‘Why?’
‘Because it’s out of the wind, it’s sheltered, and she’s got a wall to lean on while she waits.’
‘Are you not always punctual?’
‘With Roman traffic! And I’m the one doing the favour of picking her up.’
‘How often did you meet here?’
‘Lots of times. Twenty, thirty? Like I was her chauffeur.’
‘And she always waited by that wall?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see. And who else knew about the appointment?’
‘Anyone that she told.’
‘Do you know her friends?’
‘She didn’t have any. At school, I used to lend her my friends, even though we were younger than her. Pathetic, huh? Can we go now? I’m cold.’
‘Do you think when we listen to the recording of the call between you and her we’ll hear her say she’ll be at the wall?’
Olivia’s eyes widened. ‘You can do that?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Blume gravely.
‘Well then, you’ll hear her say “usual place” and then “thank you”.’
‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘You realize this is very important?’
‘I think those were her words,’ said Olivia. ‘Why is it so important? I mean, obviously it’s a murder and all, so everything is, like, really important, but why is where we decided to meet so important?’
‘Because this is where she was killed,’ said Blume.
‘This is going to come across as bit heartless, and that’s not at all how I mean it, but so what?’
‘She was shot with a high-velocity bullet, probably from a rifle. The killer had to be waiting for her, so he had to choose his vantage point and had to know she would be here.’
‘We just said the usual place. Except this time . . .’ Her eyes welled up with tears, which she allowed to splash freely down her cheeks, smudging her mascara.
‘I am sorry I had to bring you here,’ said Blume mechanically. Tears irritated him no end. Was Olivia misjudging him again?
Olivia sniffed, and brought her face closer to his. The tears had gone already. ‘Is my face a mess?’
‘Your face is fine,’ said Blume. ‘You were very kind to give her lifts.’
‘We were more like sisters than cousins. She was like a big sister.’
Blume accompanied her back to her car, parked fifty metres away. He patted the roof of the car, on which was painted a Union Jack. Two more Union Jacks were painted on the leading edges of its aerodynamic wing mirrors.
‘Are you an Anglophile?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘These British flags all over your car.’
She laughed at him. ‘They were there when I bought it. They were part of a set of optional extras, I suppose. I have a bag with that flag on it, too.’ She paused, ‘And a T-shirt and a pencil case and an iPhone cover. I just like the colours. And the shape’s pretty cool. Better than the Italian flag, wouldn’t you say? I mean the Italian flag on your car would just look silly.’
‘And attract vandals if you drove it up north,’ said Blume.
‘But the British flag looks good. Besides, everyone loves Britain and all things British. Can I go now please, Inspector?’
‘Commissioner. I am a commissioner.’
‘Is that higher or lower?’
‘Infinitely higher. You bought the car?’
‘Sure.’
‘You personally?’
‘Well, my dad.’
‘What does dad do?’
‘Not much. Hangs out with friends, works in a hospital sometimes.’ She shrugged.
‘One more question. Sofia worked in the Health Institute on Viale Margherita. Why was this the usual meeting point for you?’
‘Because this is where I study. This is my campus.’
‘Yes, but isn’t it a bit out of her way?’
Olivia shook her head, then recomposed her hair. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You’re saying Sofia would come all the way over here to get a lift from you?’
‘Because I am the one with the car. Besides, from where she worked, she could just cut through the campus.’ She pointed a manicured finger at the entrance to the university.
‘How long was the walk?’
This was the sort of question that provided an opportunity for Olivia to widen her pupils in surprise. ‘I don’t know, Inspector. And I’m freezing.’
‘Get into your car, roll down the window.’ When she had done so, he leaned in. ‘You often gave Sofia a lift because you both live in the same district, right?’
‘We are almost neighbours. Our mothers are sisters, and they wanted to stay close after their mother died.’ Olivia clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Ooh! Sorry! I called you Inspector again.’
‘That’s OK. What district is it?’
‘We live in Trullo, unfortunately.’
‘Why unfortunately?’ asked Blume.
‘Well, Commissioner, it’s not exactly the nicest part of the city, is it?’
‘I see. Thank you, Olivia. I’ll let you go home now. But I want to talk to your boyfriend. Would that be all right?’
The question earned him an impatient toss of hair. ‘You’ll have to ask him, I suppose. What do you want to talk to him about?’
‘It’s how an investigation works. We talk to everyone the victim knew. Sofia knew Marco, didn’t she?’
‘Well, obviously, because there’s me, isn’t there?’
‘Were you always around when they met?’
Olivia snapped her head round and looked straight at Blume whose face was just inches away.
‘What a fucking stupid question,’ she said, all the bubbles suddenly gone from her voice and movements.
Blume stood back from the car and did his best to look affronted. ‘Sorry, but why is it such a dumb question?’
‘Because if I am not around, by definition I wouldn’t be there to see if they were meeting, would I?’
‘Ah, I see. But they might have told you afterwards, or before.’
