small, like an upended zinc coffin. They squeezed in together.
As they came out of the elevator on the top floor, Blume mopped his forehead and D’Amico patted his cheeks. There was just one apartment, and the hallway was filled with plants. An expensive bicycle, unlocked, was parked behind a small ficus tree.
Blume reached out and pressed the doorbell. Instead of a ding-dong, it made a soft cooing and cheeping sound like a jungle bird.
“What’s with the bell that makes zoo sounds?” said Blume.
The door opened, and he found himself standing in front of Gallone.
“Vicequestore,” said D’Amico, stepping forward into the space left by Blume, who had fallen back a pace. D’Amico extracted a large-screen mobile phone from his pocket.
“This belongs to Romagnolo, sir. You specifically asked for it to be returned to her, I remember.”
“That’s her phone?” Gallone sounded suspicious. “Where was it?”
“In the apartment, after all. It had not been logged properly. They’ve cloned the SIM and whatever else they do with it, so we can give it back.”
Gallone nodded slightly, but then his face darkened as he reregistered Blume’s presence. “I specifically told you to leave Sveva alone.”
Blume said, “Sveva? You mean Senator Romagnolo?”
“Franco?” It was a woman’s voice. “Who’s there? Why don’t they come in?”
“Just a minute,” said Gallone, but the woman had already appeared behind him.
“Oh, colleagues.” She sounded disappointed, and sounded tired. “I suppose this is funny in its own way. Franco was just promising me that I wouldn’t have to face too much questioning, yet here you are.”
“They are not here to question you,” said Gallone. “They are returning the phone you left behind in the apartment.”
“I do not mind being questioned if it helps the case,” said Romagnolo. “Well, come on in. Don’t stand there at the door all three of you.”
“I shall monitor the interrogation, Sveva,” said Gallone.
“No, Franco, I’d really prefer it if you didn’t.”
“In that case…”
“You’re quite right,” said Romagnolo. “In that case there is no need for you to spend any more time with me here. I really appreciate what you have done.” Lightly, she placed her hand on the small of Gallone’s back, murmured something polite to him, and ushered him out the front door and closed it behind her.
Blume felt like clapping.
She turned to him and said, “Do you always smile so widely when interviewing the recently bereaved?”
Blume straightened his face. “I am sorry,” he said. He felt like his favorite teacher had just scolded him, and he felt irritated at the effect she was having on him.
The contrast with Clemente’s mistress was striking. It was partly a question of class and looks, but it was not just that. Where Manuela Innocenzi had been red, raw, angry, talkative, and corrosive, Romagnolo just seemed downcast, but composed and reticent.
Sveva Romagnolo made a gesture with her hand that Blume took to be an unenthusiastic invitation into the spacious apartment. Blume had always thought the minimum age for the Senate was forty, but the woman in front of him could hardly have been more than thirty-five.
She had a high oval forehead, and long, straight brown hair fell down on either side of a dead-straight parting, giving her the look, Blume thought, of a 1960s university radical. Her nose was slightly upturned and, compared with her wide mouth, a little too small, perhaps the result of plastic surgery. She wore a thin, flat silver necklace and a raw silk blouse. When she moved, the silk rustled against her breasts and seemed to change color from green to blue and back. Admiring her long legs and the light, loose-fitting black pants that ended just above the ankles, Blume noticed she was wearing a pair of simple Birkenstock-style sandals. It went fine with her image, but it still felt strange to be meeting a senator of the Republic in sandals.
She led them across a large open-plan room, as large as Blume’s entire apartment, and out through a sliding door onto a large terrace overlooking the garden they had just walked through. The high trellises covered with shiny Chinese privet leaves interlaced with jasmine formed an effective barrier twice as high as the original wall on which they rested. Potted orange and lemon trees did sentry duty along the outer wall, and ivy climbed up the wall of the house. In the middle of the terrace was a small but fully functioning fountain made of four stone turtles supporting a basin, from the center of which three smaller basins rose, like stacked champagne glasses.
It would be fun to play football up here, Blume thought.
“Please, do sit down,” she was saying, indicating a circle of wicker chairs with brightly colored maroon and purple cushions. What happened when it rained? Not that it ever did anymore.
Even in the act of sitting, he asked his first question: “How long have you known our vicequestore aggiunto?”
“The vicequestore. God, what a title for Franco.” She let out a long breath.
“I have known him for…” She scrunched up her face, thinking, and finally Blume saw the creases of age in her face, “Twenty- five years? He was at La Sapienza with me. Class of seventy-six.”
“Old friends?”
“And nothing else. Absolutely nothing else.” Romagnolo gave her shoulders a small shudder as if shaking off a repellent image of Gallone touching her. “We grew apart. Met again sometimes. There was a group of us. It’s also where I met my husband.”
The woman did not look her age. In 1976, he had been a child in Seattle; she had been a political activist at university. He suddenly felt babyish in front of her. To compensate he added gruffness to his tone.
“So Gallone also knew your husband?”
“Not really. When they were younger their paths crossed a few times.”
D’Amico said, “Excuse me interrupting. We found this in the apartment.” He handed Romagnolo the mobile phone. “This is yours, isn’t it?”
“Yes, thanks. I need this.” She immediately started thumbing at the buttons, consulting the menus.
Blume reached into his leather bag, pulled out a pad of paper and opened it. “First of all,” he began, “may I express my deepest condolences for your loss. It must be a terrible shock.”
It was a stock phrase and he had used it or variants of it many times before, but it was not bereft of meaning. It was terrible losing a loved one. It went beyond words, which is why he had reconciled himself to using more or less the same phrase repeatedly. He also liked the covert accusation it contained. It must have been a terrible shock; it better have been a terrible shock.
Romagnolo finally laid her phone aside. Blume found himself looking hard at the widow’s hands, which were long-fingered and, he noted, showed the early wrinkles and spots of middle age that her face had yet to acquire. Whenever he was meeting the first of kin after a murder, he checked out the hands and wondered if they could have struck the fatal blows, pulled the trigger. Often they had, but so far the hands had belonged to men only.
Sveva Romagnolo thanked him for his kind words, and lapsed into silence. D’Amico had taken out a notebook, too, and was staring at it sullenly as if he had forgotten how to read or write.
As they sat in momentary silence, Blume became aware of the irritating trickle of the fountain behind him. Far in the distance, someone was trying to start a motor scooter, or a lawn mower. Blume was wondering about the child. Should he ask? He decided he shouldn’t, but his mouth betrayed him: “How old is your son?”
“Nine.” Romagnolo enunciated the number very clearly, to underscore its pathetic smallness and warn him away. She fixed her eyes hard on him as she said it. They were dark brown, almost black, and, he realized, a little too small. She didn’t have such nice eyes.
“How is he?” inquired Blume.
“Traumatized. Destroyed. Inconsolable. He’s been so hard to deal with. I’ve hardly had a chance to take it in myself.”
Blume nodded sympathetically. He was calculating her probable age when she had the child. She must have been at the very limit.
“When you entered the house, did you notice if the door to your son’s bedroom was open or closed?”
“No.”
“No which?”
