“And no one has gone to rescue them yet? In all this time, no one thought to rescue the dogs? That’s… It’s unspeakable.”
Blume brought his mind back to the surreal conversation he appeared to be engaged in. “Ferrucci wanted to do something, I remember. The dogs will be dead by now, I suppose. Unless someone was giving them water.
I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Well, think about it now.”
“If they’re not dead, they’ll have escaped and they’ll be feral,” said Blume. He needed to confront Paoloni now.
“Get a team and go there,” said Sveva.
“It’s the responsibility of the municipal police or the local health board,” said Blume. “Not a matter for the flying squad.”
“So call them. Call someone. Then call me back, let me know.”
Blume had just sent the last of the case files to the Halls of Justice. It would take the best part of the day to get the files back, find Clemente’s notes on the whereabouts of the damned dogs… Unless.
Blume looked up the number of LAV on his computer and called Clemente’s office. The doleful secretary answered. She remembered him, without much fondness, but seemed to soften a little at Blume’s unexpected display of humanity. More to the point, she was able to suggest a place where the dogs might be caged. He could do that, then deal with Paoloni who, wisely enough, had returned to sick leave.
Just under an hour later, Blume stood in the middle of a field, head bowed in an effort to get his nose out of the wind and away from the smell it was bringing with it. About 250 meters in front of him, set amongst collapsing prefab huts and rusting vehicles, were silent metal cages. He could just make out inert lumps and dark shapes in them, and he was not moving a step further. He kept his head down and examined the knotty grass growing out the sand, mud, and crushed seashells.
Blume stayed like that for ten minutes until a four-by-four with the letters ASL and the Lazio coat of arms came rolling over the field and a three-man squad from the Health Service arrived with blue-and- white overalls, orange protective gloves, and an armory that included not only restraining poles and a narcotizing projector but also a shotgun. They all wore masks. They seemed to think it was his task to bring them all the way to the cages.
“Not without a mask,” said Blume. One of them went to the van and came back with a mask. It was impossible to talk with the mask on, so they walked the last stretch in silence.
It was already evident from fifty meters that every dog was dead. Some of them, those at the far end, were already mummifying. The ones nearest the closed off water tap were almost invisible behind the swarms of flies.
One cage seemed to contain one dead dog and the ripped remains of two others. The rest contained one dog each. One of the team handed his companion his dart gun and pointed a fogger machine between the bars.
Blume moved back from the billowing white smoke toward a broken-down shed, avoiding an incongruous refrigerator, also crawling with insects, and leaned against a decaying caravan propped up on three cinder blocks. The ASL team could deal with this foul mess themselves.
The fumigation fog seemed to have gotten into his mask, or maybe it had steamed up inside. Blume pulled it off, got hit by the stench, and put it on again quickly. That was worse. He could see nothing. He leaned down and pulled it off again.
As he did so, he thought he saw a small amber light flicker on beneath the caravan. He hunkered down to check what it was. As he registered the presence of another amber light, he felt a prickling of danger run up to his hairline from his neck. They were not lights; they were eyes. Then he heard it, a growl, and before he had time to stand up again, two canine fangs appeared in the blackness and a huge, heavy, stinking black shape rushed from under the caravan and hurled itself on top of Blume, sending him crashing to the ground. As he fell on his back, he could see the civil protection team twenty meters away, enveloping themselves in smoke, oblivious behind their masks.
Blume shouted, then instinctively brought his arms up to his throat, but the animal did not attack him there. Its tactic seemed to be to use its weight to immobilize him before tearing at him with its teeth. The beast opened its huge mouth over Blume’s damaged arm. He could feel its tongue and breath on his hand, and tensed as he waited for the jaws to shut and sever his fingers. Blume started thrashing about, and realized the animal was not as heavy as it looked. He punched with his good arm and connected with the animal’s cold nose. It barked and took its weight off him completely. Scrambling to his feet, Blume delivered a massive kick to the flank of the animal, which shuddered and yelped. He kicked it again, and it rolled onto the ground, assuming almost the same posture as Blume had been in a few seconds ago.