Olivia received this suggestion in silence, then she leaned back in the seat, fluffed her hair, and laughed. ‘Sometimes I am so stupid! Everyone always said Sofia was the clever one. Of course, they could have met and then told me. I just didn’t think of it.’ She reached out her hand and gently touched him on the arm. ‘I am sorry for my tone just now. I am very upset.’
‘I understand,’ said Blume. ‘So maybe you’ll ask your boyfriend to contact me, maybe drop by the Commissariato on Collegio Romano, phoning ahead to make sure I’m there?’
‘Sure!’
‘Great! Bye then.’
Olivia switched on the engine, revved it a little bit, turned, and gave him a lovely smile. He slapped the Union Jack on the roof of the car, and leaned down again.
‘Did you ever drive around to Viale Margherita to wait for her outside her office?’
‘No.’ And with a final pitying shake of her head, she spun the steering wheel, and the mini nipped neatly out into the traffic flow.
Chapter 12
Blume sat on a turquoise plastic bench that seemed to have been ripped out of the back of a bus from the 1970s. Until now, he had believed that the main problem with plastic was that it was non-biodegradable, but this seat was making him reconsider his science. Worn out by the shifting buttocks of people waiting for haircuts, it had fissured into millions of tiny scales like the surface of an old painting, and every time he moved, a tiny stream of blue plastic particles rose into the beam of sunlight coming through the window.
On the floor before him lay the curly grey locks of the customer before him, like the shavings of a sheep with scabies. Propped on the counter in front of the mirror and overhanging the washbasin was a small television set. On the other side was a portable DVD player. The cable linking them dipped into the washbasin. The DVD player was double wired with an electric shaver, and the TV was plugged into a socket behind Blume, who had been warned by t
he barber as he came in not to trip over it.
The barber and his customer, whose face Blume could not see from where he was sitting, were enjoying a film with Alberto Sordi, who was playing a marquis in a comic-historical romp. The barber would often pause his haircutting and point with his sharp scissors at the screen, to recommend an upcoming scene, whose screenplay both he and the customer seemed to have committed to memory. Then they would wait until the scene had played itself out, and the barber would prudently put down his scissors, so that he could safely wipe away his tears of laughter with the back of his hand. Then he would pick up the scissors again, sigh, and snip a few more hairs from the top of the customer’s head, before pointing again at the screen in delighted anticipation of what was coming next. He seemed to manage about three grey curls per hour.
Fortunately, Blume had arrived when they were already far into the film. As the credits rolled up, the barber whipped out a folding razor and, with unexpected speed and dexterity, cleaned up the bristles along the customer’s hairline.
Finally, he took the once-white apron off the customer, and with the theatricality of an onstage magician making a girl disappear, swiped it up and down in the air with a happy thwack. Millions of tiny black hairs and skin-toned particles joined the asbestos-like dust from the bench in the sunbeam. Blume thought fondly of the gas mask he used to have hanging on his belt while policing football stadiums as a young cop.
From a bent shelf made of slowly exploding plywood, the barber retrieved a bedside candlestick containing the stub of a candle surrounded by Gothic lacings of hardened wax.
‘Candle treatment?’
‘I need it?’
‘Afraid so.’
‘OK, not too much, you’ve got a customer there. Don’t keep him waiting.’
The barber pulled out a soft pack of MS cigarettes from his pocket, opened it, extracted a disposable lighter, and lit the candle. Then, crouching down a little, he gently pushed the customer’s head to one side and waved the flame about his right ear, and then proceeded to do the same with the other ear. A smell of burning hair filled the small space.
‘Ow,’ said the customer mildly.
‘A few caught fire there. They won’t be bothering you for a while.’
The customer, who turned out to be a large and angular man with the face of a mistreated horse, rubbed his ears as he stood up. He gave Blume a nod. ‘Pity you can’t get rid of nostril hairs in the same way,’ he said with the cheerful complicity of a man spotting a peer. ‘Tweezers. Don’t talk to me about tweezers.’
The man paid €10 and left. The barber fetched a broom, swept the hair into a pile against the skirting board, and propped the broom against the wall. Then, with the solicitude of a maître d’, invited Blume to take a seat.
Blume settled down into the damp warmth of the previous customer. The barber went over to the right-hand side of the sink, lifted out the video cable, rinsed the scissors, then dropped it back in. He popped out the DVD, a homemade affair with the title written in felt pen, blew on it carefully, and then wiped it against his apron, covering the disc in a million tiny hairs.
‘Hold on a second.’
He disappeared around a skirting-board partition at the back of the shop, and Blume heard a door scrape close. After a minute or so a toilet flushed, the door scraped open again and the barber was back, DVD in hand.
‘You look more like a man who enjoys Eduardo De Filippo. Am I right?’
Blume’s knowledge was limited to snatches of old films glimpsed on Sunday afternoons. But he agreed that De Filippo was to his taste.
‘What’s your favourite film of his? One with his brother Peppino?’
Blume racked his brains for a title.
‘Do you prefer the stuff from the forties or the fifties?’
