The Fatal Touch Read online

  “How long do I have to stay here?” demanded Grattapaglia. “If you want me to do house-to-house and then those extra reports and write up this morning’s incident . . .”

  Blume cut him short with a wave of his hand.

  “We are having a meeting of the investigative team after lunch. At least until then.” He turned to Caterina who was hanging back trying not to overhear. “Come on, Inspector. Time for a visit to Treacy’s gallery.”

  Chapter 7

  Caterina and blume stood on Via in Caterina, looking at a shiny brass plaque set into the wall, with “Galleria Orpiment, 1º piano” etched into it. The door to the building was half open, and they stepped inside the small courtyard to find themselves before a wide stone staircase whose many shallow marble steps seemed designed to ease the task of climbing and to impress upon the visitor that this was a building with room to spare. Turning around on the landing at the end of the first flight, they were confronted with another, slightly steeper and shorter, leading up the piano nobile and the entrance to the gallery, which was marked by a high threshold topped with red marble and a faded coat of arms and the motto Ingenium superat vires. The large double-leaved oak door was open and led to a small access area fronted by darkened glass. Blume pressed the intercom and the door clicked open immediately.

  Inside the gallery, the ceilings were high and their footfalls clacked and echoed every time they left the overlapping Persian carpets. The hall smelled of polish and lavender, and the cool air felt smooth and heavy against their skin. It was a place conducive to quiet business between people who understood one another. Pictures that looked like they had been overlaid with a veneer of treacle were set in heavy gold frames, but their irregular spacing on the walls stopped them from being too overbearing. They all seemed to feature people with complacent eighteenth-century faces in extravagant clothes, lounging on urns and surrounded by classical ruins.

  At the end of the room, behind a clear desk with a flat-screen monitor, but no keyboard in sight, sat a young woman who watched as they entered. Blume noted her perfect shape, so flat, so taut.

  He introduced himself and Inspector Mattiola, and the girl introduced herself as Manuela Ludovisi. She was composed enough not to stand up herself, but instead motioned them to sit down. Using the polite pronoun “Lei,” she offered them tea, coffee, and water before finally accepting that they were declining all beverages.

  “Are you alone here?” Blume decided to use the familiar “tu” immediately.

  She nodded. Beautiful women often had heads the shape of eggs, Blume decided. It allowed them to have oval faces and tapered cheeks.

  Blume’s cell rang. He flicked it open, and saw Grattapaglia’s name. He’d let Grattapaglia stew for another hour or two before letting him go. He cut off the call, turned to the receptionist with a smile, and said, “Sorry about that. Do you know why we are here?”

  The girl shut her eyes without scrunching her eyelids, wrinkling her brow, or bringing her hand to her face. It was a study in self-control. She opened her eyes again, and they seemed bluer and brighter than before. Only then did he realize he was looking at eyes full of withheld tears. “Something’s happened to Henry,” she said. “Is he dead? The policeman who phoned me earlier just told me to stay here till someone came, but he would not tell me anything.”

  “Yes,” said Blume. “He’s dead.”

  She nodded slowly, and the tear in her left eye fell onto her table. None followed. “Where was he found?”

  Caterina leaned forward and said, “The policeman who called didn’t say?”

  “All he said was that someone would be calling round to talk about Henry Treacy and I was to stay put.”

  “Why did you ask where he was found?” said Caterina with what Blume felt was aggression. “What makes you think he did not die at home?”

  “If he died at home how would anyone even know he was missing?” said the girl. “It’s only half past ten. I don’t think he had a cleaner and I can’t think who might have gone to his house.”

  “Because no one ever went to his house?” asked Blume.

  “Apart from Nightingale. That’s John Nightingale, his partner here and my boss.”

  “Where is Nightingale now?”

  “I don’t know. He was supposed to come back from Florence early this morning, but he didn’t pass by here and he’s not at home yet. So maybe he stayed there. I tried phoning his house.”

