The Memory Key: A Commissario Alec Blume Novel

by Conor Fitzgerald

  ‘You already have,’ said the barber.

  Chapter 13

  Principe, dressed like the Italian idea of an English gentleman, raised his glass of gin and tonic and clinked it against Blume’s coffee cup. ‘You made a good impression, dear boy. Pitagora likes you. He sees in you a kindred spirit. He phoned me to tell me this.’

  ‘I find that strange,’ said Blume.

  ‘That someone should like you? He invited you to his house, I hear. I hope you accepted.’

  ‘Yes, I did. But only for you.’

  ‘See, you are likeable.’ Principe gulped down half his drink, set it on the table, swirled a few shards of ice with his little finger, then gulped down the rest. ‘Did you get your hair cut?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It makes you look older. The grey comes through.’

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked Blume, signalling to the waiter.

  They were sitting huddled against the cold in Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina. Principe asked the waiter for another gin and tonic and for the outdoor heater to be moved closer to him and turned up. Blume suggested going indoors, but Principe shook his head.

  ‘There is more life out here.’

  A group of children in expensive fancy dress tumbled by. A small girl dressed as a pirate decided to take a short cut through the outdoor tables, and immediately got lost in the forest of human and chair legs. A young woman elegantly wove her way in and out of the tables without disturbing the patrons, swept the lost pirate up in her arms, and carried her back to the open piazza to run after her friends, who were milling about the steps in front of the church of San Lorenzo.

  ‘Why are they dressed up like that?’ said Principe. ‘It’s autumn, even if it feels like winter. Carnival is still three months away.’

  ‘Halloween,’ said Blume. ‘It was a few days ago, but once you have the costume, you may as well use it. There is a kid on the second floor of my building who goes round dressed as Batman from October to March. His sister is often a bee.’

  ‘Another American import. No one paid any attention to Halloween a few years ago.’

  ‘Time passes, times change. Here’s your drink.’

  Although he was wearing a heavy green woollen coat, red scarf, and a trilby, Principe shivered so much that his hand shook as he took his drink. He drank this one, too, in rapid gulps, then smacked his lips and hugged himself.

  ‘Why don’t we go in since it’s so cold?’ said Blume again.

  ‘It’s not so cold. You’re sitting there in a jacket and open shirt, Alec.’

  ‘I have a T-shirt beneath the shirt and the jacket is heavy. It’s cold enough.’

  ‘You are being polite. Back to the case. Pitagora has clout. I’m sure you picked that up. He knows where the bodies are. Maybe literally.’

  ‘I hear that so often in this country,’ said Blume. ‘And yet no one ever finds the bodies. I am beginning to think no one knows anything.’

  ‘Code of silence.’

  ‘Except Pitagora never shuts up.’

  ‘You noticed that, too?’

  ‘He sits there and spouts forth an endless stream of bullshit,’ said Blume.

  ‘I sort of admire him,’ said Principe. ‘At least he believes what he says.’

  ‘Unlike us, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Blume was going to argue the point, but Principe looked too haggard and vulnerable in his oversized coat, and by the time he had stayed his tongue, he was beginning to think maybe the magistrate was right.

  Principe sipped at his drink, grimacing as if it were filled with bile. ‘There is the sexual angle,’ he said.

  ‘I was wondering about that,’ said Blume. ‘What’s the story there?’

  ‘For years there have been hushed up scandals and rumours about him exploiting his students,’ said Principe. ‘Good marks for favours. Not only that, good marks, possible research posts, and influence over other members of staff, which means the good marks continue to arrive.’

  ‘That’s not much, though, is it? He’s hardly the only professor who does that. Regular sex?’

  Principe shrugged. ‘These days who can say?’

  ‘Just answer me, Filippo.’

  ‘Yes. Taking into account rumour-mongering, envy, exaggeration. His house is swarming with young students. He teaches there.’

  ‘You mean “teach” as in “fuck?” ’

  ‘I think he actually teaches, too.’

  ‘Was Sofia one of his students?’

