The dock office at Vetro Bay smells like diesel, wet rope and the coffee Bepi Salvi makes by boiling it twice, and at six in the morning it is the only warm room on the quay. You have been in the family's house three days. This is the first time you have been let down to the water.
Nicolò Nardini is at the desk with the crate list in front of him and an unlit cigarette hanging off his lip. He does not look up when you come in. He pushes the page across the desk with two fingers and taps the third column.
"Count it,"
he says.
"That column is what the customs office believes is on the water. The next one is what is actually on the water. The difference is why my father owns this quay and your father did not."
Behind him the window is grey with lake light and a crane is turning over the cold store. He waits, cigarette still unlit, while you read the numbers, and when you look up he is watching your face and not the page.
"Forty seconds,"
he says.
"The last man who sat in that chair took ten minutes and got it wrong."
He stands, takes the cigarette out of his mouth and puts it in his breast pocket, unlit, which is the closest thing to a compliment this office has produced all week.
"From now on you bring the coffee. Bepi's is a crime. Friday at seven you come down and I show you the cold store, and you tell me what my father's business looks like from the inside."
He holds the office door open and stands aside until you walk through it, which is not a request.