He stepped out the door, ready to turn directly on to the stairs and leave the building, but the neat cop who had deprived him of his badge and Beretta was standing there waiting for him.
‘They want you back in, sir.’
‘That’s not what they just told me.’
‘I don’t know what they told you, I only know what they told me.’
When he entered the room again, the two men were sitting in the same places as before and attempting to wear the same expression, but something had changed. They were slightly more anxious, whereas he felt more relaxed now. Lighter without his badge and pistol, his bladder empty, his future a wide open range, he could not see what other harm they could do to him today. Perhaps at the disciplinary hearing itself, but that was at least six weeks away. He was suspended on full pay, and they suddenly needed him back to tell them something. His sense of ease increased when Questore De Rossi nodded to his freckled deputy, dismissing him.
‘Look, Blume, seeing as you have got yourself involved in this, can you at least answer a few questions?’
Blume shrugged.
‘Did the professor kill Stefania Manfellotto?’
‘Macché!’
‘I don’t mean in person in the hospital. Did he order her killed, do you think?’
‘No.’
‘Is he involved in her murder?’
Blume was less sure about this. ‘Probably not,’ he ventured after a while.
‘You don’t sound too sure.’
‘I can’t be. Someone called while I was in the toilet,’ said Blume with a grin. ‘Right?’
The questore ignored his question. He picked up a pen, clicked it, clicked it a second time, put it down again, and then began moving a piece of paper in front of him. ‘I am in two minds here. We have got a lot of pressure from the Carabinieri and the new investigating magistrate, who are all very anxious to see the back of you, and who wouldn’t be? But Pitagora has friends, too, and they are even higher up, and the pressure from them, when it comes, will be even greater. For now, the professor seems to believe in you. He sent me a message – not directly – asking for your arguments to be listened to.’
‘It would look good it you helped him in his hour of need, resisting the pressures of the Carabinieri.’
‘You realize that I cannot lift a suspension even if I wanted to?’
‘Of course,’ said Blume.
‘But if you have something that might help the professor recover his peace of mind, that would be welcome.’
‘The professor is innocent,’ said Blume, becoming more convinced of the idea as he spoke it.
‘Give me your evidence.’
Blume shook his head. ‘For now, it’s only negative. I have no proof, and now thanks to you, I have no badge, so getting proof is going to be hard.’
‘Just tell me your theory.’
‘Not until it’s fact.’ Blume expected the questore to explode, but his expression was almost meek.
‘What about this Manfellotto business?’
‘Probably a political assassination.’
‘You think someone dragged her out of bed, took her to the fire escape, and threw her over on to a group of doctors smoking in the courtyard. Who would have killed her, Blume? You spoke to her – improper conduct and all that aside.’
‘The professor probably knows more or less who ordered it, but he’s not behind it. It could be an accident, or suicide.’
‘She was brain damaged?’
‘Yes, but also perfectly sane, and perfectly harmless,’ said Blume.
‘Tell that to the people she shot and the 80 people she blew to pieces,’ De Rossi said.
‘Sure, if you think talking to the dead makes sense,’ said Blume.
The questore eyed him levelly. ‘My inclination is to back the professor. And that means you.’
‘Good old Pitagora. He’s scared, you see. They killed Manfellotto.’
‘He should have been scared after the first assassination attempt, too, then.’
‘Maybe he was,’ said Blume. ‘But I can see how this second one is more frightening for him.’
‘How?’
‘Well, apart from the fact they succeeded, they decided to get rid of someone who was only marginally dangerous. The professor is no doubt marginally dangerous to some people, probably the same people. Anyhow, sir, seeing as you cannot un-suspend me, can you get me clearance into the computer forensic labs at Tuscolana?’
‘What do you want there?’
‘I want to look at Facebook messages, emails, that sort of thing.’
The questore folded his arms. ‘This is to do with the case?’
‘Of course. It’s the only thing I can do without getting under the feet of the Carabinieri. Without them knowing.’
‘And this will help clear the professor?’
‘Maybe. In any case, he will see that you have been trying to help.’
De Rossi picked up the phone on his desk. ‘When were you planning on going?’
‘I don’t know, the next few days. I sort of lost my sense of urgency with the suspension.’
‘How about right now? If you ever want back on the force.’
‘Now’s also good.’
After the questore had finished on the phone, he ordered Blume to wait at the front entrance on Via Genova. ‘Someone will come to collect you.’ He pointed a pudgy finger at Blume, ‘If you’re wrong . . .’
‘Then you will suffer political embarrassment,’ said Blume, ‘but you will make damned sure my career goes down in flames.’
‘Your life, Blume. Your whole life. You had better be right.’
Chapter 35
On his way through the courtyard of the Questura, Blume pulled out his phone and called Caterina. He let it ring, his satisfaction that he was fulfilling his duty without paying the price of conversation tinged with anxiety that she was not answering. It was a pity her phone would limit itself to telling her he had called, but fail to report that he had conscientiously let it ring and ring.
As he turned right into Via Genova, the air filled with a rushing sound as if a sharp breeze had come spinning through invisible trees, and then the rain came smashing down, bouncing off the four squad cars parked in front.
