The Memory Key: A Commissario Alec Blume Novel Read online

  Panebianco looked at Blume and nodded slowly in acknowledgement of the trust Blume was placing in him. ‘I need a magistrate if I am going to look in any detail.’

  ‘Start working on it. Pretend I am not suspended. And prep the magistrate. It’ll make you look good.’

  ‘As if this were my idea?’

  ‘You can have it if you want. It might not be right.’

  Panebianco shook his head. ‘She was the shooter? Or . . .’

  ‘Her boyfriend, Marco. He seems weak. He seems like the type who would do anything for her. Now, seeing as I was followed by a man in a Skoda, and Marco’s brother drives a Skoda, and may be inclined to look after his baby brother, or may even stand to gain some inheritance, I’d like you to look into it.’

  Panebianco was already tapping at his keyboard. ‘Meanwhile the Carabinieri and the investigating magistrate are following the political angle.’

  ‘Yes. With reason,’ said Blume. ‘After all, Manfellotto was almost certainly killed by some rogue elements of the service or on the orders of someone with things to hide. What they don’t realize, is that she was killed much as a nomad tribe might first try to help, but then finally kill an injured companion.’

  ‘Nomads do that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Blume. ‘It’s just a metaphor. Elephants, then. I’m sure some animals do that.’

  ‘Not elephants, I think . . .’ A photograph of a young man in a Carabiniere uniform appeared on Panebianco’s screen. ‘Not the world’s handsomest, is he?’ remarked Panebianco.

  ‘That’s Paolo Aquilone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Blume. ‘His younger brother got all the looks. Check him out, Rosario. Marco Aquilone.’

  ‘Why would I want to “check him out”?’

  ‘The sheer contrast.’ Blume was peering hard at the screen and ignoring Panebianco’s touchiness. ‘Hey, do you think he has curly hair underneath that cap?’

  Panebianco glanced at the screen. ‘It’s under a cap. You can’t tell.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Blume. ‘But the way the cap sits sort of high on his head, isn’t that the sign of curly hair?’

  ‘Just accept that you can’t tell from this picture. There will be others. I’ll get them for you.’

  ‘Thanks, Rosario.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. By the way, Principe has been replaced. Alice Saraceno has taken over.’

  This was not news to Blume, but he did not appreciate being one of the last to know officially. The least Principe could have done was a courtesy phone call.

  He resolved to pay Principe a visit later that day.

  Twenty minutes later, with printouts, his notebook, razor, phone charger, and another shirt in his bag, Blume headed towards the exit.

  ‘Wait!’ Panebianco called him over, and pointed to a picture of a young man with curly black hair in civvies. ‘Paolo Aquilone as he presents himself on Facebook. You were right about his hair.’

  It was him. The person who had followed him the other day. Blume gave Panebianco a slap on the back.

  ‘I get the feeling you’re making progress,’ said Panebianco.

  ‘With the case yes; with my life, not so much. The thing now is to get the case to work in my favour so I can get back in here to boss you around.’

  ‘I look forward to it. How’s Caterina?’

  ‘She’s fine. Better. Better off without me.’

  ‘You’ve split up?’

  ‘I’ve said too much.’

  ‘Well, if there is anything I can do.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Blume, ‘I no longer have access to my service car.’

  I was hoping you wouldn’t take me literally.’

  ‘Too late,’ said Blume, giving him a second slap on the back.

  Chapter 40

  Blume went thundering up the Via Nazionale bus lane in Panebianco’s Volkswagen Polo on his way to see, and hopefully surprise, his estate agent.

  When he walked in and demanded to see the ‘manager’, since he still could not remember Valentino’s real name, a young woman, whose fine features were ruined by pockmarked skin that she had tried to cover with too much makeup, told him that it was unreasonable for him to demand to see the manager if he did not remember his name. And anyhow, he was not a manager. He was an area director, if – she underscored the ‘if’, even making a little mark in the air with her finger – if they were talking about the same person.

  ‘You people post more flyers than takeaway pizzerias,’ said Blume. ‘I thought the idea was you smiled and played nice with any walk-in.’

  ‘We are a serious operation.’

  ‘And I am a serious customer. He’s in there, isn’t he?’

  ‘You still have not made it clear who you mean by “he”,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Smells of aftershave,’ said Blume. ‘Wears a Valentino suit two sizes too small, with wide lapels.’

  Her scornful demeanour vanished and was replaced by a smile that revealed a crooked eyetooth. She waved him closer as she lowered her voice, ‘I once asked him what make of aftershave he used, but he didn’t get the hint.’

  ‘I can tell him if you want.’

  She pulled back. ‘Oh no. Don’t say I said anything. His name is Mario Melandri.’

  ‘Thanks. Don’t worry. I won’t say you said anything.’ Blume made to go through the door.

  ‘Let me warn him.’

  ‘Nah, I prefer it this way.’ He made a point of barging through the door and Mario Melandri leapt up like a teenager caught masturbating. A glossy magazine fell from his lap, landing open on the floor and revealing a two-page spread of men in hard hats pointing at a high-rise building surrounded by yellow cranes. He smiled and wiped his palms on the front of his trousers. ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone.’

