elegant all at the same time, and he suddenly felt self-conscious about his abject appearance. Nothing about her fitted his image, and nothing in her actions matched his expectations.
She placed a full glass of jet-black liquid on the table before him. He looked down at the glass, then up at her, examining her face. Why had he not pulled up a file on her, prepared himself better for this encounter? This was the woman whose life he had decided to put in danger. The woman he said he had no sympathy for. Her eyes were dark and sloped in a way that would have given her an Asian look had they not been so large. She had a small white scar on her left cheek, a mark from childhood chicken pox or measles. Her childhood, Blume realized, could not have been all that long ago.
‘What’s in this glass?’
‘Your nose must be blocked if you can’t smell it.’ She stood up again, went over to the drawer, pulled out a large knife, and Blume felt his hand reach automatically inwards towards his sweaty waist and the butt of his gun. The knife flashed as she sliced through two thick-skinned lemons. Cautiously, he brought the glass up to his nose.
‘It’s a suspension of pure liquorice,’ she said, coming over with the lemons, one of which she had halved, the other quartered.
‘Liquorice liquor. Then it’s alcoholic,’ he said. ‘I don’t drink alcohol.’
She rolled up the dangling sleeve of her shirt, and pushed the lemons towards him. ‘If you want to get rid of your headache, drink that cordial.’
Blume drank. It was powerful. He could feel it painting his tongue and the roof of his mouth black, and it burned the back of his throat even though it was extremely sweet. The glass contained at least three measures. He put it down half empty. Already he could feel the fumes going to his head.
‘All of it, come on. You’re a big man.’
Blume took a second long draught and snapped the empty glass back on the wooden top. It was like drinking a cough medicine.
‘Those lemons are sweet enough to peel and eat like oranges, but they will taste sour after the licorice. Nothing is sweeter than licorice. Bite into the quartered lemons,’ she instructed.
‘I don’t think I will. We need to talk.’
‘Do it. You can talk at the same time.’
Blume did as she said. She was right about the lemon being sour, but the effect was invigorating and the taste delicious. He finished two quarters with two quick bites, attacked the third, and said, ‘You know who I am?’
‘For now, you are just an unhappy man with a headache.’
‘Commissioner Blume. I am a policeman.’
‘You just said that a minute ago.’
‘So I did. I apologize. The reason I am here, Mrs Curmaci, is.. ’ He stopped. He did not sound credible to himself. He finished the last quarter lemon as he thought of something to say.
‘Now take the two half lemons, and press them against your temples.’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘No. But if you think you’ll look stupid,’ and here she smiled sweetly at him, ‘and you will, just hold half a lemon in your hand and keep smelling it. Your headache will be gone in ten minutes. In fact, it’s already fading.’
She was right. As soon as he thought about it, he felt another pulse, but at least thirty seconds had passed since the last one. And the sensation of the pain trying to break out was diminishing fast.
‘You can use lavender, too. Shall I get you some?’
‘No. I’m fine. This,’ he brought the lemon to his nose and inhaled deeply, ‘is working.’
The nausea was fading fast too, and he had finally stopped sweating. He looked gratefully into the face of the young woman across the table and saw her eyes shift sideways and her face become anxious. He followed her gaze to the kitchen door, where staring at them was a youth on the verge of manhood.
Blume raised his hand in greeting, but the teenager continued to regard him in grave silence. Blume looked at the mother for guidance. He had never mastered the etiquette of speaking to children. All he knew was that after they reached a certain age, asking them their names and age sounded as strange to them as it would to an ordinary adult. And yet he could not for the life of him imagine what else to say.
He looked back, and saw the boy was gone. Mostly he felt relieved, but he also found the sudden disappearance and the utter silence that preceded it disturbing.
‘That’s my son.’ She smiled. Her eyetooth was slightly crooked. ‘I have another son upstairs, and if he wakes up I’ll have to go to him. His name is Roberto. Robertino we call him. The little one. My son here, the one you saw…’
Blume ran his mind’s eye over files from what seemed like years ago and plucked the name Ruggiero from the air, and said it to her.
‘That’s right, Ruggiero.’ Her voice softened as she pronounced the name, and she expressed no surprise that he should know it.
Blume felt very pleased with his brain and with the lucidity of his thoughts, then realized, almost with a shock, that the pain had simply floated out of his head. Tentatively, he rolled his head backwards to feel the tension in his neck. Nothing. It was gone, and he felt energy returning to his whole body.
‘How are you feeling?’
Happy was the right response, but he could not really say that. ‘That liquorice seems to have done the trick,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t mention it. Now what am I going to do about having not just a man, but a policeman visiting my house? I hope you’re going to make a call and a fleet of cars will drive up and you’ll arrest me now. Nothing else would look right.’
‘Well… I suppose I could…’
‘And it needs to be made clear that the time we spent together in here was dedicated to discussing what was to be done about the children. I was refusing to leave the house until arrangements had been made for them. In fact, that’s true. I am going to make a phone call to the Megales across the road, and send Roberto over with Ruggiero. Can you make the call to your colleagues, make sure there are a lot of flashing lights and squealing of tyres?’ She rolled up her shirtsleeve, which had fallen down again, and held out her arms. Blume could see tiny blonde hairs against her smooth brown skin. Her wrists were thin, one encircled by a silver bracelet, and her fingers long, one encircled by a golden ring.
She shook her lovely hands at him. ‘Maybe you could put handcuffs on me?’
‘I can’t just arrest you like that. I need a magistrate to bring charges. And I can’t call in the local police. It doesn’t work like that.’
She pulled her arms back and folded them across her breast. ‘So what are you doing here?’
‘I thought you might need help.’
‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘In a moment of weakness, I made a telephone call. But you don’t look like you came either to arrest me or to help me. You’re all alone, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not here to arrest you.’
‘Do you even know what I am talking about?’
‘Yes. You made a call to Magistrate Arconti,’ said Blume. ‘But maybe you had no choice?’
‘Of course I had a choice.’
‘If you have been under pressure or threat from your neighbours, from people around here, I think I can help you understand why. But first I need to ask you this: has your husband returned?’
She shook her head, not in denial but in refusal to answer.
‘I need to ask you this again,’ said Blume. ‘Has your husband returned?’
This time the shake of her head contained a warning.
‘Suppose your husband had returned,’ said Blume. ‘Do you think he could resolve this problem that has arisen? I am referring to your reputation in this community.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Without bloodshed. Because if he could just make sure, without bloodshed, that everyone understood your phone call was made in good faith, then I would be happy with that.’
