The Memory Key: A Commissario Alec Blume Novel Read online

  He slipped back into sleep but a strange vibrating sensation in his chest woke him. It turned out not to be cardiac arrhythmia but his telephone alarm, which he now remembered setting for half past five.

  He showered.

  Caterina would neither like his appearance nor the fact of his appearing, but it could not be helped.

  Chapter 45

  She left the building at 6 in the morning, just as the traffic lights stopped flashing yellow and cars started coming in twos and threes rather than singly. It was bitterly cold and damp, which afforded her grim satisfaction. That is how it should be. She had borrowed her mother’s shapeless coat for the occasion, ostensibly to protect against the cold, but mainly as a form of disguise. And it had worked, she hardly knew herself.

  The morning sickness had left her a few days ago, but as she woke up at 5 this morning, she had been unable to eat for the nerves. The combination of the cold, the early morning air, the empty stomach, and the sense of dread reminded her inappropriately of going on a foreign holiday. She even felt a perverted version of the excitement that she remembered from those holidays, taken on her own, later with her husband, but never with Alec. The cold was like that she had felt in London all those years ago. She remembered her dear husband’s heartfelt envy at the ability of the English to park their cars in front of their house. How would he have aged?

  But in the Bible of Blume, having to remember where you parked your car every morning was good mental exercise: the equivalent of a five-minute run for the brain cells, he had told her. The bullshit he came out with.

  Her car was parked at the end of the street, next to a bar frequented by Vigili Urbani and shift workers. Someone was leaning against its side, and she pushed her head down and advanced, hoping the person would understand her intention and remove himself without her having to speak. It was a miserable enough morning.

  But the figure stayed there, leaning in a posture that was far too casual for the cold, too slouching for that hour of the morning. People up and about at 6 do not slouch. She kept her head down, and looked at the familiar scuffed brown shoes.

  ‘I’d like to accompany you, if I may,’ said Blume. ‘And apologize while we are on our way.’

  She had not mentioned anything to anyone. Nobody knew of her appointment.

  ‘Do you want me to drive?’ he asked. He had that smell about him again. Soap and alcohol oozing from his pores. It reminded her of formaldehyde, but she was not prepared to deal with it now.

  ‘The hell I want you to drive. Do you know where I am going?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why I am here. Accompanying you is the least I can do.’

  ‘You stupid bastard.’

  He nodded, accepting, but there was something in the way he did it, like an old master nodding wisely as his protégé finally formulated and delivered an insight, that made her even angrier.

  ‘Did you hack into a computer, no, you can’t even turn on a mobile phone. Did you spy on me?’

  ‘I know you, Caterina. I know that if you make a decision, you take the earliest possible opportunity to put it into effect. I was not sure it was going to be today, and I don’t know if I was going to hang around all day, but I guessed right. The first available day at the earliest possible hour. That’s you. No room for doubt on some things.’

  Another insult. Was it deliberate? But he had guessed right.

  ‘How did you find out I was still pregnant?’

  ‘I replayed the scene of our last meeting in my head, over and over. And I kept seeing the cushion in front of you, and the way you held it, and the look on your face. What I don’t understand is how I failed to understand it at the time. I could see you were pregnant yesterday as we sat there talking. But you told me the child was lost, and you don’t lie, not really, not like I do. That meant you had decided you were going to end your pregnancy. This became clear to me last night as I was going over stuff in my head. Ruling out your mother, I guessed you would go by yourself.’

  ‘I could have called a friend to drive me, and what then?’

  ‘You don’t have any friends, not like that. But I did think you might get a taxi. So I kept my eyes open for that, since you can’t drive home by yourself after an operation like that.’

  ‘Are you here to hand out medical advice?’

  ‘Let me drive. I have something to confess, and I want to have an excuse to be looking forward, away from your face as I say it.’

  She handed him the key, and sat in the passenger seat.

  ‘You know the accident you had. You went to talk to the barber who had withdrawn his statement?’

