‘Promise me you’ll . . .’
‘I promise nothing.’
‘At least look at Niki without a filter of hate. Then decide. I wanted to show you something, Blume.’ Greco stood up, staggered, and almost fell over.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘A righteous bully hit me over the face with the stock of a shotgun, remember? Just hold my arm, and I’ll take you to her.’
In the garden. He should have guessed. Alina’s body was probably fertilizing the lettuces that Silvana was happily eating as part of her vegan . . . it was hard work holding Greco up. It was as if the trembling in the old man was transferring itself into him, as if the weakness was spreading.
‘You don’t seem that strong either, Blume. Here she is.’
‘Alina?’ Blume looked around for disturbed ground.
‘No. Look at that statue.’
‘That piece of grey rock?’
‘Come over here, and have a closer look.’
Blume allowed himself to be led across a short lawn edged with starry white sweet-scented flowers.
‘Jasmine,’ said Blume, proud of his knowledge. ‘The smell.’
‘Forgive me if I correct you for the sake of precision,’ said Greco. ‘But that is Trachelospermum jasminoides, a false jasmine. There. You don’t see an image of the Madonna?’
Blume went up and examined the rock, which gave the illusion of being free-standing, but was simply a protrusion from a large boulder buried in the ground. He saw no resemblance to a Madonna.
‘I didn’t see it at first either,’ said Greco. ‘But once you see her face, you’ll always see it.’ He touched a ridge. ‘Lips, see?’
Blume did not.
‘There is a great mystery surrounding her.’
‘By “her” you mean this rock?’
‘She weeps. The legend is that when she cries, her very first tears will cure whoever drinks them.’
‘All these weeping, curing Madonnas, you never see them grow back a missing limb on someone, or anything tangible. Always some inner thing, isn’t it? Some disease no one can see.’
‘You really are not a believer.’
Blume shrugged and leaned against a lemon tree. He broke a leaf and inhaled the tangy scent in an effort to clear his mind, then remembered his nasal spray.
‘That’s the thing, no one knows when it will happen, and it is very infrequent. The great mystery is that no one knows where the water comes from.’
Blume snorted the taste of the spray into the back of his throat, but the migraine was descending anyhow. ‘We are surrounded by marshes, and Silvana told me there are underground rivers.’
‘There is no water below that boulder, and no way for it to permeate its way up. The stature rests on a bed of pink peperino.’
‘Condensation, obviously.’
‘It’s more than that. A full stream comes pouring out of the rocks. No one knows where from.’
‘When was last time she cried?’
‘In 1994,’ said Greco. ‘I saw it with my own eyes.’
‘Did she cure you?’
‘I was not the first to drink her tears.’
‘Bad luck.’
‘It was Niki.’
‘So his diabetes is cured?’ said Blume.
‘He must have asked for something else.’
‘This is what you wanted to show me?’
Greco did not answer, he was cutting a diagonal line in the direction of the villa, careless of the flower beds. Twice he staggered. Blume, his own head throbbing now, quickened his pace and caught up. ‘What’s the matter with you? What has made you change so much since we met in the maresciallo’s office?’
‘Palm of Christ, angel trumpets, devil’s trumpets, and conium.’
‘What have you found out?’
‘Not what I have found out; I have been found out. How are you feeling by the way, Blume? You seem feverish to me. Go home. I am not going anywhere.’
Blume looked at the old man, and felt a sudden surge of pity. ‘Do you want me to call an ambulance?’
‘Just finish your work, Blume. I think you need to hurry. I’ll wait.’
Chapter 30
He began shaking as he reached the SUV, and had to steady himself before turning on the engine, then remind himself what he needed to do now. Things had taken an unexpected turn, and the investigative plan he had set out with such clarity the night before was no longer of much use. A different idea, a completely different idea, was forming in his mind now.
