“Where are you?”
“In my office in the Viminale,” said D’Amico.
“Aren’t we supposed to coordinate or something?”
“That’s what this is: coordination.”
“Have you got something for me, Nando?”
“Yes. The widow, Sveva Romagnolo, did not make an emergency call when she found the body. Not at first.”
“No?” said Blume.
“OK, picture this,” said D’Amico. “Romagnolo finds her husband’s bloody corpse on the floor, her kid is presumably suffering psychological trauma so she whips out her mobile like any normal person would do and she calls-get this-not 112, 113, or 118 but 1240-directory inquiries. She made that call at three fifty-five. That’s nine minutes before we logged the emergency call.”
“Wait. Go back a bit. She whips out her mobile phone?”
“Sure.”
“The one that went missing from the crime scene?”
There was silence from on the other end of the line.
“Nando? Did you lift Romagnolo’s phone from the crime scene?”
“It wasn’t part of the crime scene. She left it there after the fact. It’s irrelevant to the murder. Unless she did it, which is out of the question.”
“Is it?” asked Blume.
“Pretty much, yes. She was traveling with her son. She was in her constituency in Padua. Hundreds of people saw her. She’s a senator, for God’s sake.”
“When the Holy Ghost started talking about the cell phone, you didn’t think to explain? Maybe even give it to him?”
“He didn’t ask nicely. And he’d just have given it back to her, without checking the calls and the numbers on the contacts list. And I want to know why the Holy Ghost is suddenly so visible.”
“You ever hear of a chain of evidence, Nando?”
“You could ask the same of Gallone. He was happy to hand over an important piece of evidence. Do you want to hear what I phoned to say or not, Alec?”
Blume realized he was pressing the receiver too hard against his ear. He put his free hand on his solar plexus and tried to measure his feelings. He was tense, but not angry. D’Amico was presuming complicity, but he was also sharing information. Blume knew D’Amico’s interest in the case was political, that’s why they had sent him down from the Viminale. For some, including D’Amico, evidently, it was more urgent to find out who the widow knew and who she had called than who killed her husband.
“Romagnolo calls directory inquiries, you say?”
“Yes,” said D’Amico. “If we get a warrant, we can maybe find out who she was looking for, but I don’t think we need to. She was looking for the Collegio Romano commissariato, where you are.”
“Here? This station?”
“Yes,” said D’Amico. “A few minutes later, she phoned the desk downstairs there and asked to speak to the vicequestore aggiunto. So it looks to me like she got directory inquiries to give her the number for your offices, or tried to get Gallone’s number, which is not listed. They wouldn’t connect her, so then she said it was an emergency, and they asked what sort and she told them. When I say ‘they,’ I mean the officer who took the call.”
“She called directly?”
“Yes. I just spoke to the desk sergeant who took the call. He remembers she then told him she was a personal friend of the vicequestore aggiunto, and demanded to be put through. He patched her through to Gallone’s mobile number.”
“So she wanted the Holy Ghost in particular, not just any old police.”
“Funny, that. Someone wanting Gallone,” said D’Amico.
“She can’t know him all that well,” said Blume, “or she’d have had his number already.”
“Gallone’s the sort of person whose number you cancel from your phone first chance you get. I did. Anyhow, after talking to Gallone, she called the central switchboard here at the Viminale. I don’t know where that call went to, if anywhere. Probably to someone more important than Gallone.”
“And after that?”
“After, maybe because no one had come yet and she was beginning to freak at what was in front of her in the apartment, she called 113, where she spoke to the dispatchers. They routed the call to Via Cavalotti, but they had no one available, so it was rerouted back to you. The same desk sergeant took the call, got the address, dispatched a unit, then called the Holy Ghost to inform him. But Gallone said a team had already been sent to that address, and called the poor bastard on the desk an incompetent.”
“So, first Gallone, then you people at the Ministry, then an ordinary emergency call, in that order?”
“Yes,” said D’Amico. “Which is why I heard about it first, and you last.”
“So where is she now? The wife, or the widow as she now is.”
“She told the first unit-the one sent by Gallone-that she was removing herself and her child to her mother’s house. She gave an address. But didn’t Gallone say he was dealing with that?”
“He did say that, yes,” agreed Blume. “You can tell he’s handling it by the way he let the wife walk away like that. OK, Nando. You coming round here to coordinate with me anytime soon?”
“I was thinking of getting home. I’ll stay on call if there’s anything you need me to do,” said D’Amico.
Blume thought about it. For now, he didn’t want D’Amico to do anything.
“Just be here tomorrow morning. Before the meeting with Gallone,” said Blume, and hung up.
Blume walked out of his office. “Ferrucci, what have you got for me?”
Ferrucci, who had been bobbing up and down in his seat from enthusiasm, and showed no signs of tiredness, said, “I got a list of addresses, sir.”
“Whose?”
“Romagnolo’s mother’s place. Clemente’s office and… I got two so far. You need any more?”
Blume wondered if he had been overestimating Ferrucci. “That’s all you got?”
“Yes, sir.” Ferrucci went bright red.
“You could have used a phone book for that. What’s with the computer?”
“I was looking up Clemente, sir. I hadn’t finished.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“He worked for LAV-that’s the League Against Vivisection. He is the chairman of the Lazio section. Was the chairman. He sort of specialized in protecting dogs.”
“Meaning?”
“He campaigned against illegal dog fights. He’s been at it for a while. There are newspaper articles dating back at least as far as 1998. He was doing a documentary on it. Remember the operation last year against a dog fighting ring in Tor di Valle?”
Blume did, though it had involved the Carabinieri, not the police.
“He was behind that. Kicked up a big media fuss. His name’s all over the papers in that period.”
“Good. So we have a motive. Who was he doing the documentary with?”
“Taddeo Di Tivoli. He’s the host of a TV show.”
“I know the name,” said Blume. “But I don’t really watch TV. What else did you find out about Clemente?”
“He was thinking of going into politics, joining the Greens. That’s his wife’s party.”
“Right. Anything else?” Blume was beginning to believe in his young colleague again.
“No. But I heard the vicequestore was…”
At that moment, Paoloni came in and belched.
“Broad beans don’t agree with me,” he said and rubbed his stomach. “It could be the beginning of Favism. Go on, Ferrucci, you were saying: Gallone was what?”
Ferrucci, his voice rising a little from tension, continued: “I heard he had taken charge of questioning Romagnolo.”
“Or so he thinks,” said Blume. “Go on.”