  ‘No,’ said Principe. ‘She was a bit vague about the professor. I couldn’t pin down what she wanted to hide. She seemed to know about his memory methods. Apparently her boss was a student of his. But she was not forthcoming on the point.’ His voice turned throaty and he coughed at length. When he had recovered his composure, he waved his hand in feeble apology. ‘I always hated old people who coughed like this and now here I am.’

  ‘It was annoying,’ agreed Blume, ‘but you’ve stopped now.’ He waited until he was sure the fit was over. ‘I went up to the storage space from which the shot that hit Stefania Manfellotto was fired, and I did a little reconstruction using a student. She started walking from the building when I told her and . . .’

  ‘How did you tell her if you were upstairs?’

  Blume pointed at his mobile phone sitting on the table between them. The blush that covered Principe’s face made him seem momentarily healthier.

  ‘So, I ordered her to walk. After about 30 seconds, she came into sight from the window. At around 40 seconds, she cleared the shadow of the building, and that was by far the best moment for the shooter to pull the trigger. Every step she took thereafter simply increased the range. Worse, the point at which she was shot was at the very limit of the range. A few more steps and she was protected by the admin building. So why did the shooter wait till the shot was as difficult as possible? It would make sense if Manfellotto had been coming in the opposite direction, towards the window. Then we could say the shooter fired at the earliest opportunity.’

  ‘I don’t have an answer for that,’ said Principe, still as embarrassed but whitening again.

  ‘That makes me wonder,’ said Blume. ‘You have the diagrams, the reports, the ballistics, so why did it not occur to you?’

  Principe took off his glasses and breathed on them, then tried to polish them on his woollen coat, with poor results. He placed the glasses on the table and peered with his watery eyes in Blume’s direction.

  ‘A little kindness, Alec. I am fallible, and I haven’t been feeling great.’

  ‘That’s fine. You’re fallible. I might not have thought about it either, but the Carabinieri? I know they will have reached the same conclusions, and I know they have a file on it. So, what worries me is this: either they did not point out an essential element of the investigation to you, in which case they are deliberately withholding evidence from you; or they did, in which case you are withholding evidence from me. Which is it?’

  ‘There is a third possibility, Alec. Maybe they showed me, and I forgot. I am not withholding evidence from you. Why would I do that?’

  ‘You forgot? I need to talk to the lead investigator of the Carabinieri. I am sure he won’t appreciate my butting in. But it can’t be helped.’

  ‘Captain Giovanni Zezza,’ said Principe. ‘I have already asked him to meet you.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ said Blume. ‘Where there is more than one victim, you seek the point of convergence in their lives and concentrate there.’

  ‘There is nothing in common between Manfellotto and Sofia. The girl must have seen something by accident.’

  ‘What could she have seen? When the sniper dropped Manfellotto, they were in an open space. Even if she saw where the shot came from, and you tell me she didn’t, she can’t have identified anyone. No, the connection has to be the professor.’

  ‘She wasn’t a student of the professor’s. She wasn’t even a student.’

  ‘What abou
t the people in Pitagora’s class. Did she know any of them?’

  ‘She was just cutting through on her way to meet her cousin for a lift back home.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question. Is that because you forgot to ask? Did she know who Pitagora was?’

  ‘Everyone knows who Pitagora is,’ said Principe.

  ‘Yes, but did she?’

  ‘Yes. I told you that. I asked her, of course I did.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Blume. ‘I just need to be clear. Unlike you. What about her place of work? Have you checked that out?’

  ‘That’s just standard procedure. Yes. Or no . . . I told her boss to present himself for questioning. I think I’m seeing him . . . I forget. I’ll look into it. For the sake of procedural protocol. But like I said, there are interviews scheduled and the Carabinieri have asked a few questions.’

  ‘So you have no objections if I go?’

  ‘You have your own bastard way of doing things, and I’m not going to change that now.’ Principe was slurring his words noticeably now. ‘What’s your lead?’

