The Memory Key: A Commissario Alec Blume Novel Read online

  ‘No little men inside there?’ asked Blume as he reached them.

  The Carabiniere who had been peering through the back of the model stood to attention, and Blume turned round to see Zezza had been silently tracking his footsteps.

  ‘At ease,’ said Zezza.

  ‘The professor was just explaining this Colosseum to us . . .’

  ‘It’s so obviously not the Colosseum,’ said his partner. ‘He explained that.’

  ‘Whatever. It should have little people in it, and maybe some animals, too.’

  ‘And lighting,’ suggested his partner. He looked at Blume and Zezza, as if for permission. ‘These segments come out. The central one is largest, then three on either side. You peer through the seven arches like my colleague was doing and imagine the rising tiers, the seats in front of you, peopled with things you need to remember. The professor gave us a list of Roman emperors to picture sitting in the first few rows.’

  ‘Yeah, but first he taught us a great trick for remembering anything just using the Roma football team. What you do is you take the last match and beside each player you associate an emperor . . .’

  ‘. . . or a number or anything,’ added his colleague.

  ‘And if you know the numbers the players wear, or remember the scores of the matches, then you can use that.’

  ‘Where is the professor, appuntato?’ demanded Zezza.

  The young man straightened up. ‘There he is.’ He pointed to an empty chair. ‘He was looking up a book, he must have . . .’

  Blume went over to the bookshelves. A sliding wooden ladder was attached to a brass rail running along the ceiling, but the shelves did not go that high. He climbed up and found there was a narrow walkway, a ledge running along a gable from when the villa was extended. It ran behind the last two rows of bookshelves and was invisible from below. At the end was a narrow door. He walked to it, glancing down to see the two Carabinieri staring up at him as he floated majestically above the leather volumes, while Zezza stared daggers at then. The door opened to a short flight of stone steps that led into an internal courtyard, which, unlike the front garden, was carefully tended. A white pebble path marked out a square of very green lawn, in the middle of which was a small fountain. He crossed the path, went through an arched doorway and down a few more steps, and found himself at the rear of the villa. He walked round again just in time to meet Zezza, whose jaw was clenched so tight he was unable to open it wide enough to respond to Blume’s cheerful greeting.

  Chapter 47

  Zezza was off checking whether Pitagora had taken his car, when Blume’s phone rang. He answered without looking, expecting Magistrate Saraceno to be calling back.

  ‘I was wondering if you’d like to chat?’ said Pitagora’s voice.

  ‘Are you hiding in a bush or something, or are you on the run?’

  ‘Of course not. I simply became bored, and I don’t like being kept at another’s convenience. I shall present myself before the Communist magistrate later today, with my solicitors.’

  ‘Where do you want to meet? I could ask why, but I suppose you’ll tell me when I arrive.’

  ‘I’d prefer not to say where, in case someone is listening to your line. Someone following the orders of Magistrate Alice Saraceno,’ he said placing exaggerated emphasis on the name.

  ‘I can assure you, even if this conversation is being recorded, it’ll take weeks before she hears it.’

  ‘Unless she’s standing there, listening. Are you there, Magistrate Saraceno?’

  ‘Don’t be so melodramatic, Professor. Just tell me where you are.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s going to make it kind of hard for us to meet, isn’t it?’

  ‘Have you seen my memory theatre?’

  ‘Nice, but I thought you would have gone full scale, a whole room, perhaps.’

  ‘I am in another memory theatre. Across the field of forgetting. Figure it out, Blume.’ He hung up.

  Blume thought about it for a few moments, and then walked through the crabgrass and weeds, unnoticed. It was easy to move around the villa undetected. He reached the gate, and slipped out in what he guessed was simply the inverse of the movements of the man who had come to plant the murder weapon.