The first thing to do was find out about the body at the bottom of the ravine, which did not fit in with anything, not even his new theory. He drove cautiously back up to the town, parked Niki’s car in its usual place, and began the ascent that would bring him not only to where he understood they had found the body, but to his room, where he would wash, rest, and, above all, drink water, before finishing his work.
Four o’clock. Monterozzo was, as always, empty of people. Maybe there would be a crowd watching the firefighters and Carabinieri retrieve the unfortunate who had fallen off the rock. He had just passed the piazza, and was walking slowly into the steepest and darkest part of the town when his phone rang and Caterina’s name flashed up on screen.
Hearing her voice felt almost as good as drinking fresh water.
‘Caterina.’ His voice came out as a dry croak. He tried to clear his throat and engage some saliva.
‘Alec? Are you all right?’
‘Fine,’ he whispered. ‘A bit of a cold.’ He passed a fire truck, which had been unable to go any farther, and was now guarded by a lonely youth in an unseasonably heavy brown jacket. He stopped to ask about the operation going on above, and learned that they were only now winching the body up. All the equipment had had to be carried up by hand.
‘Alec?’
‘Hold on, Caterina.’ He cupped his hand over the phone, an automatic gesture, as he turned back to the fireman. ‘Any idea who it was?’
‘Not yet, and I’m not even from round here, so . . .’
‘Old or young?’ interrupted Blume.
He didn’t know that either, useless youth. ‘Sorry Caterina, you were saying?’
‘There is someone beside me who would like to talk to you. I am putting you on speakerphone.’
‘Hello, Commissioner Blume.’
‘Nadia? Nadia!’
‘Yes.’
The image of her lying dead at the bottom of the ravine evaporated to be replaced with a surreal image of Nadia and Caterina sitting in the living room, Alessia playing on the carpet before them. None of it made sense.
‘I was afraid . . .’ he began. ‘I thought I had failed you, too. You might have been dead.’
Caterina’s voice. ‘Are you all right, Alec? She’s not dead. She is here with me. We’re at the station. It is time to start making this part of an official investigation. She came to me with Niki Solito. He drove.’
‘Oh.’ This part, too, was beginning to make sense to him.
‘He had my address,’ said Caterina accusingly. ‘He came to my house.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Blume. ‘He is not dangerous after all.’
‘That’s not the point. Nadia rang my doorbell and asked for me by name. How do you think that made me feel?’
‘Niki drove me,’ offered Nadia. ‘He said I would be safe. He stayed downstairs so as not to worry you.’ She must have intended this last comment for Caterina.
‘All the way to Rome,’ said Blume. ‘Did he say why?’
He was asking Caterina, but Nadia answered. ‘Because of what happened to Alina. He was worried for me.’
‘I know who Alina is now, Alec,’ said Caterina, her voice amplified and far away at once. ‘Nadia has been able to tell me a lot.’
‘I may know where Alina is,’ he said.
‘Alina!’ It was Nadia’s voice, full of inappropriate hope.
He passed right by the cluster of firemen, Carabinieri, and onlookers, relieved he didn’t have to bother wit
h them now. He wondered how many people fell off this rock, how many hurled themselves off it. They had brought arc lights and batteries, a winch, stretcher, and ropes. Fabio the vigile was there, too. He had come up on a motorbike. The maresciallo was sitting on a doorstep, enjoying a small glass of coffee and a flavoured Toscanello cigar, whose aniseed-scented smoke hung in the still air increasing the relaxed drawing-room atmosphere of the group, in no hurry to drag the battered body of a stranger into their convivial midst. The maresciallo raised his hand in uncertain greeting, and did not call out as it became apparent Blume was not stopping.
Soon after, Blume let himself into the princess’s house. The €200 was still on the reception desk. Maybe she had gone out to see the body. It didn’t seem like her. Another thought crossed his mind, but he dismissed it.
The coldness of his bedroom was a great relief at first, but soon he found himself shivering, and he climbed fully clothed under the covers, and pulled them over him. An hour and a half, two hours at most, to gather his strength, he told himself. He lay on the bed, closed his eyes, and tried to map out his next moves. It would be better to go down to the garden for the last time before darkness fell.
