Conor Fitzgerald - The Namesake

And yet, even as he looked at the signature and the torn image, Blume could not believe that Konrad was really an envoy from Domenico Megale. He could not say why he was so certain except that Konrad had little of the perpetrator and much of the victim about him.

He closed the van door again and started putting everything back into the suitcase, including the torn Madonna. When the lanky German came knocking on the hotel door a few hours from now, angrily demanding an explanation for his missing notes, Blume would ask him about it.

Someone hammered on the door he had just closed. Blume snapped shut the case, put it back on the floor, opened the door.

Konrad stood holding two plastic bags. ‘I thought you’d be out front.’

‘No parking space. I tried to use the shade of the trucks to keep the camper van cool.’

Konrad peered in. ‘Are they still there?’

‘No,’ said Blume. ‘There was just the one. It might be near your feet.’

Konrad gave a satisfying leap, like a colt learning to show-jump. Then he got in the driver’s side, slamming the door behind him. ‘Close the door, please.’

‘Did you get that coffee?’ said Blume from behind him. ‘Wait, I’m coming around.’

Blume sat down in the passenger seat and Konrad gingerly handed him the bag. Blume peered inside and pulled out a packet of fruit pastilles and popped one in his mouth. ‘You remembered, well done. I love these sweets. But where’s the coffee?’

‘When I asked for what you said, no one understood me,’ said Konrad.

‘It’s sold with the sweets, in a blue container… never mind.’ He popped another in his mouth, adding synthetic strawberry to the chewy lemon he was already enjoying. ‘What?’ he said to Konrad’s outraged and incredulous expression. ‘I like sweets. I never grew out of it. It’s my only vice. You want one?’ he pulled back the wrapper and held the tube towards Konrad, who recoiled.

‘Did you wash your hands?’

‘You mean the rat? I was kicking at the rat, not tickling its stomach.’

‘European rats carry a flea which carries a bacterium called Bartonella. It causes serious coronary damage.’

Blume popped a green sweet into his mouth, then mimicked a man having a heart attack, clutching at his left bicep, then throat.

‘You’re not funny, Commissioner.’

Rome

Arconti was sitting up waiting for her and managed to lift his arm as she entered the room. A box of Kleenex sat by his side.

‘I have a private room, which is good,’ he said, plucking one out and dabbing the side of his mouth. ‘Excuse me if I drool a little.’

Caterina, who did not know the magistrate, was unsure what sort of tone to use. Sensing this, Arconti said, ‘I am going to use tu and call you Caterina. I want you to do the same. Call me Matteo.’

‘Signor Giudice, you are asking too much. I can’t possibly use tu

…’ she trailed off as the magistrate fixed her with a haughty and unblinking stare.

‘I am not that old, despite present appearances,’ said Arconti, his lip curved into a sneering expression of command.

Caterina bristled. ‘I am not using the familiar form with a magistrate I don’t know. You had something to tell me, now tell me.’

The magistrate continued to regard her balefully, but his voice sounded incongruously cheerful. ‘That’s fine by me. Sorry if I embarrassed you. May I call you Caterina?’

‘Yes,’ she conceded.

‘OK, Caterina, now will you please look at this side of my face, the side that doesn’t look like it’s had the mother of all Botox injections? I’m sure the frozen half is fascinatingly creepy, but I have feelings, too.’

She looked at Arconti’s face full on, and saw half his mouth smiling. His right eye was moving up and down and there was a humorous glint in it.

‘They are hopeful that other side will start thawing out within a few days,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Caterina. ‘I was staring, wasn’t I?’ She glanced surreptitiously at the left eye which glared murderously back at her, while Arconti laughed good-naturedly.

‘Never mind. And as for the honorifics due to a magistrate, you can forget that. I’m quitting. I know it was probably cholesterol or cigarettes or something, but I blame my work for this. That and my parents of course, they gave me the genes.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Caterina. She hooked some strands of hair over her ear and turned her head so as to look only at the magistrate’s good side.

‘You’re lovely,’ he said. ‘And now you’re blushingly lovely. I found in the past few days it’s become easier for me to speak my mind. I find you lovely, and the fact that that big brooding bastard of a commissioner didn’t see fit even to mention you in all those hours we were together is…’

‘Hurtful,’ said Caterina.

‘Yes. Blume isn’t always upfront, is he?’

‘Not always,’ she agreed.

‘I think he probably communicates more with you than with me, which is as it should be and as I hope it will be,’ said Arconti. ‘Do you know where he is now?’

Caterina hesitated.

‘I’m not fishing for information. I know where he is,’ said Arconti. ‘I’m just wondering if you do.’

‘Yes, I do. I think so. Tell me anyhow.’

‘He’s been recruited by Captain Massimiliani from the DCSA to accompany a German who may or may not have something to do with the Ndrangheta and may or may not be acting as a go-between for the Ndrangheta and the Camorra. He left you here investigating the murder of Matteo Arconti, which, I have to say, still makes a certain impression on me when I say the name. You were briefly under the direction of a magistrate from my office, right?’

‘Magistrate Nardone.’

‘Can’t quite bring him to mind,’ said Arconti.

‘Natty little beard, young…’

‘Nope. Can’t picture him, but it’s all irrelevant now because the case has floated up to Milan and into the all-devouring embrace of the anti-Mafia magistrates.’

‘You are very well informed, Giudice.’

‘Call me Matteo, and, really, use the familiar form,’ he attempted a smile, and Caterina’s eye was drawn back to the sneer stamped on the left side of his face. ‘I’m informed because I’ve been talking to this Massimiliani I mentioned. He wanted to know a few things about Blume.’

‘When was this?’ asked Caterina. ‘I was given to understand that you were in a coma. In fact I was surprised when the doctor called.’

‘Yes, it was Massimiliani’s idea to say I was totally incapacitated. It was such an opportunity for a plausible lie he simply could not let it pass, even if it served no purpose whatsoever. Not that I’m up and dancing yet, but no coma. Is Blume a principled man?’

Caterina fell silent.

‘If it helps,’ said Arconti with another lopsided grin, ‘I think he is but…’

‘But?’ asked Caterina. ‘What has he done? Or what are you going to ask him to do?’

‘I am not going to ask him to do anything, Caterina. But he took a doubtful initiative. I think his motives were pure — well, not pure but justifiable — and I think he was looking out for me…’

‘Don’t make excuses for him,’ she said.

‘You’re right. Still, I get the feeling that Blume has embraced a philosophy he doesn’t believe in, and it’s led him in the wrong direction. I’d be interested to know whether you are accompanying him on it… You haven’t a clue what I am talking about, have you?’

‘No.’

‘That means he’s on his own.’

‘You are still talking in riddles, Giudice.’

‘When Massimiliani found out I was not a vegetable, he came in to ask me about a confession apparently made by Curmaci’s wife, Maria Itria. When I said I had spoken to the woman but never received any confession, quite the contrary really, he showed me a transcript, adding that copies of the same had been leaked to the press, and one in particular could be tracked back to a policeman in your office who is known to do anything for a bit of cash and is therefore usually kept away from sensitive information…’