The Fatal Touch (45 page)

“That’ll do, Inspector,” said Blume. “Don’t waste your sympathy. He’s a mugger, now he’s a parricide. He made his choices.”

“Do you believe that’s all there is to it?”

“No,” said Blume. “I don’t. But if you feel like this for him, how are you going to deal with the devastation of the truly innocent?”

“I have seen dead children. I have seen murdered young women. They were Chinese, Nigerian, Kurdish. When I worked in immigration I saw things you wouldn’t imagine. Well, the public wouldn’t imagine, or couldn’t be bothered to imagine, because they were foreign and illegal.”

“Exactly,” said Blume. “So don’t waste your sympathy.”

“He didn’t mean to kill his father, I’m sure of it. I was there.”

“Sometimes I think we should just get rid of this whole business of distinguishing between what people meant to do and what they actually did,” said Blume. “Think how many lawyers we could get rid of. The ancient Romans didn’t allow for intentionality, you know. They just looked at the result of an action. I think it is a sensible approach. Their punishment for parricide, by the way, was to whip the culprit raw, sew him into a leather bag with a dog, a viper, a cock, and, where available, a chimpanzee, then throw the bag into the Tiber. The
poena cullei
. That’s the name of the punishment. It’s not on the statute books any more, unfortunately.”

“That’s horrific . . . a chimpanzee?”

“Apparently,” said Blume.

Caterina repressed a giggle.

“I’m not making this shit up,” said Blume.

She straightened her shoulders and looked directly at him. “You have a weird way of cheering people up.”

“You did great work, you know,” said Blume. “And I heard what you did for Grattapaglia. That’s great. A fantastic move. It will put us all in the clear.”

Caterina nodded. “Thanks.”

“You’ve also cleared the decks of work, and given us a bit of breathing space. Even if now you’ve got to write up the reports on this morning. Then I’m going to have to sign off on the paperwork.”

“There’s something else,” said Caterina. “Angela and Emma came in this morning, after you had gone. And then Grattapaglia and I established that Emma’s not telling the truth about her movements on the night Treacy died. Where were you this morning, by the way?”

“I was going to tell you that.” He glanced around the room, saw Rospo sitting at his computer massaging his shoulder, his forehead a map of angry creases.

“Come into my office.”

Chapter 37

After having caterina set forth the details of her conversations with Emma and her mother, Blume was very complimentary. “And I know you’re protecting Rospo by playing down the fact of his absence.”

Caterina ignored all this and looked at him expectantly.

“Your turn,” she said. “You answered the phone while I was talking, and left directly afterwards, what was that about?”

“I asked you for a report in my capacity as your commanding officer. It doesn’t necessarily work the other way round.”

“What are you talking about? You have no right to reticence. None. I’m directly involved in all this and so is my son. Jesus, you are an irritating bastard sometimes.”

“You can’t talk to me like that. Not when we’re inside these walls. That’s why there are rules to stop this sort of thing from developing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“You know . . . the personal entering the workplace.”

“No. Spell it out.”

“You know exactly what I mean,” said Blume.

Caterina laughed. “You should see the color of your face now. Tell you what, just tell me about what you’ve been doing. It’ll be a cinch in comparison with this conversation.”

“It’s really better you don’t know. For your sake.”

“If it’s for my sake, I give you permission to disturb my peace of mind,” said Caterina.

“No. Not in this building,” said Blume. “We can’t speak like this in here.”

“Where then?”

Blume stood up quickly from his desk. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“Have you ever seen a Velázquez?”

“No, I haven’t. Treacy spoke of the portrait of the pope, I can’t remember his name.”

“Innocent the tenth. Giambattista Pamphili, if you prefer.” Blume went over to his window and pointed. “It’s about twenty paces from where I am standing now.”

They left the police station and turned right. A few steps past heavily grated ground-floor windows brought an impressive entrance with a green flag announcing Galleria Doria Pamphili over it.

“In here?” asked Caterina.

“No. That’s the old entrance,” said Blume. “We need to walk around to the Via del Corso.”

“You’ve been in there recently? I don’t think I’ve been in a gallery since I was on a school trip,” said Caterina. “Do you visit them a lot?”

“A bit,” said Blume.

“Did you study art or something?”

“I was brought up in it. My parents were art historians.”

They turned on to Via del Corso, and Caterina got caught behind a group of tourists in bermuda and cargo shorts who had aggregated into a tortoise formation and were proceeding along with defensive care, determined not to be forced by the natives off the sidewalk and into the path of the deadly buses. By the time she had managed to navigate around them, Blume had disappeared. She was walking blithely past a massive arched entrance to what she had always assumed to be a bank, when he stepped out and gently pulled her into a peaceful courtyard. He flashed his police badge at a man in a glass box selling tickets, who shrugged and scowled, and led Caterina down a long quiet hall toward a flight of curving steps.

“My father is dying,” said Caterina into the silence. “I don’t know why I said that. Nor why it should feel like a confession.”

“It feels like a confession because you’re telling me you don’t know how you’ll manage without him,” said Blume. “But you will. When they are alive, your parents are like two fires: the focus of comfort, warmth, and light but also of anger, rage, and heated battles. When they die, they leave a sort of after-smoke which keeps expanding until it seems to be everywhere and in everything you do and drains the color from it. So you accept that for the rest of your life you’ll be walking around in that smoke. Then one day you notice the smoke is thinning out, which is good, but you feel bad about it, too.”

They entered the gallery and found themselves standing in front of a bronze centaur, and Caterina almost pointed like a little kid to say: “Oh, look!”

“We’re the only ones here,” said Blume. “Not even a tourist. Wonderful.”

A tall blond couple entered the room speaking Dutch.

