Donna Leon - Blood from a stone

‘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?’

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.

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 Gazzettino before he himself left, consciously choosing to go back to the Questura, not because he particularly wanted to, but because Claudio had gone in the other direction.

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 vu cumprà ?’ Patta asked with no genuflection to politeness of phrase.

‘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.’