‘I can’t tell if you’re repentant or not, Professor.’
‘I am a complicated man. So was your friend Principe, the magistrate. He was one of them.’
‘One of who?’
‘The people who have suppressed the truth and memory for all these years of the Republic. He struck deals with killers, turned them into freelancers for the deviant sections of the secret state. In his long career, he probably met whoever killed Manfellotto, came to an arrangement with them. Not in this case, but some time in the past. That’s how it works. Everyone does a little bit; everyone has a little bit of guilt.’
Blume stood up. ‘I need to get out of this place. It’s getting a bit heavy, talking between these mounds full of martyrs. Literally walking through the valley of death. I want to go outside and look at some ordinary people driving ordinary cars.’
‘I was hoping . . .’ Pitagora could not manage to speak as he tried to keep up with Blume’s fast pace towards the exit. ‘Can you slow down?’
Blume seemed to speed up if anything.
‘Did you hear me?’ He was wheezing and Blume had already vanished behind the wooden lattice entrance. Blume stepped back through the gap. Pitagora caught his breath and collected his thoughts.
Blume allowed Pitagora to pass through the gap first. As he did so, someone grabbed him without violence but in a firm grip. Captain Zezza was standing there with four other Carabinieri. Two squad cars were parked right up against the memorial plaque.
‘Thanks for the text, Commissioner,’ said Zezza. ‘You saved me some embarrassment. The magistrate has given me a detention warrant for Pitagora. Conspiracy to commit murder is the charge, but she’s rather depending on you to help her with the details.’
Pitagora stared at Blume.
‘You need to talk about that meeting with your Swiss banker friends,’ said Blume. ‘Feeling bad is not enough. You were instrumental in her death. And as far as I can see, your main motivation was fear, which is to say cowardice.’
‘Double-dealing Yankee Jew. You think I am going to help you after this?’ He tried to shake off the grip of the Carabinieri pushing him towards the squad car. ‘I’ll be out in hours.’ Pitagora turned and shouted at Zezza. ‘I’ll fuck you all up, including you, Captain. Blume’s just having fun at your expense and mine.’ An appuntato solicitously placed his hand on Pitagora’s silver head to stop him banging it on the car roof. Pitagora swung round in the seat to stop the door from being closed and shouted back at Blume, ‘Check your blood lines. I told you I knew you better than you do yourself.’
‘He’ll be pleading insanity in court,’ Blume said to Zezza, who looked worried.
‘You have to tell them why they killed Manfellotto,’ shouted Pitagora. ‘It is in your stars that you must behave this way. Accept your part in this, Blume. You are Mercury. I am Pitagora, I am the Sun, and I am also Pasquale Pinto.’
‘See what I mean?’ he said.
Chapter 48
‘I am sorry it took me so long to get back to you, Alec. You were right. Five assistants in four years. Sofia was the sixth. Do you want their names?’
‘I don’t think I need them. You’ll be talking to them, won’t you?’
‘I have already talked to three of them on the phone. One, the penultimate, filed a harassment complaint. Another is suing the Institute for wrongful dismissal. That’s what really hurts. These women had filed complaints with us, and no one thought to talk to them. Even a basic cross-referencing would have brought this out. Professor Ideo’s name is on record. Seven complaints from women. I don’t see how he can still be working there.’
‘And yet he is,’ said Blume.
‘And I simply cannot believe that no one thought to check up on the boss of the victim. That was very remiss. I realize Principe was your friend . . . but even so.’
‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum,’ said Blume.
‘It’s not his fault, or not as much,’ said Saraceno graciously. ‘The whole Manfellotto connection led the inquiries in the wrong direction.’
‘Would you have checked if I had not mentioned it?’ asked Blume.
‘Of course I would have!’ She sounded outraged.
‘I need to go now. What’s the next step?’