  “What about his cell phone?” asked Blume.

  “He doesn’t have one. Neither did Henry.”

  Caterina pulled her chair closer to the table. “What made you so sure it was Treacy who was dead. Why not your other boss, Nightingale?”

  The girl leaned backwards and wrinkled her nose slightly as if she had caught a draft of bad breath from Caterina.

  “It had to be Henry. He was sick. He drank. He was the one who hated himself and everyone. You know, the tortured artist.”

  “You don’t like artists?” said Caterina.

  “As long as they stay sober and don’t mistake their trade for genius, I don’t mind them.”

  Blume nodded sympathetically. “Good attitude,” he said.

  “Did Henry think of himself as a genius?” asked Caterina.

  “Maybe once he did. Not since I knew him. That’s where the tortured bit came in. That’s why I knew it was him you found dead. And you still haven’t told me where.”

  “Piazza de’ Renzi. Know it?” asked Blume.

  “No. Is it near his house?”

  “Yes,” said Blume.

  She touched the tiny hollow above her upper lip. “I really need to get home,” she said. “I can’t just stay here.”

  “We need you to show us around, I’m afraid,” said Blume. “Are there many more rooms?”

  “Just two. Both slightly smaller than this. One for Nightingale, one for Treacy.”

  Caterina shifted in her seat and leaned forward. “Where is home, by the way?”

  “Via della Lupa, number 82b.”

  Caterina wrote it down. “What’s the postal code?”

  “00186.”

  “That’s very central.”

  “Yes. I walk to work.” The girl’s eyelids flickered slightly as she looked at the Inspector. “It helps keep me in shape.”

  “I walk everywhere, too,” said Blume.

  “How much is the rent?” asked Caterina.

  The girl rolled her blue eyes sideways as if trying to remember. “Around two thousand six, two thousand seven, I think.”

  Caterina lowered her notebook. “You think, but you don’t know?”

  “I don’t pay it.”

  “Who does?”

  “Galleria Orpiment.”

  “Galleria Orpiment or one of your employers or both?”

  “It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “John Nightingale, then. He’s the one who organizes most things.”

  “How much do they pay you here?”

  The receptionist looked at Blume. “Do I have to answer that?”

  Blume nodded. “Yes, you do, I’m afraid. Though I can’t see why it should be a problem.”

  “I feel as if my privacy is being violated.”

  “Well, perhaps,” said Blume. “We’re investigative police. Violation of privacy is basically what we do.”

  Caterina waved her notebook impatiently. “How much?”

  “I get €4,700 a month, OK?”

  Jesus, thought Blume. That was about what he and Mattiola made between them.

  Caterina arched her eyebrows, then asked, “What does your mother do?” She pushed out her hand to ward off the beginning of a protest from the girl. “Everything’s relevant. Just answer.”

  “She works in a bank. She’s a teller. But if you were to ask her what she does, she’d say she was an artist.”

  “There’s that unlovely word again. You don’t like artists because your mother is one?”

  Manuela wetted
her lip with the tip of her tongue, and Blume stood up abruptly and wandered off to look at the paintings on the wall.

  Caterina slid into his chair, which was closer to Manuela, and said, “But her works don’t sell?”

  “No, they don’t. She can’t even give them away.”

  “And your father?”

  “I don’t have a father. Just my mother.”

  “So Ludovisi is her name, your mother’s name.”

  Manuela hesitated. “No. It’s my father’s name.”

  “You just said you didn’t have a father.”

  “I don’t. My mother gave me his surname to shame him into returning, but he never did.”

  “And so, your mother’s name is …?”

  “Angelini. Chiara Angelini.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Pistoia.”

  “So you’re from Pistoia, too?”

  The girl hesitated.

  “Just say yes or no, it’s not a trick question,” said Caterina.

  “Yes.”

  “You went to school there?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the name of the school?”

  “Um . . . Liceo Classico ‘Niccolo’ Forteguerri.”