Blume leapt back under the loggia of the building, where the policeman standing guard was shaking his head in disgust.
Within five minutes, the loggia had filled up with functionaries, cops, steam, and cigarette smoke. Some of the braver souls, jeered and ironically applauded by their colleagues, pushed up umbrellas and ventured out. The ones with suits made calls, and unmarked dark cars flashing blue lights occasionally pulled up, opened their doors, and whipped them away. Someone offered Blume a cigarette, which he declined with regret. He remembered how there was something very satisfying about lighting up in the rain and standing in a fug of soft wet smoke, especially in company. He called Caterina again. Still no reply.
A few seconds later, a blue Alfa Romeo Giulietta pulled up in front of the building, causing a tiny interruption in the conversations around him as everyone noted, then ignored, its arrival. The back door opened and the vice-questore called Blume’s name.
Blume ducked, ran, and swung into the car, bouncing down beside the freckly bastard, who moved over to the far side of the seat, and pouted out at the rain. The car was warm and smelled strongly of the air-freshener tree hanging from the rear-view mirror. The driver hooked his arm over the back of his seat and stared at Blume without seeming to see him, reversed blindly towards the fire station on the corner of Via Genova, then stopped to await instructions.
‘This is where our appointment was,’ said the vice-questore.
‘It was raining,’ said Blume. ‘Use your head.’ He tapped the driver on the shoulder. ‘Via Tuscolana.’
The driver hesitated, awaiting confirmation from the vice-questore, who nodded irritably.
Even with the vice-questore acting like a personal pass key, it still took over an hour
before Blume finally found himself where he wanted, which was inside a room that looked like a graveyard for old PCs, and for the careers of the two men inside. But they were remarkably cheerful. The first thing they did was offer Blume a ham sandwich. It was wrapped in cellophane and seemed innocuous, and he was hungry, but the fact it had been pulled out of a desk drawer full of computer components made him uneasy. The vice-questore sat at the door, fingering his freckles.
The one who had offered him the sandwich presented himself as Enrico. He pointed to his companion who was peering into a big red bag of Saiwa potato crisps. ‘That’s Sandro.’
Sandro looked up and nodded. He had the greasy-skin small-eyed look that Blume associated with all-night stake-outs.
In the middle of Blume’s explanation of what he wanted, Sandro suddenly got up and left, muttering something unintelligible as he passed the vice-questore at the door.
‘Never mind him, he’ll be back,’ said his partner. ‘So you want to check the Facebook page of the victim? You had to come all the way here for that?’
‘Yes, he did,’ said the vice-questore. ‘Let him ask the questions, so we can save time.’
‘Sure,’ said Enrico, rolling his eyes conspiratorially at Blume.
After a few moments of silence had passed, the vice-questore snapped. ‘You’re allowed to talk, you know. Commissioner, ask him whatever it is you need to know.’
‘I am not sure what I am looking for,’ said Blume. ‘Probably nothing.’
Some more silence ensued. There was no sign of Sandro. Eventually, Enrico said, ‘So you’re American, Seattle. What’s that like?’
‘How do you know that?’
Enrico looked confused, then pointed at the vice-questore. ‘He told me?’
The vice-questore wore a very convincing look of confusion and outrage. ‘I did no such thing. I didn’t even know he was American.’
‘No, not directly, sir. You told us who was coming to visit. The rest –’ Enrico waved his hand at the five lit computer screens, ‘came from there. You have a small internet footprint, Commissioner. A Mafia boss would be proud to be so invisible.’
‘Thanks for the comparison,’ said Blume.
‘Ndrangheta to be precise. The Camorra, on the other hand – all over the internet. Those guys love Facebook.’
Sandro re-entered with a fresh bag of crisps. He ripped open the bag and offered them around.
The vice-questore looked revolted.
‘No, thanks,’ said Blume.
Sandro sat down on a swivel chair beside his colleague and Blume, as Facebook pages appeared on three screens. He dug into the crisps, pushed them into his mouth.
‘So, why do they call it Facebook?’ said Enrico. ‘It’s not a book.’
Sandro swallowed his snack. ‘But it does have faces.’
‘Yeah, but it’s not a book.’ Enrico seemed quite exercised by the question.
‘It’s got pages,’ said Sandro soothingly. ‘Therefore, book.’
‘Not even close.’ Enrico had turned away from Sandro. ‘I get the face bit, but it’s not a book.’
Sandro used the opportunity to fill up with more crisps, and Blume realized the question, or accusation, was being directed at him.
‘It’s an American thing,’ said Blume.
‘I know it’s American,’ said Enrico. ‘Everyone knows that.’
‘In high school in America, they have what they call yearbooks. It’s a photo album with all the faces of the people in the school divided by class. It’s a book. You can find your classmates in it. That’s where the idea came from.’
Enrico regarded him sceptically.
‘I have two of them myself. Yearbooks, that is.’
They lay disintegrating under his parents’ books in the study . . . speaking of which, he needed to clear the room out for his tenants.
‘Is this from your days in Roosevelt High School?’ asked Enrico with a grin that faded as he saw the look on Blume’s face. He waved at the computers. ‘Hey, it’s all there. I was just checking.’
