The Memory Key: A Commissario Alec Blume Novel Read online

  ‘You could quit.’

  ‘So could you. You have money coming your way from that woman, Emma.’

  ‘We are both suddenly well off,’ she said.

  ‘Wait till the taxman has a look, and the lawyers, and the Finance Police in the case of Principe’s properties.’

  ‘You get money, but still no optimism.’

  ‘It comes from the death of a friend, and it has not arrived, and I am not sure I want it anyway.’

  ‘Being wealthy is not going to change you in the slightest,’ said Caterina with a laugh. It was the first time she had laughed in days.

  She pushed the cushion away. If he had walked over, and lain down beside her and put his head on her stomach, then perhaps everything could be resolved, but she could already feel the return of subdued hostility, basically his default mode. She knew he was angry at being abandoned. It was what made him tick, and Principe had just overwound his mainspring. ‘It’s OK to be angry,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t give me that psychobabble. I don’t need someone to tell me it’s OK to be angry, any more than I need someone to tell me it’s OK to be hungry, or OK to take a shit.’

  ‘Forget I spoke.’

  ‘That wasn’t aimed at you.’

  ‘Sure it was.’

  ‘No,’ said Blume. ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘Well, then don’t lob fragmentation grenades into conversations and not expect unintended victims.’

  ‘You’re right.’ He fell silent for a moment, then aimed an idle kick at his suitcase on the floor, and opened his hands. ‘Also, I’m really sorry about what happened . . . I mean the loss, the miscarriage.’

  He paused and looked at her, and she covered herself with the cushion again. ‘I should have been there for that,’ he said, though without much conviction in his tone. ‘I should have been there for you, but I especially should have been there for that. But I wasn’t, just as I wasn’t here for Elia, and so I think it’s for the best. I am obviously not cut out to be a good father to anyone.’

  Her thoughts exactly, but now that he had voiced them, she was not so sure. If he was capable of acknowledging the problem, maybe he could fix it. She resolved to tell him the truth. She opened her mouth to tell him, and out came different, slyer words. ‘You should have visited, true, but the accident was hardly your fault, was it?’

  This was his chance. If she could not depend on his intellectual honesty, then at least she could hope in his investigative intelligence, which surely told him that she would have found out by now. All he had to do was launch into an explanation as to why he went to subvert her witness. She would allow him to be as self-absolving as he wanted. She wouldn’t agree with his motivations, and she did not even expect his defence to be anything but self-serving, but she would be happy to hear him tell her the truth at least about his actions. They could maybe build on that.

  If he told her the truth, then she might return the favour. The abruption was under control, they said. There had been no miscarriage. She would almost certainly be able to bring the pregnancy to its full nine-month term.

  That was half the truth.

  The other half was that she had scheduled a termination of the pregnancy for the following morning.

  She could not find the courage to say, ‘I am going to abort your child because I don’t trust you’, but she did have the courage to look straight at him. She was shouting so hard inside her head at him that she felt sure the thought waves had to cross the room and make him see what was at stake. She prayed for him to make the right decision, to look her in the eye and begin his next sentence apologetically, as he shamefully disclosed his pig-headed betrayal that had put her in hospital: ‘As a matter of fact’, or ‘Look, there is something I need to tell you’, or ‘Listen, about that barber . . .’

  For God’s sake, Alec, she thought. You think the hospital discharged a woman who had just miscarried after an accident? Look at me sitting here, flushed, plump, my skin shining like butter beneath the bruising, my legs already swollen, my hair lank, my breasts larger. You have been looking at me suspiciously since you came in. You know, even if you don’t know you know.

  ‘Actually,’ began Blume. ‘There is something – excuse me.’ He pulled his telephone out of his pocket.

  ‘Don’t answer,’ she said.

  ‘I have to, it’s Questore De Rossi.’

  The conversation was one-sided with Blume replying only in monosyllables. But as she watched the colour draining from his face and his knuckles whitening as they clutched the phone, she realized it could not be good news. Then he started pacing, which meant he was nervous but thinking.

