Free CB14 Blood From A Stone (2005) by Donna Leon

belief that the ambulanti enjoyed the protection of – for a moment, he was at a loss how best to express this, even to himself – the protection of ‘forces that function at variance with those of the state’ was the euphemism he finally summoned.
    He took a notebook and opened it to the centre page, where he found the phone number he wanted. Adding one to each of the digits in itand embarrassed at this simple code, he dialled. When a man answered on the fifth ring, Brunetti said only, ‘Good morning, I’d like to speak to Signor Ducatti.’ When the man told him he must have dialled a wrong number, Brunetti apologized for disturbing him and hung up.
    Immediately Brunetti regretted that he had not gone down to the bar at the bridge for a coffee before phoning: now he was trapped in his office until Sandrini called him back. To pass the time, he took some papers from his in tray and began to read through them.
    It was more than half an hour before his phone rang. He answered with his name, and the same voice that had told him he had dialled a wrong number said, ‘What is it?’
    ‘I’m very well, Renato,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Thanks for asking.’
    ‘Tell me what you want, Brunetti, and let me get back to the office.’
    ‘Just stepped out to make a phone call, did you?’ Brunetti asked.
    ‘Tell me what you want,’ the man said with badly suppressed anger.
    ‘I want to know if your father-in-law’s – what shall I call them – if his business associates had anything to do with last night?’
    ‘You mean the dead nigger?’
    ‘I mean the dead African,’ Brunetti corrected him.
    ‘That all?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’ll call you,’ he said and hung up.
    If Renato Sandrini were better behaved, perhaps Brunetti’s conscience would have troubled him about blackmailing and intimidating him. As it was, the man’s consistent rudeness, as well as the arrogance that characterized his public behaviour, made it almost pleasant for Brunetti to exercise his power over him. Twenty years ago, Sandrini, a criminal lawyer in Padova, had married the only daughter of a local Mafia boss. Children followed, as did an enormous amount of very well-paid defence work. The repeated success of Sandrini’s defences had turned him into something of a local legend. As the size of his legal practice increased, so too did that of his wife, Julia, until, at forty, she had come to resemble a barrel, though a barrel with very expensive taste in jewellery and an alarmingly possessive love for her husband.
    None of this would have worked to Sandrini’s disadvantage, nor to Brunetti’s advantage, were it not for a fire in a hotel on the Lido that had filled some of the rooms with smoke and caused four people to be taken to the hospital, unconscious. There, it was discovered that the man in room 307, who had given his name as Franco Rossi, carried the c arta d’identità , as well as the credit cards, of Renato Sandrini. Luckily, he had regained consciousness in time to prevent the hospital from calling his wife to alert her to his condition, but not before the police had been called to report the disparity in names that appeared on thedocuments. All of this would have passed as an easily overlooked clerical error were it not for two things: the other person in the room with Sandrini was a fifteen-year-old Albanian prostitute, and the police report containing this information landed the following morning on the desk of Guido Brunetti.
    Caution prevented him from approaching Sandrini until he had spoken at some length with the prostitute and her pimp and had obtained both videotaped and written statements from them. They were willing to talk only because they believed the man in question to be Franco Rossi, a wholesaler of fitted carpets from Padova. Had they had the least idea of who Sandrini was – more importantly, had they had any idea of the identity of his father-in-law – both would surely have preferred prison to having had the