  At last. It was as if she had grown used to a small sharp something, like a jagged sliver of ice, being lodged somewhere around her ribcage. She turned on the CD player. Einaudi’s repetitive melodic music filled the car and Blume, typically, incorrigibly, even as he was confessing and apologizing, lifted his hand and turned the volume almost all the way down.

  She turned the volume up again, but not as loud as before. ‘That music makes me feel more relaxed. It’s therapeutic.’

  ‘It always makes you cry,’ corrected Blume.

  ‘Sometimes the key changes can make me cry.’

  ‘Good job he doesn’t seem to know how to do them, then,’ said Blume.

  He finished telling her what he had done, and how sorry he was, and how miserable, too, and the last track, ‘Bella Notte’, came on.

  ‘I don’t expect you to think much of me for confessing to this only now,’ he said, ‘also because I know you knew I knew you knew.’

  ‘It’s too early for me to follow you. Yes, I knew.’

  ‘I know. I figured it out. The barber has been questioned three times now by Panebianco. He’ll have found out about my visit and he will have told you, and I am glad he did.’

  ‘You figured it all out using memory and logic. You replayed the scene of me on the sofa, you worked out the probable dynamics of the visits to and conversations with the witness, you worked out what I would do, when I would do it, and waited for me, then appeared in a triumph of rightness, and you expect me to accept it as some sort of apology? Do you even get where we are going, what you are making me do to myself, to you . . . and to . . .’

  Einaudi chose that moment to change key.

  She did not manage to say anything more until they had reached the hospital. He parked the car in the lot, already half full, and gave her the key.

  ‘I don’t want you coming in with me,’ she told him, ‘and I don’t want you here waiting for me, and I don’t think I want to hear from you afterwards either.’

  He nodded. ‘I know why you are doing this.’

  ‘Really, why?’

  ‘You want to hurt me. You want to repay me some of the damage I have done. I accept your choice, but I wish you would not make it.’

  She swallowed her tears and found her throat suddenly hoarse and dry with anger.

  ‘Repay you? You think this is about revenge?’

  ‘Partly. And partly, I’ll grant you, my incapacity to behave like a responsible adult.’

  ‘You cannot be allowed to think that your behaviour, your flaws are so important that they determine what I do with my body. Because you’ll never grow up I must submit my body to this violence?’

  ‘Then I don’t know what to think,’ said Blume.

  ‘Good. Because if you are left in a state of total loss as to why all this is happening, then you’ll at least have some idea of how I feel.’

  She climbed out of the car and wrapped herself up against the cold wind. He got out, too, but kept the car between them. Typically, he was not dressed warmly enough, and she could see him wince as the cold wind bore into his chest and his eyes, and he brought his hand up to protect them.

  He waited until she was almost out of earshot, then used the wind and distance as an excuse to scream her name at the top of his lungs.

  She turned round. He had his arms out, like a character in an opera buffa. ‘Everything
is unravelling.’

  She willed herself forward, but her feet refused to comply; she was not moving back, and he showed no sign of moving forward. They stood still 50 metres apart, the wind howling between them.

  Chapter 46

  ‘We have had an interesting development, Commissioner, and I feel you really should be part of this,’ said Captain Zezza.

  Blume, sheltering from the rain beneath the awning of a bar on the Circonvallazione Gianicolense in front of the clinic, took a deep drag on his cigarette and pressed his phone to his ear.

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘The murder weapon has been found at Pitagora’s villa. It was confirmed this morning. It is the weapon that fired both shots. It has been stripped down and cleaned. The lab hopes some DNA traces can be found, but it would be useful to know if the person who cleaned the weapon is also the person who fired it.’

  ‘That would be the logical thought.’ Blume flicked his cigarette against a billboard sign advertising one of the many funeral parlours that fronted the hospital complex. Why cry twice? Funerals from as little as €100!

  ‘Pitagora was charged, and is currently at liberty on his own recognizance. Circumstantial evidence, circumspect magistrate, that Alice Saraceno. She does not want to make any mistakes.’

