The Memory Key: A Commissario Alec Blume Novel

by Conor Fitzgerald

He clicked on another button and a wall of numbers with dots leapt out at Blume, ‘by IP addresses and . . . So let’s see . . . Olivia_v@hotmail.com, and then Marco_08@hotmail.com, and Brian_93@yahoo.com are the three main contacts. There is also a Pitagora@sapienza.uni. That was one of the names you asked us to look for.’

  ‘It was,’ said Blume. ‘She was in contact with the professor?’ He felt a nervous knot in his stomach at the idea he had missed something.

  ‘No,’ said Enrico. ‘That was Marco_08 forwarding something from the professor about a lesson. There is no direct traffic between her and the professor.’

  ‘Who’s Marco_08?’ asked Enrico.

  His partner answered. ‘That’s the victim’s cousin’s boyfriend. He’s attached to Olivia, right, Commissioner?’

  ‘Right,’ said Blume.

  ‘And this Brian?’ asked Enrico. ‘The guy whose IPs are in London. He comes in late.’

  ‘Boyfriend of the victim,’ said Sandro. ‘Or friend. Still in the UK by all appearances.’

  ‘And why is Sofia’s name in red?’ asked Blume.

  ‘No reason,’ said Sandro. He hit his keyboard and her name reverted to black. ‘I highlighted her name in red so you could see it better in the cc field sent by this Pitagora person.’

  ‘Sofia_347. That’s her?’ asked Blume.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why 347?’

  Enrico shrugged. ‘A name like Sofia is going to be used already, even if you add the surname. So often the site will suggest you tack a number on at the end. A lot of people choose their year of birth, but if your name’s really common, or you just don’t care, you may accept whatever random number you get given. She didn’t seem that interested in social media and computers; my guess is she just clicked OK OK OK agree agree agree, like any sane person should because even if you don’t agree they are still going to steal your data and sell it to companies.’

  ‘I always used my full name, and that’s never happened to me.’

  ‘You probably got there first. If you try and sign up a main account now with, like Google, Facebook, Hotmail, or LinkedIn, you’ll find you have less choice.’

  ‘I have never even heard of LinkedIn,’ said Blume. ‘So why would you think I would have got there first?’

  ‘All I meant was you’re pretty old,’ said Enrico.

  ‘He means in internet years,’ said Sandro. ‘They’re like dog years.’

  The vice-questore was grinning like a skull in the corner.

  ‘I think I have seen enough here,’ said Blume.

  Chapter 36

  In the meantime, Caterina had gone offline. A frustrating back-and-forth with the hospital finally revealed the news that she had been discharged, and, no, they were not able to say if this had been her own decision.

  Blume considered, then dismissed calling Caterina’s mother to find out what was happening. A few months ago, Caterina and he had agreed to let the Telecom Italia landline lapse.

  ‘Nowadays, we phone the person, not the building we think the person might be in,’ said Caterina. ‘I don’t see why you object to that.’

  Something about a phone ringing in an empty house appealed to him, as did the idea of sitting by a ringing phone in a room and not answering it. It was something to do with the possibility of not being there, but he had never properly explained it to himself, let alone her.

  Now, standing at the front door of her building, Blume finally admitted to himself that he was ashamed and afraid to meet Caterina. He had keys, of course. He always had keys. But something about slipping into the apartment like a thief made him pocket them and press the buzzer. He needed to announce himself this evening.

  When Caterina’s mother answered, he told himself he had been expecting this. After all, Caterina had been in hospital until only a few hours ago, and she was now an expectant mother. Tired and injured, calling on the help of her mother as well as her partner.

  When Mrs Mattiola said Caterina was not at home, Blume told himself he had been expecting this, too, since it made sense for Caterina to go to her mother’s where she could help and be helped, and maybe pick up Elia, who ate most of his meals there. The flaw in this logic was that Mrs Mattiola ought to be in her own home with her daughter.

  A neighbour from downstairs was coming out now, and kindly held the door open for Blume.