  He stepped gingerly across the slippery wet cobbles of the Appia Antica, checking carefully for speeding drivers, entered a gateway in a wall opposite, and made his way down a footpath towards the San Callisto Catacombs. He drew in deep breaths, filling his mouth with wet air and the faint camphor of the cypresses that lined the walk. He spat on to the cindery path to clear out some nicotine, then filled his mouth with saliva and his throat with mucus, and spat again. Better, but he could still feel the yellow tar sticking to the back of his throat, dangling on his tonsils, disgusting now but threatening to become enticing later. At the end of the lane stood a priest watching.

  ‘Afternoon, Father.’

  The priest closed one eye and peered at him. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I have taken up smoking again after 10 years,’ confessed Blume.

  ‘Ah, now that’s a pity. Make the next one your last for another 10.’

  ‘I will. Is the back gate open?’

  ‘To get to Via delle Sette Chiese? Yes.’ The priest pointed towards the church. ‘Just go straight on, past the church, unless you want to go inside, of course.’

  ‘No thanks, I’ve seen the catacombs.’

  ‘I am sure it was a very long time ago, probably on a school trip.’

  ‘Yeah, well they won’t have changed much, will they? I mean that’s basically the big thing about the catacombs. They don’t change.’

  ‘My, my. Not the catacombs, I meant the church. Visit the church just for a moment.’

  ‘Another time, perhaps.’

  Blume hurried away, walking at a brisk pace towards and past the church on a dead straight avenue towards another gate set into a wall, this time skirting Via delle Sette Chiese. He made his way across the road on to Via Ardeatine and headed towards the entrance to the Cave Ardeatine memorial.

  Yellow signs warned that the area was under video surveillance and a guard was present at the entrance, but otherwise it was deserted. He walked in and headed towards the innermost area, where he found the professor standing head bowed.

  ‘I didn’t know if you would understand my message or if you would come,’ said Pitagora. ‘Did you walk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have been sitting in hallowed ground calling solicitors and some other contacts. It seems blasphemous. I was right to have faith in you. Few others would have immediately understood what I meant about the other memory theatre.’

  ‘The largest memorial in the country to Nazi atrocity, visited year in and year out by politicians chasing votes? It’s not so hard to figure out.’

  ‘Not for you, Blume. For others, I am afraid it is. That leftist magistrate will never work it out. All she thinks about is Palestinians.’

  Blume sighed. ‘Professor, I am not political.’

  ‘Everyone’s political.’

  ‘Not at your level of intensity. I will say, it is hard to figure out how you can reconcile being here with your Fascist beliefs.’

  ‘Fascist, not Nazi. Italian, not German. I wish people would remember the difference. And old as I am, I was only a child when they did this.’ He waved his hand at the memorial all around them. ‘My father worked for the authorities that collaborated with the Nazis. I remember this slaughter.’

  ‘You just said you were a child,’ said Blume.

  ‘Children remember. I was born in 1938. I was 6 when they killed these people. But you know how I found out?’

  Blume shook his head.

  ‘The smell. The villa I still live in was the family home, built by my grandfather. The wind carried the smell from here to there. There is nothing like it: 335 dead bodies less than a kilometre away, across open fields. It is hard to forget. I don’t mean I found out when I was 6. But I remember the sm
ell all over the garden, coming in the windows, sitting in the air at night, getting sweeter and thicker and more nauseating day after day until my parents finally gave up and we left the house for weeks. I found out later what it was.’

  Pitagora picked up a pebble. ‘Jews put a small stone with their left hand on the headstone of a tomb as a mark of respect, did you know that?’

  Blume shook his head.

  ‘It shows that someone visited the grave. Jewish graves used to be just a mounds of stones to show the place of burial. Once the stones were scattered, no memory of the grave or the person remained. By adding a stone, you helped mark the spot and keep the memory.’

  Pitagora pointed to the long list of names inscribed on the wall. ‘The most remarkable thing about that list is the sheer variety of trades. Professor of literature, tailor, mechanic, fruit stall holder, shopkeeper, lawyer, policeman, general, cook, driver, tax lawyer, insurance salesman, shoemaker, waiter.’

  He turned round so his back was to the wall, and then slowly slid down till he was seated. ‘Ask me a number.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood for games.’