Blume brought his foot up, ready to strike with his heel this time, but the big black dog just lay there, breathing fast. A muffled yell came from behind, and Blume turned to see the men running toward him. One shouted something from behind his mask, then ripped it off and shouted again: “Stand back!”
One of the team, still in a mask, was pointing the shotgun, the other a tranquilizer gun. Blume started to step back, and the one with the shotgun was the first to step forward. Blume stepped back to where he was.
“Get away! That’s a Cane Corso. It can rip out your throat with a single bite.”
His companion with the shotgun took off his mask to observe, “A bit small for a Cane Corso.”
“It’s young. Also, it’s badly malnourished. But don’t let it fool you.”
Blume looked at his bandaged arm and hand. The animal had covered it in saliva.
“Stand back, Commissioner.”
The dog had had plenty of opportunity to bite his arm off. But it had not used its teeth. Even as he had thrashed about and hit it, the animal had done its best to continue licking his hand. That’s all it had done. He realized now that he had managed to smash his fist into the dog’s nose because it was trying to nuzzle him. Blume moved a little closer, and the animal thumped its ugly cropped tail back and forth, then closed its strange tiger-ish eyes.
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Blume.
“We’ll put it to sleep with this.” He slotted a feathery red dart into the light rifle.
“Then what? He gets put down?”
“Phenobarbital overdose. If I had to choose a way to die, I might just choose that. Very peaceful.”
Blume hunkered down and stretched out his arm. The dog lifted a mud-caked paw and made a sort of whinnying sound. Blume patted the muscular neck, still sleek and clean.
“Can we get him some water?” he asked.
56
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 9 P.M.
Did you find the dogs?” asked Sveva Romagnolo as she answered the door to Blume later that evening.
“Yes.” He was not sure he liked doing this woman’s bidding, but being here postponed his meeting with Paoloni to another day.
“They were all dead, as you said they would be, weren’t they?”
“Mostly.”
“Not all of them? I suppose they had to be put down immediately. Fighting dogs can’t live in human society. All they know how to do is kill. Arturo always said that, you know. Everyone thinks that loving dogs is an unconditional thing, but he was tough, too. He would have banned certain breeds entirely. It is an act of gross irresponsibility to keep certain types of dog in the company of humans. You may have noticed he had no dog of his own. Anyhow, thank you for coming.”
Blume stepped into the apartment. The doors to the terrace were open, and a warm night breeze was blowing in.
“Let’s go out on the terrace,” she said.
Blume sat in the same wickerwork chair as last time and described his meeting with Pernazzo. He told her about the computer games, the gambling, the connection with Alleva, the murder of Enrico Brocca outside the pizzeria.
Sometimes she winced, more often she nodded as he spoke. At no point did she display much anger, though her features were indistinct in th
e half darkness.
When he had finished, she said, “And do you have any idea who killed Pernazzo? Your boss Gallone will only tell me investigations are ongoing, and none of my other contacts seem to have any idea… or interest, really. The important thing was for me to react well, which I did. The case itself is unimportant to them.”
“If I tell you who I think killed Pernazzo, you won’t insist on my going public with it?”
“No. Of course not.”
“And you won’t advance the hypothesis in my name, even when you see the investigation peter out without anyone being brought to justice?”
“I won’t use your name. I may make a fuss, though.”
“It was probably Manuela Innocenzi. Eventually you’ll hear this from other sources, too.”
“That… woman?” Now he could hear anger and disgust in her voice. “Have you any evidence?”
“More likely, she asked for it to be done. I don’t have direct evidence, but I got a call from Benedetto Innocenzi the other day that points in that direction. He called a few other people, too, to give the same message, which was not to think of importuning his daughter or there would be reprisals, and, above all, compromising revelations.”