  ‘The weather’s cleared up at last. I couldn’t take another day of rain,’ said the neighbour with apparent friendliness.

  ‘Still chilly, though,’ said Blume.

  ‘Yes, well, it’s November, what do you expect?’ said the neighbour, walking out. Blume let go of the door, which closed with a snap. What was it with people? A conversation about the weather had ended up with the implication he was an idiot for not knowing that it got cold in November.

  As always, he shunned the lift, more trouble than it was worth with its flappy little swing doors. Depressing, too, with its Bakelite fixtures and peat-dark mirror, wet floor, and constant smell of mechanical grease.

  Mrs Mattiola, who had been very fond of him once, had not even buzzed him in. She had been so encouraging in the early days but then something happened. It might have been the deteriorating condition of her husband, or the absence of any marriage proposals, or perhaps the realization that a commissioner, despite the elegant title, was just an underpaid pleb with no real power, but she had grown colder towards him month by month so that, without any direct exchange of fire between them, they were now enemies. Blume felt if he had arrived a few years earlier, he might have enlisted Caterina’s father to his cause, but that chance was gone now.

  He reached the front door and knocked softly with his hand. Mrs Mattiola was waiting behind it. She opened it very slightly, keeping the chain on. It seemed thin enough to cut with his fingers.

  ‘This is very hard for me to say, Commissioner . . .’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’

  ‘It’s a bit late to start using first names.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘At my place, of course. Please don’t go round there.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Thank you. She promised you would be reasonable. She also asked me to tell you not to come here either. As of tomorrow, when she comes back.’

  ‘I have things in there that belong to me.’

  ‘Most of what I see in here belongs to my daughter.’

  ‘That’s because from where you’re standing you can’t see my pants drawer.’

  ‘Are you trying to make light of this?’

  ‘I need some clothes. That’s all I’ll take.’

  ‘You can work that out with Cate’. I am not letting you in.’

  ‘I do have a key,’ said Blume.

  ‘She said you were to put the flat and building keys into the door on your side and leave them there. And to walk away.’

  Blume felt the energy drain from him. ‘OK. I’m going to leave them in the lock. Did she say why?’

  ‘She said you would know why. She said if you thought about it honestly, you would be able to come up with at least ten reasons.’

  ‘I just wish she had had the courage to do this herself.’

  She slammed the door in his face, then, to his surprise, threw it open, and stared at him, her face chalk white. Her eyes, which usually peered absently at him from behind owlish glasses, were steady as two laser beams etching her contempt all over his face as he stood there, keys still in hand. ‘Courage! My daughter came out of hospital today, her body black with bruising, her beautiful face swollen, her legs, stomach, and back gashed open and painted brown with antiseptic. She spent four hours with the doctors this morning, and then fought and cried until finally, against all their better judgements they let her out of hospital for the night, but only because they needed the bed and she threatened to call in her colleagues if they didn’t let her go. She came home, comforted her son, who was worried sick and completely abandoned to his own devices, while I tried to look after my damaged daughter and hel
pless husband, while you . . . you . . . worm!’

  He heard a tiny metallic click from down the hall as a neighbour cracked open a door to see what was going on, and he could picture himself from the neighbour’s perspective, head down, neck burning in bright humiliation as he stood there.

  He held out the keys. Mrs Mattiola, perhaps thinking he was offering to shake hands or reach out in some way, shrank back from him in alarm.

  ‘The keys. I’m giving you the keys.’

  She slammed the door in his face again. It was a fearful insult but the disappearance of her face and the muffling of her voice were very welcome. ‘You are supposed to put them in the door and walk away!’

  Blume fumbled for a while slipping his own key ring off, then inserted the flat key into the door in front of him. ‘The keys are in the door. Tell Caterina I . . . tell her I did what she asked. I am walking away now.’

  There was no reply.

  Part of him was enraged at what was happening, but another part of him felt relieved to have it confirmed that he was the sort of person who deserved to be alone. Besides, he felt like having a drink.

