Conor Fitzgerald: Fatal Touch

“I do admit it, Commissioner.”

“No, not to me. To him. Everything with me is hunky-dory.”

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

“Well, it is. Who did you phone on the bridge?”

Caterina hesitated. She was sure Blume had not seen her make the call to Elia. She had kept her eye on his back all the time. She had hit speed dial, spoke for, what, twenty seconds at most, and Blume had not turned around once.

“How do you know I phoned someone?”

“You deliberately fell back by pretending to be interested in a journal of civil service examinations at the newsstand, and so I figured you wanted privacy to make a call. When you caught up, I saw you were a little distracted. And I’ve noticed you hook your hair over the back of your right ear when you’re using a phone. Your hair was still pushed back when you sat down here.”

Caterina brought her hand up to her ear.

“No. It’s fallen back in place now,” said Blume. “Here’s the thing: I like to know who my investigators are talking to while we’re at work.”

“My son.”

“Oh, right. I didn’t know you had a son. Or maybe I did, but I’d forgotten. I didn’t know you were married either. Or are you?”

“I was. My son’s just turned nine. I don’t like people knowing. It’s hard enough being a woman and getting taken seriously, but being a single mother, well, you can imagine.”

“Well, no. I can hardly imagine being a single mother, can I? You should have reminded me the other day when you came in asking for fieldwork.”

“Would knowing that have influenced your decision?”

“I don’t know,” said Blume. “I’d like to think not. But let’s do a test. Tell me what we have so far. Give me a hypothesis. Go on.”

Caterina cleared her throat and said, “Well, not much…”

“Good start,” said Blume. “Never forget the law of parsimony, Inspector. Whichever theory needs fewest assumptions is the best.”

“The tourist mugger, hearing him singing in English, decided to rob him. A struggle ensued, the mugger hit him over the head. Or pushed him down.”

“That’s short enough,” said Blume. “Most reports of the mugger speak of one man acting alone, which is a bit odd since they usually work in twos or threes. That’s not a core issue now, but keep it in mind all the same. More importantly, the reports all mention him having an unusual thin knife, like a stiletto or something. So if he is going to kill, why not use that?”

“He hasn’t used it yet,” said Caterina.

“There’s always a first time,” said Blume.

“Except, this wasn’t it, obviously,” said Caterina, surprising herself as she heard annoyance creeping into her voice. “Seeing as he wasn’t stabbed.”

“So let’s rule out that hypothesis and think of one even likelier and simpler,” said Blume. “Like this: The man had been drinking. He was in his early seventies…”

“Wait…” She double-checked her arithmetic. “He was in his early sixties. Not his seventies.”

“Yeah?” Blume looked skeptical, then spent some time counting on his fingers. “You’re right. Jesus, that’s terrible.”

“What’s terrible?”

“It’s not so long till I’m that age.”

“You’ve still got a fair bit to go,” said Caterina, smiling at him.

“I don’t drink. I suppose that’s a plus,” said Blume. “I gave it up eighteen months ago, don’t even miss it. Alcohol intoxication lessens muscular protective reflexes, and makes the brain more vulnerable to concussive trauma. This is Treacy I’m talking about now, by the way. So, the old fellow falls down, bangs the back of his head, manages to get up, and struggle on for a few meters, perhaps on his knees. He crawls a bit, but his brain is hemorrhaging, so he lays the side of his face on the street, pisses his pants, and dies a drunkard’s death. End of story.”

“Oh,” said Caterina. “This isn’t going to be my first murder investigation, is it?”

“I doubt it. The magistrate has lost interest already. Expect a lot of disappointment in this work,” said Blume.

As they recrossed the pedestrian bridge to the piazza, Blume’s phone rang.

“Excellent. Well done, Linda.” He turned to Caterina, “She’s the young blond…”

“Yes, I know her,” said Caterina.

“Linda’s just done her first piece of investigative work and got us an address for Treacy.”

“You mean she looked it up in a telephone book?”

“She did, bless her. Now as for the address, it’s just a three-minute walk from here. Treacy had almost made it home.”

They reached Blume’s car, which sat in the middle of Via della Pelliccia, a blue light flashing justification for the disruption. Now he went over to it, removed a bag from the trunk, took off his jacket, which looked too small when it was on him but huge as he held it in his hand, then his V-neck, which, she noticed, was pocked with moth holes. He folded them with more difficulty than care, then opened the back door of the car, and tossed them in.

“You missed the seat,” said Caterina as he slammed the car door shut.

He strapped the bag over his shoulder. “Never mind.”

They walked back to the piazza, open again to its residents. The small police tent in the middle lent the piazza an air of slight gaiety, as if someone had set up a food stall, though the festive effect was spoiled by the presence of a blue van of the Mortuary Police.

“Those bastards take their own sweet time,” said Blume. “The body went in the back forty minutes ago.”

Blume went over and seemed to get into a vicious argument with one of the men inside the van, but when he came back he was laughing.

“It won’t start. The battery’s flat. He says it happens all the time. Nice to see the police aren’t the only ones with vehicles that don’t work.”

“Is that so funny?” she asked.

“No. Just something the driver said about the guy lying in the back enjoying the air-conditioning, while he had to sit there… never mind, there’s Grattapaglia.”

Grattapaglia came out of the pink building to the left accompanied by two policemen. They watched him send them to the next building, then he came over.

“Nothing, no witnesses, most people at work. Six officers are going around all the local bars to see if there were any incidents, arguments.”

“You and Inspector Mattiola here can do a bit of door-to-door, then come back here to me in about a quarter of an hour or whenever you see the van leave.”

Blume went over to Inspector Rosario Panebianco who had been maintaining the scene, watching the forensic teams, and re-examining the area.

“Anything else here?”

Panebianco tutted dismissively. “Nothing, Commissioner. Surely this is just an accident scene? That’s what I feel at least.”

“Yes,” said Blume, “but there’s the question of the mugger. Maybe this was a mugging that went wrong.”

“He had his wallet.”

“He might have put up a fight and the mugger fled without taking it. The victim is foreign, like the mugger’s preferred targets. For the Questura and the press, we need to be careful how we treat foreigners.”

“Dear me, has anyone ever mentioned that to Grattapaglia?”

“Don’t even talk about that,” said Blume. “Just to be clear: you found nothing new here?”

“Nothing. No real evidence of a crime.”

Blume watched as the last of the forensics team packed away their stuff. A thin man in cotton blue coveralls came walking around the corner. Tucked under his long arm as if it weighed nothing was a gray Magneti Marelli battery. He gave a cheery wave to the driver of the mortuary van, as if they were old friends. Two patrolmen busied themselves taking down the tent, the electrician went to work under the hood of the van, passersby cast curious glances. Ten minutes later, the mortuary wagon drove off, the electrician sitting squeezed in between the driver and his companion, the three of them chatting and smoking. With its departure, the only sign that anything had happened at all was the unusual number of policemen coming in and out of the buildings around Blume and the broken strands of police tape fluttering at the corners of the piazza.