  The questore said something else, and any traces of deference in his voice vanished. ‘Do as you fucking see fit, sir’, were his final words.

  He shook his head in a gesture of disbelief. ‘Hippy bitch.’

  ‘And who might this latest object of your hatred be?’

  ‘Magistrate Alice Saraceno. She ordered a search of Pitagora’s villa this morning. She must have given the order while she was on her way over to Principe’s. Apparently, she thinks she can play me like that.’

  ‘Why now?’

  ‘She got a tip-off. Someone phoned up the news desk of Il Paese Sera and asked to speak to the crime reporter, and told him to pass on a message to the investigating magistrate in the Manfellotto–Fontana cases. The caller did not specify which magistrate, which may have been a tactic . . .’

  He was beginning to speak to himself rather than her.

  ‘What was the message, Alec?’

  ‘Oh, right. That the murder weapon was at Pitagora’s.’

  ‘And was it?’

  ‘Apparently. Hidden in the garden. Captain Zezza conducted the search in person. They found it cleaned, stripped down, and wiped. But of course that midget De Rossi is furious, because he took a political punt on Pitagora’s innocence, and me. As if I am the one who betrayed him.’

  ‘So you were wrong?’

  Blume crossed his arms and scowled at the floor. ‘It has to be a set-up.’

  ‘Not wrong, then?’

  ‘I can’t say for sure,’ said Blume.

  ‘If De Rossi gambled on you, he should be prepared to take the consequences when he loses,’ said Caterina. ‘I did.’

  Chapter 43

  The man had a head like a round-nose bullet, and it was as deeply tanned as his arms, face and, Blume imagined, his whole body. This was not the sort of man to have a bikini line, or whatever the male equivalent was. He had even gone to the trouble of oiling and shining his head to give it a coppery sheen. It looked hard and impermeable, as if it had never had a hair follicle. The skin over the skull was taut and youthful, the hand he offered Blume powdery dry, the handshake firm, hard, and decisive. He was wearing cargo pants and a white polo shirt that set off the darkness of his arms.

  ‘Mr Aquilone? I was looking for your son, Marco,’ said Blume.

  By way of reply, the man stepped back and ushered him inside the small apartment, and led him straight into the compact kitchen, whose surfaces gleamed and where not so much as a teaspoon had been left in sight. They sat at a steel-topped table that would not have looked out of place in a morgue, in the middle of which was a white bowl full of green apples.

  ‘Coffee?’ Mr Aquilone slid open a narrow drawer and extracted a capsule, which he slotted into an espresso machine. He fetched a square white cup. The machine hummed electronically and the coffee trickled down.

  ‘Long or short?’

  ‘Ordinary – short. Whatever.’

  He handed Blume the cup. ‘No sugar, I’m afraid. No milk either. Lactose intolerance. Anyhow, it spoils the taste. That’s Illy coffee. The guy’s a Communist, but he makes good coffee. So, what rank are you?’

  ‘Commissioner.’

  ‘Excellent. What has Marco done?’

  Blume sipped his oily coffee. ‘You have another son, I believe?’

  ‘Paolo. Yes. But you are not here for him, are you?’<
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  Blume ignored the question. ‘What makes you think Marco is in trouble?’

  The man folded his arms, and Blume noticed a white line snaking across his forearm. He caught Blume’s gaze and flexed his triceps causing the scar to whiten still further. ‘An accident with phosphorous. Night training with idiots.’

  It was hard to make out the man’s age. ‘Are you still in the Carabinieri?’

  ‘No. Retired. Two former colleagues and I run a gym now.’

  ‘That going well?’

  ‘What the fuck do you care, Commissioner? You’re here to question or arrest Marco, but I have not seen him in several days. If I did, I’d hand him in, no problem.’

  ‘If I were here to arrest him, I wouldn’t have come on my own.’

  ‘Maybe you have backup around the corner. I don’t know how these things work. I was never on civilian duty.’

  ‘First Tuscania parachute regiment, you left in 2002.’

  Curt nod.

  ‘But you must know something about civilian policing from your other son.’

  ‘You mean my first son, Paolo.’

