The Memory Key (16 page)

His eye wandered around the squalid little room in search of inspiration, and came to rest eventually on the aluminium frame window, which was protected outside by a heavy metal grille. Sofia’s mother seemed to have been following his gaze, for she said, ‘The bars haven’t always been enough. We’ve been robbed three times now.’

Blume nodded. How long would she continue saying ‘we’?

‘Do you work, Signora Fontana?’

‘Call me Mirella.’

He smiled. The name sounded nice. It suited her. ‘What do you do, Mirella?’

‘I clean other people’s homes.’ Her choice of words expressed her sense of humiliation, and sensing that she had perhaps overstepped some boundary, she moderated her tone a little. ‘I am lucky to have the job, and the people I work for are decent. I will only work for decent people.’

‘Did Sofia ever help?’ A grieving parent thinks of nothing other than the lost child. Nothing was to be gained by avoiding the subject, so you may as well be direct. It was Principe who had told him that.

‘Clean houses? Absolutely not.’ Her voice was hoarse, and she probably had no more tears left for the day. He imagined they would flow freely when she woke up in the morning, the loss dawning on her all over again.

‘Did she ever babysit for any of them?’

‘No. She studied. That was the deal we had.’

It had been a long shot, but one worth taking. Any connection was relevant. ‘Excuse me, Mirella, I realize you have been questioned by the Carabinieri already and it is painful.’

‘Yes. It is. But I need to know why, so keep asking questions.’

Grieving mothers will always want to know why; fathers want to know who – Principe again. In this case, there was no father.

Blume asked some more questions, unsure whether he welcomed or was distracted by the presence of the sister, who had sat there making small noises of approval and grief as appropriate. After a while, he turned his attention to her.

‘I see you live on the same street.’

‘I live three doors down,’ she said. ‘How did you know that?’

‘It’s on the files. Getting together a full list of names, addresses, and phone numbers of the family is one of the first things we do in a case like this. So your apartment is pretty much the same as this one?’

The sister reddened. ‘Well, they all have the same floor plan. They are based on the one model. Mussolini built them.’

‘Mussolini had other people build them,’ corrected Mirella suddenly, with more life – and venom – than she had shown when he asked his routine questions. ‘She always puts it like that: as if Mussolini was down here in person breaking ground with a pickaxe, hero of the working class.’

Her sister gave a tight little smile of indulgence, and looked meaningfully at Blume, as if to say that unreasonable outbursts like this were to be expected from a grieving mother.

‘And what do you do?’ Blume asked her.

‘I am an artist.’

‘Really?’ said Blume. ‘An artist. You paint?’

‘Yes, I paint. I also write.’

‘Poetry or prose?’ asked Blume.

‘It’s hard to tell,’ interrupted Mirella, whose seething anger at the attribution of building prowess to Mussolini seemed to have momentarily seared through her cloud of grief.

‘You’ve always hated my artistic side,’ said her sister, her veneer of compassion cracking. ‘The artistic genes were passed on to me, not to you, and you’ve always resented it.’

‘I don’t resent it, Silvia,’ said Sofia’s mother in what seemed like a gentle tone, but she followed it up with the less than tender observation: ‘It’s just you’re no good. No one wants your paintings, no one will publish your poetry.’

‘No one that you know, but you don’t anyone worth knowing, do you?’

‘So have you been making millions selling your paintings to cultured folk? People who understand. People who don’t think your paintings look like dogshit from a distance, and dogshit from close-up, too.’

Blume had been forgotten, but that suited him fine. Family dynamics were always interesting, even amusing, unless you were inside them.

‘We at least tried to do something meaningful.’

‘We?’

‘Olivia and I.’

The breath came out of Sofia’s mother as if she had been punched in the stomach. Her head fell forward and, for a moment, she reminded him forcefully of the image of her daughter slumped against the wall. A similar sound now broke from Silvia, who went over and hugged her sister. Blume was caught off balance by the sudden shift in emotions. He expected a fight to last longer than that.

‘I loved her, too. I love you,’ Silvia was now saying. ‘I don’t know why I say these things.’

Mirella stroked her sister’s face. ‘It’s all right. I know you loved her, and I love your Olivia. That’s what will keep us going.’

When they had composed themselves, Blume said, ‘The main reason I am here is for you to tell me anything that you think might be relevant.’

‘What sort of things?’ asked Mirella, gently pushing her weeping sister away.

‘Anything.’

‘Well . . . no. You’ll just think I am being stupid.’

‘No, tell me. I will think nothing of the sort.’

‘It’s almost as if she knew, you know what I mean?’

Blume nodded and made a sound that could be interpreted as assent, but he had no idea what the mother meant. He hoped she would continue.

‘I thought it was London, but she was down a lot of the time. She was even short with me. Then she would make up for it. But it’s like she saw something was going to go wrong.’

‘This is after she witnessed the shooting of Stefania Manfellotto?’

‘No! Before. That’s what I mean. It’s as if she knew.’

‘But she said nothing,’ prompted Blume. ‘Did she mention any problems at work, anything along those lines?’

‘No.’

‘Was she involved with some group, some cult, a former boyfriend perhaps? Someone else?’

‘Like a married man, you mean?’

‘Anything,’ said Blume, aiming for a tone halfway between reassuring and pleading. ‘Nothing can harm her now. But any knowledge you have might help us get whoever killed her.’

Silvia now took it upon herself to praise her niece to make up for the fight a minute before. ‘Sofia did not have much time for boyfriends . . .’

‘She had some boyfriends,’ interjected Mirella.

‘All I meant to tell the policeman was that Sofia was a serious-minded, lovely girl. She was always ready to help my daughter Olivia with homework when they were in school. If it hadn’t been for Sofia, I don’t think Olivia would even have done her
maturità
and gone to university. Olivia, you see, has an artistic temperament like me, which means she is not so good with certain subjects like Maths and Science.’