  “May I see your identity card, please?”

  The girl brought up a square black handbag from below the desk, and Blume came over to watch. From the neatly divided contents, she plucked out a compact Fendi wallet and produced a surprisingly battered-looking ID card, which Caterina looked at closely before handing back.

  “What’s the bank she works in?”

  “Carismi.”

  “Carismi?”

  “It’s short for Cassa Di Risparmio Di San Miniato.”

  Blume continued staring at the dull portraits on the walls as Caterina asked the girl more questions about her mother, Pistoia, school, her friends. She took down a few names and addresses, got the girl’s cell number. Caterina was doing a good job, so he left her to it, and wandered around the hall, looking at the portraits, glancing back at the two women seated at the desk. There was an undertow of tension and a sort of subliminal tussle going on between them, but they were managing it with composure. He thought of the shouts and obscenities, the threats, spit, slaps, kicks, arrogance, imbecility, intoxication, and noncooperation that characterized so many of the “interviews” between male suspects and tired, stressed-out cops. Watching the girl’s face and lips, the way she crooked her elbow as she straightened a bright strand of hair, with Caterina poised and calm, observing her carefully, he felt humans, or some of them, were worth it after all.

  The eight portraits showed young men and women dressed in red or blue standing in front of Roman ruins, with idealized landscapes behind them. The faces were photographic, and some were far more handsome than others, but the artist had somehow managed to render each face slightly idiotic. It was something to do with the pursed lips and smirk.

  The interview between Caterina and Manuela seemed to be over, and Manuela, with the air of a vindicated adolescent, arose from her seat and came over to him.

  “Five of those are by Pompeo Batoni,” she said. “Three are by Treacy. And no one can tell the difference without checking the signatures on the back.”

  She said this with unaffected pride, as if there was nothing untoward in the way that Treacy imitated another painter’s work.

  “Batoni charged his customers up front. These are all English and German tourists. He’d do their faces in about two or three sessions, then fill in the rest afterwards and have them shipped. He charged extra for details. If you wanted, say, a dog or a broken classical column, it cost you extra,” she said.

  “Oh,” said Blume. He focused on them again. “I don’t like them much,” he said after a while.

  The girl laughed, and Blume smiled knowingly, as if he had always intended his comment to be witty.

  “Nobody likes them,” she said, then became grave again. “No one except Henry. He loved Batoni. Whenever he came into the gallery, he’d wave at the people in the pictures and shout, ‘Good morning, English cretins!’ He said Batoni had no pretention as an artist. All the pretention was in the buyer, whose face is in the picture. He spent a lot of money collecting these.”

  Blume looked around and saw Caterina opening a pair of double doors at the far end of the room. He went across to join her, and Manuela followed. The room they entered had a very similar leather-topped desk and a handsome oak bookcase. It was extremely orderly and had no pictures on the walls. Most of the books seemed to have been bought for decorative purposes.

  “This is Nightingale’s room,” said Manuela. “He never uses it, really. Except to make phone calls.”

  The other room was bursting at the seams with objects, books, and paintings. Some paintings and books were stacked on the floor. Behind the desk a full-length portrait, done in modern acrylics, showed a young man with a thin face slouched against a broken pillar, his blue eyes looking slightly sideways and half closed as against the smoke from his cigarette, yet gazing out at the viewer. The man held the cigarette between two lips curled like two tildes, his black shirt was open to reveal a smooth chest whose muscles the artist had exaggerated almost to the point of parody. Something about the man was extremely familiar, and Blume found himself staring at the painting for some time.

  “I know him from somewhere,” said Blume. “But I can’t quite remember.”

  “That’s Henry Treacy,” said Manuela. “It’s a self-portrait from 1966. It’s one of the only original works with his signature, and is worth quite a lot. At least, that’s what Treacy himself used to say.”

  The man’s dead face he had seen earlier in the day looked nothing like this handsome youth with the curved lips.