  Blume opened his bag, took out his charger, went over to a wall socket, and plugged in his phone, then turned his attention to the agent who was slowly sitting down again, his hand warily suspended above the phone on the desk. Blume unlatched and opened a window, and said, ‘First of all, where’s my stuff ?’

  ‘Mr . . . Blume?’

  ‘Commissioner Blume.’

  ‘In storage, Commissioner Blume.’ He seemed more pleased with himself for getting the name right than awed by the official title. ‘Do you need to see the receipts? Or do you need the address?’

  ‘You didn’t warn me beforehand. You just sent in your men, removed my stuff. In a single day. You had that room cleaned out within hours.’

  The agent beamed proudly.

  ‘The only people I know who are that efficient at emptying a flat are thieves,’ said Blume. ‘How much were you thinking of charging me for the privilege?’

  Melandri began searching though the papers on his desk that had started flapping in the wind from the window, but Blume could see they were just brochures and publicity. ‘It will be written down somewhere. I’ll have it brought in.’

  ‘You were going to deduct it directly from the rent you passed on to me, right?’

  ‘You agreed to removal charges when you signed.’

  ‘Fine. So, whatever you were going to charge me for the removal and the warehousing, you are now going to charge me half that amount. So, what is half the amount?’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘I know you can.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’

  ‘Not yet. But you were trying to pull a fast one on me, because you detected a certain distraction in me. That’s fine. But I am focused now.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘And now the good news is that when you finally get round to telling me that you have found a particularly good deal for me, and can cover the removal costs yourself, when you have done that,’ Blume raised his voice over the beginning of a protest, ‘I am going to turn right round and give you the money back again.’

  This gave Valentino pause, as he knew it would. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Trust me. It
’s all going to work out for you. We have agreed you are not charging me for the removal, just as I am not going to charge you for the damage to the goods that I and my police colleagues are sure to find, and now you are about to tell me the excellent warehousing deal.’

  ‘Three hundred euros a month.’

  ‘So that makes €150. That seems fair.’

  ‘No, that was already half price.’

  ‘The hell it was. €150. Even that strikes me as a bit steep.’

  ‘It’s air conditioned and damp proof. Speaking of which . . .’ he motioned at the window.

  ‘No,’ said Blume. ‘Keep it open. You smell far too strongly of aftershave. I bet it’s green. It smells green. Is it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said stiffly. ‘I do sometimes dab a little cologne on a handkerchief I keep in my pocket. I use it to freshen up if I am meeting clients. 4711.’

  ‘4711?’

  ‘That’s what the cologne is called: 4711.’

  ‘Well, as a client, I say lose the aftershave. Now, back to the storage issue, am I going to have to add the cost of mould to the damage already done?’

  ‘That’s not fair. There is no mould.’

  ‘I am sure I and an officer from the Vigili Urbani can find some. That stuff you removed from my parents’ study was pretty old.’

  ‘€250 a month.’

  ‘Not so much old as antique, and precious. Irreplaceable and invaluable in some cases.’

  ‘€200 a month for storage. Any lower, and I am running at a loss.’

  ‘Deal,’ said Blume. He stuck out his hand, forcing Valentino to take it. ‘That argument is completely closed now.’

  Finally, he sat down, leaned forward, and folded his arms on Valentino’s desk. ‘Now, a promise is a promise. I said you would be getting the money back, and seeing as I now know I am dealing with an honest man, I would like to rehire you to find me somewhere to live. Oh, ho! I see your face has brightened already. That’s great. Thing is, I don’t have much time to waste searching. Now I am already paying you €200 a month for storage, a vast sum that reduces the amount I can pay by a corresponding amount, but I have the rent from my place, which is €1,800. I need a decent apartment for a single person. It does not have to be central. If you put me in a trendy district full of students, I’ll break your legs. The place I want does not have to be large, it does not have to have a lift, but it must not be on the ground floor or basement. It must cost no more than €1,000 a month and it must be ready by tonight.’

  Valentino had taken a piece of headed notepaper and was writing down the demands like a hostage ordered to write the ransom note.

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Yes, and I am staying in this office until you find one.’

  ‘For that price, you’ll have to share.’

  ‘I am not sharing. That is a lot of money.’

  The insult to his professional knowledge gave Valentino courage. ‘If you want to be anywhere within the ring road, you need to share at that price. There is no room for dispute. I don’t know when the last time you rented was, but the market has changed. Unless you are prepared to make a long commute every morning.’

  Blume shrugged. ‘I can commute. You can get a lot of thinking done in a car.’

  ‘It would be easier if you were prepared to share.’

  ‘You expect me to spend years in miserable confinement with some poor bastard just to make this day a little easier for you?’

  ‘Look, can I close that window?’

  Blume relented. It was clear that if he wanted a flat immediately, he was going to have to make some compromises. His compromise did not, however, include allowing Valentino his freedom back until some sort of a solution had been found.

  There was a moment of rebellion from his hostage, which Blume defused easily enough with a ready lie.

  ‘I’ve checked up on you.’ He paused. It really would be more useful if he could remember the man’s name. ‘Your record isn’t perfectly clean, is it?’

