The Memory Key: A Commissario Alec Blume Novel

by Conor Fitzgerald

  ‘I am reporting the event and this conversation.’

  ‘Good for you. You’re right. How about we say you found these used jumpsuits, one of which might have been used by the shooter. Would that help?’

  ‘I am still writing a truthful report.’

  ‘I didn’t say not to. I am just suggesting that if we agree that you rather than I found these jumpsuits, it might help neutralize the mistake you made. I’m not asking for anything in return.’

  ‘It will mean you have a lie you can hold over me, Commissioner.’

  Blume nodded. ‘You’d better get back to your post, appuntato. You have too much integrity to go far,’ he said.

  As he drove down Via Cavour, the rain eased off and he opted for a detour by the Circo Massimo and a leisurely, luxury breakfast at Cristalli di Zucchero. Parking outside the rose garden and the American residence, he strolled down towards the United Nations building and, for old times’ sake, bought himself a copy of the International Herald Tribune, being mildly surprised to find that it still existed. It had been his father’s paper, or, better, it and the Guardian Weekly had been the newspapers for all the ex-pats in the days before the internet and globalization, in the days before graffiti and economic decline, in the days before the damned euro, ‘in the days before Rock and Roll,’ he said out loud in his best Van Morrison voice, drawing a sideways glance from an African woman hurrying to her UN job.

  That reminded him, he needed to check out his new tenants – or did he? What was the etiquette? One thing he needed to do was tell Caterina he had finally rented out his apartment. She would appreciate that.

  He spent a pleasant hour and a half in his own company, getting warm and dry again and even venturing into the crossword at the back of the newspaper, and reading the comic strips which, like the newspaper and the act of leisurely reading in the morning, seemed to belong to another, better age, when most people kept their thoughts to themselves, and opinionists were rare creatures that lived in newspapers, and nobody blogged.

  Full of cappuccinos and pastries, and marvelling still at how much they had just made him pay, he drove up the winding hill behind the Vittoriano and parked his car next to an overexcited couple, him in a morning suit, her in a cream dress that cost more than the car they had come in, on their way to get married in the registry office. It was now about 11:40. Ten minutes late for a conference was like being half an hour early.

  As he reached the portico of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, he noticed the groom was carefully following one of the lines of the white marble pattern set into the cobblestones, while his bride swept forwards across the ground, past Marcus Aurelius on his horse, holding up the hem of her wedding dress above her ankles but letting its trail sweep the wet ground behind. The young man was now looking up at the sky in wonderment at what he was getting himself into.

  Blume climbed Michelangelo’s elegant staircase, prepared to be bored and irritated in equal measure for the next two hours. He pushed the doors of the debating chamber open, then found himself staring straight down the aisle at the questore who was standing in front of a stature of Julius Caesar saying something about the burdens of responsibility. The questore stopped in mid phrase to stare at Blume, then continued, but not before everyone else had also looked at him. All the front row seats were taken. Blume slid into a seat next to a commissioner from Tor Vergata with pointed sideburns and a moustache who looked up from his game of Angry Birds on his mobile.

  ‘Good entrance.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Blume. ‘How come everyone’s early?’

  ‘It’s the cold, makes us all feel northern and efficient.’

  ‘Still it’s only ten minutes . . .’

  ‘You know it was rescheduled to start at 9:30?’

  ‘No! She told me 11:30.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘She said it was put forward an hour. The meeting was moved forward an hour from 10:30: that makes 11:30.’

  The commissioner destroyed a complex pig stronghold and rubbed his hands in satisfaction. ‘Yes! They moved it forward by an hour. There was a circular. It’s not as if you missed anything’. The commissioner’s finger hovered over a slingshot containing a fat white bird, and he glanced at the object on Blume’s lap. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s called a Kindle. It’s a sort of unfriendly book.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  Blume let him see, and waited patiently as the commissioner lost the place in the book, explored the submenus, and looked critically at an image of Mark Twain.