“I will insist on a proper investigation.”
“You are within your rights,” said Blume, then instinctively ducked as an orange-and-white football bounced off the back of his chair. He turned around to see a child with long hair and a babyish face scowling at him.
“Tommaso!” said his mother. “This is Alec Blume. He’s a policeman.”
The child continued to stare at Blume. It was a hostile stare, but it contained no real malice.
“You play football?” said Blume. There, that was precisely the sort of inane thing that grown-ups said. Quite rightly, the boy ignored the question and went to retrieve his ball, then began slapping it on the tiles directly behind Blume, canceling out any hopes of conversation, while his mother smiled apologetically not at Blume but at the child. Time to go.
Blume stood up and watched as the boy bounced the ball too high and lost control of it again.
“You’re not very good at that yet,” said Blume.
Sveva Romagnolo stared at him in outrage.
The child retrieved the ball, tucked it under his arm and said, “I am good.”
“Not yet. I think maybe it’s because of your hair. It’s too long. It gets in your eyes.”
“Tommaso has beautiful hair,” said Sveva. “You were leaving, Commissioner?”
Tommaso bounced the ball five times in succession, then said, “You believe I can do it faster than that?”
“I do. I think you might be a natural, but you need to practice. A lot. And when you can bounce it all day using your hands, then you have to learn to do the same with your feet. It takes ages, but, like I said, you look like a natural to me. Get someone to cut your hair, see if I’m right.”
“Commissioner Blume! Tommaso, say bye-bye to the policeman.”
“Bye, Tommy,” said Blume.
“Tommaso. Not Tommy,” said Sveva.
She strode across the living room, thumping her bare heels against the floor.
Tommaso followed as far as the French window, and called out, “If I learn to do more than a hundred will you come back and watch?”
“Sure, I will,” said Blume.
Sveva stopped dead in her tracks and looked at her son, standing framed in the doorway, holding the ball above his head. Then she looked at Blume.
“That is grossly irresponsible of you. Suppose he really does want you to come and watch him. What then?”
“Call me, and I’ll come over,” said Blume. “And cut his hair. He’s not a girl.”
“I realize my son is not a girl. But he’s never had his hair cut since he was a baby,” said Sveva.
“That’s why you should do it now. Don’t pretend nothing has changed for him.”
57
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 10 A.M.
The following morning Blume, finally off duty, gave himself the luxury of a lie-in until ten. He had breakfast in his local bar, running down some of the credit left by Sveva. He phoned Paoloni and got no reply. Here we go again, he thought.
So he phoned Kristin in the embassy and was surprised when she invited him to her place for dinner. Seven o’clock. Blume figured he should arrange to meet Paoloni at around four. The pain of the meeting would be lessened by the prospect of seeing Kristin immediately afterward. But first, he had two other important appointments.
After breakfast, he walked down to Via Tuscolana to the vet and asked about the dog he had brought in the day before. The receptionist, whom Blume couldn’t help thinking of as a nurse, told him to wait. He sat beside an elderly woman with a cat in a cage. The cat had three legs. The woman narrated events as they happened.
“And here is a nice man come to sit beside us, Melchior,” she told the cat. “He’s hurt his arm, just like you hurt your leg. Though of course, his arm is still attached, isn’t it?”
Luckily, he did not have long to wait.
Blume looked in dismay at the animal that stood in front of him. Somehow, being cleaned up made its head and shoulders seem even larger than it had last night when, with the dire warnings of the ASL unit, he had transported it back in his car.
“He’s unusually small for that breed,” said the vet. “A bit of a failure as a Cane Corso, really. When I first saw him, I thought he was young and had more to grow. But he’s fully mature. You can see that from his teeth. Some are loose, by the way. Let’s hope he doesn’t lose them. He is undernourished, and suffered dehydration. But he must have got food from somewhere. Perhaps there was some available in the place you found him?”
