CB14 Blood From A Stone (2005) by Donna Leon

Muhammad. I can ask him.’
    ‘You think he’d trust you?’ Brunetti asked.
    Gravini shrugged. ‘No way to know until I ask him.’
    Brunetti told Gravini to keep the photos and to show them around, perhaps ask Muhammad if he would do the same among the men with whom he worked. ‘Gravini,’ he added, ‘tell them that all we’re asking for is a name and an address. No questions after that, no trouble, nothing else.’ He wondered if the Africans would trust the word of the police and suspected that they had no reason to do so. Even though there were men like Gravini, willing to jump into a canal to save them, Brunetti feared that the prevailing attitude of the police would more closely resemble that of the old man on the vaporetto and thus not encourage cooperation.
    He thanked both men and went down to Signorina Elettra’s office, where he found her at her desk. For some days, Signorina Elettra had been keeping the gloom of winter at bay with a refulgence of colour: she had begun last Wednesday with yellow shoes, Thursday with emerald green slacks and Friday with an orangejacket. Today, to begin the week, she had decided to skip her throat – no doubt because a bright scarf would be too predictable an accessory – and had wrapped her hair in a piece of silk that seemed to be covered with parrots.
    ‘Lovely birds,’ Brunetti said as he came in.
    She glanced up, smiled, and thanked him. ‘I think next week I might suggest to the Vice-Questore that he try the same thing.’
    ‘Which? Yellow shoes or the turban?’ Brunetti asked, just to show he had noticed.
    ‘No, his ties. They’re always so very sober.’
    ‘Not the tie-pins, though. They have different coloured jewels in them, don’t they?’ Brunetti asked.
    ‘One would hardly notice, they’re so small,’ she said. ‘I wonder if I should get him some.’
    Brunetti had no idea if she meant ties or jewelled pins for them: it hardly mattered. ‘And put them down as office expenses?’ he asked.
    ‘Of course,’ she answered. ‘Perhaps I’d list them as “maintenance”.’ Then, turning to business, she asked, ‘What is it I can help you with, Commissario?’
    Hearing her, Brunetti wondered when she had last asked anyone what she could do for them, whether himself or the Vice-Questore. ‘I’d like you to see what you can find out about the vu cumprà ,’ he said.
    ‘It’s all in here,’ she answered, pointing at her computer. ‘Or in the Interpol files.’
    ‘No,’ he said, ‘not that sort of information. I want to know what people know, really know,about them: where they live and how they live, what sort of people they are.’
    ‘Most are from Senegal, I believe,’ she said.
    ‘Yes, I know. But I want to know if they’re from the same place and if they know one another or are related to one another.’
    ‘And,’ she continued, ‘presumably, you’d also like to know who the murdered man is.’
    ‘Of course,’ he answered. ‘But I don’t think that’s going to be an easy thing to find out. No one has called about him. The only people who volunteered anything were some American tourists who were there at the time, and all they saw was a very tall man with hairy hands who they said looked “Mediterranean”, by which they mean dark. There was another man, but all they noticed about him was that he was shorter than the other. Aside from that, the shooting might as well have taken place in another city, for all we know. Or on another planet.’
    After a thoughtful pause, she asked, ‘That’s pretty much where they live, isn’t it?’
    ‘Excuse me?’ he asked, confused.
    ‘They don’t have any contact with us, not real contact, that is,’ she began. ‘They appear like mushrooms, set out their sheets, and do business until they disappear again. It’s as if they popped out of their space capsules, then vanished again.’
    ‘That’s hardly another planet,’ he said.
    ‘But it is, sir. We don’t talk to them, or really