‘I am issuing a warrant for his arrest, and it will be executed immediately. I have two substitute magistrates who are dragging up all the details of his life, and the women he bullied and molested will be giving statements. Ideo is a member of the Porta Neolo shooting club. A little detail that was also overlooked. He has a hunter’s licence. We may even have a trace on the rifle. His grandfather fought in Libya, and there are records of several gun licences in his name. Ideo lives in the same house his grandfather once owned. With his mother, by the way. The man is 52 and he lives with his mother.’
‘I knew that. So how long?’
‘Till we pick him up? Now, basically.’
‘Good. Maybe half an hour?’
‘What?’
‘You know. In half an hour’s time, as opposed to immediately?’
‘Wait, Blume, where the hell are you now?’
He hung up, without answering, pocketed the phone, and peered into a cage containing a fat rat.
‘Who was that?’ asked Ideo, dropping three more food pellets into the food dispenser in the next cage.
‘Work,’ said Blume. ‘It’s non-stop. You’re better off here with your cages. I wouldn’t want to be in one of them though.’
Ideo straightened up and set the tray of pellet food on a table beside him.
‘Were you talking about Sofia’s case?’
‘As a matter of fact, I was,’ said Blume.
Ideo pulled on a pair of latex gloves. ‘Any progress?’
‘Oh, yes. Lots,’ said Blume.
Ideo opened the cage and took out a fat rat, and started to stroke it. ‘Glossy, isn’t he?’
‘I’m not so keen on rats, really,’ said Blume. ‘I suppose he is glossy, if that’s a good thing. I am already a little uneasy about not wearing the protective clothing.’
‘Don’t be. It’s safe in here. It’s been a while since we tested anything really deadly in this lab.’
‘That is a comfort,’ said Blume.
‘So any arrests, or are you not allowed to tell me?’
‘Imminent arrests,’ said Blume. ‘You’ll be reading about it soon enough, but, no, I can’t say much more.’
Ideo nodded. He brought the rat up to his chin and nuzzled it a bit. Blume almost expected the creature to purr. Then he put it back in its cage, and turned to face Blume. ‘You know I miss her enormously.’
‘Sofia? Of course you do. So does her mother. And there is a kid called Marco, who was secretly in love with her while going out with her cousin. He’ll miss her, too.’
Ideo’s face darkened. ‘Marco? She never mentioned him.’
‘Young, very handsome. We still need to talk to him, to rule him out of our inquiries.’
‘He’s gone missing?’
‘Yes. Suspicious behaviour, isn’t it?’
‘Very,’ agreed Ideo.
‘So I suppose you’ll be getting a new researcher to replace her?’
‘No one can replace Sofia. She was a wonderful, wonderful girl. Especially with dogs.’
Blume looked around the laboratory, causing Ideo to laugh. ‘None in here. That’s in a different facility. Experiments with dogs are not popular even if they don’t suffer.’
‘Apart from the lack of freedom.’
‘They are adaptable animals,’ said Ideo. ‘Shall we go to my office?’
‘Any chairs in it yet?’
Ideo laughed. ‘No!’
‘Then we may as well stay here,’ said Blume. ‘Tell me about your former assistants.’
‘I’d rather not. I did not get on well with them.’
‘And with Sofia?’
‘She was wonderful. She didn’t want me, of course. Couldn’t get beyond my body and its imperfections. That was p
erhaps the most superficial thing about her. Women are like that. They obsess about appearance. Their own and others’.’
‘So your belly and bald head were off-putting to her?’
Ideo clasped his hands around his stomach, like a defensive pregnant woman. ‘She was beginning to see my mind. She was beginning to understand that that’s all that counts.’
‘And then she got killed before she could understand fully.’
‘Yes.’
‘And now no one can have her.’
‘You speak as if she simply ceased to exist.’
‘She’s dead,’ said Blume. ‘That’s not existing.’
‘Not at all,’ said Ideo. ‘It’s just matter rearranging itself. All of us, even you, Commissioner, are made of the elements that came into existence after the Big Bang. We literally have infinity inside us.’
