Claudio shrugged. ‘In this business you can, and you can’t, trust people.’
‘Not to talk about the stones?’
Again, Claudio gave a casual shrug. ‘I doubt they’d say anything unless they were asked.’
‘And if they were?’
‘Who knows?’
‘Are they friends?’ Brunetti asked.
‘People who deal in diamonds don’t have any friends,’ Claudio answered.
‘The man in Antwerp?’ Brunetti asked.
‘He’s married to my niece.’
‘Does that mean he’s a friend?’
Claudio allowed himself a small smile. ‘Hardly. But it does mean I can trust him.’
‘And?’
‘And I asked him to tell me where the stones come from, if he can.’
‘When can you expect to hear from him?’
‘Today.’
Brunetti could not hide his surprise. ‘How did you send them?’
‘Oh,’ Claudio said with studied casualness, ‘I have a nephew who does odd jobs for me.’
‘Odd jobs like carrying diamonds to Antwerp?’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ Claudio insisted.
‘How did he go?’
‘On a plane. How else would you go to Antwerp? Well,’ he temporized, ‘on a plane to Brussels, and then by train.’
‘You can’t do this, Claudio.’
‘I thought you were in a hurry,’ the old man said, sounding almost offended.
‘I am, but you can’t do that for me. You have to let me pay you.’
Claudio waved this away almost angrily. ‘It’s good for him to travel, see how things are done there.’ He looked at Brunetti with sudden affection. ‘Besides you’re a friend.’
‘I thought you said people who deal in diamonds don’t have friends,’ Brunetti said, but he said it with a smile.
Claudio reached over and picked a loose thread from the seam of Brunetti’s overcoat, pulled it away, and let it fall to the floor. ‘Don’t play the fool with me, Guido,’ he said and reached for his wallet to pay for the drinks.
19
When they were ready to leave the bar, Brunetti had to fight the impulse to offer to accompany Claudio to his home. Good sense, however, intervened and made him accept that he was the one person Claudio should not be seen with, so he let the old man leave first and then spent five minutes looking at the pages of the
The officer at the door saluted when he saw Brunetti and said, ‘Vice-Questore Patta wants to see you, sir.’
Brunetti gestured his thanks with a wave of his hand and started up the steps. He went to his office, took off his coat, and dialled Signorina Elettra’s extension. When she answered, Brunetti asked, ‘What does he want?’
‘Oh, Riccardo,’ she said, recognizing his voice, ‘I’m so glad you called back. Could you come to dinner on Thursday, instead of Tuesday? I forgot I have tickets for a concert, so I’d like to change the day, if that’s possible.’ Aside, he heard her say, ‘One moment, please, Vice-Questore,’ then she came back to him. ‘Eight on Thursday, Riccardo? Fine.’ Then she was gone.
Tempting as the thought was, Brunetti refused to believe that she was suggesting he leave the Questura and not return until Thursday evening, so he went back downstairs and into Signorina Elettra’s office. He noticed that Patta’s door was ajar, so he said as he went in, ‘Good morning, Signorina. I’d like to speak to the Vice-Questore if he’s free.’
She rose to her feet, went over to Patta’s door, pushed it fully open, and went inside. He heard her say, ‘Commissario Brunetti would like a word with you, sir.’ She came out a moment later and said, ‘He’s free, Commissario.’
‘Thank you, Signorina,’ he said politely and went through the open door.
‘Close it,’ Patta said by way of greeting.
Brunetti did so and, uninvited, sat in one of the wooden chairs in front of Patta’s desk.
‘Why did you hang up on me?’ Patta demanded.
Brunetti pulled his eyebrows together and gave evidence of thought. ‘When, sir?’
Tiredly, Patta said, ‘Entertaining as you might find it, I can’t play this game with you this morning, Commissario.’ Instinct warned Brunetti to say nothing, and Patta went on. ‘It’s this black man. I want to know what you’ve done.’
‘Less than I want to do, sir,’ Brunetti said, a remark that was both the truth and a lie.
‘Do you think you could be more specific?’ Patta asked.
‘I’ve spoken to some of the men who worked with him,’ Brunetti began, thinking it best to skate over the details of this meeting and the methods used to bring it about, ‘and they refused to give me any information about him. I no longer know how to get in touch with them.’ He thought he would suggest he believed that Patta took some interest in what was going on in the city and so said, ‘You’ve probably noticed that they are no longer here.’
‘Who, the
‘Yes. They’ve disappeared from Campo Santo Stefano,’ Brunetti said, making no reference to the absence of at least some of them from their homes. He had no way of knowing if it was true or not, but still he said, ‘They seem to have disappeared from the city.’
‘Where have they gone?’ Patta asked.
‘I have no idea, sir,’ Brunetti admitted.
‘What else have you done?’
Putting on his best voice, Brunetti lied. ‘That’s all I’ve been able to do. There was no useful information in the autopsy report.’ That was certainly true enough: Rizzardi’s report on the signs of torture had come after the official one, and by the time it arrived, the original report — Brunetti’s thoughts turned to a phrase he had adopted from Spanish colleagues — had been disappeared. ‘Everything that happened suggests that he was a Senegalese who somehow angered the wrong people and didn’t have enough sense to leave the city.’
‘I hope this information has been passed on to the investigators from the Ministry of the Interior,’ Patta said.
Tired of lying but also aware that any more passivity would only feed Patta’s suspicions, Brunetti said, ‘I hardly thought that necessary, sir. They seemed quite able to get to it without my help.’
‘It’s their job, Brunetti. If I might remind you,’ Patta said.
This was too much for Brunetti, and he shot back, ‘It’s my job, too.’
Patta’s face flushed suddenly red, and he pointed an angry finger at Brunetti. ‘Your job is to do what you’re told to do and not to question your superiors’ decisions.’ He slapped his hand on the top of his desk for emphasis.
The sound reverberated in the office, and Patta waited for silence before he spoke again, though something in Brunetti’s manner made him hesitate a second before he said, ‘Does it ever occur to you that I might know more about what’s really going on than you do?’
Given Patta’s apparent lack of familiarity with most of the staff at the Questura and what they did, Brunetti’s first impulse was to laugh the question to scorn, but then he thought that Patta might be speaking of the powers behind the Questura, indeed, the powers behind the Ministry of the Interior, in which case he might well be
