Conor Fitzgerald - Fatal Touch

“Hello? Hello?” said a voice. A southerner.

“Hello, this is Commissioner Alec Blume, squadra mobile, who am I speaking to?”

“Lieutenant Colonel Faedda,” said the voice. Blume placed the accent as Sardinian. He pictured a thin and swarthy young man in full dress uniform sitting at his desk carefully arranging pencils.

“Inspector Panebianco didn’t introduce us properly,” said Blume.

“He’s useless, isn’t he?” said the Carabiniere. “You should see him on the pitch. Hopeless. What can I do for you, Commissioner?”

Blume was taken aback by the easy familiarity of the man’s tone. He erased the image of the uniform and the pencils, pictured feet on a desk. “I wanted to talk about John Nightingale and Henry Treacy,” he said.

“Yes, I’ve been looking at files all morning,” said the Carabiniere. “Not just on Rosario’s behalf, of course, since the case has been assigned to us. I’d definitely appreciate any help you could give me.”

This conversation was flowing in the wrong direction. “I don’t have anything I can give you,” said Blume.

“I realize it’s early days,” said Faedda. “We can wait for the autopsy. Then maybe we can meet, compare notes?”

“That’s really for the magistrate to decide,” said Blume rather stiffly.

“I hear the magistrate is Buoncompagno.”

“Yes,” said Blume.

“Buoncompagno is a man who prefers to have his decisions taken for him.”

Blume was suspicious of the casual frankness of the statement.

Faedda continued, “Look, a former colleague of mine-from before my time, really-is involved in the case. Colonel Farinelli. Have you met him?”

“I have,” said Blume, on his guard.

“Already? Well, then you’ll know who’s calling the shots, Commissioner. And the Colonel’s influence outreaches his rank. Have you spoken to John Nightingale yet?”

“No.” Blume felt judged.

“Me neither, and I don’t think I will get the chance. But you might. Now, I don’t know what you’ve found out there, but from our records here I can tell you Nightingale’s specialization is provenance. He appears to be exceptionally good at it.”

“Go on,” said Blume, reaching for a pen and a blank sheet of paper, and wrote down the name Faedda.

“Nightingale knows every branch of every minor aristocratic or rich bourgeois family in England, America, Germany, France. When generating a story, he never begins with a purely fictional character. Let’s put all this in the past tense since he seems to have been pretty inactive over the past few years. When he purported to be reselling on a painting, he always used the name of someone who really existed as having been a previous owner.”

Blume wrote the word “provenance” beneath the picture of the sad dog he had been drawing. “In what way did he use their name?” He started sketching a tree.

“He’d say the person had sat for the painting, commissioned it, ordered it, bought it, sold it, lost it. It didn’t matter. The important thing is to establish a connection with someone with reputation, money, or title who died some time ago.”

Blume tapped the tip of the pen on the branches of the tree, but the dots looked more like rain than leaves. He’d make it a stormy scene. “Don’t the families deny it?”

“I have never seen that happen. A family will go to great lengths to confirm that their ancestors were perspicacious people, ahead of the curve, gifted with good taste, or on friendly terms with famous artists. It’s the celebrity culture, Commissioner, and no one is immune.”

“I am,” thought Blume to himself. He scribbled in some curly storm clouds and wrote “family.”

“Another trick that Nightingale used to do was to attribute paintings to great houses, castles, and mansions that were destroyed in one of the wars. If the place no longer exists because the Americans bombed it, who’s to say what once hung on its walls?”

Blume put down his pen. “It’s more likely that the Germans would have bombed it, no?” he said.

“No, no. The Germans occupied but the Americans did most of the bombing. They still do.”

“Yeah, well… Did you find all this stuff about Treacy and Nightingale just now?”

Silence.

“Because it doesn’t sound like it to me,” continued Blume. “It’s almost as if you were following this case before it even happened, and that’s a bit strange… what’s your first name, Colonel?”

“Nicu. It’s Sardinian.”

“Well, Nicu. How come you sound like you’ve been following the case before it even happened?”

“I am just well informed of the facts. You know, we really should meet soon.”

“Yes, I think that would be a good idea,” said Blume.

After he hung up, he added some roots to the tree, then balled up the piece of paper, threw it across the room, and, in the absence of spectators, it traveled straight into the trashcan.

First the Colonel sitting in Treacy’s living room looking for notebooks he had no reason to know about, and now another Carabiniere who seemed very well informed about Nightingale. Blume took the small key from his pocket and opened the drawer with the notebooks.

Someone tapped lightly on his door. Blume pushed the drawer closed again, locked it, slid the key beneath the green leather writing-pad on his desk, and called, “ Avanti! ”

The door edged open about wide enough for a cat, then an Agente put his head around and seemed to sniff the air before opening the door fully and coming in.

“What?”

“A Mr. John Nightingale is downstairs. I just thought you’d like to know,” he said.

Certain englishmen seem to expend so much energy on being English that it empties them of natural vigor. If he had not just heard about John Nightingale’s skill at faking provenance, Blume would have dismissed the lethargic man in the downstairs waiting area as being slow-witted. Blume put him in his mid-sixties. His hair was gray and tightly curled like a scouring pad used for saucepans. He looked the kind who might be comfortable in corduroy, maybe with patches on the elbows of his jacket, but in fact his clothes, though wrinkled, were sober, silver-gray, and expensive. Blume introduced himself. Nightingale stood up, shook Blume’s hand, and smiled by curving the left side of his mouth upwards and the right side downwards. Then he sat down again and said, “E’ tutto vero?”

“Is what true?” asked Blume, switching straight into English as soon as he heard Nightingale’s accent.

“That they found Harry murdered on the street.”

“Hahwy?” said Blume, momentarily confused.

“Yes. Harry.”

“Harry as in Henry?” said Blume, resisting the temptation to say “Henwy.”

Nightingale said, “Yes. Harry. I never called him Henry.”

“Henry Treacy. How did you find out?” asked Blume.

“Dear God!” Nightingale widened his eyes. “It is true, then.”

“How did you find that out?” repeated Blume.

“Emanuela told me. Manuela, rather. My receptionist. Manuela told me, well, let me see, half an hour ago. She told me to come down here and find you or an Inspector Mazzola or some such name. It’s good to find someone who speaks English like this. I can’t quite place your accent… God, you’re not Irish are you?”

“No.”

“No, you’re American. How stupid of me. Harry was Irish, you see.”

“I see,” said Blume. “I take it you’re here to make a voluntary statement?”

“What?”

“A statement to the police. Since no lawyer is present and I am not a magistrate, nothing you say can be used as evidence in court.”

“I came to get information, not the other way round. Am I under arrest?”