‘I may be made of stardust,’ said Blume, ‘but I still see being dead as dead.’
‘When a person dies,’ said Ideo, ‘do you think their personality simply evaporates?’
‘Yes. Actually, I can think of several colleagues ostensibly alive whose personalities seem to have evaporated already.’
Ideo wasn’t listening. He wasn’t even looking at Blume now. He had tilted his head back, like a lecturer in a large hall or a preacher in a church, the better to project his voice. ‘That’s not how it is. Matter has memory. If a good person existed, she will serve as a template for another good person, perhaps a better one. In the future, there will be a better version of Sofia and a better version of me. There will be worse versions, too. But her spirit, if you like to call it that . . .’ Ideo paused at a sudden sound of voices and feet. ‘What’s that?’
‘Sounds like a group of men outside,’ said Blume. ‘Tell me this, Professor, you’d like to be a sort of guru, wouldn’t you. Like Pitagora managed. With admirers.’
‘Pitagora is an old fraud.’
‘Why didn’t you just let her go? Like the others. Their complaints don’t seem to have cost you your job. Why did you have to kill her? We know about the gun club. The rifle still has DNA on it. You must know how hard it is to get rid of that.’
Ideo nodded. ‘Persistence is such a feature of nature. That’s why Sofia won’t disappear as a pattern, you see. She was different. Let’s hope the resonance of her former being resonates into a new vibration. I am sure it will.’
Blume had never seen a smoother transition. One second the concerned work colleague and boss, the next an admitted murderer, with no change of register.
‘Did you make a phone call?’
Ideo looked momentarily confused, then his face cleared. ‘Oh, you mean claiming responsibility, in the name of the Justice and Freedom Party? That was good, wasn’t it?’
‘Justice and Order Party.’
‘Even more inspired on my part. Pitagora left his office door open. There was a phone sitting on the desk as I came down. I just grabbed it. I hoped I could use it to confuse things. I wasn’t even sure it was Pitagora’s phone until I saw the phone book was empty.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Pitagora used to boast about never having to write down any phone number. A phone without contacts had to be his. Then I heard I had hit not just the wrong person, but that monster Manfellotto – well, it was too good. “Justice and Order”. Talk about thinking on your feet.’ He shook his head in slow self-admiration.
‘No one saw you in the CNR building?’
‘White coat,’ said Ideo with a smile, flapping at the one he was wearing. I look like I belong there, and I know the layout, too. Just as I knew the layout of the university. I was seen by about 15 students, but not one of them actually saw me. I am invisible to the young. All they see is professor, old man, bald, fat.’
‘Did her rejection of your advances hurt you more than the others’?’
Ideo nodded his head, but did not bow it. ‘You think you understand, but you don’t.’
‘No. Quite the contrary,’ said Blume. ‘I don’t understand. I don’t even begin to understand, and God help me the day I do.’
He walked out the twin sets of double doors, leaving Ideo in the middle of the room with his cages and pellets. A group of six Carabinieri, two in uniform, were in the corridor. Two of them had their weapons drawn and pointed downwards.
They all stared at him as he emerged.
‘He’s in there.’
Still they did not move.
‘Unarmed.’
The plain-clothes commander nodded at the biohazard notice.
‘It’s OK,’ said Blume. ‘Just a whole load of trapped animals.’
Chapter 49
Valentino was in a terrible state of excitement.
‘Do you like panoramas, Commissioner? You know, beautiful vistas of nature and the countryside, the mountains of . . . whatever. The ones to the east of the city.’
Blume demurred.
‘OK, forget the panorama, how about no traffic and your own underground parking?’
Blume was more enthusiastic at this prospect. Valentino piled on the glories. Loads of space to walk your dog, definite possibility of a metro line sometime in the next decade. The whole area run by a consortium and not the City of Rome, so the neighbourhood was actually clean. All Blume needed was an €80,000 deposit, which would give him 30 per cent ownership and he would pay rent on the remaining 70 per cent to the construction company, with the option to buy the property in increments of 10 per cent. Once he got to 50 per cent, he could sublet if he wanted.
