The Fatal Touch (27 page)

School was supposed to be let out at 2:15. At 2:25, Caterina and the other mothers formed several huddles so that they could share their dissatisfaction and lament the passing of the afternoon and their lives. Then all of a sudden the children came tumbling out. The teacher, two years shy of retirement, but still shell-shocked like it was her first day, gave the courtyard trees a vague salute and wandered off.

Half the class formed a quick knot, then scattered like escaping fish to every corner of the yard. Soon they had organized a raucous game kicking a rolled-up wrapper around the concrete. The fatter kids clung onto their parents and demanded food. Caterina turned around looking for Elia, but could not make him out in the chaos. She went back to listening to a mother talking about having to pay for parking outside her own house. The class representative came by collecting money for toilet paper for the school bathrooms.

Elia’s friends were called to order and went on their way. The number of players in the ball game began to decrease. The janitor shouted at the remaining ones to stop and at the parents to get out of the yard. Elia was still nowhere to be seen. She called his name, twice. Then a third time, louder. The pools of chatting parents were breaking up, and she started asking around. No, no one had seen him.

Caterina’s next heartbeat seemed to cause a sudden change of pressure in her inner ear. For a moment she could not hear properly. Nor think.

Where is he?
She checked her own memory. Her mother had taken Elia to school that morning, right? Right. Was it this morning she had gone to Pistoia and met Emma’s mother? Was that relevant? No. Maybe. Something to think about later, when she had Elia in her arms.

She grabbed a child from Elia’s class who was on his way out with his mother and fired questions. Yes, yes, he told her, Elia had been at school today.

She stood still until she could again hear the logical side of her mind underneath the loud bullying panic in her head. Clearly, he had forgotten something and gone back to the classroom to get it. That was it. The stupid, stupid child was always forgetting things. Caterina waited by the door, setting her face to stern for when he appeared. The school yard had almost emptied now, and the hubbub and noise were moving slowly up the street as the children were whisked away to one another’s house, the park, dance lessons, catechism.

She went inside and was stopped by a woman with a massive bosom.

“You can’t come in.”

Caterina explained her case.

“No children are allowed back in after the last bell. If the child forgot something, he can get it tomorrow.”

Caterina realized talking to this caretaker woman was merely putting off the thing she dreaded. She pushed her way by, dimly registering some sort of protest, and increased her pace as she reached the stairs. She took the steps two at a time, reached the third floor. It smelled of paper, glue, leather, wood polish, poster paints, shoes, sweat, felt pens, children. He was not in his classroom, and the corridors were empty. One wall was covered in photos of all the children in the school. She knew exactly where Elia was among them. She glimpsed his wavy hair and his brown eyes as she rushed by, heels clacking and echoing as she headed back to the stairwell. Her skin prickled and something icy mushroomed in her solar plexus. As she came back down the stairs, her phone rang. She grabbed it and saw Blume’s name. No. She did not need him now.

Get off the line. Get off the line. I need this line to be free
.

The phone rang on and on.
Fuck off. Fuck off, fuck off. Please, leave my line free
. She flipped the phone open and snapped it shut. There, it had stopped.

She reached the front of the school again. The yard was deserted: the janitor was closing the gates.

Oh, Elia.

Anything but this. Dear God, let nothing have happened to him. Please, God, listen, please—wait, logic. Could he have gone to a friend’s house without asking, without the friend’s mother telling her?

Her phone rang again. No. This line: it had to be kept free. That was essential. She was not sure why. It just was. But if Blume didn’t talk. If he just listened—She flicked it open. “Alec, listen to me! Something terrible—I think . . .”

“I’m not ‘Alec,’ dear,” said her mother’s voice. “Are you all right?”

“No. No. You need to get off the line. Oh, Christ.”

“Caterina!” her mother’s voice was sharp. “What’s the matter?”

“Elia . . .”

“Elia’s here with me,” said her mother.

Caterina made her repeat it. Then again.

“Now tell me, what’s going on,” said her mother. “Do I need to call someone?”

Every drop of moisture in her body seemed to come suddenly out of her pores, leaving her throat dry. She found it difficult to talk.

“He’s there. With you?”

“Of course he is. If you couldn’t make it, all you had to do was call me. I don’t see why you had to send a car around to pick him up.”

“What car?”

“Are you sure you’re all right? Your colleagues. They brought him straight here, though I think they might have arrived a bit early at the school, they took him out of his last lesson. Next time, just call me if you can’t make it on time.”

“Can I talk to him?”

She heard her mother call Elia, and then he was on the line, his voice the clearest, purest, sweetest sound she would ever hear.

“Mamma?”

Caterina felt her legs wobble, so she just sat down in the middle of the yard. The janitor watched uncertainly from the gate, showing his impatience from a distance, but not daring to come over.

“Who took you home? What did I tell you about strangers?”

“They weren’t strangers. They were police. Two men.”

“Did you know them?”

“No, but they said you had sent them, and they showed me a badge, and . . . it was like the other day when the Commissioner drove us.”

“The other day I was with you, Elia. What did they do?”

“They drove me home. Straight here. But they came too early, so the janitor had to call me out of class.”

“I’m coming right over, Elia. I need to talk to you about this.”

“OK. Can I go to Giacomo’s today to play on the Wii?”

“How can you ask that? No, you’re not going anywhere today. I’m coming right over.”

Caterina rose unsteadily to her feet, and noticed the woman with the bosom watching, making no effort to hide her satisfaction at her distress.

“Did you release a child to the care of two adult males this afternoon?” said Caterina, coming over.

“Certainly not.”