  Downstairs on the street, he called 6645, gave the taxi dispatcher his name and Caterina’s address. They asked for a phone number, and when he started with the 333 prefix, told him they would prefer a landline number to a mobile. Eventually, his voice heavy with suspicion, the dispatcher told him there would be a car along in ten minutes.

  He moved away from the front entrance to avoid meeting Mrs Mattiola if she came out. He did not want her to think he was standing there like a stalker. The air pressure was high enough to give a cold night sky, with the stars visible in spite of the glow of the city lights. He walked up and down trying to keep warm. If he had known the number of another cab company, he would have called it. No doubt the other companies had warm cars right now cruising softly past, one street away.

  His phone trembled in his pocket and he pulled it out and cupped it against his cold ear. ‘Taxi. Lima Roma 147. Two minutes,’ said a voice in broad Roman. ‘Confirm?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Blume, turning and walking back quickly. Without quite realizing it, he had walked all the way down the street. He had also failed to notice that the street sloped down, so that the front door was out of sight, and the taxi driver would not see him. He had also failed to calculate how hard it was to walk fast up even a gentle incline.

  As the front door of the apartment block came back into sight, he could see the taxi sitting there. Then the door to the building opened and someone walked out, and even from this distance, he recognized the careful gait of Caterina’s mother. The taxi driver tapped his horn and now she was going over to him. Blume slowed down his pace, and watched as she drew back and looked warily about her, like someone who had just been informed of a spy. Then she caught sight of him. He could not see her face from where he was, but he saw the way she stood stock-still and looked all the way down the street, past the few other people still out and about, to where he stood. The only other person on the pavement at that time. She raised her arm and pointed at him. The taxi flashed its lights and came down towards him.

  Blume hoped directly in the back seat and hunkered down.

  ‘You weren’t there,’ said the driver grumpily. ‘I almost drove off.’

  ‘San Giovanni area. Via Orvieto,’ said Blume.

  The driver pressed the address into his satnav and started pressing buttons.

  ‘It’s just off Via La Spezia, I can tell you where to turn.’

  The driver continued working at his machine. There was €5.50 on the metre already.

  ‘You don’t need that to tell you where Via La Spezia is, do you? How long have you been driving a taxi?’

  ‘Look, you do your job, whatever it is, I’ll do mine.’

  ‘Yeah, but your job is to drive, not play video games. Via La Spezia. Go down to the bottom of this road, go straight, go straight again, and after that go straight. I’ll give you plenty of advance warning of anything so radical as a turn.’

  ‘If I don’t like your attitude, I don’t have to take you anywhere. There!’ He pointed triumphantly at the satnav, which showed a big green arrow pointing straight ahead.

  Blume got off at the corner of Via Orvieto, then spent a fair while collecting the exact fare from his pocket in as many coins as possible and putting them one by one into the driver’s dirty hand.

  He walked across the courtyard, surprised to notice that it had a familiar smell all of its own. The voices, the crooked venetian blinds of the building opposite, the missing shutters from the third floor, the chrome pipes stuck to the outside of the buildings in the mid 1990s, bringing, for the first time, proper drinking water to the complex, just in time for the whole world to start drinking bottled water anyhow, were all powerfully familiar. He realized how much he had missed them. In the summer, he could hear too much of his neighbours, but now it was cold and shutters were closed to keep in the heat, and the complex was uncharacteristically quiet. It might almost have been Germany. He opened the front door to his building, and breathed in the heavy smell of the oil-fired furnace in the basement.

  A brown package had been jammed halfway through the narrow slot of his letterbox at the bottom of the stairs. He pulled it out and ripped it open and found himself looking at Fisher’s book. He pulled out a few bills and flyers and stuffed them in his pocket as he made his way up.

  Outside his own door, he paused, took breath, and prepared himself. This was going to be a little embarrassing, but it was necessary. He checked his phone. It was almost midnight. Definitely too late. He would need to explain himself clearly, and be very apologetic. He pressed the doorbell.

  ‘Keee ay?’ A man’s voice, sounding slightly frightened, perhaps, or was it the faltering Italian pronunciation.

