The Fatal Touch Read online

  Caterina realized the city was coming to life. She could hear vehicles moving down Lungotevere Farnesina, rushing while they still could. Shutters had opened, and coffee smells had percolated down to the piazza. Radios were playing and front doors were opening, and people were trying to step out into the piazza from the surrounding buildings, then stopping as a uniformed policeman yelled at them. Hardly any of them stepped back inside, but their not moving forward and intruding on the crime scene was accepted as a fair compromise.

  “It’s morning, Inspector,” said Blume.

  “Good morning, Commissioner,” she said. She should phone her son who woke up early, even on Saturdays. Especially on Saturdays.

  “This is the beginning of chaos,” said Blume. “And I want you to do your best to manage it, Inspector. You have eight uniformed policemen plus yourself. Not me, not Panebianco, nor any of the technicians. We can’t help. Sovrintendente Grattapaglia will be here soon. Let him show you the ropes. He’s got years of experience at crowd control, setting up the house-to-house interviews, picking out likely witnesses, all that sort of stuff. He’s known to be grumpy in the mornings, mind, so don’t annoy him. Every civilian you talk to is going to have an unassailable reason for having to traverse the area, so don’t talk to them. There are going to be doctors on call, surgeons on their way to save a child’s life, politicians with connections on their way to an important vote, a surprising amount of people working for essential services, engineers on their way to rescue old women locked in elevators, teachers giving exams, lawyers with cases, judges with sentences, criminals and rebels who want to compromise the scene on principle. You’ve got your work cut out for you here. Think you can do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I bet you the price of breakfast you can’t stem the flow for more than twenty-five minutes. But that’s all we need, or, better, that’s all we can expect to get. You can’t close down a place like this for long.”

  Caterina would have preferred to be invited to do the walk-through with Blume and Panebianco than to be sent off to do sentry duty, but she did as ordered. First she walked in a circle staying close to the fronts of the buildings around the piazza, telling people to step back inside the doorways, but it was like a game of Whac-a-mole. As soon as she passed, they reappeared. She went over to a group of three policemen standing at the corner of Via della Pelliccia, where they had stretched a piece of crime scene tape across the lane, tying it to a no-entry road sign on one side, and a leg of one of the bar chairs on the other. The bartender, who had put out his chairs and tables, was now inserting a patio umbrella pole into a metal base.

  She called out to the nearest policeman, the younger of the two she had seen in the dark, and instructed him to walk counterclockwise around the piazza, making sure people stayed indoors. “Don’t talk to any of them, just order them in,” she told him. He lingered for some time, on the verge of refusing, but eventually set off at a very leisurely pace. She turned to the barman who had unfolded the vinyl beer umbrella with Tuborg written on it. “That can wait.”

  The bartender looked skywards, then fitted the umbrella pole into its base. “I know. The sun doesn’t reach here until two. But customers like these umbrellas to be up. Makes the place more visible.”

  “You’re setting up your bar in the middle of a crime scene. I said it can wait. Step inside your bar, please, and keep it closed until we say you can open. Is that clear?”

  “You want me to send out the two policemen having a cappuccino, then?” said the bartender, and opened the umbrella.

  “Yes, I do.”

  The bartender put his hand against the door jamb and called out, “Agenti, you’re wanted.”

  Di Ricci came out, wiping milk foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. Rospo followed, holding a cornetto pastry. Caterina pointed at him. “You. Go plant yourself twenty meters down Via del Cipresso. Over there.” She pointed. “That way you can stop people before they even get to the piazza. Di Ricci, take up position there at the corner of Vicolo de’ Renzi.”

  Rospo softly tore his pastry in two, and inserted half into one side of his mouth, and stood there, cheek bulging and jaw moving, looking at her.

  “It’s a direct order from Blume,” she added.

  He shrugged, pushed the other half of the pastry into the other side of his mouth, and moved off.