  ‘That charge was dropped.’

  He had guessed right. Estate agents bullied old people and browbeat the young. Valentino was bound to have forced some ghastly remainderman deals on old women. As his old friend Paoloni used to say, everyone’s a creep.

  ‘I need to make phone calls. A lot of phone calls.’

  ‘Make them.’

  ‘I can’t. Not with you sitting there.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Blume.

  ‘It’s like some people can’t piss when there are others around? I can’t make phone calls.’

  ‘Do your lies humiliate you? I’ll sit outside the door. I have an appointment, but it’s quite late in the evening. So you have all day.’

  He returned to reception, pulled out his book, and started to read.

  He read a chapter on the amazing plasticity of children’s brains, which he found depressing. As far as he could make out, his brain and life had probably started their downward spiral from his eighth birthday. By lunchtime, he had learned a sort of nursery rhyme, thanks to which he now knew all the kings and queens of England from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II, though to what end he was hard pushed to say. He phoned Principe, and got no reply. He went over the ten presidents. Yes, they were still pointlessly there. He felt restless. Now it was a real book he was dealing with, he was able to hop to the appendix, where he finally learned the Memory Key.

  He decided to go out for a late lunch, by now trusting Valentino and the girl to work hard on his behalf even without his glowering presence. When he returned, he called Principe in vain, tried to flirt a bit with the receptionist, who subsequently vanished for an hour. He spent another while in the company of Fisher who had a ‘sure-fire’ trick for remembering the periodic table. Fisher’s method relied on imagining a table, colours, images, and faces based on a peg-system story that read like a bad trip on magic mushrooms. Besides, he already knew all the elements, though not in the right order, thanks to the Tom Lehrer song that his father not only used to sing in the shower, but also frequently played on the record player.

  There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,

  And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium?. . .

  The hardest bit was at the end.

  And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc, and rhodium

  And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium?. . .

  He could hear Lehrer’s voice, but when he tried it, his tongue always tripped between ‘neon’ and ‘radon’.

  Valentino opened his office door. ‘Are you singing?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Blume. ‘And waiting.’

  ‘Well, you may end your song, Commissioner.’ Ceremoniously, he ushered Blume in, went round, and sat behind his desk, and carefully brought his hands together as if he were protecting a small delicate object.

  ‘We have found you a place.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘€900 per month, which is an incredible bargain. Especially since it’s in the Borgo. Via dei Tre Pupazzi.’

  Blume sat back and waited for the ‘but’.

  ‘But I just couldn’t get you one that was immediately available.’

  Blume knew he has been asking too much for a flat in one day, but he wasn’t keen on going back to the lonely hotel on Via Aurelia. ‘How long?’

  ‘Eight days.’ He flinched slightly, though Blume had not stirred. ‘It’s the best I could do. The best I can do.’

  ‘You find anything else?’

  A shake of the head, a setting of the mouth in a frown of defiance. He had pushed Valentino far enough.

  ‘OK,’ said Blume. ‘I’ll think about it. Let me use your computer a moment.’ He found the number of the hotel and phoned them to book another week. They quoted a price per room that was €10 lower than he had been paying. One night free. Wonderful. He needed a toothbrush, underwear and, come what may of it, he needed to get his clothes out of Caterina’s flat. And he also needed to find out why Pri
ncipe was not answering his damned phone.

  Chapter 41

  The sun had come out. The white chapel in the corner of the piazzetta was almost blinding. The gleaming cobbles shone like obsidian, and the potted plants around Principe’s building seemed to have been reinvigorated. The rain had rinsed the scooters and cars bright and new.

  The building itself had benefited less from the general cleansing. The upper floors were still the colour of dried blood, the lower floors a sickly yellow and grey. The rain, delayed and partially absorbed by the weeds growing on the roof, was still seeping over the edge, sloppy and muddy. The wind caused the windowpanes to flex just enough to shift the light and give the illusion of a figure moving about behind them.

  He took out his mobile and called Principe for the umpteenth time. It went straight to voicemail, as he now knew it would. He called the number of the apartment he was looking up at, and let it ring. Finally, he went to the front door and pressed the column of intercom buttons starting at the top and working his way down. Two or three voices, querulous, suspicious, indifferent, responded, and he simply said police, open, and they did. He walked up to the top floor. He went over and started hammering on Principe’s door, ringing the bell and cursing him. Eventually the neighbour opposite poked out his head.

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  Blume took his finger off the bell, and turned round. ‘That depends how you want to look at it. But I’d say no, there’s no problem. Except maybe for you.’

  ‘Me? What have I done?’

  ‘Nothing. In fact, it might be to your advantage if you play your cards right. When’s your next rent due?’

  The man looked at Blume, then quickly shut the door.

  ‘Don’t bother calling the police!’ Blume shouted after him. ‘We’re here already!’

  He stopped thumping, and stood quietly in front of the closed door, then took a few steps back, and sat down, his knees seeming to give way at the last moment. He pulled out his phone and called Panebianco.

  ‘Rosario, I’m just round the corner. I need you to come with a few people, fire brigade, and an ambulance, though what we probably need here is a mortuary van.’