He felt very squeamish about moving his arm with the drip attached to it.
It was all he could do to hold the small carton of juice up to his mouth and not dribble too much.
“Here.” Paoloni waved Blume’s wallet, keys, and cell phone. “I’m putting them in the top drawer here. They tell me your clothes were destroyed.” He looked at Blume and said, “Your face didn’t come out of it too badly. Your nose looks a bit… Ferrucci’s dead.”
“Yes, I know,” said Blume. A clear picture formed in his mind of Ferrucci’s exploded head, his pathetic gesture of defense.
“His funeral is later today.”
“What time?”
“Four o’clock.”
“I need you to bring me some clothes, Beppe. I’m not missing the funeral.”
Paoloni received this pledge with such indifference, Blume wasn’t sure he had heard.
“Did you hear what I said?”
Paoloni was gazing with an absent-minded air across the room. “Sure. I’ll get someone to… if that’s what you want. I’m not going.”
“What do you mean, you’re not going? Of course you’re going. What sort of cop refuses to go to a colleague’s funeral?”
“The sort of cop that killed him,” said Paoloni.
Blume disentangled what he could of the events of the past few days, pulling apart the separate strands of thought that probably belonged to his opium sleep. His arrival in hospital, his being wheeled around, pushed, injected, and made to sleep-all that was hazy but everything before was clear. He was certain that Paoloni had been in the car beside him. Paoloni’s declaration therefore made no sense.
“You didn’t kill him.”
“I might as well have, the way things turned out,” said Paoloni.
“We all messed up. Me, especially, with my driving.”
Paoloni shook his head. “I warned Alleva we were coming.”
The realization seemed to hit him in the base of the stomach before it had registered in his head. “You told him that? Jesus, Beppe. You tipped them off. You tipped off Alleva, which is why he was ready. He called in Massoni to make his getaway, and Massoni shot Ferrucci.”
Paoloni knotted his arms, crossed his feet, and twisted his body as if he was trying to screw himself into place.
“I didn’t tell him, exactly. Like I didn’t tell him the operation was going down that morning. All I said was we would be picking him up the next day.”
“It’s not so hard to guess that we’d have made our move in the morning.”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like that,” Paoloni said. “I figured Alleva might get rid of some merchandise, something like that, to make sure he wasn’t caught with anything incriminating. He wasn’t supposed to panic and run. He wasn’t supposed to shoot. He didn’t shoot. Massoni did.”
“You informed a criminal about a police operation,” said Blume. “That’s what it comes down to. And a colleague got shot.”
Perhaps it was the result of the bruising, but the fear on Paoloni’s face was more yellow than white. His lips were chapped and swollen and dry, and he kept pausing in his speech as if to detach his tongue from the roof of his mouth.
“Alleva was supposed to come quietly. I gave him a heads-up. It was a gesture. He would owe me a favor, which I would cash in as soon as he got released.”
“He owes us now,” said Blume. “And if he makes trial, then he’ll owe us his life.”
“I’m going to get some water,” said Paoloni.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Blume. “Because I think as soon as you move out of my sight, I’m going to call in your name and order your arrest. Complicity in the murder of a follow officer. That’s what you’ll be booked for.”
Paoloni leaned over him, and for a moment Blume felt under attack, but then Paoloni’s shoulders slumped forward.
“It’s all gone to shit.”
“Sit down, Beppe.”
Paoloni sank into the chair, tucked his legs under it and began to sway slightly back and forth.
“I liked Ferrucci. So maybe it didn’t look like it. But he was a colleague… I mean, Alleva wasn’t supposed to react. Alleva wasn’t Clemente’s killer. You know that. We were both agreed on that before all this happened, weren’t we?”
Paoloni was right, but Blume was not about to offer easy comfort.
“Stop swaying and look at me when you’re talking to me,” he said.
Paoloni stopped rocking back and forth, but kept his eyes to the floor as he spoke. “I didn’t see any harm in making myself seem like an inside in-for mant, since the operation was pointless to begin with. Alleva wouldn’t even have gotten charged. We had nothing on him. The tip-off was supposed to be a cheap favor that wouldn’t have cost us anything. It just went bad.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know, you’re my commanding officer. Tell me what I am supposed to do.”
Blume pulled himself upright, registering the pain it caused him only after he had completed the movement. He turned his head slowly, like a gracious monarch, to scan the room. Paoloni and he were the only people there. The door was closed.
“Who else knows?”
“Nobody,” said Paoloni. “Nobody except you.”
“If I tell you to go and confess to Principe, go and turn yourself in, will you do it?”
Paoloni looked at Blume in shock. Then he touched his forehead, and nodded. “If that’s what I have to do.”
“It’s what you have to do, Beppe,” said Blume.
“Now? Right now, on the day of the funeral?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t help?”
“I am helping.”
“It doesn’t feel like help.”
“Just promise me you’ll do all I say. Exactly what I say.”
“OK, I promise,” said Paoloni. “You want me to go to Principe, tell him?”
Blume thought about it, as Paoloni resumed his swaying. “Maybe,” he said. “I need more information. I need to know about what happened after the accident. Where is Alleva?”
“He vanished. So did the shooter, Massoni.”
“We know for sure it was Massoni shot Ferrucci?” asked Blume.
“Yes. The getaway was by motorbike. Ducati 999, which was abandoned in the vicinity of Tor di Valle. Hidden in bushes and rubbish.”
“When was it found?”
“The next morning. Monday, nine thirty-five.”
“Just like that?”
“It is a brownfield site, ready for building. A crew of Albanians sent in to set up prefab huts found it, got into a fight about who saw it first, foreman called for help.”
Blume tried to picture it. He caught himself checking the story for plausibility. He allowed the building site to fade from his mind, imagined the two fugitives. “They could have made either of the airports. Right?”
“We checked flight manifests,” said Paoloni. “All names were checked. Nothing. They would have had false passports.”
“What about the bike?” asked Blume.
“It had been reported stolen a month before. It had been resprayed, registration plate changed. Previous owner has no record, two kids, job in mobile communications. Migali, I think his name was.”