  Caterina had made two rounds, glancing back into the middle of the piazza where Blume and Panebianco were moving up and down in a narrow grid pattern around the area where Rospo said the body had been found. The coroner’s unit was zipping up the black body bag, the last technician was taking down a video camera, when she walked into a short man in a gray suit who had gone out of his way to block her path.

  “I have diplomatic immunity,” said the man in the suit.

  He moved sideways to stay in front of her. His accent was funny and he smelled slightly of balsam and moss. He was holding out a plastic-covered card. A miniature elongated silver cross enclosed in a circle was pinned just below the buttonhole of his lapel. “The Embassy of the Kingdom of Spain to the Holy See,” he explained. “I need to go to my office now.”

  Caterina glanced at her watch. It showed 7:12. The coroners had their shiny zinc stretcher propped up beside the black bag, all ready to go.

  “I think we have just about finished, Ambasciatore,” she said. “Maybe if you waited five more minutes?”

  “I have already waited long enough. I have been very patient. And I am not ambassador rank. Yet.” So saying, he stepped past her and traversed three meters of crime scene territory. Keeping her hands at her sides, Caterina moved forward to intercept the Spaniard. Finding her in front of him again, he continued to move forward, pushing her breasts with his chest, touching her inner thigh twice with his knee.

  Caterina looked behind her and saw other residents from the building, waiting to get out, watching the drama playing out in front of them. Then one or two broke cover, looking left, right, left, as if about to cross a busy street, and walking quickly, leaning into the graffiti-stained walls as if this would stop them from being noticed. Caterina spun around looking for help. Blume was standing in the sun, Panebianco in the shade. She spotted Sovrintendente Grattapaglia, who must have just arrived.

  “Wait, please. I’ll see what I can do,” she told the diplomat. “I’ll get the most senior policeman here to talk to you. But in the meantime, will you please return to your place by the front door? I’m sure the Commissioner will escort you personally out of the area.”

  The Church diplomat snorted, but turned back. The other fugitives had been halted by the policeman at the far end of Via della Pelliccia, and were receiving unsympathetic treatment. Good.

  She had no intention of doing anything for the diplomat. All she had to do was make sure he stayed where he was for five minutes, maybe ten. She moved over to Grattapaglia quickly.

  “Get over there. Don’t let that guy through. He’s a troublemaker. Ten minutes. Tell him I’ve gone to get someone important for him.”

  Grattapaglia opened his mouth to say something.

  “No,” said Caterina. “Don’t make me repeat myself. The Commissioner put me in charge of this situation, and now I am giving you an order. Mess this up, and you’ll be answering to him, not me.”

  Grattapaglia seemed to be about to say something, then dismissed his thought, or her, as unworthy. He hacked up mucus and swallowed it, then ambled over in the direction of the protesting diplomat.

  Voices from the increasingly large group of people gathered at the middle door of the pink building called out their impatience, “Aho, guardie? How much longer do we have to wait?”

  “Ehi, annamo.”

  “Anvedi ‘sta ficona che ce fa aspettà.’ ”

  “Macché ficona.”

  She went over to them. “Can you people wait five minutes? I promise that’s all it will take. Anyone who needs an official note for being late to work can contact me, this is my card.” She handed o
ut her business card and three or four hands took one. She added, “Also, if anyone heard or saw anything at around two last night, please call that number.”

  “Who is it?” asked a woman who was restraining her son from running about by holding onto the schoolbag on his back.

  “It’s that English drunk,” said another.

  Caterina singled out the speaker. She was a thin woman made up entirely of wrinkles, and she was standing there in a blue dressing gown, brown stockings, and white hospital clogs.

  “How do you know that?” asked Caterina.

  “Hah!” said the woman, looking around for approbation and, indeed, getting some. “I was right, see? I live on the fourth floor,” said the old woman. “I can see clearly from there. I recognized his white beard. He won’t be singing any more loud songs late at night now, will he?”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “What would I know his name for?”

  Caterina took down the triumphant little woman’s name, and asked if there was anyone else about who might know the man’s name.

  “None of my friends,” she declared, wagging her finger.

