Conor Fitzgerald: The dogs of Rome

Manuela Innocenzi put the metal circle down on the bed, and picked up one of the five sheets of numbers.

“That’s just backup. In case something goes wrong with the memory sticks, which could never happen. With these numbers I can reconstruct bank account numbers and telephone contacts.”

She took out the Ka-Bar Tanto, and examined its hilt. She took it out of its sheath, and turned it back and forth as if looking for blemishes on the blade. He realized he should never have kept that knife, no matter how important it was to him.

Pernazzo stared at a Star Wars bedside mat on the floor beside the bed. C3P0 had his hand raised in greeting.

“How did you find me?” All at once, this was all he wanted to know.

She ignored the question, but spoke at last. “You had no reason to do all these things. You had a choice. I was born into it, and I tried to move above, without hurting my father’s feelings. Arturo was my last chance to change. I would have made it, too. I’d have got away. Escaped into goodness.”

Pernazzo had no idea what the ugly woman was talking about, but he was in no doubt of her power.

She said, “You killed Arturo with this,” and gently waved her hand to forestall any protests. “And you kept it because you are proud of what you did. Arturo and I had a deep sense of justice. Know that? It’s what we had in common.”

Pernazzo felt a shadow move down his head and body as hope drained away.

“This is yours, too?” Her voice sounded tender. Pernazzo looked down and saw she had placed Alleva’s undersized pistol on the child’s bed. “Not this backpack, though. This was his. I remember he used it to bring a packed lunch. He was always walking or cycling, always had this bag. He kept a book for identifying flowers in it. Not just flowers. He was enthusiastic even about weeds, grass.”

Pernazzo looked at a world map on the bedroom wall. It curled at the edges. The Soviet Union still existed. Argentina was green, Brazil orange, Chile pink. His feet were cold.

“How did you find me?”

“We all get found out in the end.”

Pernazzo found himself in the corridor, the earless old man behind him. He moved down the staircase as if it were an escalator. At the bottom of the steps stood a youth in a white tracksuit, who looked hardly older than a child. He had a bum-fluff moustache, a hairless chest, and doe-like eyes. He was also holding a pistol and pointing it casually at Pernazzo’s heart. It was an elegant model, like Massoni’s.

The kid seemed nice enough. Pernazzo looked slowly to his right. The raw-faced woman had sat down, her big feet pointed in his direction. She was twisting something in her hands and staring at him with her small blue eyes, never taking them off him, all the time working the gum in her jaw. The old man’s phone rang, he pressed it to his mutilated ear, murmured something about five minutes, put it away.

“Move,” commanded the boy. They left by the front door, and the boy suddenly gave him a hard shove, as if the house had kept him polite and he was only now coming into his element. Pernazzo slipped on the grass, went sprawling forward, and considered breaking into a sprint, but the boy was just behind him with his long-barreled pistol. Pernazzo saw two four-by-four vehicles parked in front of the gate. How had he not heard? They circled the house, and he was in the back garden again. There was the broken window, the shining glass shards.

As they approached the thicket at the end of the garden, he tensed, ready to make a break for it, but though the top of his body felt light and ready to burst into flight, the lower part seemed to be wading through water. The youth whispered “Stop,” and his voice was so close that Pernazzo felt the hairs in his ears tingle.

Pernazzo walked on a few paces, wondering whether his mother could see him now.

“I said ‘stop.’ ” There was no annoyance in the soft voice.

Using the energy surging through the upper part of his body, Pernazzo bent down and grabbed a broken elm branch, but it was as light as cork. He spun around, stick in hand, but the kid was five paces behind and out of reach. He didn’t even seem to have noticed Pernazzo’s weapon.

“Wait a minute!” said Pernazzo. He raised the rotten stick above his head. “This is too light. I need…”

“What?”

But Pernazzo could not think of anything to say.

The kid shot him through the right elbow. When he heard the crack, Pernazzo thought the wood had exploded over his head. And, then, suddenly, the pain was so bad he wanted to tear off his right arm with his left.

The next bullet buried itself in his kneecap and did not come out. As he went down, he felt vomit rise from his throat, and when he hit the ground he sucked it all back in again and couldn’t breathe. He wriggled over onto his side and dislodged enough to be able to gasp for air. Something infinitely strong and merciless grabbed his shattered arm and pulled, causing the agony to move from his elbow to his entire body. Far above him stood the darkened face of the young man and above him a blue sky with clouds like faint chalk marks.

Pernazzo had not planned for the pain. It left him no chance of clarity. Most of all, it was not fair. He had no chance, lying there. A distant idea was beginning to form in his mind, somewhere behind the pain. He would need some time to work it through. Time to recover. It had something to do with change. He was sure it was going to be a beautiful idea.

“Wait,” said Pernazzo, “I think I may…”

The young man in the white tracksuit shot Pernazzo twice in the forehead, putting an immediate end to the thrashing movements. He used his foot to push the scrawny corpse over and, never one to take a gamble, delivered two more shots to the back of the head.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 11 A.M.

"What about the dogs?”

The speaker was Sveva Romagnolo, and Blume couldn’t believe her question. He had just finished describing the discovery of Pernazzo’s body at Di Tivoli’s country villa in Amatrice, and this was her idea of a suitable response.

“The dogs?” He took the phone way from his ear and looked at it as if it were responsible for the ludicrous question. His main concern now was what to do about Paoloni. He could not come to a decision.

“I know it may sound like a strange question after all you have been telling me, Commissioner, but you see, I’ve already heard all about what happened to Pernazzo. Your boss Gallone was very pleased to be able to give me every detail, along with assurances that he would handle the media. I don’t want to hear any more. Not for now. And it’s the very first thing Arturo would have asked. So now I’m asking for him.”

“Ferrucci said he would look after that,” said Blume. “But after he got… well… it got forgotten.” What ever he did, he would not report Paoloni to the authorities. Paoloni could do that himself.

“You know where the creatures were kept imprisoned, don’t you? The details were in Arturo’s files.”

“Somewhere near Ponte Galleria, I think,” said Blume. He had been working with Paoloni for seven years. Until now, the differences of style had not mattered.

“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.