“All right. Did a police patrol come by today to pick up a child?”

“Yes, but they were Carabinieri.”

“Look, let me tell you something about how easy it is to forge an ID . . .” Caterina stopped as her phone began to ring, the number withheld. As she answered the woman walked away.

“Inspector Mattiola, I hope we didn’t have you worried there. It seems there was some sort of mix-up about the pickup time from school.”

“Who is this? Who are you? I know your voice, you bastard. I can identify you.”

“It’s simpler if I identify myself, Inspector, takes the guesswork out of it. Colonel Farinelli. Commissioner Blume and I are working closely together, but I don’t think he’s being entirely open with either of us. I would like us to meet in, say, an hour, on the corner of
Via Catania and Via Bari. There’s an office supplies store, which will be handy.”

“Handy for what?”

“For photocopying the photocopies of the notebooks Blume left with you. I really don’t want him to know about this, so we’re going to leave you with the photocopies he made for you, understand? Phone your mother again; tell her you’ll be a bit later than planned. Don’t phone anyone else. Especially Blume. In fact, the best thing would be for you to turn off your cell phone altogether. They are little better than self-inflicted listening devices.”

Chapter 22

When working in immigration, Caterina had liked to think she would fight harder, give up less easily than some of the people she had to deal with. A lot of immigrants were tough, independent, scary even. But many were weak, exploited, and tormented because they had sold out. Selling yourself is the last option. At the very most, you might buy some time but once that time passes, you belong to someone else.

It was something the dead immigrants smothered in the back of trucks failed to understand. The Chinese girls, those white, dusty moths that never saw the sun, who lived, slept, gave birth, and died in underground factories in Prato, had not figured it out. Caterina wanted to sympathize with them, but in a secret part of her heart she knew she despised them, their stupidity, their flat, alien faces, their total helplessness. They had driven her out of Immigration Affairs into Blume’s Squadra Mobile.

And now she was walking down the same road with her eyes wide open. In her case, all it had taken was a single phone call and an implicit threat to her son.

Twenty minutes later, Caterina parked her car in a space reserved for the handicapped and tried to work out what she was really thinking. Was her idea to satisfy the Colonel’s demand for now, but lay a trap for him later? Or was this a self-serving lie? Her father would tell her to test the feeling she had in her stomach and believe that. The body does not lie. This was something he used to say, until his own, quietly and painlessly, betrayed him in old age.

Even though she was early, the Maresciallo was already waiting. She saw him give a brief signal as she walked toward him, and the Colonel emerged from a red Alfa Romeo 159. She saw him toss aside a toscano, and she touched her service Beretta. To have him fall dead at her feet, she would need to start firing now, like a hunter taking down an advancing hippopotamus.

When he arrived, he put out a big floury hand with manicured nails. She looked at it with revulsion.

“I see you are still peeved. Never mind. You have the copy? Good. In we go.”

There was one other customer, a nervous student type. Farinelli held up a hand and snapped his fingers, then pointed down at Caterina as if she were a glass that needed refilling.

“We need these copied, very quickly. No binding.” He pulled out three twenty-euro notes. “Here. I’ll pay in advance for speed.” He took the pile of papers from Caterina and handed them over the student’s head to the man behind the desk, who took them and went straight into the backroom.

“Hey! I was first,” ventured the student, addressing himself to the smooth silk back of the Colonel’s jacket, causing not a ripple of a movement. He glanced accusingly at Caterina, but the look she flashed back caused him to lower his eyes and then his head.

A few minutes later, the assistant came out with three neat piles of typing paper.

“You sure you don’t need these bound or stapled?”

“They’re fine like that. Thank you.” Farinelli popped them into a briefcase, gave Caterina her original copy back. He caught her arm and propelled her toward the door, saying, “There’s a little hotel four doors down. The Hotel Malaga. I know the owner. We can have a drink there, a sandwich if you haven’t eaten.”

She shook her arm free. “I’m not hungry, and I don’t want to be in your company.”

“I’m not asking,” said the Colonel. “I need to talk to you, put you in the picture. I don’t want to see you in a panic like this afternoon. Soon you will be acting with complete serenity, I promise. You’ll be happy to know what I am about to tell you.”

“Tell me now.”

“No. Just four doors down. Follow me.”

When they reached the hotel, the Colonel ushered her in first, and Caterina found herself in a ludicrous state of social embarrassment at not knowing where to go. She wanted to kill the Colonel for having threatened her child and was rushing through ideas of how she might be able to do this, yet she felt awkward and, incredibly, apologetic as she led the way. The lobby connected to a breakfast and dining room and to a narrow corridor, surely too narrow for the Colonel. She ignored the person at reception, only registering his presence a few seconds after she had entered the room. She sat down at a polished wood table facing the door. Stainless steel food warmers and steak knives sat on a table to her left, and the walls were sponge-painted yellow and orange. A mirror on the wall made the table seem twice as long. She sat with her back to it, and realized the Colonel would now be able to see all of her, front and back, at once.

If she tried to pull a gun, he would see it coming but he was too large to run, and impossible to miss. As she fired, she would have to tell him why.
This is for threatening Elia. This is so that nothing may ever harm him
. Then two, maybe three crack-thump sounds as the bullets tore into him. She felt sick. The Colonel entered and sat down at the far end of the table.

“I know the owner. We shall be left alone in here. Can I get you something to drink?”

Caterina did not answer. She was wondering how many people she would have to kill before Elia would be safe. The Colonel, that Maresciallo who accompanied him. And others, no doubt. She could never do it. She already knew she was going to accept whatever he proposed if it meant putting her son beyond harm.