‘Or History, Geography, Languages, Music, Philosophy,’ added Mirella.

The emotional swings in the small room were making him dizzy, and he blurted out his next question more to stop a resumption of hostilities and weeping between the two sisters than because he had any clear intention. ‘Where is Olivia now?’

‘Olivia?’ said Silvia, flashing her sister a dirty look. ‘She’s at home.’

‘Just wondering. Anyone there with her. Your husband, perhaps?’

‘No, he went out. Olivia is there with her boyfriend Marco, as it happens.’

‘Ah, now that’s very handy,’ said Blume getting out of his chair. ‘Because I was hoping to talk to him. I thought we would meet tomorrow, but if I can talk now, that would be great.’

Silvia looked doubtful. ‘These are young people. They need their privacy.’

‘I am sure you can ring the bell rather than use the front door keys. Or phone ahead,’ said Blume.

‘Yes, but we promised them privacy.’

‘I see,’ said Blume. ‘Is that why you’re here and your husband is out?’

Silvia glared at him. ‘I would have been here anyhow to help my sister.’

‘I can imagine,’ said Blume. ‘And your husband, where does he go when Olivia needs a free house?’

She looked at him trying to see if there was a trick to his question, then, seeing none, said, ‘He has a regular place, a bar across the street. It’s closed now, so he’ll go to the multi-screen at Parco de’ Medici. Sometimes he drives down to Ostia afterwards.’

‘What’s your husband’s job, Mrs Visco?’

‘He’s a manager.’

‘Really. Our records must be out of date, then, because when I looked him up his occupation was given as hospital porter on sick leave for the past eight years, poor man.’

‘Why do you ask questions if you know the answers?’

‘Because I didn’t have the correct information, as you see. That’s why it’s always a good idea to double-check. So where is he a manager?’

‘In the hospital. He manages the shifts. You’ll have to ask him.’

‘Tell you what,’ said Blume clapping his hands loudly. ‘Let’s give the kids a surprise.’

It took a bit of persuasion, with an undertone of threat but, with the encouragement of Mirella who did not seem sorry at the prospect of her sister’s departure, Blume manages to get her out of the house. From an investigative point of view, Silvia, Olivia, and Marco seemed more interesting than poor Mirella, to whom he had taken a liking. As he was on his way out, she clasped his hands in hers.

‘Catch the right person, please.’ Her hands were warm and dry and, despite her job, soft. ‘Commissioner, your hands are freezing. Your fingers!’

‘It’s cold,’ said Blume.

‘You must wear gloves.’

‘I don’t have any gloves,’ he said.

‘You must learn to look after yourself.’ She released his hands, and he was sorry to lose the warmth.

Chapter 17

Caterina ate eggs resentfully at breakfast, battling down the nausea. Scrambled, boiled, boiled, and scrambled, sometimes mixed with spinach and always with a dose of what Blume referred to as ‘Dukan dust’, she sighed and chewed and looked weepy and angry morning after morning. She had even started snarling at Elia. It was a deep and lasting nausea that went beyond eggs.

When she had mentioned that the diet recommended meat, he had had visions of sirloin steak fried in butter and onions every night. Instead, it was boiled chicken, strips of Bresaola so thin they wouldn’t offend a vegan, and, a recent and ghastly addition, tofu. He had started finding reasons to stay out for dinner. Once, he had even sneaked back into his old apartment and made himself a big beautiful lasagna.

A week earlier, Blume had made the mistake of speaking his mind.

‘I think you should give up this diet. A million eggs a month can’t be good for you and you hate them anyway, almost as much as you hate the fish you have to eat. It’s only making you miserable. Besides . . .’

‘Besides what?’ she snapped.

Shocked at the sudden aggression in her voice, Blume lowered his chocolate muffin and spread his hands in a what-the-hell? sort of gesture.

‘No, you started this conversation,’ she said. ‘Say what you were going to say.’

Blume played for time by thickly buttering a piece of toast with exaggerated care. ‘I don’t trust that French guru you’re following. I mean, have you seen the smug little face he has? Reminds me of a three-toed sloth.’

‘Of course I’ve seen his face. It’s on the front of the book.’

‘That’s another thing. What sort of person puts his own face on his book?’

‘Maybe a successful person who has done something in his life? I don’t see your face on too many best-sellers.’

‘I was trying to say something that I find hard to say,’ said Blume. ‘But now . . .’ he shook his head sadly.

‘Tell me what, Alec?’ She relented, and softened her reproach. ‘I appreciate you are making an effort here. If you have something that you think needs saying, say it.’

He swallowed the rest of the muffin and pointed his finger at her plate. ‘I think all those eggs are making you fat.’

Since that conversation, Blume had been inventing appointments to get him out of the house earlier in the morning so as not to meet her at breakfast. She knew what he was doing, of course. By the time they met in the office or in the field, she seemed to be in a better mood, at least until dinner time.

Over the past few months, Caterina had taken charge of his scheduling, and he was coming to depend a little too much on her. He was also beginning to resent the way she double-checked that he had understood, as if he were an idiot. At her suggestion, he had also taken to using a computer bag to carry his stuff around in. It was padded, had compartments that kept papers separate and uncreased, sat nicely on his shoulder, and could accommodate anything from a pistol, though he had never used it for that, to a packed lunch and a few paperbacks. He still pretended he resented having to give up on his old leather briefcase just to please her, but the truth was he would never go back to it.

She had warned him several days ago that a mid-morning conference in the Giulio Cesare Hall of the Campidoglio, originally scheduled for 10:30, had been put forward an hour.