  ‘This is no game. This list of the murdered was the first I ever committed to memory.’

  ‘Victim 99.’

  ‘Angelo Di Porto. He worked in a shop. One of the 75 Jews in here. A Jew, like you.’

  ‘I’m getting fed up with your saying that,’ said Blume.

  ‘See, everyone is touched with some anti-Semitism. Check your background. Look at your name. Be proud of your heritage. Of course, there was a much more famous Di Porto. Celeste di Porto. Ever hear of her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A famously beautiful, nowadays we would say sexy, Jewess. She was known as the “Star of Piazza Giudia” where she worked as a waitress. She became a Nazi collaborator. She would walk up and down Via Arenula, along the Tiber there, fantastically dressed, a real head-turner. She would graciously greet old friends from the neighbourhood, and those friends would then be grabbed by the police and disappeared. Eventually her name changed from “Star” to “Panther”. She sent hundreds of her companions to their death. After the war, she became a seamstress and a Catholic and lived happily ever after, dying peacefully in 1981. She didn’t cut her own throat, and, here’s the thing, neither did any surviving Jew do it for her. Why is that?’

  Blume shrugged, then sat down on the ground opposite Pitagora, ignoring the dampness, and tucked his knees up. Caterina would have killed the foetus by now. Was that the wrong way of looking at it? He wouldn’t say kill, and he wouldn’t attribute the killing to her. He wished his thoughts started off as careful and forgiving as that. His thoughts as they came out in their raw state were so ugly. He refined them as they slipped to the front of his mind, and polished them some more before he spoke them, and still people said he was blunt.

  ‘That’s right, sit down. They should have killed her. Violence is justified in some cases. You need to clear away the evil, weed it out.’

  ‘You said you had something to tell me.’

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone. I have never killed anyone.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Blume.

  ‘You believe me?’

  ‘Up to a point. You knew what Manfellotto was going to do in 1980 and you did not act to stop it.’

  Pitagora kept his head bent and addressed the words to the ground.

  ‘There were coup-plotters and generals and prelates and bombers and CIA and Greek colonels, Mafia, Ndrangheta, and the Banda della Magliana, but once an operation is completed, successful or not, it’s over. All the real effort, more complicated than any operation, comes afterwards and it is dedicated to hiding evidence of who knew what. That’s all it is, really. The network consists of people who knew, keeping an eye on each other and making sure no one spoke out of turn. The only reason we do this is for shame. This Manfellotto business caused panic. No one suspected for a moment that she was going to break silence.’

  ‘Maybe she wasn’t.’

  ‘Then why did someone try to kill her? And eventually succeed.’

  ‘I’ll tell you who it was if you tell me who you think it was,’ said Blume.

  ‘Swiss Catholics. The bankers. The same people who organized the kidnappings and murders of the 1980s. They funded the people who did the deeds. They were the people around Calvi, and they faded back into the shadows when he lost power and then his life. Wojtyła restored some of them to obscure positions of power, but Ratzinger has made the mistake of promoting some of them back into visibility. Those are my referents.’

  ‘The hippy magistrate is going to be delighted when you tell her all this,’ said Blume.

  ‘No she won’t, because I am not going to tell anyone but you.’

  ‘I am flattered. These people sent someone to kill her in the hospital, then.’

  ‘Why ask? You told me you know who it is, Commissioner.’

  ‘The hospital murder – I have no idea,’ said Blume. ‘That’s your territory. The original shooting – that was simply a mistake. The real target was Sofia Fontana.’

  ‘The witness who got shot outside the university?’

  ‘She was not a witness: she was the target. Both times. Everyone has assumed it was Manfellotto, including you and all her ex-camerati, and you are now ready to tear yourselves apart over it. But it was Manfellotto who strayed into the path of a bullet meant for Fontana, not the other way round. It was an accidental shooting.’

  ‘Stefania was an innocent bystander, in some miserable settling of accounts between non-entities?’

  ‘As innocent as if she were just some woman standing in a train station, planning her day and her life.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Pitagora laughed, and then put his head in his hands.