  ‘And neither do you,’ said Blume. ‘But you know you already have, which is why you are calling me. Remind me who filed a complaint that got me suspended? Who wanted me out of his investigation?’

  ‘Where are you?’ asked Zezza.

  ‘What do you care?’

  ‘Let me hazard a guess that you are not at the Courthouse, for a meeting with Saraceno that begins – right now, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘It must have slipped my mind,’ said Blume. ‘So you know I was supposed to have a meeting with her. Oh, OK, I get it, she told you to phone me.’

  ‘She is minded to close the Principe case immediately, and is looking forward to resolving the Manfellotto–Fontana cases in which she will commend you and me for our excellent work.’

  ‘I don’t know about you guys, but magistrates don’t have that much clout in the police. She can praise me all she wants, but who the hell is going to spend their free time reading a case report except for other magistrates and lawyers? Superiors on my force only look up past cases when they are trying to screw you.’

  ‘Well, the Principe affair, your inheritance. It would be nice for that not to be investigated too closely.’

  ‘Tell her, nice try.’

  ‘You are not going to help? You’ll allow Pitagora to go through all this?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. A Fascist agitator getting his comeuppance from a leftist magistrate?’ Blume lit another cigarette. Like cherries, you could never have just one. ‘Tell you what, I’ll meet you at Pitagora’s place. You show me where the weapon was found, I’ll have a chat with the professor himself. I have one or two things to ask him anyhow.’

  ‘I am very grateful,’ said Zezza.

  ‘Don’t be. If I can screw you in any way, I will. Also, I need a lift. Send a car round.’

  While waiting Blume made a call to the Courthouse and was put through to Magistrate Saraceno.

  ‘I forgot,’ he said as soon as she answered. ‘I am sorry.’ He almost felt like telling her all about Caterina.

  ‘Aren’t you already in enough trouble, or do you no longer care because money is coming your way?’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘You can leave the police.’

  ‘To do what?’ asked Blume.

  ‘You wouldn’t have to respond to commands. I think you’d enjoy that freedom, Commissioner.’

  ‘Were you going to ask me about Pitagora this morning?’

  ‘That and other things,’ said Saraceno. ‘We can reschedule.’

  ‘Have you opened any other lines of inquiry?’

  ‘Such as?’ He voice was wary.

  ‘Sofia’s co-workers,’ said Blume. ‘Interview them.’

  ‘You suspect one of them?’

  ‘I think you need to talk to them,’ said Blume. ‘Interview them, not as suspects. Get the pulse of the place where they work. Another thing I suggest you do . . .’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Can you look up Sofia’s predecessors? Permanent senior research and lab assistants. Just tell me how many there have been over, say, the past five or six years.’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘A permanent research job in an Italian educational establishment? That’s golden, and it’s for life. And yet I get the distinct impression that Sofia had several recent predecessors. Why would that be?’

  ‘What made them quit, you mean?’

  ‘Exactly. Or who. Why did they quit?’

  ‘No one looked into this before?’ asked Saraceno.

  ‘No,’ said Blume. ‘Too many men running the show. No one ever thought to ask Sofia about what was happening in her life. No one thought she was important enough.’

  ‘That’s very sensitive of you.’

  ‘The fuck it is. Just run a quick check on Sofia’s predecessors, will you? Names, how long they were there. Phone me when you do that.’

  ‘Do you feel you have the prerogative to give me orders, Commissioner? Do you feel threatened as a man that I give the orders and you follow them?’

  ‘I thought I was Alec and you were Alice. Back to Commissioner again? Just check. Then call me back. As a favour. Oh, one more thing, take all the names of Sofia’s bosses and colleagues and cross reference them with gun club memberships in Latium and Rome.’

  Ten minutes later, he was climbing into the backseat of a Carabinieri squad car. They used the siren and show-off driving to get him to Pitagora’s villa in less than 15 minutes.