“There seemed to be some scraps of meat near the cages,” said Blume.
“I hope that’s what he was eating. I do not like the idea that he might have eaten other dogs.”
“Not this guy,” said the vet. “Look at him. Does he look like a cannibal to you?”
Blume said he could not tell.
“Exactly,” said the vet. He touched the animal on the side. “Bruising on the flank shows that some bastard gave the poor thing a kicking very recently, and he cows easily, which suggests he was regularly beaten in the past. But basically, he’s in good shape. Probably got worms from polluted water sources, though. He seems to be good-tempered. Definitely a quiet dog. Don’t leave him unattended with children, though. In fact, don’t let him off a leash, and just be careful. He could change. You need to feed him small meals four times a day for the next month. Plenty of phosphorous, potassium. Let me see
… magnesium, Omega-3 and-6 fatty acid supplements. You look bewildered.”
“I’m supposed to do all this?”
“Someone has to do it. Big dog, big responsibility. Don’t worry about the diet, I’ll write it all down for you. You’ll need to walk him a lot, too. Make a return appointment for next week, then every two weeks after that for the next two months. You can pay by check if you like.”
Blume had planned to leave the creature there for a few days, but when he learned that the vet charged more for overnight stays than the hotels Blume went to on holiday, he changed his mind.
The dog sat in the back, its breath on Blume’s neck, eyeing his driving.
Blume made a visit to a pet shop for a collar, a retractable leash, a food bowl, vitamin supplements, cereal, assorted cans, and antiparasite powders. It came to €112.15. He was shocked at the total. The store owner asked him if he had €2.15 in change, and Blume conducted an awkward one-handed search through the coins in his wallet. Sitting in the middle of them was the tiny memory card Innocenzi had given him. He had still not watched the video.
His computer didn’t have the right kind of reader, anyhow. He balanced it on his finger, almost flicked it away, then returned it to his wallet.
When he got back to the car, an attractive young woman seemed to be waiting for him, hands on hips.
“What sor
t of a monster are you?” she demanded.
Blume felt this was a bit strong. “Sorry. I don’t usually double-park.”
“What are you talking about? Open the windows of that car immediately. That creature could die in there. Have you any idea how hot it gets inside a car? An animal that size uses up all the oxygen. Open, damn it!”
Blume did as he was told. He explained to her that he was new to this, that it wasn’t his dog. She gave him a lecture on animal welfare and let him go on to his second appointment.
Blume drove over to the Brocca house hold. He put the collar on the dog, which seemed none the worse for having been baked in the car, then spent a while fitting the leash to it. Then they both got out and went up to the apartment.
Giulia’s mother answered. She looked better than before, and managed a weak smile, which vanished when she saw the dog. She seemed to be on the point of saying something when her daughter appeared behind her.
“Alec! You have a dog,” said the girl. “What’s his name?” Her mother stood aside to let them in.
“He doesn’t have a name, Giulia, and he’s not my dog,” said Blume. “It’s a temporary thing. Look, he hasn’t even got a tag.”
Blume looked around the living room. It was tidier than when he had been there last. Giulia’s mother sat down in an armchair and motioned Blume to sit on the sofa opposite. He sat down without relinquishing the leash. Giulia sat near Blume on the sofa. The dog stood between them, and blocked their view. He yanked on the lead a few times, but the dog tautened its neck and threw him a bored-walrus look.
“Is your son here, Mrs. Brocca?” inquired Blume, leaning his head back to see over the dog.
“No, he’s with his grandmother. I don’t want him to have to listen to this, even if nothing will be worse than what he saw.”
“Did forensics send your car back?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Sit!” shouted Giulia suddenly, but the dog remained where he was. She stood up and walked over to it, and Blume tightened his hold on the leash. The girl was only a little taller than the animal. Her whole head could fit in its mouth. “Lie down!” She pointed to the floor. The dog lay down.
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