through the inside pocket, finding nothing more than what seemed to be the torn and crumpled remains of some old-fashioned postcards. One showed the ‘doors of Malta’, another was an image of an English seaside town called Brixham. Judging from the faded turquoise colour of the sea and the single brown car parked in the port, the photo dated from the 1970s. There was a ripped postcard of a caravan site in County Cork in Ireland framed by bright red fuchsia, and a close-up of the Glockenspiel at Marienplatz in Munich and another of the nearby Frauenkirche. There was nothing written on any of them. The postcards were so old that the paper formed tiny fibrous pills as he rubbed his thumb along the edges. They did not fit in with the neatly stacked clothes, the high technology, the cleanliness and order of the bags. He had an idea, which immediately crystallized into a conviction, that the camper van in which he now stood had been to those places in the distant past. These were fragments of Konrad’s memory, pieces he wanted to keep for personal reasons. Something here explained his presence in Italy.
He pulled out the last postcard, which turned out to be ripped vertically in half. He felt around for the other half, but the pocket had given up the last of its treasures. The postcard, more of a holy keepsake, was of the type religious people bought in churches. It showed a vaulted ceiling, a side chapel, a Madonna with a massive crown on her head and the beginnings of a second crown, presumably on the head of the Christ child in her arms. The vertical tear obliterated the rest. But Blume recognized it at once. It was an image of the Madonna of Polsi, also known as the Madonna of the Mountains, the goddess of the Ndrangheta. This was the very Madonna that the bosses lifted on their shoulders and paraded through the steep streets of the village clinging to the sides of Aspromonte. He turned the card over and saw it was signed in a careful childish hand with rounded large characters: Domenico Megale.
Old Megale wrote like a five-year-old. If that was his signature. Blume looked closely at it, bringing it over to the door to get more light. The glistening of the ink, its fresh darkness on the old paper convinced him that Domenico Megale, or someone purporting to be him, had signed the back of this torn Madonna recently. Either Konrad was such a fan of the Mafia boss that he carried around his autograph, or this had some specific purpose. It had to be Konrad’s passport to somewhere, he reasoned. It certified that Konrad was to be allowed to enter somewhere, or was a man to trust. Someone else held the other half of the image, so they could check this was authentic.
And yet, even as he looked at the signature and the torn image, Blume could not believe that Konrad was really an envoy from Domenico Megale. He could not say why he was so certain except that Konrad had little of the perpetrator and much of the victim about him.
He closed the van door again and started putting everything back into the suitcase, including the torn Madonna. When the lanky German came knocking on the hotel door a few hours from now, angrily demanding an explanation for his missing notes, Blume would ask him about it.
Someone hammered on the door he had just closed. Blume snapped shut the case, put it back on the floor, opened the door.
Konrad stood holding two plastic bags. ‘I thought you’d be out front.’
‘No parking space. I tried to use the shade of the trucks to keep the camper van cool.’
Konrad peered in. ‘Are they still there?’
‘No,’ said Blume. ‘There was just the one. It might be near your feet.’
Konrad gave a satisfying leap, like a colt learning to show-jump. Then he got in the driver’s side, slamming the door behind him. ‘Close the door, please.’
‘Did you get that coffee?’ said Blume from behind him. ‘Wait, I’m coming around.’
Blume sat down in the passenger seat and Konrad gingerly handed him the bag. Blume peered inside and pulled out a packet of fruit pastilles and popped one in his mouth. ‘You remembered, well done. I love these sweets. But where’s the coffee?’
‘When I asked for what you said, no one understood me,’ said Konrad.
‘It’s sold with the sweets, in a blue container… never mind.’ He popped another in his mouth, adding synthetic strawberry to the chewy lemon he was already enjoying. ‘What?’ he said to Konrad’s outraged and incredulous expression. ‘I like sweets. I never grew out of it. It’s my only vice. You want one?’ he pulled back the wrapper and held the tube towards Konrad, who recoiled.
‘Did you wash your hands?’
‘You mean the rat? I was kicking at the rat, not tickling its stomach.’
‘European rats carry a flea which carries a bacterium called Bartonella. It causes serious coronary damage.’
Blume popped a green sweet into his mouth, then mimicked a man having a heart attack, clutching at his left bicep, then throat.
‘You’re not funny, Commissioner.’
29
Rome
Arconti was sitting up waiting for her and managed to lift his arm as she entered the room. A box of Kleenex sat by his side.
‘I have a private room, which is good,’ he said, plucking one out and dabbing the side of his mouth. ‘Excuse me if I drool a little.’
Caterina, who did not know the magistrate, was unsure what sort of tone to use. Sensing this, Arconti said, ‘I am going to use tu and call you Caterina. I want you to do the same. Call me Matteo.’
‘Signor Giudice, you are asking too much. I can’t possibly use tu
…’ she trailed off as the magistrate fixed her with a haughty and unblinking stare.
‘I am not that old, despite present appearances,’ said Arconti, his lip curved into a sneering expression of command.
Caterina bristled. ‘I am not using the familiar form with a magistrate I don’t know. You had something to tell me, now tell me.’
The magistrate continued to regard her balefully, but his voice sounded incongruously cheerful. ‘That’s fine by me. Sorry if I embarrassed you. May I call you Caterina?’
‘Yes,’ she conceded.
‘OK, Caterina, now will you please look at this side of my face, the side that doesn’t look like it’s had the mother of all Botox injections? I’m sure the frozen half is fascinatingly creepy, but I have feelings, too.’
She looked at Arconti’s face full on, and saw half his mouth smiling. His right eye was moving up and down and there was a humorous glint in it.
‘They are hopeful that other side will start thawing out within a few days,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Caterina. ‘I was staring, wasn’t I?’ She glanced surreptitiously at the left eye which glared murderously back at her, while Arconti laughed good-naturedly.
‘Never mind. And as for the honorifics due to a magistrate, you can forget that. I’m quitting. I know it was probably cholesterol or cigarettes or something, but I blame my work for this. That and my parents of course, they gave me the genes.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Caterina. She hooked some strands of hair over her ear and turned her head so as to look only at the magistrate’s good side.
‘You’re lovely,’ he said. ‘And now you’re blushingly lovely. I found in the past few days it’s become easier for me to speak my mind. I find you lovely, and the fact that that big brooding bastard of a commissioner didn’t see fit even to mention you in all those hours we were together is…’
‘Hurtful,’ said Caterina.
‘Yes. Blume isn’t always upfront, is he?’
‘Not always,’ she agreed.
‘I think he probably communicates more with you than with me, which is as it should be and as I hope it will be,’ said Arconti. ‘Do you know where he is now?’
Caterina hesitated.