  ‘It’s all in English,’ he said, handing it back.

  Chapter 18

  Say you want to remember the contents of a business report, a book you just read, a film, or maybe a name, a face, or a childhood memory, a moment from the distant past. What do you do? You focus and focus and think and think and then in a flash it comes to you. Right?

  The hell it does.

  The more you obsess about what you can’t remember, the less you remember what you can.

  The trick, then, is to look away. Some people swear this is the best way to find actual objects not just thoughts. If you have lost your car keys, pretend for a bit that you’re not looking for them and, hey presto, there they are!

  My daughter tells me that this works because you lull the keys into a false sense of security, and they come out of their hiding place, which I think is a fantastic metaphor for what happens when we try to catch a thought. Remember, if it went into your head once, it is in there still.

  So how can you practise this looking away? Well, one way would be for you to wait till the next time you forget something, which isn’t very practical. The other way, which is the way we are going to do it, is for you to capture your dreams. Not all of them, because that is what crazy people do. Just some of them.

  Capturing your dreams is beneficial in all sorts of other ways, too, especially if you are a creative person.

  But wait, I can already hear the impatient ones among you, those less interested in creativity and more interested in exams and success, looking for short cuts to effective memory. OK, how about this: Marilyn Monroe: picture her. Now picture her nude. She was born in 1926 but died in 1962. The ‘but’ is there because her life was too short, but it also serves to draw attention to the reversal of numbers. Is this useful information? Perhaps not, but it sticks in the head, as does the image of her in the nude. Those dates and that image will still be in your mind, bugging you at the end of this book, like a pesky pop song, which is just what you want when trying to memorize something.

  There seems to be a puritanical belief that learning should be abstracted, and involve no tricks. Personally, I think this comes from the fact the Puritans didn’t like images. This was not a problem for medieval monks. Some of the holiest books have dirty pictures in them. And check out some of the scenes you get in the frescos and bas-relief of cathedrals in Europe. X-rated stuff, and totally memorable.

  What about the idea that there is something lazy in using tricks to expand your memory? Well, our brains are busy things. They have to be lazy and a bit careless when dealing with stuff – including stuff such as seeing. We ‘see’ about 10 per cent of our surroundings. The rest we fill in. If you want to call that lazy, fine. In fancy talk, it is ‘heuristic’, which means making the most of a bad job (the bad job is done by the eyes, the brain does magnificent work with what it gets).

  So we have the number reversal method, which George Orwell used in 1948 to name his book 1984. There are other more useful tricks coming right up, don’t worry.

  I am going to go straight to the method that people find hardest to accept, the one they say is over-elaborate, and requires more work than is worth the effort. It is also the method used by those ‘magicians’ who can remember thousands of random numbers. These magicians are not cheats – and I am not just saying this because some of them are my best friends. But when people find out about how they learn all those numbers, they tend to say – ‘Oh, but that’s just
a trick!’ That, my friends, is where the puritanical impulse is hiding itself. Because a method is effective and maps the way we think, it is cheating to use it? If that is what you believe, close the book now.

  Can’t really do that with an e-book, thought Blume.

  I am not just going to give you the trick here. Instead, I have chosen to include the ‘Major System’ or Memory Key as an appendix to the book. Why? Because those who already believe that you can learn 5 decks of cards, all your telephone numbers, history dates, and so on will go straight to the back of the book and learn it now. Those who don’t will read on as sceptics. I welcome sceptics. I was once one myself. But as you continue, the contents of this book will start seeming more and more surreal as we start applying the system. Memorization using this method draws on the same parts of your mind as dreaming, Dreams are surreal, they can even be disturbing, but they are pretty easy. Easier than studying.

  So go to Appendix I at the end of my book. Or just read on.

  Blume made a few fruitless attempts to get the e-book to go to the appendix, then gave up.