Sandro licked the salt and grease from his fingers and tapped on a keyboard to bring up an old-fashioned-looking data list, all text and no graphics. ‘So, this Sofia. She didn’t have so many friends. But she wasn’t that active either. The photos are pretty sober, not your usual pouty teenage-girl face.’
Blume peered over his shoulder and the vice-questore came over to take a look, too.
‘Like you’re a real expert on teenage girls,’ said Enrico
‘Like any of us here is,’ said Blume. ‘Except Sofia wasn’t a teenager any more.’
‘Lots of dogs,’ continued Sandro. ‘Rodents in cages, which is a bit weird. And this guy.’
‘That’s her boss.’
‘Ideo – yeah his face is tagged,’ said Sandro. ‘He also sent her some emails.’
‘What about?’ asked Blume.
‘Work. Nothing interesting. Except one, I guess. He’s annoyed with her for making some stupid mistakes. She sends him one back, apologizing, then there is nothing more for a month, and suddenly, she sends him an email saying she is quitting.’
‘Quitting? Show me,’ said Blume.
Sandro tapped on the keyboard.
Dear Professor Ideo, I think you know what I am going to say to you. I cannot work in these circumstances. I will not. Unless the situation has resolved itself by Friday, I shall have no option but to resign my post. I do not want to do this. Frankly, I value my post above our friendship. If I find I have to quit, I will make sure people know why.
Yours sincerely,
Sofia.
‘That was the end of it,’ explained Sandro. ‘The professor never replied. And she didn’t resign. They must have worked it out, because there is another work-related one weeks later.’ He called it up. It was a long message to do with a press release he wanted her to write. Ideo was planning to launch a campaign against the sterilization of pigeons on the grounds that immigrants ate pigeons and would end up ingesting the sterilization treatment. Ideo suggested this might be a deliberate campaign to stop immigrants from having children.
The three men read it in silence. The vice-questore remained in the corner, tapping on his iPhone.
‘Leftists are weird people,’ said Sandro at length.
‘Do immigrants eat pigeons?’ Enrico wanted to know. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard about it.’
‘Go back to Sofia’s threatened resignation,’ said Blume. ‘What does it sound like to you?’
‘Sexual harassment, for sure,’ said Enrico. Sandro crinkled his crisps bag in agreement. ‘But it looks like it could have been resolved.’
‘When was all this?’ asked Blume
‘Last January. Ten months ago. But there’s no more. This one email is all we got.’
‘That’s her wall,’ said Enrico. ‘Links to serious sorts of stuff. Museums, medical stuff, biology, science sites. Poetry.’
‘Her poetry?’ asked Blume.
‘No, some guy called Emilio Dickinson or something. All about death and stopping.’
Sandro pressed the buttons flicking between code and ordinary Facebook pages as Enrico continued the commentary. ‘We’ve checked all this. There is nothing there. No threats, no hints of trouble, nothing. She had a boyfriend in London. Looks to us like that’s where he still is. This is the condolence page. So you can see for yourself: 42 friends but 381 expressions of condolence. Nothing suspicious there. Young people love posting on a death page. It’s the same mentality that makes people slow down at car accidents. No trolls, no hate. Traffic has collapsed to zero now.’
‘Let me see the messages from Olivia and Marco,’ said Blume.
‘On the condolences page?’
‘No. All of them. Can you extract them?’
‘Sure. But they’ve been checked. I thought she was killed because she was a witness. If so, her killer is hardly likely to have friended her on Facebook.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Blume. ‘Still, ca
n you pull up the conversations for me?’
‘You know there’s hardly any need. She hardly ever used Facebook, and she was only on it for a year. You could read through everything in a few hours,’ said Sandro.
‘OK, I’ll do that then,’ said Blume. ‘But I thought all young people were on Facebook.’
‘They are now. But Sofia was just old enough to have found out about other sites and services. She used email, which a lot of young people don’t really do.’
‘Email is for old people?’ asked Blume.
‘Yeah,’ said Enrico.
The news disturbed Blume. He was just getting used to the idea that CDs were not cutting edge. ‘Did she have anything before Facebook?’
‘MySpace. But she never did anything with it. And a Hotmail account that she used to chat on,’ said Enrico.
‘Can you recover her chat history?’
‘With file carving, if we knew what we’re looking for. But the best way would be to go to the ISP.’
‘What about her email?’
‘Well, for a while she was using Outlook, so it’s all here. Again, we’ve looked at that. But there’s not much to see. Mostly college stuff, funny video links. Harmless. The girl was a studious and serious person.’
‘Did she have an address book?’
‘Sure. About 300 names in there. Excluding sign-up addresses, companies, institutional addresses, and so forth, about 30 real people . . . Here. See for yourself.’
A bar chart overlaid with a jagged line and a red curve line popped up onscreen.
‘What am I looking at?’
‘We cross-referenced email addresses with Facebook contacts and generated a composite chart based on frequency and message or chat length. The long bars are the names of the people she was most in contact with over the past three years. They are identified by email addresses . . .’
The Memory Key: A Commissario Alec Blume Novel Page 24
