Conor Fitzgerald: The dogs of Rome

“His name is Truffa.”

“Truffa, you say?” Blume pulled out his cell phone, pressed the numbers as Zambotto called them out. He dismissed Zambotto with a nod of the head. Zambotto went into the interrogation room.

“You going to call him now?” asked Principe.

“Why? Think we should wait?” Blume dialed the number, identified himself to the man who answered and apologized for calling so late, paused for a second, then made a weak joke about bad television. Two minutes later he hung up and shrugged.

“Well?” said Principe.

“OK. This supermarket manager-Truffa-just told me customers almost never try to pull a fast one or complain about missing items,” said Blume.

“Is that a breakthrough of some sort?” Principe wanted to know.

“Not at all,” said Blume. “Hardly makes any difference. But it means stuff doesn’t go missing. Customers would complain if it did. It doesn’t make sense to lose a job, even a lousy one, for the sake of a tin of beans.”

The door to the interrogation room burst open, and Zambotto appeared, breathing heavily, his enormous head hanging down as if he had just completed a round in the ring. “Had to get out of there, stop myself from strangling the fucker.”

“Why, what did he do?” said Principe.

“He denies everything. So maybe he didn’t do it, but he’s using this tone of voice, you know, like he was calling me stupid.”

Blume said, “You know what, Cristian? I think we can leave it there.”

“What?”

“He’s not who we’re after. Also, I want a break. Maybe you want one, too?”

Zambotto nodded.

“Fine,” said Blume. “Let’s send him back to his mother in time for supper. In one piece.”

Blume left the basement and went up to the serious crimes section on the second floor of the station in search of Paoloni, who was supposed to be setting out the investigative chronology. But instead of Paoloni in the office, he found the young deputy inspector, Marco Ferrucci, tongue out in concentration as he tapped something into his police computer on the desk. Blume had not intended to use Ferrucci until the following day.

“When did you get in?”

“About an hour ago, sir.”

“There was a reason I didn’t call you. I wanted at least one wide-awake officer on the job tomorrow. Who told you to come in?”

“No one.”

“So what, you just dreamed there was a case, woke up, and came in?”

“I wasn’t asleep. It’s not late.”

Blume cut him off. “So where’s Paoloni?”

“He said the computer hurt his eyes, sir.”

“He went home?”

“I don’t think he went home. Anyhow, he’s been working very hard until now.”

The phone on Blume’s desk in the next room began to ring. Almost all the calls to his desk now came from within the building, and the only person he could think it might be was Gallone.

“Are you going to answer that, sir?” asked Ferrucci.

The phone stopped ringing.

Blume said, “Answer what?”

But then it started up again. Blume banged his way into his poky office, grabbed the receiver, brought it up to his ear, but, just to provoke Gallone, said nothing.

“Alec?”

It was D’Amico, not Gallone.

“Nando.”

“Yeah, it’s me. So you’re in the office. I called this number because I know it by heart. I was about to call you on your mobile.”

“Where are you?”

“In my office in the Viminale,” said D’Amico.

“Aren’t we supposed to coordinate or something?”

“That’s what this is: coordination.”

“Have you got something for me, Nando?”

“Yes. The widow, Sveva Romagnolo, did not make an emergency call when she found the body. Not at first.”

“No?” said Blume.

“OK, picture this,” said D’Amico. “Romagnolo finds her husband’s bloody corpse on the floor, her kid is presumably suffering psychological trauma so she whips out her mobile like any normal person would do and she calls-get this-not 112, 113, or 118 but 1240-directory inquiries. She made that call at three fifty-five. That’s nine minutes before we logged the emergency call.”

“Wait. Go back a bit. She whips out her mobile phone?”

“Sure.”

“The one that went missing from the crime scene?”

There was silence from on the other end of the line.

“Nando? Did you lift Romagnolo’s phone from the crime scene?”

“It wasn’t part of the crime scene. She left it there after the fact. It’s irrelevant to the murder. Unless she did it, which is out of the question.”

“Is it?” asked Blume.

“Pretty much, yes. She was traveling with her son. She was in her constituency in Padua. Hundreds of people saw her. She’s a senator, for God’s sake.”

“When the Holy Ghost started talking about the cell phone, you didn’t think to explain? Maybe even give it to him?”

“He didn’t ask nicely. And he’d just have given it back to her, without checking the calls and the numbers on the contacts list. And I want to know why the Holy Ghost is suddenly so visible.”

“You ever hear of a chain of evidence, Nando?”

“You could ask the same of Gallone. He was happy to hand over an important piece of evidence. Do you want to hear what I phoned to say or not, Alec?”

Blume realized he was pressing the receiver too hard against his ear. He put his free hand on his solar plexus and tried to measure his feelings. He was tense, but not angry. D’Amico was presuming complicity, but he was also sharing information. Blume knew D’Amico’s interest in the case was political, that’s why they had sent him down from the Viminale. For some, including D’Amico, evidently, it was more urgent to find out who the widow knew and who she had called than who killed her husband.

“Romagnolo calls directory inquiries, you say?”

“Yes,” said D’Amico. “If we get a warrant, we can maybe find out who she was looking for, but I don’t think we need to. She was looking for the Collegio Romano commissariato, where you are.”

“Here? This station?”

“Yes,” said D’Amico. “A few minutes later, she phoned the desk downstairs there and asked to speak to the vicequestore aggiunto. So it looks to me like she got directory inquiries to give her the number for your offices, or tried to get Gallone’s number, which is not listed. They wouldn’t connect her, so then she said it was an emergency, and they asked what sort and she told them. When I say ‘they,’ I mean the officer who took the call.”

“She called directly?”

“Yes. I just spoke to the desk sergeant who took the call. He remembers she then told him she was a personal friend of the vicequestore aggiunto, and demanded to be put through. He patched her through to Gallone’s mobile number.”

“So she wanted the Holy Ghost in particular, not just any old police.”

“Funny, that. Someone wanting Gallone,” said D’Amico.

“She can’t know him all that well,” said Blume, “or she’d have had his number already.”

“Gallone’s the sort of person whose number you cancel from your phone first chance you get. I did. Anyhow, after talking to Gallone, she called the central switchboard here at the Viminale. I don’t know where that call went to, if anywhere. Probably to someone more important than Gallone.”

“And after that?”

“After, maybe because no one had come yet and she was beginning to freak at what was in front of her in the apartment, she called 113, where she spoke to the dispatchers. They routed the call to Via Cavalotti, but they had no one available, so it was rerouted back to you. The same desk sergeant took the call, got the address, dispatched a unit, then called the Holy Ghost to inform him. But Gallone said a team had already been sent to that address, and called the poor bastard on the desk an incompetent.”