  When they arrived, the gates were wide open, as were the doors of the house. Parked haphazardly on the gravel and the crabgrass were two Carabinieri cars, lights flashing. Nearer the door was an Isuzu D-Max SUV belonging to RaCIS, the scientific unit. The Carabiniere driver and partner saluted him with deference, using the Voi form of address, turned their car around, and left.

  There was none of the tension and excitement, the coming and going, the crackling of radios and efficiency of movement that were so much a part of a moving investigation. There were no ambulances or mortuary vans, no sealing off of the area, no white-faced recruits and grim-faced unit commanders.

  He walked through the ‘weeds of forgetting’, as Pitagora had called them, towards the house, so rustic and remote despite being surrounded by the city.

  ‘Blume!’ Captain Zezza came up and slapped him on the shoulder. He looked at him closely. ‘You do not seem well. Have you been eating badly?’

  Blume ignored the question and nodded at the RaCIS vehicle. ‘Still looking for stuff, are they?’

  ‘Just a few more checks.’

  ‘Where’s Pitagora?’

  Zezza pointed to a door at the end of the hallway. ‘In there. He’s in what he calls his memory theatre. It’s a room in the centre of the house. There are two Carabinieri with him. Not that he will flee. A man his age, with his connections, has nothing to fear from the courts. He’ll get house arrest, and then that will be extended to allow him to continue working in the university and it will be as if none of this ever happened – though maybe it didn’t?’

  ‘Still fishing for help, Zezza? Where was the weapon found?’

  ‘In the overgrown weeds outside.’

  ‘No one thought to look until now?’

  Zezza looked uncomfortable. ‘As a matter of fact, we did.’

  ‘But you didn’t see the rifle?’

  ‘Look, can we talk frankly to each other, now?’

  ‘Sure. We’re friends and allies now: you, me, the hippy magistrate.’

  ‘The rifle wasn’t there,’ said Zezza.

  ‘No,’ said Blume. ‘That figures. But it can be made to look like your mistake.’

  ‘I personally logged them in the company of an appuntato. We drew up a re
port but forgot to present it to Principe.’

  ‘Because you were holding back on him.’

  ‘Also because there was nothing to report. The rifle wasn’t there.’

  ‘This corridor has weapons in it,’ said Blume, pointing to the paltry collection of rusting old weapons hanging haphazardly here and there on the walls, just above head height.

  ‘They are decorative. Anyone can see that. We took down the weapons from the wall, and examined them. They were all decommissioned collector’s pieces. Old weapons. The ones you see there now. The only nearly modern weapon was an Enfield .22, but its barrel was filled with lead. That ancient-looking revolver is a replica. Those swords are irrelevant. It may as well be a butterfly collection.’

  ‘The suspect had a weapons collection, the murder weapon was found in his garden, but you missed all this. It’s going to look like you are an incompetent, Zezza. I’ll be doing my best to reinforce the idea, by the way.’

  ‘That rifle was put there by someone.’

  ‘Why did you conduct another search? It was an anonymous tip-off, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Do you have any idea who might have put it there?’

  ‘Someone making a desperate attempt to distract us,’ said Blume.

  ‘You’re going to make me wait.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Blume, with a large smile. ‘I am. A career-damaging long wait for you, Captain.’

  They walked in silence to the end of the corridor. Zezza opened the door and held it open with ironic courtesy as Blume passed through. The space they entered was almost large enough to be a gym. The walls were lined with tall bookcases and at the far end was an arched fireplace, over which hung a collection, slightly more impressive this time, of swords, spears, and other white weapons. But the central feature was a large, brightly painted scale model of an ancient Greek theatre, as large as a baby’s playpen, set on top of a purpose-built dais raised about half a metre from the floor. Two Carabinieri were standing next to it, pulling out sections of the theatre. One had hunkered down and was peering from behind the stage, like a giant behind the scenes. The other had discovered to his delight that the semicircle of stepped seats surrounding the stage was made up of seven separate wedges that could be lifted out.