Blood from a stone

Arsenale.

At the bottom of the bridge, Claudio went over and stood in front of the stone lions, studying them slowly, pausing in front of each one until he could have committed its face and form to memory. After that, he strolled back to the bottom of the bridge and looked left through the gates of the Arsenale and out towards the laguna. Then he turned and ambled alongside the canal in the direction of the bacino. To an idle spectator, the man with the cane could be a sightseer interested in the area around the Arsenale; to a policeman, he was someone checking to see if he was being followed.

Claudio turned around and came towards the bar. When he entered, Brunetti left it to him to make the first move. He came and stood next to Brunetti at the bar but gave him no greeting. When the barman approached, Claudio asked for a tea with lemon, then reached aside and pulled that day’s Gazzettino towards him. Brunetti asked for another coffee. Claudio kept his eyes on the paper until his tea arrived, when he laid the newspaper aside, looked out the window at the empty campo, then at Brunetti, and said, ‘I was followed yesterday afternoon.’

Brunetti spooned sugar into his coffee, and inclined his head in Claudio’s direction.

‘There was only one man, and it was easy to lose him. Well, I think I lost him.’

‘How far did he follow you?’

‘To the train station. I waited for the 82, and when it came it was crowded the way it always is. So I waited inside the imbarcadero until the sailor was sliding the gates closed, and then I pushed ahead and started shouting that, with all the tourists, there’s no room for Venetians.’ He looked at Brunetti and gave a sly smile. ‘So he pulled the gate back and let me on. Only me.’

‘Complimenti,’ Brunetti said, making a note to use the tactic, should it ever be necessary.

Claudio took some artificial sweetener and poured it into his tea, stirred it round, and said, ‘I spoke to a few people yesterday and sent some stones to someone I know in Antwerp.’ He took a sip of tea, set his cup down, and added, ‘And I took a few to show to a colleague here. It was when I was leaving his shop that I noticed this man.’

‘How much did you tell these people?’ Brunetti asked, wondering which one of them might have been the weak link.

‘Let me finish,’ Claudio said and took a sip of his tea. ‘I asked someone I know in Vicenza if he had been offered any African diamonds recently. He doesn’t have a shop and works the way I do, but he’s the most important dealer in the North.’

When it seemed that the older man was finished, Brunetti asked, uncertain if he could inquire as to the reliability of his friends, ‘Is he someone that many people know about?’

‘That he buys and sells? Yes, most of the people in the North know him. He’d be the logical choice for anyone who wanted to sell a lot of stones, well, for anyone who knew anything about the market.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing,’ Claudio said. ‘No one has approached him with diamonds like these.’

Brunetti knew better than to question this. ‘Where are the stones?’ he finally asked.

‘The ones you gave me?’

‘Yes.’

‘In a safe place.’

‘Don’t be clever, please, Claudio. Where are they?’

‘In the bank.’

‘Bank?’

‘Yes. Ever since. . ever since then, I’ve kept my best stones in a safety deposit box in the bank. I put yours there, too.’

‘They aren’t mine,’ Brunetti corrected him.

‘They’re yours far more than they’re mine.’

Brunetti realized there was little to be gained by arguing back and forth about this, so he asked, ‘If you think no one would talk, why should anyone follow you?’

‘I was awake thinking about it most of the night,’ Claudio answered. ‘Either the place where you got them was being watched, and you were followed until you came to see me, though I think you would have noticed had you been followed, so we can exclude that. Or the fact that I’m the best-known dealer in the city makes me an obvious person to keep an eye on, just as security. Or my friend’s phone is being tapped.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and added, ‘Or I’m a foolish old man who can’t learn to distrust his friends. Take your pick.’

Like Claudio, he excluded the first. His love for the old man made him want to discount the last and choose one of the others, but he thought they were in fact equally likely. ‘Did you learn anything about the stones?’

‘I showed five stones to my friend — two of yours and three that I know are from Canada. At first he said only that he’d like to buy them.’ The old man paused and then added, ‘I suppose that’s what I thought he’d do.’ He shot a glance at Brunetti, then out of the window, then back to Brunetti. ‘But when I told him they weren’t for sale and I only wanted to know where he thought they came from, he said three of them were Canadian and two African. The right two.’

‘Is he certain?’ Brunetti asked.

Claudio gave him a long, speculative glance, as if deciding how best to explain. ‘More certain than I am,’ Claudio said, ‘because he knows more.’ When Claudio saw that Brunetti was not going to be persuaded by this appeal to authority, the old man went on, ‘He didn’t explain why he thought that about those specific stones. I’d be a liar if I told you he did, Guido, but he knows about these things. Other people can do it, but they need to use machines. I know you like information and facts, so I can tell you that at the chemical level, the machines measure the other minerals that are trapped along with the carbon crystals. They differ from pipe to pipe — what you’d call mine to mine. If you know enough about which minerals come from which place, then the machines let you identify stones by measuring the different colours.’ Claudio paused, then added, ‘But it’s really a question of feeling. If you’ve looked at millions of stones, you just know.’ He smiled and said, ‘That’s the way it is with this man. He just knows.’

‘Do you believe him?’

‘If he said they came from Mars, I’d believe him. He’s the best.’

‘Better than you?’

‘Better than anyone, Guido; he has the gift.’

‘Just Africa? Can he be more specific than that?’

‘I didn’t ask. All I asked him to do was to give me an estimate of their value so I could be sure the price I was asking was right. He told me he thought that they were African just as a passing comment, to show me how much more he knows about stones than I do.’

‘And the value?’ Brunetti asked.

‘If cut well, he said the minimum would be thirty-five thousand Euros.’ Seeing Brunetti’s surprise, Claudio added, ‘That’s for each stone, Guido, and I didn’t give him the best ones.’

Brunetti remembered then what he had failed so far to ask. ‘How many were there altogether, after the salt was gone?’

‘One hundred and sixty-four, all of them gem quality and all about the same size.’ Then, before Brunetti could work it out, Claudio said, ‘If you use it as an average price, that’s just under six million Euros.’

The value of the stones astonished Brunetti, but it was what Claudio told him about being followed that most concerned him. ‘Tell me what the man looked like,’ he said.

‘About as tall as you, wearing an overcoat and a hat. He could have been any one of a thousand men. And before you ask, no, I wouldn’t recognize him if I saw him again. I didn’t want him to know that I saw him, so once I noticed him I ignored him.’ Claudio picked up his cup and took a small sip of tea.

Allowing hope to enter his voice, Brunetti asked, ‘Then he might not have been following you?’

Claudio set his cup down and fixed Brunetti with a firm expression. ‘He was following me, Guido. And he was very good.’

Brunetti decided not to ask how Claudio had learned to distinguish in this matter, and asked, instead, ‘The men you spoke to, can you trust them?’