  ‘No lead. I just want to learn something about Sofia. So far the focus has all been on who killed her. It’s good to get an idea of the sort of background she came from. Including the workplace. As you said, it’s standard procedure.’

  He watched as the magistrate put away another drink. He had had one in front of him when Blume arrived. No wonder he was forgetting stuff.

  ‘Stop giving me those disapproving looks, Alec.’

  ‘Maybe it’s envy.’

  ‘Then have one.’

  Blume shook his head.

  ‘Too bad,’ said Principe, with a hint of aggression in his voice. ‘Pitagora and Manfellotto are on opposite sides of a power struggle going on within the parties of the extreme right. Both of them are figureheads more than anything, but their opinions count. Manfellotto, believe it or not, was playing the role of the moderate. She was in favour of an alliance with Berlusconi or whatever creature comes after him. Pitagora, on the other, hand, is following the line of Forza Nuova: no abortion, reinstatement of the Lateran pacts giving the Catholic Church complete control over education, public morals, and so on, expulsion of all non-Italians and a few other points I can’t be bothered remembering. Basically, she is anti-Catholic but pro-establishment, he is pro-Catholic and anti-establishment, if those things can go together.’

  ‘All this fighting over 2 per cent of the vote.’

  ‘They’ll soon get a hell of a lot more, mark my words. Pitagora is also a leading light in Our Own Nation, if you have heard of them. Anyhow, their big platform is that the banks and high finance are running and ruining the world. And since that is indisputably true, I think they are going to start picking up a lot of support, and I’m not the only one who thinks this. A lot of powerful people are taking long positions on the rise of these parties, and Pitagora is a natural interlocutor. This is one of the reasons he is hard to touch – Excuse me,’ Principe stopped the waiter and ordered yet another gin and tonic for himself and, without asking, a cappuccino for Blume.

  ‘They’re not still killing each other, though, are they? Last time I looked, internecine strife on the far right consisted of Alessandra Mussolini doing her angry fishwife act on television.’

  ‘It might be starting again. As I say, the far right is on its way to power.’

  ‘We have had 20 years of the Northern League, so what’s the difference?’ said Blume.

  Principe propped his elbow on the table and fumbled around a bit with his glasses before getting them back on his face. ‘The Northern League is a spent force. Italians need something just as nasty, maybe a little less comical than fat men with green handkerchiefs, to take its place. But you’re right. It’s all happened already and will happen all over again. I’m just explaining why people take Pitagora seriously.’

  ‘No one so much as Pitagora himself. You can’t be Fascist and have a sense of humour,’ said Blume.

  ‘But to get from that to shooting his old girlfriend and camerata is a hell of a stretch,’ said Principe. ‘How would that work? They met, they argued. He took an old high-powered rifle . . . Ah-ha.’ He took his glass from the waiter’s proffered silver tray, and drank one-third of it before Blume had finished watching the sugar sink beneath the foam on his cappuccino.

  As the waiter walked away, Principe said, ‘Did you see the look he gave me? Like I had asked for a personal favour.’

  ‘You asked for the bill, but he’s been putting the receipts under the drinks as he brings them out. Maybe that was it, or maybe it’s the fact that you’ve gone through half a bottle of gin in about half an hour and it’s not midday yet. What’s going on, Filippo? I don’t remember you drinking like this.’

  ‘It’s the loss of my wife.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but that was two years ago, and drinking won’t help.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. Now she’s finally gone, I can drink as much as I like,’ said Principe with a forced laugh that turned into a cough and then an attack of spluttering. The waiter came over and, without saying anything, placed a glass of water beside him. Principe downed it, and thanked the waiter.

  Three minutes later, Principe stood up and said, ‘I need an old-man piss’, just too loud, drawing looks from the tables around. He swayed slightly as he made his way into the bar.

  He was a long time coming back. The sun had already left the piazza, and Blume was beginning to feel cold and impatient. When Principe finally emerged, he announced that he had paid the bill. He threw a thin arm around Blume’s shoulder and with his free hand, rolled his fist playfully against Blume’s chest before releasing him. ‘Loosen up, Alec. Have a drink now and again. Smile a bit more, learn to like people and appreciate all this,’ he swept out an arm and turned in a full circle, staggering from left to right foot as he completed his twirl.