  If you read the Appendix, you now command the means to remember any number up to ten thousand. Learn those letters and the numbers associated with them now – it’s the hardest task in this entire book. If you didn’t, I hope to make you want to.

  How can you learn the system and, generally, what is a good method for remembering? One method that I and many others have found very useful, as well as extremely enjoyable, is called ‘lucid dreaming’. As you lie in bed tonight and the first odd thought comes into your head, the first thought that seems slightly out of kilter, slightly illogical, let it float about for a moment, and then accept that it was the first thought of a dream. Don’t look at it too closely, or you’ll wake yourself up. And if you have problems in relaxing, let your mind free-associate, float?. . .

  The commissioner from Tor Vergata gave him a sharp nudge and the Kindle fell out of his hands and hit the floor with a clatter.

  ‘What?’ roared Blume, furious at the assault and ready for battle.

  The questore paused in his speech. A roomful of inattentive and bored people became momentarily alert and hopeful of amusement.

  ‘What … ?’ repeated Blume more quietly.

  ‘You were snoring.’

  Chapter 19

  The cordonata leading down into Piazza Ara Coeli was glistening wet and treacherous in the midday sun, but Blume was still strongly tempted to walk down it, cut down past Piazza del Gesù, and get some air that, if not fresh, was at least cold and invigorating after the interminable conference and the breathy heat of dozens of public officials.

  But the Municipal Police, who had their headquarters nearby, got quite defensive about parking rights on the Campidoglio. Odds were they’d leave his car alone, but even if they did, he’d still have to come back for it at the end of the day. His present desire for a wake-up walk was unlikely to recur in the evening, when it would be dark and probably raining again. So, reluctantly, he made his way to his car, and drove the short distance to the station, waving to the cop standing on the corner of Via della Gatta protecting the side of Palazzo Grazioli where, probably at this moment, Berlusconi and his followers were cavorting with a gaggle of girls. He liked them young and leggy. A baron with traditionalist tastes, essentially.

  He was pretty sure by now that Caterina had deliberately failed to tell him about the conference being brought forward by an hour. Maybe to avoid an argument like they had last time, when she told him an interdepartmental meeting scheduled for a Wednesday had been moved forward by two days. For Blume, that meant it was now on the Friday; for Caterina, it meant Monday. The upshot was that he missed it.

  He was going to have to disabuse her of the idea that their personal problems could be brought into the workplace. He might even discipline her, put a demerit in a report. It would shock her, but maybe that’s what she needed.

  He took the stairs rather than the lift, as he always had. Caterina had told him a while back that her French guru recommended always using the stairs. Blume, who had avoided lifts all his life, started using the one in the office for a week after that, just to make a point, but soon grew tired of it. All that helpless waiting, and standing still, door closing, and button pushing stressed him out. He liked to take stairs three at a time and feel the muscles on the back of his thighs contract and stretch as he did so.

  No one noticed as he entered the operations room. He could see Caterina sitting at her desk, looking, he had to admit, pretty good this morning. Her diet might not be working as she had hoped, but he liked the flushed smoothness to her face and, for once, she seemed happy and relaxed. Beside her, on the same side of the desk, whispering to Caterina like an old friend, sat a figure capable of putting any woman in the shade, Olivia.

  As Blume watched, he could see Agente Rospo bobbing up and down on the far side of the room, trying to steal glances at the two women. Meanwhile, the new sovrintendente from Corviale had found a reason to sit at the wrong side of his desk, which gave him a direct line of sight to Caterina’s desk. Inspector Viviano, who rarely passed this way, had a file folder in his hand, and had stopped to lean against the cubicle partition and was still chatting to the two women about a funny bureaucratic moment in his life.

