ‘When the big ones are cut and polished, each one could be worth thirty, perhaps forty, thousand Euros, but the price will depend on how much is lost when they’re cut.’ Claudio picked up one of the raw stones and held it towards Brunetti. ‘If there are perfect stones to be had from these, they’re worth a fortune.’

Then what had they been doing, Brunetti wondered, in a room with no heat, no water, and no insulation? And what were they doing in the possession of a man who earned his living by selling counterfeit bags and wallets on the street?

‘How can you tell they’re African?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I can’t,’ Claudio admitted. ‘That is, not for sure. But they look as though they might be.’

‘What tells you that?’ Brunetti wanted to know.

Claudio considered the question, no doubt one he had heard before. ‘Something about the colour and light in them or off them. And the absence of the flecks and imperfections that you find in diamonds from other places.’ Claudio looked at Brunetti, then back at the stones. ‘To tell the truth,’ he finally said, ‘I probably can’t tell you why, at least not fully. After you’ve looked at thousands of stones, hundreds of thousands of stones, you just know — or at least you think you know — where they’re from.’

‘Is that how many you’ve looked at, Claudio?’

The old man sat up straighter, though the action made him no taller in his chair. He folded his hands in that professorial gesture and said, ‘I’ve never thought about that, Guido — it was just a phrase — but I suppose I have. Tiny sixteenth of a carat stones filled with imperfections, and some glorious ones that weighed more than thirty, forty carats, so perfect it was like looking at new suns.’ He paused, as though listening to what he had just said. Then he smiled and added, ‘I suppose it’s like women. It doesn’t matter what they look like, not really: there’s always something beautiful about them.’

Brunetti, in full agreement, grinned at the simile. ‘Is there any way you could be sure where they’re from?’ he asked.

Claudio considered this and finally said, ‘The best I can do is show a few of them to friends of mine and see what they think. If we all agree. . well, then either they’re from Africa or else we’re all wrong.’

‘Can you tell where, specifically? That is, what country?’

‘Diamonds don’t acknowledge countries, Guido. They come from pipes, and pipes don’t have passports.’

‘Pipes?’

‘In the ground. Deep craters that are more like thin, deep wells than anything else. The diamonds were formed down there — kilometres down — millions of years ago, and over the years, they gradually work their way up to the surface.’ Claudio relaxed into the graceful authority of the expert, and Brunetti listened, interested. ‘They come in clusters, some pipes, or they can be single ones. But it’s possible that the clusters can cross what are now national borders and fall into the territories of two countries.’

‘What happens then?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Then the stronger side tries to take them from the weaker.’

As he had learned from his reading of history, Brunetti knew this was the normal operating procedure for most international disputes. ‘Is this the case in Africa?’

‘Unfortunately, yes,’ Claudio said. ‘It gives those poor people another reason for violence.’

‘Hardly necessary, is it?’ Brunetti asked.

The sombre topic halted the flood of Claudio’s garrulity, and he said, ‘You can come and get them tomorrow.’ Then, as a joke, he added, ‘If you think I can be trusted with them, that is.’

Brunetti leaned forward and placed his hand on Claudio’s arm. ‘I’d like you to keep them, if you will,’ he said.

‘For how long?’

Brunetti shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. Until I’ve decided what to do with them.’

‘Is this police evidence?’ Claudio asked, but he seemed interested in clarity, not security.

‘In a way,’ Brunetti said evasively.

‘Does someone else know you have them?’ Claudio asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Thank God,’ the old man said.

‘What difference would that make?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Then I’m less likely to steal them,’ Claudio said and got to his feet.

14

On his way back to the Questura, Brunetti pondered what Claudio had told him. Because it was all new to him, the older man’s talk of diamonds had seemed important, but the part that applied or might apply to the African, upon closer examination, was precious little: some vast amount of Euros and a probable African origin for the stones. It was certainly interesting to know these things, but Brunetti could not see how the knowledge brought him any closer to understanding the connection between the stones and the dead man or between the stones and the man’s death. Greed was one of the most reliable motives for crime, but if the man’s killers had known about the stones, why had they not gone and taken them after he was dead? And if what they wanted was the stones, then why kill the man at all? It was hardly as though the police were likely to believe a vu cumpra who came into the Questura to report that he had been robbed of a fortune in diamonds.

As he walked back, Brunetti decided that the best strategy was to speak immediately to his superior, Vice- Questore Giuseppe Patta, and seek his permission to continue to lead the investigation, though in order to achieve this, he would somehow have to persuade Patta that he did not particularly want the job. He went directly to Patta’s office, outside which he found the man he sought in conversation with Signorina Elettra.

As if someone had whispered the word ‘diamonds’ into the ears of the staff of the Questura as they were dressing for work that morning, Patta wore a new and unusually garish tie-pin, a tiny gold panda with diamond eyes. Signorina Elettra, as though alerted by a sartorial advance warning system, wore a pair of tasteful diamond chip earrings which diminished, though they could not overcome, the impact of Patta’s panda.

With an air of studied casualness, Brunetti greeted them both and asked Signorina Elettra if she had succeeded in locating that Gazzettino article about the former director of the Casino. Though this was a question Brunetti had invented on the spot to justify his arrival in the office, Signorina Elettra said she had and reached across her desk to hand him a folder.

‘What are you working on at the moment, Brunetti?’ Patta inquired.

Holding up the file, Brunetti said, ‘The Casino investigation, sir,’ in much the same tone Hercules might have used had he been asked why he was spending so much time in the stables.

Patta turned towards his office. ‘Come with me,’ he said. The remark could have been addressed to either one of them, but the absence of ‘please’ indicated that it was directed at Brunetti.

An Iranian friend had once told Brunetti that underlings there acknowledged the commands of their superiors with a word that sounded like ‘chasham’, a Farsi word meaning ‘I shall put it on my eyes’, which conveyed that the person of lesser importance placed the command of his superior upon his eyes and would do — indeed, see — nothing until the command had been executed. Brunetti often regretted the absence of a similarly servile expression in Italian.

Inside, Patta went to stand at the window, thus preventing Brunetti from taking a seat. He stood just inside the door and waited for Patta to speak. The Vice-Questore stared out of the window for a long time, so long that Brunetti began to wonder if Patta had forgotten about him. He cleared his throat, but the noise evoked no response in Patta.

Just when Brunetti was on the point of speaking, Patta turned from the window and asked, ‘They called you the other night, didn’t they?’