  Caterina, who had gone to the far side of the desk and was looking with casual interest into a drawer, said, “What do you mean one of the only works with his signature?”

  “Treacy stopped painting soon after that portrait,” said Manuela. “I mean, he stopped painting as Treacy.”

  “Who did he become after that?”

  The girl gave a sideways glance at Blume as if giving him the opportunity to intervene and explain the obvious. When he did not, she continued, “Henry Treacy became a restorer and a dealer. He was one of the best draftsmen ever, and it is true that he could imitate many great artists. He did five of the Batoni portraits out there, but he did not copy.”

  “Really?” said Caterina. “Manuela, tell me this: what’s the difference between copying and imitating, then?”

  “A copy is just a copy, but not the original. Imitation is when you create something new out of something old. That’s what Treacy did. He created new things.”

  “New forgeries, you mean?” said Caterina.

  “It’s not like that. His work was his own. Everyone copies anyhow.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “I’m not sure if he told me it, but I think that was his opinion.”

  “And yours, too?”

  “Inspector, I’m only the receptionist. I’m still learning. You need to talk to Nightingale, not me, about these things.”

  Blume heard a soft purring sound coming from somewhere.

  “That’s the intercom,” said Caterina. “As you’re the receptionist, you had better see who it is.”

  Blume looked over at Caterina, and for the first time noticed his colleague’s clothes. She was wearing a jacket that was slightly too tight under the arms, and he could see fabric pills and some loose threads on her black slacks. “She’s very . . .” began Blume, but he hadn’t prepared a careful adjective.

  “She’s very beautiful is what you mean, Commissioner. And young.” Caterina fiddled at her blouse cuff, which was missing a button. “Do you think we declare the Gallery a secondary scene?”

  “That’s for the magistrate to decide, and it’s not even a confirmed homicide yet. Let’s see if this Nightingale turns up.”

  Blume and Caterina came out of Treacy’s o
ffice and came face-to-face with a group of eight Carabinieri, all of them wearing white gloves as if for some academy graduation. They were busy taking down the pictures from the wall and putting them into clear plastic boxes. Behind them was Manuela who was holding a piece of paper in her hand, and talking to a man in his late thirties with long curly gray hair that cascaded in ringlets over the upturned collar of his yellow and black waistcoat.

  “Who’s that?” said Caterina as the man turned around, saw them, and cast a bright-toothed smile in their direction.

  “That creature,” said Blume, “is Investigating Magistrate Franco Buoncompagno.”

  “So that’s what he looks like,” said Caterina.

  “You’ve heard of him?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  The investigating magistrate moved toward Blume and Caterina, and Blume circled away, standing in front of one of the last pictures not to have been removed from the wall as if it were his. If the magistrate noticed, he did not let on, and took Caterina’s hand, clasped it briefly between his own, saying, “You must be …?”

  “I must be Inspector Mattiola, Third Section, Squadra Mobile,” said Caterina, pulling her hand away.

  “Well, I am—You’re so pretty, I’ve forgotten who I am. Just kidding. Breaking the ice, as the fat penguin said. It doesn’t do to be too formal. Investigating Magistrate Franco Buoncompagno.”

  “How do you do,” said Caterina.

  Blume stepped in front of Caterina and looked over Buoncompagno’s head at the young Carabinieri removing the paintings. “What’s going on here, Dottore?” said Blume.

  A young Carabiniere hovered behind the magistrate, waiting for them to finish before he took the painting on the wall behind. Blume motioned him away with a flick of his hand.

  “Commissioner Blume!” said Buoncompagno, his voice full of surprise and delight. “Finally!” he tapped his nose as if revealing a secret. “I called your office. Twice.”

  “Did you try my cell phone?”

  “Of course.”

  As Blume took out his cell phone and started thumbing through the missed call list, Buoncompagno added, “I didn’t call you personally, of course. I have been very busy. I left word in the office that they were to call you.”