Conor Fitzgerald - Fatal Touch

She could see he was ready to fire off the name of the movie, so she didn’t bother asking. Instead, she leaned sideways to look behind him and addressed Grattapaglia. “Is that holding cell free?”

The youth turned awkwardly in his seat to see the policeman she was talking to.

Grattapaglia paused in the middle of moving piles of papers from the top of his desk to Rospo’s trash can. “What holding cell?” he said. “We don’t have any… ” He caught Caterina’s eye. “We don’t have any free. Shit, you know better than to ask me that. You’ll have to put him in with those two… ” he made a clutching movement with both hands. “You know, the two who…”

Pietro spun around and stared at Caterina.

“What two? Two whats?”

“Choo choo, chuff, chuff!” said Grattapaglia from behind, and laughed. “Looks to me like he’ll like it.”

“Jesus Christ, what is he talking about?” said Pietro. “I want a lawyer.”

“Have you got a lawyer?” said Caterina.

Pietro glanced around the room, desperately looking for someone resembling a lawyer. But he was alone there with Caterina and Grattapaglia.

“No. But I have a right!”

“I’ll go and get you one, Pietro. Maybe it’ll take a few hours.” She pulled out a pair of plastic handcuffs. “So if you don’t mind I’ll just slip these on you and leave you in the holding cell until…”

“No!”

“It’s OK, Pietro,” said Caterina gently. “Listen to the advice the Sovrintendente here gives you, and you’ll be fine.”

Grattapaglia came over. “Once you’re in there, just talk to the small guy with the brown hairpiece. Don’t look at his hairpiece though. Whatever you do, don’t let him know you know. Then if he likes you, his friend won’t hardly touch you.”

“Why did you tell me about it? If you hadn’t mentioned the hairpiece, maybe I wouldn’t have noticed. Now he’ll see me looking.”

“ Managgia. I should have thought of that,” said Grattapaglia. “They don’t teach criminal psychology to people of my rank.”

“Wait!” said Pietro, glancing around at Caterina.

Caterina stood there twirling the plastic bracelets, a perplexed expression creasing her brow. “What?”

“Can’t we just talk in here?”

“In here?” She looked confused. “You mean a voluntary witness statement? Sure. But we can only do that if there is full cooperation. Once it becomes antagonistic, we go from interview to interrogation, which means… ” She spun the plastic cuffs absentmindedly on her finger.

“I get that.”

“So when I start asking questions, you tell me what I need to know.”

“Sure.”

“Show me you’re serious about cooperating,” said Caterina. “Prove it.”

“How can I prove it? What am I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know. OK, let’s start over. Manuela Ludovisi. Do you know who she is?”

“Like I said, she’s my girlfriend.”

“Good. And Emma Solazzi?”

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

Caterina looked into his eyes which darted back and forth as he avoided her gaze.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! You have to have the wrong person. I know Manuela, but not this Emma.”

“OK, let’s forget about Emma. You just said you were with Manuela on Friday night, all night. Was that true? Just say ‘yes’ if it is, ‘no’ if not.”

“No.”

“A second ago you said you were. Manuela told me you were. What’s going on here?”

“I was doing her a favor. But I wasn’t with her.”

“Fine. But now I’m going to ask you another question that may put you in a difficult moral quandary. OK?”

“OK.”

“Manuela is citing you as an alibi for that evening. Do you still say you weren’t with her?”

“I was not with her.”

“She’ll get into trouble, you know. She’s sort of depending on you to say yes.”

“I can’t say yes, you just told me to be honest!”

“Well then, she’s in trouble.”

Pietro looked at his feet under the table.

“So where were you?”

“I wasn’t even in Rome that night. I was with friends in Terracina. I was there for the whole week.”

“Can your friends corroborate?”

“Yes.”

“Give me their names.”

Pietro obliged and Caterina noted them down. Then she dismissed him.

“Where do I go now?”

“I don’t care. Back to the reptile house or wherever it is you live.”

Pietro made his way unsteadily out of the office, and Caterina picked up her bag. Grattapaglia was still standing at his desk, smiling.

“Thanks for helping out. That was quick and inspired thinking, Sovrintendente.”

Grattapaglia looked at her. “That was pretty funny. I’ve never seen someone break down a suspect so fast.”

“He was not a suspect, only a witness.”

“Little shit. I wish we had thrown him into a holding cell. Who was he?”

“Emma’s boyfriend,” said Caterina. “I’d prefer to see my son wrongly jailed than turn out like that.”

Caterina called rospo on his cell, told him to meet her on Via Jandolo in twenty minutes, but thirty-five minutes passed and there was no sign of him, and he wasn’t answering. She called dispatch, gave them the address, told them to refer it to Rospo when he called in.

Now she stood alone in front of an imposing but graffiti-scored door. There was just one buzzer, and it looked as if it had not been used in years. She pressed it anyhow. She waited for three full minutes, giving the buzzer the occasional dab of her finger, convinced now that it was out of order. Just as she was turning to go to find someone who could tell her how to contact the occupants, if there were any, the door scraped open and a tall old man stood framed in the darkness, blinking papery eyelids at her and the sun.

“Inspector Mattiola, Police,” declared Caterina. “Are you Alfonso Corsi?”

“Conte Alfonso Corsi, and there is no need to raise your voice.” He sighed and tutted his tongue, but surprised her by stepping aside and elegantly ushering her in, then closing the door behind her, enclosing her in a corridor that smelled of damp brick and rust. The long old man, his pace far quicker than she had expected, overtook her, and proceeded with sharp footfalls down a corridor of black and red hexagon tiles.

“Wait.”

But Caterina was not sure she had spoken loud enough. She increased her pace to catch up, but already he had reached a flight of stairs at the end of the corridor, and ascended it with efficient, light, insect-like leaps, leaving her plodding and heavy below. As she rounded the first landing where the staircase doubled back on itself, she worried that he might leap out at her. But he was already at the top, and calling down.

“They have kept me fit all these years.”

By the time she reached the second floor, Conte Corsi had entered a high-ceilinged room with yellowed windows and no furniture save for a writing desk and a few chairs at the end. Behind him, a double-leaved door stood slightly ajar, allowing in a thin bar of brighter light. She had the feeling that the room behind was just as large and just as empty. She came over and took a seat, glancing behind at the echoing room. The Count turned his bone-white smooth countenance toward her and said, “Not much left, is there? Someone will have to build up the family fortunes, but it won’t be me. I am eighty years of age. I can trace my lineage back to Enea Silvio Piccolomini on one side and Jacopo Corsi on the other. Do you know who they were?”

Caterina shook her head. “I’ve heard of Piccolomini. Wasn’t he an artist or something?”

The Count shook his head sadly and from his desk picked up a pair of reading glasses, held them up like a glittering fish in the light from the window, then perched them on his nose. “Let me see what you have, then.”