  Caterina stepped out of the doorway and looked over at Blume and Panebianco. They were still there, but the coroners were closing the doors on the wagon. It was almost over.

  She could call Elia any time now. She reached into her bag for her phone, but before she got to it she heard a commotion to her left.

  Grattapaglia had just pulled his nightstick and truncheoned the Spanish diplomat to the ground.

  Chapter 4

  “Snatching his diplomat’s card and throwing it to the ground might have been mistaken for pique, but you ground it under your heel,” said Blume. “Classy.”

  Sovrintendente Grattapaglia smiled broadly. It took him a long time to realize his cheerfulness was not being reciprocated, and Caterina squirmed in her seat, mortified on his behalf, wondering how he had failed to see the anger in Blume’s face. Eventually and with defiant slowness, the Sovrintendente allowed his smile to fade, then shrugged, and said, “I didn’t know he was a diplomat.”

  Blume’s face showed a mixture of contempt and puzzlement, as if he was coming to accept but still struggling to fathom the depths of Grattapaglia’s idiocy. For one who had so casually turned to violence a short while ago, Grattapaglia seemed oddly defenseless now, like a huge child in big trouble. She felt bad for him, and resolved to speak up. “Before the Sovrintendente assaulted . . . I mean, before the incident, that diplomat—”

  Grattapaglia jerked his index finger at her, as if in warning. She stopped speaking, trying to understand why he didn’t want her backing. Keeping his finger pointed at her, Grattapaglia turned to Blume and said, “You know as well as I do, it’s her fucking fault. She shouldn’t even have been there if she can’t do her job.”

  Caterina felt her eyes widen and her mouth drop open. She was aware of it, but couldn’t help herself.

  “I’d like you to explain that to me,” said Blume.

  “Explain what? It’s obvious. She didn’t warn me. She just said troublemaker, like that covered it. If I had known he was an ambassador, you think I’d have done that? I told you she wasn’t ready for fieldwork.”

  Blume mock-reprimanded Caterina. “You didn’t think to warn him not to batter a member of the public in front of three dozen hostile witnesses in the middle of a crime scene?”

  “So I made a mistake,” said Grattapaglia. “But she should have given me a heads-up.”

  As Blume’s face darkened, Grattapaglia adopted a less aggressive tone, somewhere between conciliatory and plaintive. “All I’m saying is she doesn’t even lower herself to speak to me.”

  “You mean she hasn’t ever come to you looking for advice?”

  “No. Never.”

  “On what, Salvatore, on how to deal with obstreperous diplomats with direct connections to our administrators?”

  Grattapaglia slumped back into his seat, defeated.

  The three of them were seated outside a bar on Via Giulia, having crossed the Sisto Bridge. Blume was buying her breakfast because, he insisted, she had won the bet and managed to keep order in the piazza for twenty-five minutes. He was being kind. She had fallen short by ten minutes.

  Grattapaglia had ordered peach juice pulp for himself. He now poured the contents of his glass into the cavity behind his bottom teeth, and held the liquid under his tongue as he stared across the table at Caterina.

  “Listen, Salvatore,” said Blume. “There is no way we can keep your name out of this, or pretend you were never even there, which might have been one solution. You deserve whatever you get. The thing is, I don’t. You know this is going to be my discipline problem once that diplomat makes his complaint.”

  Sovrintendente Grattapaglia swallowed the thick juice and puckered his face as if it had been lemon. “Yes, I see that.”

  “We’ll see what we can do to stop this snowballing,” said Blume. “Won’t we, Inspector Mattiola? We’re going to close ranks on this.” He looked at Caterina, who nodded unenthusiastically. She was thinking of Elia. She had called him on the way over the bridge, surreptitiously sliding out her cell phone as Blume and Grattapaglia walked a few paces ahead. Elia reminded her she had promised to watch him play in a five-a-side against San Gaspare del Bufalo that morning, the only team they had a chance of beating in the under-10 tournament.

  “Will you be back on time to take me there?” he asked.