  Speaking English, Blume introduced himself from the outside of his own front door, explaining that he was the landlord, and that something unexpected had happened, and that he was hoping he might perhaps be allowed in for no more than thirty seconds to collect something. He knew his speaking English should act as a guarantee, but the man still did not open.

  ‘It’s almost midnight!’

  ‘I realize that. I am terribly sorry.’ He fingered the key in his pocket. You only ever hear of tenants’ rights, he thought. But Mr Almost Midnight was standing in his house on his carpet, farting into his sofa and eating off his kitchen table. It hardly bore thinking about.

  Now a woman’s voice, deep and sonorous, could be heard remonstrating and Blume distinctly heard the words, ‘Let the poor man in!’

  The soft clunking sound of the key being turned in the lock told him that his tenants were cautious people, locking themselves in at night. The door swung open to reveal a man, with wispy fair hair and a thin blond beard. Blume made to step across the threshold and the man came forwards as if to block him.

  Blume stood back and regarded his adversary. ‘You’re not called Mutungi,’ he accused.

  ‘No. I’m Walker. Peter Walker. Mutungi’s my wife’s name,’ said Walker in an annoying accent of some sort.

  Blume stared at the insubstantial pale-skinned Englishman in front of him. ‘You’re the husband?’ He felt aggrieved. ‘I was told you were a Tanzanian couple.’

  ‘I am Tanzanian,’ said the Englishman.

  A broad-hipped, broad-shouldered black African woman wearing a silk bathrobe bustled into the room, relegating Walker to the periphery of Blume’s mind.

  ‘Hello Mr blume!’ she said, emphasizing his surname in way that made him feel important, welcome, and appreciative of the beauty of his own name. She gave him a dazzling smile, ‘And what can we do for you so late in the day?’

  Blume was lost in admiration for a few moments and failed to speak.

  ‘We really like this apartment. You have such good taste.’ The inflection she gave the word suggested that his good taste had come as a completely unexpected and delightful surprise to her. Seeing that Blume was evidently a slo
w-witted man, she asked him if he had come to welcome them.

  He apologized for the intrusion. ‘I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t an emergency. Of course, now that I am here, I am happy to welcome you and if there is anything you want, don’t hesitate to ask. If the kitchen radiator is cold, by the way, just bleed it by loosening the valve. Count to forty, then tighten it again.’

  ‘And you are most welcome here, Mr Blume.’

  A weak sniff from behind his back reminded him of the thin Englishman. Apologizing again, he explained he needed to pick up a few things, and would take only two minutes.

  ‘Of course! Where are these things that you wish to pick up?’

  ‘In here,’ said Blume walking towards the study. ‘May I?’ He opened the door and switched on the light just as Mrs Mutungi came bustling up quickly behind him. ‘Mr Blume, that is where –’

  It was like walking into a dream in which a familiar place suddenly turns into something else. The overcrowded study, full of posters and paintings, papers, and books, carpets, boxes, old clothes, and coats, which were what he had come for, was empty of everything except two new pine beds in which slept two children with perfect brown skin. He snapped off the light as one of them, a girl aged perhaps 6 or 7, began to stir in her sleep. The after-image of the empty shelves remained impressed on his retina and then floated upwards.

  ‘The removal men you sent arrived this morning. They took everything away to the warehouse. We very much appreciate how quick you were to send them. The children are very happy with the room. It is such a nice room. Big. They can play there, too.’

  ‘They took everything? I had all my clothes in here.’

  ‘Has it not all come to you, Mr Blume? Is something missing? That is it! Something is missing.’

  ‘No, no, nothing is missing. At least I don’t think so. It went into storage. I don’t even know where.’

  Prisca Mutungi, who was almost as tall as him, put a comforting hand on his elbow and steered him back into the living room, where the Englishman was slouched on the couch watching rugby highlights on Sky Sports. ‘You can call me tomorrow, yes? You can tell me if anything is missing and I will look for it for you.’