Conor Fitzgerald - Fatal Touch

On my third visit, I spotted an interesting painting that looked to me like a work by Coello. Of course it was not, but it almost might have been. The subject was a Spanish nobleman. Mold had eaten away at the painting so much that the face seemed to have decayed and exploded outwards in a burst of gray and green, like something from the Night of the Living Dead.

Interested also in the monogram on the back of the canvas, which seemed to suggest the painting had belonged to Lord Mountbatten, I brought it up to the end of the shop, waited patiently for Ramsauer to appear, and asked him how much he wanted for it. Two guineas, he said. “But see this chalk mark? That means it has already been sold.”

“Who to?” It seems like an impertinent question, but so far I was the only person I had ever seen enter the shop, and I wondered why the buyer had left a chalk mark on it rather than take it home, since it was not a very large painting. Ramsauer explained that the buyer had not had the money on him at the time, but was coming back.

“When?” I asked defiantly. I was conceiving a dislike for this buyer already.

“Later today, sometime tomorrow, or by next Thursday at the latest.” The old bastard didn’t have a clue, of course, but he didn’t really care. The only thing that mattered was honoring his own chalk mark. I wanted to offer more for the painting, but Ramsauer would not have accepted and I did not have it anyhow. Besides, it was not all that great a bargain considering the state of the work.

As it turned out, the buyer was a young man of about my own age, who did not look as if he had that much to spend either. I saw him the following Wednesday (not Thursday, then) pick up the painting and bring it to old Ramsauer and pay for it.

I went over and demanded to know what he intended to do with it. He looked at me in astonishment, and clutched his painting tighter.

“Are you an artist?” I wanted to know.

“No.”

“What do you want with that, then? It’s ruined.”

“It’s my business what I want with it, Paddy.”

I could have given him a clout there and then, but if he fell over he would have broken about a thousand objects.

“Take that back.”

“What?”

“You called me Paddy. Call me that again and you’ll need to put a toothbrush up your arse to clean your teeth.”

He put the painting on the counter and said, “Paddy.”

His eye tooth cut my knuckle when I hit him. He staggered backwards.

“Jesus. Mind the vase behind you,” I said. “It’s a bell krater.”

He obediently moved away from it, and I hit him on the nose.

He cupped his nose between his hands and shouted, “Fucking hell! That hurt! I am calling the police!” He was outraged, as if I had just made a terrible mistake. Then he added, his voice nasal and his eyes watering, “It’s not an original krater, is it?”

“Course not,” I said. I picked up the painting.

I walked out of the shop, then stood and waited for the young man to come out after me.

“Here, give it back. I won’t call the police, and I won’t say Paddy anymore.”

I handed over the painting. “I could restore it for you,” I offered. “For a fee.”

“I can restore it myself, thanks.”

“With what? The canvas is blooming. How do you get rid of that mold?”

“Freeze it.”

His reply stopped me dead. I was expecting him to say Dettol disinfectant and sunlight, which is what most people would have done back then. In fact, it’s a better method than freezing. But in those days freezers were a bit exotic.

“That’s clever,” I said.

“I’m clever,” he said. “Well, if your name’s not Paddy-and it had better not be after that-what are you called?”

“Henry. Henry Treacy.”

He put out his hand. “Well, Harry. How about you buy me a drink at the Lamb and Flag?”

“Henry, not Harry. You have a problem with names. What’s yours?”

“John Nightingale.”

He carried the blasted painting with ghastly precision… we drank pale ale and I said… In those days they had fires in the hearths of London and overflowing ashtrays… One is never as lonely as when…

The manuscript fell with a thump on the floor, and Caterina opened her eyes wide for a moment, turned off the bedside lamp. What was that thump? Manuscript, same sound as the gas made when he lit it. Waited for hours, then lit it. Poor Blume. Propped up like a zinc coffin, the bed tilted pleasantly back.

“No. it’s half past one in the morning, Beppe. I don’t want to go to a McDonald’s,” said Blume, looking into his rear-view mirror for the tenth time.

Paoloni’s voice sounded both metallic and intimate as it came over the earpiece: “Some American you are. Do you want to meet?”

“Of course.”

“Do you want to know if you’re being followed or not?”

“I don’t think I am,” said Blume.

“Do you want to know for sure?”

Blume sounded his horn at an oncoming car he felt was driving too close to his side of the road, raised a finger as the other car flashed its lights, and swerved toward the bastard to force him over. “I suppose so.”

“You know the McDonald’s at the Agip station on Via Aurelia? Go there. You’ll be coming from Piazza Irnerio. So call me as you get to the piazza. Don’t bring the phone up to your ear or they’ll get suspicious, especially if they’ve tapped your service phone. You start making calls without them hearing anything, they’ll know you know. Use hands-free.”

“I’m already using a Bluetooth earpiece,” said Blume.

Paoloni asked Blume for his car make, color, and license, and they estimated meeting in half an hour.

A kilometer before the rendezvous, Blume called again.

Paoloni answered after half a ring. “I’m about 300 meters behind you. No sign of anyone. Now, just as you reach the turnoff for the Euronics warehouse on your right, hit your brakes twice.”

“OK, I’m there… now.” Blume tapped his brake pedal twice as he passed it.

“I see you. OK, you’re not going to turn into McDonald’s, though I am. Go straight past the forecourt, don’t even slow down. Go on to the next overpass, which is a mile ahead or a bit less. Use it to reverse direction and start heading back into the city. After the road sign marking the city limits, take the entrance road and another overpass to reverse direction again to get to the McDonald’s you’re now passing. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Fifteen minutes later, Blume pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot. Five vehicles were parked as close to the door as possible; one, a white Audi Q5, was parked near the exit. That would be Paoloni.

Blume parked near the entrance and waited. Five minutes later the Audi drew up alongside him and Paoloni disembarked. Blume picked up the notebooks, climbed out of his car, and proffered his hand, but Paoloni punched him on the shoulder instead, saying, “None of the next thirty or so cars behind you reappeared on the ramp bringing you back here. Only two other cars took that entrance road and overpass in the five minutes after you. When you reversed direction down the Via Aurelia, they might have called it off. If they’re good, they won’t have sent a car onto the second overpass to follow you. If you had a tail, you’ve lost it for now, though they might pick you up again afterwards. I am assuming they exist, because it might just be that you’ve finally cracked. I’m starving. You can tell me who the bad guys are over a Big Mac.”

The harsh white light of McDonald’s did no favors to Paoloni, but all things considered, he was looking better than he had during his last days in the police force. He had put on a bit of weight in his face, and seemed to have developed a liking for sunlamps, for his skin was a bright glowing orange rather than the jaundiced yellow Blume remembered. Getting out of the police also seemed to have liberated his inner bling. Chains dangled from his wrists and he had taken to wearing rings on his thumbs and a flat silver link chain around his neck. He had sculpted his hair so that it stood like a bristly gray cube on his head. He was wearing a white sleeveless hooded training top, and his tattooed arms showed signs of weight training. The gym look was completed by Capri shorts with untied strings that dangled down his bare calves.