‘Every time you buy more of the property, the rent goes down!’
‘Unless they put it up,’ said Blume. ‘Where is this paradise whereof you speak?’
‘Borgata Fidene. It’s so new it’s not even on Google. Well, it is on Google but don’t look it up, because it might put you off. They photographed it in the past when it was a big excavation hole. The reality is much better. When I heard of this place, I thought immediately of you, because you are a modern man who doesn’t mind a commute. This is a modern place, you understand? Open spaces, IKEA, a cinema with 20 theatres, one of the city’s biggest shopping centres on your doorstep, perfect tranquillity. Fastweb is your phone supplier. Fifth floor. Unbeatable. Green fields. You don’t have to be in Rome to be in Rome. Even before the metro gets there, there is already a train that goes straight to the centre of town.’
‘No trains run to the centre of Rome,’ said Blume. ‘One of those little quirky oversights that make us all love the place so.’
‘Trastevere, then. That’s close. So, do you have €80,000? Or maybe €160,000, that way you can sublet immediately? If not, I can help you arrange a loan.’
‘You never said what size it was.’
The voice became sly and confiding. He had evidently been saving this pearl for last. ‘You’ll never guess.’
‘250 square metres?’
‘What?’ The disappointment in his voice was comical. ‘That’s the size of an entire floor. Oh, you were joking, weren’t you?’
‘So how big?’
‘80 square metres. Net floor area. Actual walkable area. In Rome but out of the chaos.’
‘No, not interested,’ said Blume, cutting him off.
He walked outside the hotel and was surprised to find that the clouds had, at last, moved higher into the sky and turned white. The reflection of the sun on the wet leaves of the bushes made him put on his sunglasses. He lit a smoke, and wondered about the greenfield site in Borgata Fidene. Out of Rome, away from the chaos every day. Until the city caught up with him, of course. If they developed there, they would develop around it and eventually he’d be back in the city, but that could take years, and he would be dead by then.
He didn’t remember cigarettes being so thin and burning away so quickly in his hand. Had they always been like that? He lit another.
Panebianco phoned him to ask for his car back.
‘I left it at Caterina’s. Sorry about that. I’ll get it later on.’
/> ‘Is everything OK?’
‘It was badly dented already, you know.’
‘I meant Caterina.’
‘Her too,’ said Blume.
His spirits were lifting with the air pressure. Everything would be finished by the end of the day. He took a taxi from the hotel to the Trullo district.
Olivia’s mother was not pleased to see him again, but her mild hostility was nothing to the glare of sheer hatred he received when he walked into the living room and found Olivia seated there.
‘I was really hoping to catch you,’ he said.
Olivia, who was wearing a short purple cotton skirt that may have been some form of night-time wear, slowly uncrossed her legs, flicked her hair back from her forehead, reclosed her legs while sitting up straighter in her chair.
‘Commissioner, why don’t you sit there opposite me?’
Blume shook his head. ‘I’ll remain standing, I think.’
‘You don’t trust yourself not to look up my skirt, is that it?’
There was not too much looking up to be done since the skirt did not travel any distance down.
‘You’re not irresistible, you know,’ said Blume. ‘Some men might not even find you attractive.’
‘Then they are not real men. I’m sorry, Commissioner, but there’s no point in either of us pretending otherwise. Every day, hundreds and hundreds of men of all ages turn as I pass.’
Olivia’s mother had been following the to-and-fro and now thought it time to intervene. As she drew her breath to say something, Blume said, ‘I don’t suppose I could trouble you to make me a coffee, Mrs Visco?’
‘You just want rid of me.’
‘Exactly. So if you can think of something that takes longer to make than a coffee, I would appreciate that even more.’
‘How dare you!’
‘Mother!’
The Memory Key: A Commissario Alec Blume Novel Page 33