Caterina stood feeling suddenly self-conscious in the middle of the room between lines of white statues with muscular bodies. The bright ceiling frescos showed scenes from stories she did not know. The walls were not just hung with paintings, but stacked with them. Lines of paintings one on top of the other, most of them too high to see. Those that were at eye level shone back the light as a black varnished sheen beneath which she could see almost nothing.

She followed Blume down to the end of a long corridor.

“Wait! Have you seen this!” Caterina pointed at a picture of six naked cherubims grappling and wrestling each other. “That’s so sweet! I mean it’s funny, too. Mainly it’s funny. I can see you’re giving me a look—I don’t have any taste for these things. Don’t make me feel ignorant.”

“
Putti
in battle,” said Blume. He peered at the nameplate next to the frame. “It says it’s by someone called Andrea Podestà. Never heard of him. Funny, I thought . . . never mind. I’ve seen it before. Not here.” He touched her on the arm and ushered her into a small square room just big enough for the two of them, and said, “There!”

Staring sideways daggers at them was a large portrait of Pope Innocent X.

“Doesn’t he look really hassled at our intrusion?” said Blume. “I love that.”

“He doesn’t look pleased at all,” said Caterina. She turned to examine a calmer white marble bust of the same man, his eyes blank, uninterested, who seemed to be avoiding looking at them. “Nor here.”

“You can tell that Velázquez had status by the fact they allowed him to paint the pope like that and Pamphili himself didn’t object,” said Blume. “Not flattering, but therefore flattering. Like when someone picks up on your faults? It’s annoying as hell, but since it means you’re interesting enough for them to notice, you should eventually take it as a compliment.”

He gazed at the picture, nodding at it with the utmost approval. “Also,” he said, “imagine being able to give people a fuck-off look that lasts for centuries. Who could resist that?”

They left the portrait, and walked slowly through the next room. Blume halted before a painting of a woman raising her hands in despair over a dying warrior. “That’s a Guercino,” said Blume, tapping the identifying tag on the wall. “He was one of the artists Treacy liked to copy.”

“
Erminia Finds the Wounded Tancredi
,” read Caterina. “Who were Erminia and Tancredi?”

“I don’t know,” said Blume. “Wasn’t Tancredi one of those Norman knights who conquered southern Italy? It’s still a name used down there.”

“There’s a Tancredi in
Il Gattopardo
, too,” said Caterina. “Not this guy, obviously.”

As they stood there looking at the work, which, if truth be told, she did not like, Blume began to tell her about Faedda, the staged housebreak-in and his idea of tempting the Colonel into making a rash move to get back the paintings.

“Is Farinelli really going to believe that Treacy hid something beneath the paintings?”

“I asked Faedda to deliberately leak the idea into his department, and I must say it didn’t take long for the Colonel’s source to refer the message back to him. I think that will help Faedda identify who it is, if he doesn’t know already.”

“But will the Colonel believe there is something?” said Caterina.

“In the paintings, behind them, beneath them. He doesn’t need to believe, he just has to doubt. The important thing is to confuse him, rob him of his power to make clear decisions. And it’s working. The Colonel has paintings planted in my home, then a few hours later he wants them back. He should never have given me control, even temporarily. He’s losing command of the situation and he’s not thinking straight. That’ll do me for now.”

“You tread a thin line, Alec,” said Caterina. “But the Colonel operates completely out of bounds. Be careful.”

“Decades of impunity will do that to you. Even though he knows intellectually that he’s lost most of his power, he has no sense of proportion anymore. He still acts as if there were no limits. That’s why I think he’ll make a rash move soon.”

“I want harm to come to him,” said Caterina. “And I’m angry with myself for feeling that.”

“It’s understandable. The Colonel damages people. It’s what he has done all his life. But he’s careful, too. The harm he intends for me is administrative, penal, and moral but not physical. Same goes for you and for Faedda. And he won’t touch Elia, of course. Even he knows better than to try.”

“What about the others?”

“Who’s left?”

“Emma, her mother, Nightingale.”

“He could harm them,” admitted Blume. “But for the time being, the Colonel will be focusing his energy on me and trying to get the paintings back. Then, with any luck, Faedda will get him. That’s the idea.”

“You draw his fire, so to speak. Was it your idea?”

“Not as such.”

“What do you make of Emma’s failed alibi?”

“It wasn’t much of an alibi to begin with. We have witnesses, she probably had her cell phone with her, so we could get a reading from that. You can be sure the Colonel has.”

“It means she was there a few hours before Treacy died,” said Caterina.

“It also means the Colonel will know this. But Treacy died of natural causes. She’s not going to face an investigation. There’s a Caravaggio over here that’s worth seeing.
Rest During the Flight to Egypt
.”

She allowed him to steer her into the next room, glanced at the painting, which didn’t look much like the few Caravaggio paintings she knew of. “I hate to say this, Alec, but the more I think about it, the dumber the housebreaking idea looks. For about ten reasons.”

“I know.”

“So why?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. I let Paoloni talk me into it. He’s not even persuasive, it’s just I always feel I owe him something.”

“Do you want to hear one or two of the reasons I think it was not a good idea?”

“No. I already know them all. I’ve been thinking them over myself.”

“Can I talk about one of them?”

“If you must.”

“You think you’ve managed to send the Colonel off the track by suggesting the Velázquez is hidden under one of the paintings that disappeared from your house,” began Caterina.

Blume interrupted. “Not necessarily one of the ones he put in my house. It could be any one of the paintings he took from Treacy’s house. He’ll have already started on the ones still in his possession, which will keep him busy for a while, and when he finds nothing, he’ll come looking to get back the ones that I had stolen.”