  ‘Yes, him. He’s a vice brigadiere.’

  ‘In Naples. A hard posting. Still, not quite as hard as Iraq.’

  ‘He was back in Rome recently?’

  ‘He visits me regularly. Never stays more than one night when he comes, so he is not a burden. He’s a good son.’

  ‘Is Marco a good son?’

  ‘If you’ve finished with that cup, give it to me, so I can wash it.’

  He picked up Blume’s coffee cup and carried it over to the sink, where he held it under a jet of hot water until not a germ could be left on it. He wiped away the drops with kitchen towels and dropped them into one of four differentiated bins that slid neatly from under the sink.

  ‘Do you mind my saying that you don’t seem surprised or upset that Marco’s in trouble? You seem remarkably uninterested in what it may be about?’

  ‘I wish he had got into trouble earlier.’ The words were directed at the sink. ‘It might have done him some good. As for what it’s about, I am assuming something squalid that a father would not want to hear about.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Drugs, blackmail, corruption of some sort. Maybe he was selling exam papers. Maybe he’s been caught in bad company.’

  ‘He mentioned nothing of a murdered girl?’

  ‘No, he did not.’ Marco’s father finally turned around. ‘Are we talking about a murder case?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Blume. ‘Let me ask you, Mr Aquilone, do you know Olivia, Marco’s girlfriend?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve met her.’

  ‘She had a cousin called Sofia.’

  Marco’s father shook his head. ‘I’m not saying she didn’t, but I know nothing about her.’

  ‘Really? Not even the name?’

  ‘No. I mean he might have said something once, but I doubt it. He and I don’t talk much, you see. He’s more of a mama’s boy.’

  ‘I thought she was dead,’ said Blume.

  ‘She’s not dead! Or she wasn’t last time I heard, which was a while ago, I admit. She left us when Marco was 7. So now you know what sort of woman she was.’

  ‘Not really. What sort of woman was she?’

  ‘The sort who could walk out on her children, leave her husband, a soldier, with a mother’s work. It’s odd you should come here so ill-informed of the facts.’

  ‘It’s odd your son never mentioned the death of his girlfriend’s cousin. Do you have a weapons collection, Mr Aquilone?’

  ‘No, I do not. Weapons are tools for killing. When you have no more need to kill, you have no more need for weapons.’

  ‘Did you kill anyone in Iraq?’

  ‘Not in Iraq. I shot at a UCK militiaman in Macedonia in 1998. He went down, but the kill was never confirmed by anyone. That’s it.’

  ‘No more shooting after that?’

  ‘I like to keep my hand in, but I do not keep weapons. I visit a range, and the weapons are stored there.’

  ‘So you never even heard of Sofia?’

  ‘Like I said, we don’t talk much.’

  ‘How about Olivia?’

  ‘As I said, I met her, all right.’

  ‘You don’t like her?’

  ‘She is too much woman for someone like my son.’

  ‘Your son is a good-looking kid.’

  ‘He should be. He spends all day grooming himself.’

  Blume glanced at the muscle-toned sunlamped man in front of him and said nothing, but he felt his eye flicker in contempt, and it was picked up immediately.

  ‘I look after my body. My son grooms himself like a girl. As for the rest of it, I have no idea what goes on in his head. Now you come here talking about dead cousins and asking me if I have any weapons, which, I repeat, I do not. Whatever he has done, you can be dammed sure I am not complicit in it. We are strangers to one another.’

  ‘Yet he lives here.’

  ‘When it suits him.’

  ‘Did you ever take him to that firing range?’

  ‘When he was a kid, we used to go out to my father’s place near Todi. There was a field there, and my father had some old weapons. He was a damned good shot.’

  ‘Who, your father or Marco?’

  ‘Marco. My father was a lousy shot for an Alpino. A lousy father, too, come to that.’

  ‘So your father was also in the military.’

  ‘Killed Greeks and Albanians in the Second World War, or at least shot more or less in their direction. He was a good engineer, so he says, but never learned to shoot straight. But I am not one to speak ill of the dead. Marco was a better shot than his brother, Paolo, though you would hardly believe it.’