  Olivia was drawing all gazes towards her and no one had seen him enter. The inspector continued trying to be entertaining. The look on Olivia’s face, as she listened to him turning a non-event in his dull life into an anecdote with a punch line, was that of a vivisectionist watching the spasms of a dying animal on the table. As she turned away from the inspector and back towards Caterina, the detached and contemptuous expression lingered for a moment, before dissolving into a smile of complicity and sisterhood. Blume called out Caterina’s name across the room and moved towards the group. The inspector was already pleading busyness and taking his leave, dislike for Blume stamped all over his big, lop-sided face.

  Blume realized he had momentarily forgotten how young Olivia was. She could have been their daughter sitting there. No trace of contempt or malice remained on her face; on the contrary, she had the unclouded look of happiness that he had seen only on the faces of young people and children. He felt a sudden protective urge towards her, and guilty at the way he had projected his own negativity on to her.

  ‘Commissioner!’ said Olivia with a laugh. ‘It’s good to see you!’

  ‘Why is it good to see me?’

  ‘Because we have been talking about you all morning, haven’t we?’

  She turned to Caterina, who nodded and smiled both at her new friend and at Blume.

  The waiter from the bar across the road arrived wearing an impeccable white uniform with gold braid. He bore a tray full of steaming cappuccinos, coffees, and pastries, which he set down on Caterina’s desk. Everyone gathered around to help themselves.

  ‘Is it someone’s birthday?’ he asked.

  ‘No, no,’ said Caterina. ‘We just all felt like some decent coffee. We’re going Dutch.’

  Sure enough, everyone was settling up in pairs or separately with the barista, a young kid with a good head for figures. Panebianco came over, nodded at Blume, and paid for his cappuccino and pastries. ‘How was the conference on racism?’

  ‘Long.’

  Even Rospo was invited to the party, though he paid for his coffee alone and took it straight back to his desk.

  ‘We didn’t order you anything,’ said Caterina apologetically as the waiter left. ‘We didn’t know when, or if, you were coming.’

  Olivia, who was sipping her cappuccino, which someone had paid for, waved her hand generously at the two pastries left on the tray. ‘You can share mine. It’s the one with the chocolate.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Blume.

  Caterina picked up the other pastry, a hooked cornetto with a bright yellow crema pasticcera filling and bit into it, her eyes smiling at him before she had to tilt her chin upwards to catch the falling flakes and powdered sugar.
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  ‘Your diet!’

  ‘I’ve given it up.’

  Blume looked at Olivia, who winked at him. ‘It’ll be better for both of you. Trust me.’

  ‘Look, I need to talk to you alone,’ said Blume.

  ‘Sorry, which one of us did you mean?’ said Caterina, gently brushing the front of her blouse to remove sugar and pastry off the curve of her breast. She tore open a sachet of sugar and stirred it into her cappuccino, then lifted the phone on her desk. ‘I’m going to call the bar, get them to bring you something. I can’t bear to see you sitting there so miserable.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Blume. ‘I have had my coffee and pastries today.’

  Caterina used her bottom lip and tongue to clean foamed milk from her upper lip, and pointed at the remainder of her pastry. ‘These are delicious. Try a bite.’

  By way of reply, Blume turned to Olivia. ‘Can I ask what you are doing here?’

  He was alarmed and a bit frightened to see the girl’s eyes suddenly seem to be brimming with tears.

  ‘Thank you for asking, Commissioner. I am fine. I just suddenly had an image of Sofia.’

  Blume looked at Caterina, then back at Olivia. ‘Have you been talking about that?’

  ‘Of course we have,’ said Olivia. ‘Chief Inspector Mattiola has been absolutely fantastic and so kind to me, and she has not stopped praising you either.’ She quickly flicked a tear sideways from her eye. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, that’s . . . not exactly, but you weren’t to know . . . what made you come here?’

  She tilted her head slightly as if appraising him, then reached out and touched him briefly on the arm, before drawing back, as if slightly confused by her own actions. ‘I came to see you. I came to apologize for the unfriendly reception I gave you last night and my poor behaviour the other day. I have discovered that I react to grief with aggression. It sounds strange, but maybe you can understand it?’