From another cabinet he took out a plastic bottle of mineral water, unscrewed the cap, and filled both glasses.
Brunetti thanked him, nodded to the man he now thought of as the leader, and drank half of the water. Vianello did the same. He put the glass down, rested his hands on the edge of the table, and looked at the leader, saying nothing.
At least two minutes passed during which none of the men in the room spoke. Finally the leader said, ‘You say you are a policeman?’
‘Yes,’ answered Brunetti.
‘And you want to know about him?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘I would like to know his full name and where he came from. I would like to know where he lived and what he did for work before he came here. And I would like to know if any of you can think of a person who would want to do him harm or some reason why this could have happened to him.’
The leader considered the series of questions and finally said, ‘It seems like you want to know everything.’
‘No,’ Brunetti said in a normal voice. ‘It’s not everything. I have no interest in how he got here or what sort of papers he had, not unless you think it might have something to do with his death. And I have no official interest in any of you or how you got here or what you do to make a living, so long as it has nothing to do with this man’s death.’
‘No official interest?’ the man asked.
‘As a policeman, I have no interest in those things.’
‘And as a man?’
‘As a man, I know nothing about any of you. I don’t know for certain where you come from or why you chose to come here, and I have no idea how long you intend to stay. I do know, however, that you are said not to be men who have come here to steal or rob or to cause trouble, but that you are here to work, if you can find work.’
‘That is a lot of information to have,’ the man said, ‘for someone who takes no interest.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Brunetti admitted. ‘But you have been here, you or colleagues of yours, for years, and so I know, or I think I know, some things.’ Quickly Brunetti added, ‘I don’t know about your culture, but ours is one where most information passes from mouth to mouth, and each time it passes, something is added to it or taken away from it, so each time it is passed on, the information is changed. So there is no way to know if what you are told, or what you think you know, is true.’ He watched to see that this long speech had been understood. ‘So I have no idea, really, if what I think I know about you, or your friends, is true or not,’ Brunetti said and finished his glass of water. When the man who had poured him the first glass of water stepped forward to refill it, he thanked him and said he had had enough.
The leader turned to the other men in the room and asked them something. While he waited to see what response they would make, Brunetti allowed himself to settle into the room and pay attention to it. He noticed, first, that it was cold, so cold that he was glad he had kept his coat on, and that, for all the disorder, it was clean. The linoleum of the floor was grey, but it appeared to have been recently swept. And from what he had been able to tell, his glass had been wiped as an act of respect, not of necessity. For a long time, none of them spoke, and then the young man in the too-big jeans said something. No one else said a word, and so he went on, his voice growing more heated as he spoke. At one point, he raised his left hand and pointed at Brunetti and Vianello while he said something that could have been ‘police’, but the word was buried in a long sentence that went on for some time and then ended abruptly on an angry note. During all of this, his right arm remained immobile at his side.
The leader spoke to him in a calmer tone, then placed his hand on his shoulder in a gesture that echoed the soothing tone of his voice. The young man, however, remained unpersuaded and let off another