  ‘Is this because you’re upset about Sofia?’

  ‘Is what about her?’ said Principe, his words coming out with a flanging effect caused by the mucus in his throat.

  ‘Your drinking, messing about like this.’

  ‘Told you, my wife . . .’ He grabbed at Blume’s arm

  ‘I’m not listening to this,’ said Blume, pulling away so suddenly that Principe stumbled and might have fallen had he not caught him. ‘Damn it, Filippo.’

  Principe straightened his trilby. ‘I think I may stop the drinking. It’s not as much fun as I expected it to be. It just makes me so very tired.’

  ‘And maybe less effective as a magistrate,’ suggested Blume.

  ‘That would be bad. I have to solve this case. It is my last one you know.’

  ‘You’re retiring?’ Principe certainly looked like he was at retirement age, but Blume knew he had just turned 63. ‘Is it ill health?’

  ‘More than that, Alec,’ said Principe. ‘I’m dying.’

  Blume stood back and looked at Principe from head to toe, and saw it was true.

  ‘Dead man walking,’ said Principe, then put a histrionic finger to his lips, drawing the attention of the tables around them. ‘Shh. Don’t mention it to anyone.’

  ‘I won’t. Sit down before you fall down.’

  Principe sat down heavily. Allowing his head to loll backwards before he manoeuvred himself into a more assertive posture, he continued, ‘I don’t know why I told you. I haven’t even told my daughter. And you made me sit down but stayed standing, which is just psychological bullying. I like you, Alec, but I would not choose you for a confessor.’

  ‘You just did.’

  Principe stared at him, eyes glassy from drink, then stood up again, rocking back and forth on his feet. ‘Have you ever thought of becoming a grief counsellor, Alec?’ He swayed dangerously, and Blume caught hold of him again.

  ‘Come on, I’ll get you home.’

  ‘We can walk from here, it’s quicker,’ said Principe.

  ‘I know. We’ll walk. It’ll do you good.’

  ‘I’m afraid I might crash into
all the people walking in the opposite direction.’

  ‘I’ll guide you.’

  Chapter 14

  Blume knocked again on the double doors, but they were designed to be pushed through, not knocked on, and the sound he made was no more than an ineffectual rap. He raised his voice again and called out, ‘Professor Ideo!’

  A voice, raised but sounding distant, shouted something back that Blume failed to understand.

  A woman in a white coat clacked quickly across the corridor behind him.

  ‘Excuse me?’ She ignored him. ‘Excuse me!’

  Reluctantly she turned round, pushing ringlets away from her forehead to clear her field of vision. She was young, but her face was severe and filled with snappish authority. She seemed very unimpressed by what she saw and allowed her hair to fall forward again. It was the white lab coat, Blume decided. Put an ordinary person in a white coat, or a police uniform, come to that, and watch them grow in contempt for the uninitiated.

  He pointed to the double doors which had a circular wire-mesh window through which he could see another identical set of double doors three metres further on.

  ‘I’m looking for Professor Ideo. Can you go in there and fetch him for me?’ asked Blume.

  ‘I hardly think so,’ said the woman.

  ‘Well, do you think I can?’

  ‘Do as you wish.’

  Blume turned back to the door, hesitant. A large yellow triangle announced ‘biohazard!’ and below that, in bright red letters, was written: ‘Strictly no admittance for unauthorized personnel’. Below that was written: ‘Suits must be worn at all times’; and finally: ‘Keep this door closed’.

  He turned round to ask for more advice, but the woman was gone.

  Gingerly, he pushed his way through, and took a few steps to find himself standing before another set of identical doors with exactly the same message. It was like being in one of those dreams that pretended to be about frustrated progress, but kept you thinking about death for the rest of the day.

  He knocked again. Nothing.

  He thumped with his fist and called out. ‘Professor Ideo!’