Conor Fitzgerald - Fatal Touch

“Did you find the body?” asked Caterina.

Rospo raised his hands. “Guilty.”

Caterina could not think of what to say next. She had a feeling Di Ricci was clowning behind her back. Probably masturbatory movements, thrusting his pelvis, cupping his hands to indicate breasts. Rospo was definitely amused by something.

She spun round in time to catch Di Ricci in mid mime. The man was almost forty. “You,” she said, “go over to those two in the shadows, then take up positions at the entrances to this piazza. You can stand guard behind us, where the two lanes almost converge.” She pointed to the left. “Don’t let anyone through, except for the detectives when they arrive.”

Di Ricci did not move. He said, “We’re dealing with a dead tramp. A tramp fell down, banged his head, and died.”

Rospo said, “Sovrintendente Grattapaglia gives the deployment orders.”

“Is he here?” asked Caterina.

“No, but he’s on his way. Then things will get organized.”

“Who called in the body?”

“I did,” said Rospo. “Pair of Huns saw him lying in the street, went straight back to the hotel to tell the manager. That’s how they must report crimes in Germany. See a dead body, find the nearest hotel manager. Fucking Germans…” he spat.

“Has the victim been identified?”

“Sure.”

“By who?”

“Me again,” said Rospo. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen this guy, English tramp. Been living here for years. He paints, gets drunk. Sometimes gets into fights, though he must be about seventy. You’d almost admire that. People round here have complained about him for years, pissing into doorways, singing songs in the street.”

“Tramp?”

“Artist, if you prefer. Anyhow, soon as I saw who it was, I told the German to fuck off back to his hotel, then Di Ricci and me tried to lift him up and get him to walk home. We dragged him for a few meters, but then I immediately realized he was inert and pretty cold, so we put him down again, called dispatch, and requested a crew.”

“You dragged a dead body several meters from its original position?” asked Caterina.

Rospo shrugged. “We’d picked him up off the ground twenty times before. Who was to know he was dead this time? Anyhow, we put him back. This sort of shit happens all the time.”

“So those two technicians there are looking at where the body was, originally?” She pointed at two men standing a few meters apart from the others, staring at a piece of empty ground.

“More or less there, maybe a bit to the left, a bit behind that spot,” said Rospo.

“You don’t feel like going over and telling them to take a step or two back to where you actually found the body?”

“I can’t be so precise. Besides, they’ve probably already looked there. Nothing to see.”

Caterina walked over and stood outside the circle of technicians, none of whom acknowledged her. The victim was lying flat on his back on the ground, like he wanted to look at the stars. He had a short white beard, neater than seemed right for a tramp. His hair was white and curly, all of it bunched in curls at the back of his head. The moonlight through the magnolia leaves cast a strange pattern on the upturned face. Caterina moved slightly, but the pattern remained the same, and she realized the man’s left cheek was wrinkled and scarred. It looked like an old burn. She bet he had grown the beard to hide it. She felt the muscles in her neck tense and a shudder pass through her and turned around to see Rospo.

“I found him more or less here.” He knelt down on the ground, as if looking for something, stood up, brushed dirt off his knee, and nodded. “Yes, no, wait. It was maybe a bit further over. Fuck it. Let’s just say it was here.”

“Then what did you do?”

“While the ambulance was on its way, I felt for a pulse and found none. The EMTs reached the scene twenty minutes later and pronounced suspicious death, and a forensic team was called in. The suspected cause of death is blunt head trauma.”

Caterina looked over to see if the uniformed policemen had sealed off the entrances to the piazza like she said. They had not. Then, to her immense relief, she saw Commissioner Blume and Inspector Panebianco walking over toward her. Blume was carrying a bag, which he dropped on the ground next to her. He unzipped it, pulled out a pair of latex gloves, and snapped them on. Panebianco did the same, and then they waited for her. Feeling self-conscious, Caterina plucked out two gloves from the box and pulled them on, taking twice as long as Blume.

Blume nodded at Rospo, then turned his head downwards at his bag, and pointed at a roll of crime scene tape with his toe. Rospo picked it up, and Blume shook his head in sharp dismissal, saying, “What the hell? You need to be told everything?”

Rospo was gone. Blume asked Caterina to start writing down anything and everything she saw. But first, he wanted her to get the names of the policemen called to the scene and everyone present.

Then he asked her if anything had been added to the scene since she arrived or if anyone had touched the body. But as she began her complicated response he stopped her.

“It’s OK. I know about Rospo’s body-lifting efforts already. I just wanted to see if you did.”

“You were testing me?” A thought occurred to her. “You’re not really just arriving now, are you?”

“No. I got here a while ago.”

“You didn’t seal the area off,” said Caterina, annoyed at being played like this.

“I did. You didn’t check. The exclusionary cordon you wanted was fine, but I chose to close off Vicolo del Moro. No access there means no access to any entrance to the piazza. One roadblock instead of two. Less manpower. We’ll narrow the area later, when people start waking up and going to work.”

“I see,” said Caterina.

Blume pointed to a pile of cobblestones and sand piled up against the wall of a bar, and said, “Use the tape and ring it around those stones afterwards. They might want looking at.”

“OK,” said Caterina.

Blume clapped his hands together. “So, are you having fun, Inspector?”

“I am glad to be here, if that’s what you mean,” said Caterina.

“If I had meant that, I would have asked if you were glad to be here,” said Blume. “Don’t you think this is fun?”

Caterina thought of her son waking up to her absence, the dead tramp with the white beard a few meters away, the scorn she had seen in the policemen’s eyes when she tried to give them orders. “No. I wouldn’t say fun, exactly, more…” She stopped, realizing that Blume did not really want to stand there listening to her trying to give shape to her thoughts.

Blume confirmed her suspicion by getting down to business. “So Rospo and his partner moved the body. Well, that’s a good start. I suppose we’ll begin with the assumption this is yet another mugging. Certainly, it’s another foreigner…” He stooped and she realized it was up to her to continue.

“The victim-” began Caterina.

“He may not even be a victim,” interrupted Blume. “Unless you broaden the category to include victims of misfortune or stupidity, in which case we are all victims.”

“He was just a tramp, banged his head; then died from exposure,” said Caterina. “I saw some scenes pretty similar to this with illegal immigrants.”

“Just a tramp, eh?”

“I didn’t mean that a tramp is less important,” said Caterina.

“It was not a moral reprimand, Inspector. It’s just you never know where a corpse is going to lead you. Murder cases can be short or long. Go have a look at those cobblestones, I’ll call you over in a minute. Oh, and do a sketch, would you? Of, you know…” he swept his hand around. “This place. It’s a nice little piazza. Sort of like an arena, isn’t it? Or a Greek theater. Or something.”