  ‘Why would I not believe it?’

  ‘Paolo chose a police career. Marco chose to become what he has become.’

  ‘You don’t like him any more?’ asked Blume.

  Aquilone folded his hands over his forearms.

  ‘But you did like him in the past, when you went out shooting in the Umbrian countryside, didn’t you? Do you miss your son, then, Mr Aquilone?’

  ‘I think you had better leave now.’

  ‘Where is he? Where is Marco?’

  ‘I have no idea. Like I said. I would hand him over at once if I thought he had done something wrong.’

  ‘What about Paolo?’

  ‘Paolo would not do something wrong, so I would never have to make that painful decision.’

  ‘You misunderstand,’ said Blume. ‘Would Paolo hand over his younger brother?’

  ‘I think you have asked enough questions, Commissioner.’

  ‘Just one more request.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Call Paolo.’

  ‘Now?’ He slipped a phone out of his cargo pants.

  ‘No, not like that,’ said Blume. ‘Like this: “Paolo! Come in here. We’re in the kitchen!” Like that.’

  ‘I think you are completely . . .’

  A well-built young man with irregular features and curly hair, stepped over the threshold.

  ‘It’s OK, Papà. I’ll take it from here.’

  ‘Paolo,’ said Blume. The man in front of him had all the same handsome features of his younger brother, except they looked like they had been thrown on to his face haphazardly. The fleshy lips were close to the nose, and the eyes were large, but close together. Marco’s high cheekbones were there, too, but looked like injuries. One of his ears was cauliflowered. His hands were large and powerful.

  ‘Papà, really, it’s all right.’

  Blume turned round to see the father slowly drying a large bread-knife, his eyes fixed on Blume. Slowly he put the knife down, laying it on the counter and covering it with a cloth with the care of a priest cleaning and putting away the communion chalice. Then he left the room, making no noise with his footsteps.

  ‘The car you followed me in is parked outside,’ said Blume. ‘No work for the Carabinieri in Naples?
’

  ‘I am off duty. Back on this evening. I am leaving soon.’

  ‘I won’t be stopping you, I hope,’ said Blume. ‘Tell me about Marco.’

  ‘My brother has some issues with his sexuality.’ Paolo glanced nervously behind him, then went over, and closed the kitchen door. ‘He is not ready to come to terms with it. This makes him behave oddly.’

  ‘What sort of issues?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Issues. I look after him, but he’s secretive. Yes, I followed you because I was worried he had done something – he wouldn’t talk about it.’

  ‘Do you think he is capable of killing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Of course you would say that,’ said Blume. ‘They seem to have found a rifle in Pitagora’s garden. The rifle, probably. Anyone could have put it there.’

  ‘Exactly, anyone at all.’

  ‘Your brother is one of Pitagora’s students.’

  ‘I don’t believe he has ever been to Pitagora’s private residence.’

  ‘No? Any idea where he is right now, by the way. I was hoping to catch him here.’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘A lot of Carabinieri have passed through Pitagora’s place in recent times. One more in uniform might not have been noticed. You could have dropped a rifle into the grass, no problem.’

  ‘My uniform is in a locker in Naples. I brought no rifle into any garden.’

  ‘Relax. I want to teach you a trick for remembering numbers. Are you listening?’

  Paolo’s screwed his ugly face into a pained expression. ‘I don’t have much time.’

  ‘Sit down, listen, and don’t answer me back.’

  Paolo scowled, but he sat down at the kitchen table. Blume removed the knife from the counter and placed it between them.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘It made me nervous, behind my back. Do you know what a vowel is?’

  ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’

  ‘You’re a Carabiniere,’ said Blume spreading his hands. ‘You must know the jokes. Anyhow, the vowels don’t count. You can use them however you please.’

  ‘What vowels don’t count?’

  ‘All of them. OK, so a zero is a S or a Z. Got that?’

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

  ‘When you see a zero, think of an S or a Z instead. Then you can add some vowels. So you see a zero, you think Z and then maybe the vowel O – twice if you want. What word do you have?’