Only now did it occur to him that Greco had poisoned himself. Or had been poisoned. He had even said it, but Blume was not listening. And then he had said, ‘How are you feeling, Blume, you don’t look so good?’ Or words to that effect. Flu? Unhappiness? Fear of the unknown, yellow flower; nostalgia, blue flower; innocence, white; murder, red; poison, green. All fed to him by Silvana, and he sat there imbibing them, trustful as Alessia. Caterina was looking at him with a puzzled frown, so he went over his explanation again, only to find that his audience had increased, as had the general scepticism about his motives. A room full of women, all of them interested in knowing about the toxicity of the infusions he had drunk. There was his mother, who had something to say about all those pills, too. Alessia, grown up now but recognizable, looked through him as if he wasn’t there. Caterina looked as she had when they met a few years ago; Nadia, Alina, Nadia–Alina were poised on the point of saying something. Olga, a large shadow, drank and drank in the corner, and Silvana was laughing and talking to an older man. A knock on the door caused him to lose the thread of his discourse.
He got out of bed, surprised it was dark already.
‘Your €200,’ said the princess, angrily. ‘What do I want with that?’ He retreated, surprised, then pushed the door closed against her as she tried to force her way into his room. Even with the door closed, he could feel her streaming under the crack below and through the keyhole like a cold wind, which grew in strength until the door burst open again, and he woke up.
Reluctantly abandoning the warmth of his bed, he got up to close it.
There stood the princess, pressing her hands to her temple. She had placed a red rose in her hair.
‘Didn’t you just . . . ?’
He jerked awake. It was dark in the room. Cautiously, he looked towards the door. It was closed. He waited for the next knock at the door, but none came. So much for getting back before nightfall, he muttered to himself.
He got up and had a shower, turning it to cold towards the end to soothe the hives on his upper arms and lower legs. It set him shivering again, but that passed as he got dressed in the last fresh clothes he had in his suitcase. It would be warmer outside than in.
He decided on a double dosage of Doxepin pills. He did not want to spend the day scratching himself and wincing. In the bathroom mirror, he noticed with detached interest that his pupils seemed very large. It gave him a soft look, and he tried to narrow his eyes into the unsympathetic glare that he had perfected for talking to suspects. He glanced sideways back into his room and froze. The door was open.
His fingers stopped in the process of redoing the button of his shirt, and closed themselves over into a fist. Then, keeping his movements light to compensate for the heavy thumping in his chest, he stepped out of the tiny bathroom into the bedroom. Nobody was there. Bed, unmade, suitcase on the floor, the dresser and the flyspecked oval mirror the colour of dark beer, and – of course! – the window. He had left the fucking window open. The air coming in combined with his pulling open of the bathroom door had created a low pressure wave that sucked open the door.
Even so, he was cautious and regretful of his lack of a weapon as he moved over to the door for what seemed like the third time, then spun round it into the blackness of the corridor. He looked quickly down one side, then the other, towards the stairs – too quickly, perhaps, as a red dot appeared on the periphery of his vision, then floated away.
A click at the back of his head foretold of a migraine. He went back into the bathroom, and fetched some strips of toilet paper. Gently he blew his nose, then shot two sprays of Sumatriptan nasal spray up his nostrils before dropping the bottle, almost finished now, into his jacket pocket. Today was not the day to be blinded by a cluster headache. No day was, but this in particular was one in which he needed clarity of vision. He tilted the mirror upwards on its axis to check his eyes again, bringing the top corner of the room, where wall met the ceiling, into view. He allowed the mirror to fall back into place, and he caught a flash of a red something directly behind him. He did not want to turn round. He would observe it, whatever it was, through the mirror. It was already moving out of his frame of vision, and so he did not so much see as remember that he had just seen a girl in a silver-grey dress, with a rose at the side of her short brown hair.
