Conor Fitzgerald: Fatal Touch

On balance, Inspector Caterina Mattiola was pleased to be woken in her warm bed in the early hours of the morning to be told that a man had been found dead on the streets of Trastevere, and that her presence was requested.

Since transferring from Section Two, Immigration Affairs to Section Three, Homicide, of the Squadra Mobile, she had done only administrative work. She was good at it, better than any of the men, but she knew what happened to women who became indispensable at a single thankless task.

She had taken a big risk several days ago and gone to her boss, Commissioner Blume, and asked to be detailed to investigative work. Visiting her parents later that same week, she made an effort to tell her father about what she had done. At no point had her boss promised anything, but she still felt as if she had made some sort of breakthrough. She wondered whether her father agreed. Or was she being too optimistic?

Sitting there across the table watching him chew on the last of his food, his head tilted back, and knife and fork grasped tightly in his fist like they were two ends of a handlebar on an invisible bicycle that he was having difficulty steering, she suddenly wondered if he had understood her at all.

“When was this?” he said eventually.

“When was what?” said her mother, swooping in from the kitchen bearing an aluminum coffeepot and two small white cups with fat lips. “What are you saying, Arnaldo?”

She circled around the table and placed a cup in front of both of them. “The sugar’s in the kitchen, but I left it there because I know neither of you takes it. Be careful, Arnaldo, or you’ll burn your hand again. I’d leave it for a moment till it stops hissing. Don’t pour it yet. None for me, of course. I don’t drink coffee since my op.”

Her husband waited for her to complete the circuit of the table, gathering speed as she came onto the straight stretch leading back toward the kitchen. When she had gone, he unclasped his fists and put his silverware down on the table. “When was this?”

“Three days ago,” said Caterina. “On Tuesday. Since then, nothing. But there haven’t been any cases.”

“No murders in Rome?”

“Some muggings, probably the work of one person. No murders in our district, though. The weekend begins now. That’s always a good time for killing,” she said.

“We can only hope,” said her father. He drank his coffee, then eyed the bottom of the cup to make sure it was all gone. “If you do get assigned to a murder investigation,” he said, “you won’t say anything to your mother, will you? She still thinks you process passports.”

“Right,” said Caterina. She kissed him on his forehead, the least wrinkled and tragic part of his face, and stood up. At the front door, she hitched her shoulder bag across her chest, lifted a heavy plastic bag full of fruit that her mother had left for her despite her pleas that she had more fruit than she knew what to do with, and left.

She rubbed her eyes and refocused on the present. She was to report directly to the scene. She tried to remember what address the dispatcher had given, but although it had been less than a minute ago, it had merged into the dream she had been having about colored fountains and fighting babies. Elia was beside her. He was nine, now. Too old to sleep with his mother.

She sat up quickly before sleep could catch her again.

She phoned her parents, to tell them to come to look after Elia. Her mother said she would be over immediately and expected Caterina to wait.

Caterina was already dressed in yesterday’s clothes. If this was going to become a habit, she’d shower in the evenings and set out fresh clothes every night.

“I can’t wait. I have to go now. It’s an emergency call.”

“What if he wakes up alone in an empty house?”

“I told him it might happen. I’ll phone him. He knows you’ll be here.”

“I’ll be there right now. I want you to wait. You have to. What sort of mother…”

“I need to hang up, mamma. I’ll probably see you at the gate on my way out.”

“I don’t see what could possibly be so urgent…”

Caterina hung up, finished dressing quickly, kissed Elia, snug in the bed and smelling like a warm loaf of bread. She slung a leather satchel across her body, pulled the front door of the apartment closed, but did not lock it from the outside. Her mother always complained about this, saying gypsies could easily kick down the door, get in, and steal her only grandchild away.

Caterina had tried to address this particular phobia, but it was just one of many. “Gypsies don’t steal children, mother. That’s an urban myth. They have more than enough of their own.”

“And you a policewoman.”

“Which is why I am not locking my child in for any reason.”

She made it all the way to her car without meeting her mother. She did her best to suppress a faint buzzing of anxiety like a trapped black insect bouncing lightly against the inside of her breast. She hated it, the feeling of her mother’s fretfulness and fear insinuating its way into her own personality.

She got in the car and phoned the dispatcher to get the address again. Piazza de’ Renzi in Trastevere. Near work and far from home.

Caterina drove through the center and crossed the Tiber at Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II, wondering if she had chosen the fastest route. She followed the curve of the river, building up speed on the empty road. Then she turned right, and parked her car in the middle of Piazza Trilussa, to the annoyance or amusement, it was hard to tell, of a group of down-and-outs surrounded by beer bottles, and walked through two dark lanes to Piazza de’ Renzi. Out of the shadows stepped an Agente so young he seemed like a child who had dressed up as a policeman. He examined her ID card and wrote down her name. A few more steps brought her into the little piazza where she found four uniformed policemen, the coroner’s wagon, a five-strong team of technicians in a pool of halogen at the far side of the piazza, and the medical examiner already at the scene. Even from this distance, she recognized Rospo’s oddly shaped head. The other one was what’s-his-name-Di Ricci.

She saw no sign of Blume or any other detectives, and was not sure what her next move should be. Between a little magnolia tree and a clutter of small cars, she could just make out something dark on the ground, its presence revealed mainly through the contrast it made with the legs of the technicians as they moved back and forth in their white jumpsuits, and she realized she had been called in late.

She took out her notebook from her shoulder bag and began taking basic notes. The piazza was a trapezoid, shorter at the far end where the body lay. She had come up Vicolo de’ Renzi, to her left and fronting the murder scene was a restaurant, Cassetta Trastevere. To her right, turning neatly out of the piazza almost before it had begun, was another lane, its name a mystery. The corner of the piazza opposite her was closed, a tall pink building meeting a lower orange one. Two policemen from another district stood in the shadows talking quietly. One was heavy-set, jowly, and bald, and seemed to be giving instructions to the other, who was average build but with an oversized chin and a protruding lower lip, a mouth made for catching raindrops.

Caterina needed to know something before she dealt with Rospo, so she asked, “Who found the body?”

The bald policeman paused slightly, looking her up and down before nodding in the direction of Rospo and Di Ricci.

“Those two geniuses over there,” he said. “Talk to the guy with the big shiny head.”

Caterina went over to Rospo, who let his eyes travel up and down her while he adjusted his scrotum in his gray pants. “Well, well. Look who’s here.”