Donna Leon - Blood from a stone

After a few minutes, someone banged roughly on the door to the phone booth. It was one of the vendors from the stalls of tourist junk that lined the riva , a much-tattooed man with long hair, a man known to Brunetti in his professional capacity.

He apparently failed to recognize Brunetti and said, ‘You all right, Signore?’

Brunetti stood up straight and let his arms drop to his sides. ‘Yes,’ he said, pushing open the door. ‘I just had some good news.’

The man gave him a peculiar look and said, ‘Strange way to react to it.’

‘Yes, yes, it is,’ Brunetti said. He thanked the man for his concern, words that the man shrugged off as he turned back to his stall. Brunetti started back to the Questura.

On the way he decided to tell no one. Signorina Elettra’s computer had been wiped clean: let it stay that way. Vianello’s was gone from the Questura: let it stay where it was. The body was gone, but Claudio was safe. If the powers that ruled them wanted to investigate the death on their own, then let them do it. They’d get no more of him. All the way back, he washed his hands of the case, raged at what he referred to as his former, unreformed self for daring to put his friend in jeopardy and for having risked the jobs and, for all he knew, the safety of the two people he loved at the Questura.

Part of his mind had moved on before the other part registered what it had heard. His steps slowed. He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked at his shoes, almost surprised to see that he was wearing shoes that were not soaked. ‘The two people I love at the Questura.’

‘ Maria Santissima ,’ he said, echoing the exclamation with which his mother had always recognized happy surprises.

During the next few days, Brunetti fell into a torpor in which he failed to find the will or the energy either to work or to care that he was not working. He interviewed various professors and students at the university and judged them all to be lying, but he could not bring himself to care overmuch that they were. If anything, he took a grim delight in the fact that corruption and dishonesty should manifest themselves in the Department of the Science of Law.

The children sensed that something was wrong: Raffi occasionally asked him for help with his homework, and Chiara insisted on having him read her essays for Italian class, then asked his opinion of what she had written. Paola stopped complaining about school; in fact, she stopped complaining about everything, to such a point that Brunetti began to suspect that his wife had been the victim of alien abduction and a replicant left in her place.

One night at two in the morning, the drug addicts who had committed the rash of burglaries were discovered in the home of a notary, found there by the owner’s son, who had just come back from a party at a friend’s home. The boy had had too much to drink, made a great deal of noise entering the apartment, and when he saw the two men in his parents’ living room, rashly attacked one of them. The father, awakened by the noise, came into the living room carrying a gun, and when the thieves saw him, one of them raised a hand. The notary shot him in the face and killed him. The other one panicked and tried to flee, but when he broke loose from the son, the notary shot him in the chest, also killing him instantly. He put the gun down and called the police.

Brunetti, reading the reports the following morning, was appalled by the waste and stupidity. They might have taken a radio, a television at worst, maybe some jewellery. The notary was the sort of person who would have insurance; nothing would be lost. And now these two poor devils were dead. The uncle of one of them was a tailor at the shop where Brunetti bought his suits and came to the Questura to ask him if anything would happen to the notary. Brunetti had to tell him that there was every likelihood that it would be declared a case of legittima difesa , in which case no blame would fall upon the killer.

‘But is that right?’ the man demanded. ‘He shoots Mirko in the face like he was a dog and nothing happens to him?’

‘Legally he did nothing we can charge him with, Signor Buffetti. He had a permit for the gun. His son says your nephew tried to attack him.’

‘Of course he’d say that,’ the man shouted. ‘He’s his son.’

‘I know how it must seem to you,’ Brunetti said. ‘But there’s no legal case that can be brought against him.’

The tailor tried to control his anger. Accepting the validity of Brunetti’s judgement, he got to his feet and went to the door. Before he left, he turned and said, ‘I can’t argue with you, not in a legal way, Dottore. But I know that the police shouldn’t let a man be shot and do nothing about it.’ He closed the door quietly as he left.

Brunetti was not a man given to belief in signs and portents: the real had always seemed sufficiently marvellous to him. But he could recognize the truth when someone presented it to him.

Signorina Elettra, perhaps sobered by the ease with which her computer had been violated, had not asked about the case and had made no suggestion that she resume making inquiries. Vianello had taken his family to the mountains for two weeks. When Buffetti had gone, Brunetti used Signor Rossi’s telefonino to call Vianello on his.

‘Lorenzo,’ Brunetti said when the inspector answered, ‘when you get back, I think we have to attend to some unfinished business.’

‘That’s not going to make some people happy,’ Vianello answered laconically.

‘Probably not.’

‘I’ve still got all the information,’ Vianello said.

‘Good.’

‘I’m very glad you called,’ Vianello said and broke the connection.

Two nights later the phone rang just before eleven. Paola answered with the cool, impersonal curiosity she directed at anyone who called after ten. A moment later, her tone changed, and she spoke to the person using the familiar ‘ tu ’. Brunetti listened, wondering which of her friends it might be, but then she turned to him and said, ‘It’s for you. It’s my father.’

‘Good evening, Guido,’ the Count said when Brunetti took the phone.

‘Good evening,’ answered Brunetti, doing his best to sound normal.

The Count surprised him by asking, ‘Do you get CNN?’

‘What?’

‘The television, CNN?’

‘Yes. The kids watch it for their English,’ he answered.

‘I think you should turn on their news at midnight.’

Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was only a few minutes after eleven. ‘Not until then?’

‘It won’t be on until then, what I want you to see. I’ve just had a phone call from a friend.’

‘But why CNN?’ Brunetti asked. He thought RAI had a midnight newscast, but he wasn’t sure.

‘You’ll understand when you see it. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow, but I think you’d better see the way it’s going to be presented.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Brunetti said.

‘You will,’ the Count said and hung up.

He told Paola about the conversation, but she could make no sense of it, either. Together they went into the living room and turned on the television. Paola took the remote and switched from channel to channel. They flicked past people trying to sell mattresses, women reading tarot cards, an old film, another old film, two people of indeterminate gender engaged in an activity that was perhaps meant to be sexual, another fortune teller, until finally they came upon the faintly alien face of the CNN newsreader.

‘They never have two matching eyes,’ Paola remarked as she sat on the sofa. ‘And I think they all wear wigs.’

‘You mean you watch this?’ asked an astonished Brunetti.