He breathed out slowly through his nose, and slowly turned around. Nothing and no one, of course, though he caught a grey object flitting on the ceiling, which resolved itself into the shadow of the curtain flapping in the window.
In the corridor outside, as he looked towards the stairs, he saw again the red dot that might have been a rose. Not a rose, a hallucination, he told himself. Just my imagination.
He sang the refrain from the Temptations song. Just my imagination . . . oooh, ooh yeah, running away with me. The red carried the suggestion of an outline behind, a glint that suggested eyes but was probably the reflection of the light from his room.
He changed the song to Papa was a Rolling Stone and marched towards the stairs, and the red spot receded, as he knew it would. At the top of the stairs, he looked down one flight to the next landing, and saw a shadow slip around the corner. But there was, he remembered, a light switch there. His immediate mission was to reach that and turn it on, before turning round to see what awaited him below. Holding onto the banister, because the risers of these stairs varied slightly in height and there was a danger of tripping, he walked down the nine steps, to where they turned. He followed the gooseneck plunge of the handrail as it turned right and continued down, then executed another turn and stared down the next flight. Again, he sensed someone move out of sight just below him.
Still holding the handrail, with his other hand he swiped at the wall till he found the switch, banging his finger in the process. The light came on, and the next flight below him posed no mystery and held no threat. He affected a nonchalant gait on his way down, but the problem of darkness re-presented itself at the next flight. Once again, the handrail plunged down, into a narrow landing, the stairs reversed direction, and all was dark.
He kept going, talking now, and challenging the figure to make itself known, chiding himself for being so impressionable, laughing a bit even, as he realized he was talking to himself. Finally, he reached the ground floor, where there was more light. He walked down through the hallway, shuffling to keep his footfall quiet.
. . . and when he died
All he left us was alone.
He opened the door to the room with the map. The light switch was by the door, and he flicked it on. Everything was OK. He was just a few hours behind schedule. The plan of the villa, still held in place with the lead weights, lay where he had left it. He went over and tapped the area that interested him before realising his finger was bleeding again, thanks to his frantic scrabbling for light swi
tches in the dark. A drop of blood fell onto the plan in front of him. He tried to clean off the old paper, but merely smudged the mess he had made.
He went into the next room with its mixture of portraits, photos, and junk. A portrait of, possibly, the princess’s mother in 1920s clothes, her eyes too lustrous and her lips too full for it to be innocent, stared at him. The small photographs of the princess in the silver frames were mere grey smudges. A deer head looked down at him disdainfully. He lifted up the bunch of keys he had noticed before. They were so tightly packed around the ring that they did not jingle. The weight was surprising, and the heft reassuring: he felt he was at long last carrying a weapon. He was happy to leave the house.
Blume walked slowly, allowing the warm night air to reach his bones and take away the chill of his room, and he felt his step become lighter and his head clearer. The body had evidently been recovered, and all the equipment taken down. Everyone was gone, as if they had never been there. The streets were white and clear under the moon, which shone with unusual intensity. One or two windows had lights on and someone was watching TV with the volume too loud, but Monterozzo was its usual deserted self.
When he reached the car, he opened the boot, pulled at a tab on the floor, and hunted around till he had found the scissor jacks and screw for changing a tyre. He was pleased to find a heavy-duty emergency torch, too. It was one of those with compact fluorescent tubes on the side and a powerful lamp in front. Well done, Niki, for being so prepared, he thought. He dropped them on the passenger seat beside him and drove out of the town. The keys he had taken from Silvana’s were also on the passenger seat. The keys from the princess’s house sat beside them. The car clock told him it was now 1 in the morning.
He drove carefully down the hill. Nobody and no vehicles were about. The car had halogen headlamps, which cut through the darkness with a fierce blue light. On the first hairpin, the sweep of light caught a rat or a hare, or something that hopped quickly out of sight. On the third hairpin turn, they picked up the white face of a young girl standing by the roadside.
Bitter Remedy: An Alec Blume Case Page 23