  “No, darling, I won’t. I’ll be there this afternoon, though. For your swimming.”

  “Shall I ask Grandma to drive me, then?”

  “Yes, ask her. Score lots of goals.”

  “I’m a defender. I don’t score goals.”

  “Oh, well, defenders attack sometimes, don’t they?”

  “If they’re really good. I’m not.”

  “Sure you are. I’ll phone Grandma during the game to see how you’re doing.”

  Now Grattapaglia was telling Blume, “I was a bit on edge, you know the way it is. That guy, I don’t know, he got under my skin. The way he looked at me. He had this annoying lisp.”

  “He is Spanish, Salvatore. They all lisp.” Blume paused, and closed his eyes like he was suffering from a mild pain. “OK, this is what we’re going to do: anyone comes looking specifically for you, we’re handing you over. Take the discipline, the suspension, or whatever it is. Anyone comes looking for an unidentified aggressive cop, then maybe we play dumb for as long as we can, but only if you give us a good reason. The other day, I told Caterina here to take on some of your paperwork. She did so, right?”

  “Some of it, yes,” said Grattapaglia. “Not all that much.”

  “I’m glad she didn’t. Because now it’s your turn. Caterina here is going to be busy with this case. She won’t have time for unrelated paperwork. You’ll do it for her. After-hours, without overtime. I also want you to write up a second report for the incident with the Spaniard. Don’t file it. Don’t talk about it. Give it directly to me. Clear? And stop throwing dagger looks at her.”

  Grattapaglia moved his gaze from Caterina and stared with hatred at the sparrows hopping and bobbing among crumbs at the next table.

  “Now I need you to organize a decent house-to-house.”

  Grattapaglia stood up, not looking at either of them.

  “One last thing,” said Blume. “Get the bill. And get me another cappuccino while you’re about it. Inspector?”

  “Nothing for me, thanks,” said Caterina.

  “He’s paying, remember.” Blume gave her a quick wink and an almost imperceptible jerk of the head in Grattapaglia’s direction, encouraging her.

  “No, I don’t want anything,” she said.

  “Get me a Danish, too, Salvatore. Get a few take-away pastries and coffees for Picasso-face, Di Ricci, and the others. They’ll appreciate it. Tell them they’re from me.”

  “Who’s Picasso-face?” asked Caterina.

  “Rospo, of course.”

  W
hen Grattapaglia had gone, Blume leaned back and turned his face up to the sun. “I need a job that allows me to drink coffee, eat pastries, and soak up the morning warmth. A job without people like Grattapaglia. I’d keep the dead bodies and crime victims, though. I wouldn’t have any perspective on life without them. So, what’s your impression so far?”

  “It’s hard to know. There were a lot of distractions. I didn’t get a chance to examine the scene much,” said Caterina.

  “That was my decision, Inspector. You need to know how to handle all the peripheral elements, all the distractions, the mistakes, onlookers, traffic, Spaniards with attitude, people like Grattapaglia. It’s hard. The technicians do most of the detail work, because they don’t have the distractions of all the other stuff. But if you don’t have the distractions, then you don’t have the big picture, which is what you need to solve a case. The big picture, by the way, is that there’s often no picture. All the background stuff you dig up is composed mostly of chaos and irrelevance. You need to look at it all the same. Most of it is a big waste of time. Like most people’s lives, really. All I can tell you is just try not to make any case even more complicated by introducing too many of your own interpretations. Did you sketch the scene like I asked?”

  Thankful to have something to show for herself at last, Caterina pulled the notebook out of her bag, handed it to Blume who opened it up to the sketch, which she had developed in pencil and ink over two pages. He looked at it in silence for some time, tilting the notebook left and right every so often, nodding his head.

  “Did you go to art school?” he said after a while.

  Caterina felt a tingling around her throat and knew she was in danger of blushing. “No. I was good in school, but . . .”

  Blume interrupted, “Let me tell you something, you’ve definitely got natural talent, a good hand . . .” He snapped the notebook shut. “But it’s useless for our purposes.”