Blood from a stone

idea, so thick was the press of people on the streets. Three or four times, bodies bumped into Brunetti with such force that an unprotected print would surely have been crushed. After the third time, Brunetti toyed with the idea of holding the cylinder at one end and using it as a club to beat their way through the crowds, but his awareness of how much at variance this would be with the Christmas spirit, to make no mention of his position as an officer of the law, prevented him from acting on that thought.

After three hours, two coffees, and one pastry, both Brunetti’s mind and his wallet were empty. He subsequently remembered going into a CD store and marvelling as Paola reeled off a list of outlandish names, then watching, hypnotized by the colours and designs on the covers, as the clerk wrapped two separate stacks of discs. He chose a sweater for Raffi, exactly the colour of one of his that his son had taken to borrowing, and refused to listen to Paola’s protest that cashmere was wasted on Raffi. His long-term plan included a casual switch of sweaters after a month or two. In a computer store, she bought two games with equally garish covers and, he was certain, equally garish contents.

After that, Paola agreed that she had had enough and turned towards home. As they were coming back towards San Bortolo and the bridge, Brunetti stopped in front of a jewellery store and studied the rings and necklaces in the window. Paola stood silent beside him.

Just as he started to speak, she said, ‘Don’t even think about it, Guido.’

‘I’d like to give you something nice.’

‘Those things are expensive. That doesn’t make them nice.’

‘Don’t you like jewellery?’

‘You know I do, but not like that, with enormous stones looking as if they’ve been tortured into place.’ She pointed to a particularly infelicitous combination of minerals and said, ‘It looks like something Hobbes would give to one of his wives.’ When Paola had first used this name to refer to the current head of government, Brunetti’s puzzled look had forced her to explain that she had chosen the name because of the English philosopher Hobbes’s description of human life: ‘Nasty, brutish, and short’. Brunetti had been so taken with its appropriateness that he now substituted the name, not only when reading newspaper headlines, but also in ministerial documents.

He realized that he was going to get no help from Paola in selecting her own gift, so he abandoned the attempt and went home with her to try to find a place to hide their haul from their prying children. The only thing he could think of was to put them all at the bottom of their wardrobe, but not before attaching to them carefully printed cards bearing Paola’s name, her mother’s, and her father’s. He hoped thus to deflect the children’s sorties. The thought of hiding things took his mind back to the box of salt and its strange contents.

It was too soon to call Claudio, but he did call Vianello at home, careful to use the telefonino registered to Roberto Rossi. Telling himself that he was a commissario of police, he refused to disguise his voice or speak in tongues, but he did confine himself to asking, when Vianello answered, ‘Anything new?’

‘Nothing,’ came Vianello’s laconic reply.

Brunetti broke the connection.

Dinner was peaceful, Raffi artlessly attempting to get his parents to say what they would like for Christmas, and Chiara asking if Muslims had Christmas, too. Paola explained that, because Muslims considered Jesus a great prophet, they probably respected the holiday, even if they didn’t celebrate it officially.

When Brunetti asked why she wanted to know, Chiara answered, ‘I have a new friend at school, Azir. She’s Muslim.’

‘Where’s she from?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Iran. Her father’s a doctor, but he isn’t working.’

‘Why is that?’ Brunetti asked.

Helping herself to more pasta, Chiara said, ‘Oh, something to do with papers. They haven’t come or something, so he’s working in the lab at the hospital, I think.’

‘I was there once,’ Brunetti surprised the children by saying. ‘In Tehran. After the Revolution.’

‘What for?’ Chiara asked, instantly curious.

‘Work,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Drugs.’

‘And?’ Raffi interrupted. ‘What happened?’

‘They were very helpful and polite and gave me the information I needed.’ The faces which greeted this remark reminded him of a line Paola often quoted, something about sheep looking up but not being fed, so he explained, ‘It was when I was working in Naples. There was someone who was bringing in drugs on trucks from Iran, and they agreed to help us arrest him.’ He did not tell them that this had happened only after it was discovered that a great deal of the man’s merchandise was finding its way on to the streets of Tehran, as well.

‘What were they like?’ Chiara asked, interested enough to stop eating.

‘As I said, polite and helpful. The city was a mess, very overcrowded and polluted, but once you get behind the walls — one of the officers invited me to his home — you find lots of gardens and trees.’

‘What are the people like?’ Chiara asked.

‘Very sophisticated and cultured, at least the ones I dealt with.’

‘They’ve had three thousand years to become cultured,’ Paola interrupted.

‘What do you mean?’ Chiara asked.

‘That when we were still living in huts and wearing animal skins, they were building Persepolis and wearing silk.’

Ignorant of the patent exaggeration of this remark, Chiara asked only, ‘What’s Persepolis?’

‘It’s the royal city where the kings lived. Until a European burned it down. I’ve got a book and I’ll show you after dinner, all right?’ Paola asked. Then, to all of them, ‘Dessert?’

Like Persepolis itself, interest in thousands of years of history fell to ruin, this time in the face of apple cake.

The next morning Brunetti’s phone was ringing as he walked into his office. He answered with his name while struggling to remove his coat, the receiver pressed between ear and shoulder as he tried to pull his arms from the sleeves.

‘It’s me,’ a man’s voice said, and it took Brunetti a second to realize it was Claudio. ‘I have to see you.’ In the background, Brunetti heard the loud roar of what sounded like a boat’s motor, so Claudio was out in the city, somewhere near the water.

Brunetti pulled his coat back on to his shoulders, took the phone with his free hand, and said, responding to the note of urgency in the old man’s voice, ‘I can come over right now if you want to meet at your office.’ Brunetti was already plotting the course to Claudio’s, deciding to have himself taken there in a launch.

‘No, I think it would be better if we met at. . at that place where your father and I always went for a drink.’

Doubly alarmed now by Claudio’s use of these guarded directions, Brunetti said, ‘I can be there in five minutes.’

‘Good, I’ll be there,’ Claudio said and ended the call.

Brunetti remembered the bar, on a corner facing the pillared gates of the Arsenale: Claudio must be out on the Riva degli Schiavoni to be able to reach it in five minutes. Many times in his youth, he had sat there, listening to his father’s friends talk about the war as they played endless, inconsequential games of scopa, sipping at small glasses of a wine so tannic it left their teeth almost blue. His father had never said much, nor had he been interested in playing cards, but he was there as a veteran and as Claudio’s friend, and that had sufficed for the others.

As soon as he hung up, the phone rang again, and, thinking it might be Claudio calling back, Brunetti picked it up and held it to his ear.

‘Brunetti,’ barked Vice-Questore Patta. ‘I want to talk to you now.’ His tone matched his words, and they no doubt matched his mood. Silently, Brunetti replaced the receiver and turned to leave the office. By the time he had reached the door, the phone was already ringing again.

Brunetti barely noticed the lions when he reached the entrance to the Arsenale and walked directly into the bar, looking for the familiar face. When he saw no sign of Claudio, he checked his watch and found that it had been only six minutes since he left the Questura. He ordered a coffee and turned to face the door. After another five minutes, he saw the old man at a distance, walking with the aid of a stick, coming down the bridge that led to the