  ‘You’re responsible for Stefania’s death, too, Blume.’

  ‘How do you figure that?’

  ‘We had a meeting. It is pointless asking me who was there. At the meeting, I happened to mention that Stefania seemed to have changed personality and had, maybe, just maybe started remembering, even though the doctors said that was impossible. I had no idea they would be so swift and brutal.’

  ‘But you had an idea that they would act?’

  ‘I thought they were going to anyhow. I was just trying to make myself seem useful, show I was on the right side. You will not credit this, but I also loved her. I hated her actions, loved her person. We Catholics can do that.’

  ‘Good for you Catholics. But how am I to blame?’

  ‘You mentioned that Stefania remembered me as Pasquale Pinto. That made people worry.’

  ‘But you already knew her earlier memories were intact. Clearer than ever because they were the only ones left,’ said Blume.

  ‘You forget the psychological power of specificity,’ said Pitagora. ‘That detail, my old name, brought it home to some people how vulnerable we all were. And that’s all because you thought you were clever spotting that Pinto was a Jewish name.’

  Blume slumped back against the inscribed wall. ‘Is it?’

  ‘It is one of those names that can be Gentile or Jewish,’ said Pitagora. ‘If you are interested, delve into my background, but I suggest you look at your own first.’

  They sat in silence. Blume pulled up his knees to hide his phone from Pitagora who was not looking in his direction in any case.

  ‘Tell me, Professor, your former pupil, Ideo, the animal behaviourist, you mentioned him the other day; he wanted you to endorse his book.’

  ‘Review it. Yes. He turned up in person two days ago to give me a signed copy. He included me in the dedications and cites my work over and over again. He showed me the index.’

  ‘Two days ago?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pitagora. ‘He made an appointment first. Why . . . Ideo?’

  Blume allowed Pitagora to think it through for himself. ‘He put the weapon in my garden? Are you telling me Ideo is a killer? Ideo? He writes about voles, and the magic of
dogs and the breeding habits of amphibians. He literally would not harm a fly.’

  ‘Not a fly perhaps. A woman, yes,’ said Blume.

  Pitagora shook his head. ‘I think you are barking up the wrong tree there, Commissioner. You found out he visited, and you are clutching at straws. No, the people who put the rifle there are the same people who killed Stefania. And before you ask, no, Ideo has nothing to do with any of those groups.’

  Blume nodded, as if accepting the professor’s words. The chill of the ground was seeping up his spine. He should get up, but still he sat there. It was peaceful. A place of horror, now a place of peace.

  Pitagora swept his hand around the cavernous space. ‘Do you know why the Germans shot dead 335 people?’

  ‘Because of the attack on Via Rastella,’ said Blume. ‘Ten prisoners for every German soldier killed.’ He slipped his phone out and started tapping on the keys.

  ‘Except there were only 32 killed in the attack on the day. So they chose 320 prisoners to be shot, but then another German soldier died, so they had to find another ten victims. In the meantime, Stella the Panther intervened to have some names changed around. Then some Italian officials, my father among them, intervened in an effort to save a few more names. But all this did was confuse the situation and in the end, they found they had 335 people. It was a rounding error, and this really bothered the Germans, who hate numerical imprecision. So the Germans decided the 5 extra hostages had to go back, but others, more sensible and less fanatical about balancing the books, argued that if they released the extra 5, they would to go back and report what had been done to the other 330. So they killed them, too.

  ‘When the Germans killed them all, they dynamited this area, which did not stop the stench from reaching my house, but did hide the visibility of the fact. Just as they continued to hide the extermination camps by locating them in other countries, and then hide the exterminations in the camps from the inmates. But it doesn’t make sense if you think about it. They killed all these people to make a very bold statement. Ten of you for every one of us, and it worked. But then they buried the bodies secretly in this quarry, and then killed the unlucky extra 5 for fear of them telling of the shameful act. It would have made more sense to drop the corpses into centre of the city as a warning, except that as soon as they had killed people, they became ashamed, hid their faces, and never again told the truth.’