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with me. I think there is something so beautiful about simplicity.”
    Brun stayed silent.
    “I’m guessing you are not so turned on by simplicity, Professor? What you do probably involves a range of complexities, a mixture of complex actions and complex outcomes.” Beltrano took a long drag from his cigar, exhaling slowly.
    Brun shifted uncomfortably in his seat, the cigar giving off a stream of smoke from his hand. Beltrano sighed and rolled up his sleeves; he took another long drag, “That’s where we differ, we are looking for different things, I look to take the complexities out of life, that’s my job, to take away any sort of complexities and find simplicity.”
    “I’m assuming in your analogy you are taking complexities as lies, and simplicity as truth? Officer, surely someone in your position must know that truth is rarely simple.”
    Beltrano took a moment for thought, sucking and billowing his cheeks in quick puffs. “No, that is where we disagree, Professor, truth is always simple, solid, stable, unchangeable. People try to complicate the truth, but it never alters, the truth remains the truth, to put it in your terms the truth does not react with anything around it. You can hide it, but not change it.”
    Brun sat forward in his chair and loosened his blue-patterned tie. His grey hair was thinning on top and the skin around his eyes had deep crow’s feet, but those eyes shone with vitality. “Are you insinuating that I am lying? Perhaps you are jaded by your profession, Officer.”
    “Oh I most certainly am, yes, but you’d be surprised how much being jaded , as you put it, helps to sharpen my instinct.”
    Delvechi let out a yawn and leant against the wall.
    “Officer Beltrano, we have been over and over things this evening, I have nothing left to add.” Brun took a long inhale and blew a cloud of smoke toward the floor. “Perhaps it is you that is now complicating things.”
    Beltrano smiled and removed a flake of tobacco from his lip. He chuckled and shook his head. “Touché, Signor.”
    “You are wrong though; I celebrate and revere simplicity as much as you apparently do. Take a diamond. Did you know, Officer Beltrano, that chemically and structurally a diamond is pure carbon, nothing more, pure carbon. Do you think diamonds are beautiful?”
    “Sure, doesn’t everyone? Most women gauge their life by how many they have,” Delvechi interrupted.
    “Exactly.” Brun stood up and placed the cigar in his mouth. He walked to the desk and tipped out a small plastic organiser filled with stationary. He then picked up a pencil. “Did you know that the graphite in this pencil is also pure carbon, simple, pure carbon?”
    Beltrano tilted his head. “So you are telling me that diamonds and that pencil are identical?”
    “On the surface they are, yes, both carbon. Simple. But a diamond is the hardest mineral known to man, a ten on the Mohs scale. Yet a pencil …” he snapped the pencil with one hand. “Graphite is one of the softest minerals at less than one on the scale.”
    Beltrano rested against the window ledge and tapped ash into Delvechi’s empty coffee mug.
    Brun continued, “So if they are both carbon how can they be so different? Complexities, Officer Beltrano, the clue is in little complexities.” Brun held up the pencil. “On a molecular level graphite is structurally very different to a diamond, the carbon is organised in layers, easy to break, whereas a diamond has a three-dimensional arrangement of molecules packed tightly together, adding real strength. So you see, complexity is often inescapable, even if it seems simple on the outside.”
    Beltrano gave a long exhale, coughed gently and ran his fingers over his jaw. After a long silence he grabbed the spare chair and placed it opposite Brun, sitting down with a loud groan. “I swear the bed in my hotel is made out of concrete,” he let out a sigh. “Professor, you are a very intelligent man and I respect that, but