‘Oh, the fifties, definitely,’ said Blume. A title popped into his head. ‘Napoli milionaria.’
The barber gave a knowing smile and nodded his head slowly, then displayed the disc he held in his hand. Inscribed in thick black felt pen was the very same title.
‘That’s uncanny,’ said Blume.
‘I am a good judge of character,’ said the barber, inserting the disc and fast-forwarding through the opening credits.
‘Short back and sides,’ said Blume.
‘Same style as you have now?’
‘Style?’
‘A wave cut down the back, flat edge above the ears instead of tapering,’ said the barber.
‘Right. Same style, then,’ said Blume.
A few minutes in, it became apparent that the barber was waiting to see if Blume was one who appreciated the film as serious art or lowbrow comedy. Neither was the answer. The thing depressed the hell out of him. Seeing that his customer needed guidance, the barber would occasionally pause in his clipping, point at the screen, and allow an entire exchange to pass between Gennaro and his wife Amalia, then wait to see if Blume had enjoyed it.
‘I suppose I’m in a grim mood,’ said Blume after failing to laugh for the sixth time.
‘I could turn it off , . .’ said the barber in a tone of terrible self-sacrifice.
‘No, no. It’s me. My job. It gets me down.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m a policeman. But that’s not the problem. It’s the things we have to do.’
‘I can imagine,’ said the barber and snipped the air for emphasis. ‘Just the other day . . .’
Blume interrupted him. ‘You say you can imagine, but you’re probably thinking it’s hard to put up with the violence and senseless cruelty of criminals, the terrible acts of violence.’
‘Ah, so you’re squadra mobile. I was just saying, the other day . . .’
‘Well, you’re wrong,’ said Blume.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ said the barber, hurt.
‘About criminals. You expect them to behave like that. You become immune to cruelty, you get used to violence, you regret seeing good people make terrible mistakes and throw their lives away. That’s part of the job, the good part is when you can contribute a little to righting a wrong, or saving a person. But you know what the worst thing is?’
‘Dead children, I imagine,’ said the barber, clipping away at the back of Blume’s head.
‘Yeah, well, after dead children.’
The barber went to the DVD machine and stopped the film. ‘I don’t think light comedy is appropriate if we’re talking about dead children.’
‘But we’re not. I was talking about something else. I was trying to say that what really gets you down is when the people who have been appointed to do justice do great injustice. What is a man supposed to do when he has to follow the instructions of a cruel magistrate? A bully?’
The barber listened in silence as Blume told him all about Adelgardo Lambertini, his imprisoned daughter, the mother of an infant son. The barber pushed up the short hairs at the back of his neck and quietly and methodically clipped away as Blume told him about Valerio and his drug-pushing, his Nazi beliefs, his history of violence, cowardice, and petty crime. When Blume had exhausted the full list of Valerio’s crimes, some of which he invented since, from experience, he knew they were the sort of things people like Valerio did all the time, the barber, silent now, took out an electric razor. Blume stopped talking as the razor buzzed around his ears, around the back of his head. Then it stopped, and out came the folding razor. Blume was relieved to see the barber change the blade.
Five minutes passed in silence, then off came the apron and the barber said, ‘Shampoo and rinse?’
Blume looked at the television balanced on the left edge of the basin, the DVD player on the other.
‘Only €5 extra. Makes 15 in all.’
‘In this basin?’
‘Sure. I’ll move the DVD player, first. Water would damage it.’
‘And the TV, maybe?’
‘I never splash in that direction.’ He lifted down the DVD player, set it on the floor, and said, ‘OK, head forward.’
Blume gave him 20 and told him to keep the change.
‘That’s OK. It’s my own shop. I don’t need tips. Let me write you a tax receipt.’
‘A tax receipt?’
‘It’s the law,’ he tore off a receipt and thrust it at Blume. ‘What about that policewoman, I spoke to? She was lovely. What am I supposed to tell her if she visits again?’
‘Caterina,’ said Blume.
‘You know her?’
‘I’m married to her.’
The barber stood back and looked at Blume as if seeing him for the first time. ‘You. Married to her? You don’t have a ring.’
‘Modern marriage,’ said Blume.
‘Is this a joke?’
‘No. Look, I haven’t married her yet. But that’s the plan. I do live with her, though. That’s the truth.’
‘She doesn’t know you came here to see me?’
‘No.’
‘You want me to deny what I saw?’
‘I did not say that.’
‘You implied it,’ said the barber. ‘I’d hate to see her get in trouble.’
‘I’m her boss. She can’t get in trouble with me, and if any trouble comes down from higher than me, I’ll be standing there to intercept it. For her, it’s an administrative hassle. For that old man and his family, it’s their entire lives.’
‘And you sure about the woman inspector not getting into real trouble?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Well, I’ll think about it. Maybe what I saw that old man do wasn’t as deliberate as it seemed.’
‘You do whatever you see fit to do,’ said Blume. ‘I don’t want you to do anything that goes against your conscience.’
The Memory Key: A Commissario Alec Blume Novel Page 8
