“It doesn’t have to be by the book,” said Paoloni.
“It doesn’t have to be absolutely against all the rules in the book either,” said Blume. “What’s with the sick leave, and the switched-off telephone, and now this attitude?”
“I need a break, Ale. I just need to get out of this world of killers and cops and cop-killers for two weeks. I’m sorry if I didn’t do what you asked.”
“What I ordered,” corrected Blume. But it had not been an order, because he did not have the authority to give an order to arrest a suspect like that. Paoloni was right, it had been a request, which made his refusal to comply worse.
“Are we still OK?” asked Paoloni. He sounded more resigned than hopeful.
“I don’t know,” said Blume. “Come back on duty. Waive your sick leave and report straight to me. In an official capacity. Look contrite when I next see you.”
Blume hung up. Paoloni had sounded different. Flatter, less scoffing, less explosive than usual. Something was up there.
Blume glanced at the photo of the murdered man. Killed for a parking place, according to the report. Jesus Christ. He laid the image aside and called the courthouse, got Principe on the line.
“I see we got fobbed off with a road rage incident,” he began.
“What do you mean ‘fobbed off’?” said Principe. “This is one of several important cases I am working on, now that the Clemente affair is in more capable hands.”
“And you want me to follow it up?”
“Not high-profile enough for you, Commissioner?”
“What’s with the tone, Filippo?”
“What tone? It’s just sometimes I get fed up with the way some cases get the red carpet treatment, others get kicked into the long grass. This was a family man, murdered in front of his children on his wife’s birthday. You don’t think that’s worthy of your notice?”
Blume hesitated, unsure what to make of Principe’s attitude. “Of course I do,” he said.
“I want you to stay focused on this case, and on this case alone. Is that understood?”
Blume was perplexed. First Paoloni going quiet, now Principe blustering like this. Principe continued, “Because it’s the only one you’ll get, Commissioner. Leave the Clemente case alone.”
Blume began to suspect Principe was speaking to the gallery. His tone was too rhetorical.
“Have you read the report, Commissioner?”
Calling him Commissioner three times like that was a sort of code. Principe was not on his own in his office. They might even be on speakerphone.
“Yes,” said Blume. “There’s not much to it. An unknown assailant, possibly to do with a fight over a parking place. No witnesses.”
“Get to it, then,” said Principe.
Blume put down the receiver and rubbed his ear as if a small white grub had crawled down the line and into his head, and left the office wondering what the hell had gotten into Principe. Even with an appreciative audience, there had been something too manic in the magistrate’s tone. A road rage case. Pathetic assignment.
31
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 11 A.M.
Giulia sat in the middle of her bed. Blume felt huge in the child’s room.
He had spent the rest of the previous day going over the report and talking to the two policemen who had signed off on it. The involvement of forensics had been minimal. Even Principe, who had sounded so high-toned on the phone, seemed to have lost interest. The previous evening Blume had made the appointment to interview the widow of the victim, and now he found himself talking to the daughter instead.
Downstairs, a policewoman, Inspector Mattiola, newly arrived in the department, was doing her level best to get the woman to say something.
Blume had brought her along to talk to the child, but he soon realized getting any sense out of the mother was impossible. So he left her to the new policewoman. He figured she needed to learn the hard way how unhelpful most interviewees usually are.
Not this child, though.
“Wouldn’t you prefer to go downstairs, Giulia?” he asked her.
She shook her head.
“OK.” The bedroom had one armchair. It was covered in her clothes.
Blume stood there trying to figure out what to do.
“You can put them on the floor,” she said.
Seeing no alternative, he hooked his good arm around a pile of jeans, underpants, small bras, socks, and shirts, and put them carefully on the floor beside the chair, then sat down.
“I’ll be moving into his study soon,” said Giulia. “A few months ago, he promised me that if I started helping around the house a bit, he would surrender his study and turn it into a bedroom for me. He even bought a portable computer, and started working in the kitchen, to get used to the idea. Now I’ll get his room, anyway.”
Blume pretended to examine the room with his eyes. Eventually he had to bring them back to the small grown-up sitting cross- legged on a child’s bed.
“Giacomo could get this room,” continued Giulia. “It’s bigger than his, but he doesn’t want to move. He’s like my mother.”
“I’m sorry,” said Blume.
Giulia cast a skeptical look in his direction. “It’s not as if you people did much. This is, like, the third visit.”
“This one’s different.”
“You mean now you’re going to catch whoever it was?”
Blume wished he had not spoken. “I can’t say that.”
“So it’s not really a different sort of visit, is it?”
“No.”
Giulia pulled a pillow from behind her, and arranged it against her back.
“At least you look sad. The others looked like they didn’t care. If anything, they treated my mother like she had done it.”
“It’s the police way.”
Giulia shrugged. “No wonder nobody likes the police much.”
“What age are you?”
“Twelve. What happened to your arm… and your nose?”
“I crashed a car. It’s only sprained, not broken. There’s nothing wrong with my nose.”
“If you say so.”
Blume steepled his hands, hid his nose behind it, and said, “When I was seventeen, I lost both my parents. They were shot dead in a bank raid.”
“That’s sad. Did you catch the person who did it?”
“I wasn’t a policeman then.”
“Did the other police catch him?”
“No.”
“So he is still out there?”
“No, he died.”
“How do you know he died if you didn’t catch him?”
“Someone told me later.”
“Someone in the police?”
“I’m not sure. I suppose so. But what I want to say is back then, and it’s not really all that long ago, the
