‘I disagree, Commissioner. This would be a good case for Caterina. Like you said, it’s bound to be taken out of our hands once it’s clear it is organized crime, so it would be a perfect chance for her to get some practice, and then feel the pain of losing a case.’
‘I’d prefer she wasn’t involved. She has a son, you know.’
Panebianco looked at him. ‘She’s the only one on the force with children?’
‘That came out wrong.’
Panebianco did not look pleased. ‘You’ve got no children. Why don’t you handle it?’
‘Magistrate Matteo Arconti won’t be able to investigate this. It’s too clearly a conflict of interest, and I think the same might apply to me. I’m going to retreat into the shadows, so to speak.’
Blume beckoned to Caterina who was still talking to the two street cleaners who had found the body. She flicked her hand at him, with exactly the same gesture she used to shoo away her son when he tried to interrupt her talking on the phone. Blume enjoyed the domestic intimacy of the gesture, but disliked the casual disregard of his authority. Even so, he let her finish her interview.
He took a walk around the area. The place was well chosen, a wide waste ground used as an overflow car park with no buildings overlooking it, and flanked by a road with fast-moving traffic and no footpath. The body had probably been lying there for hours. From what he had seen, it was unlikely that the victim had been killed where he was found. From a distance, the corpse looked like a lump of tar, a heap of clothes or a bag of rubbish.
The road, Via Falcone e Borsellino, was named after two magistrates murdered by Cosa Nostra in 1992.
He checked his phone again. If Arconti knew of the death of his namesake, he would surely call.
Taking his time, he returned to the crime scene, now populated with more vehicles and a mortuary van. He stood at the edge and watched his colleagues go about their business. He observed Caterina whose movements were a little too quick. She changed direction often and twice had to retrace her steps. She spoke to colleagues, then five minutes later had to speak to them again. Lots of micromanagement errors so far, but she was maintaining authority and control, and being taken seriously — that was the main thing. He was pleased for her sake, then remembered he didn’t want her on the case.
When she finally seemed to have a moment, he caught her eye and nodded at her to come over.
‘The most obvious line of…’ she began.
Blume put up a restraining hand. ‘No.’
‘No?’
‘I think,’ said Blume, ‘the best way to approach this is to put a Chinese wall between us.’
She closed one eye and examined the side of his face as she often did when trying to assess whether he was being serious or not. ‘A Chinese wall, no less,’ she said eventually. ‘A great one?’
‘A Chinese wall is when you deliberately don’t share knowledge or information so as not to help someone else inadvertently.’
‘Sounds like an ordinary Blume wall to me,’ said Caterina.
‘I think you should maybe opt out of this one. You could tell the investigating magistrate your opinions are contaminated because of what I have already told you. You won’t get sufficient clarity. So Panebianco’s doing this until it’s passed on to the DIA.’
‘Or to Milan,’ said Caterina. ‘That’s where the victim is from. He works in insurance and has no record of any sort. He never arrived at work yesterday morning, and his wife reported him missing. So maybe we should look into the wife.’
‘The wife?’ said Blume, intrigued. ‘You mean an ordinary murder?’
‘I know this is almost certainly to do with the Ndrangheta, but, like you said, I won’t be influenced by you. See, your Chinese wall’s working already.’
‘You don’t want to have anything to do with this,’ said Blume. ‘People who find an innocent namesake, kill him for… fun. Because this is a form of fun for them. Like shooting up a shop or firebombing a factory is fun for the young recruits. It is evil joy.’
‘Evil or not, it does not follow that there is a particular risk for investigators. If they strike at us directly, it could spark off a war with the state, like Cosa Nostra was stupid enough to do in the 1990s. I’m in no more danger from this inquiry than any other. And you’re not my protector.’
‘I’m your commissioner.’
Caterina smiled and beckoned him closer, leaned into his ear, and whispered, ‘Commissioner Blume?’
‘What?’ Blume found he was whispering, too, and grinning like a schoolboy.
‘Fuck off.’
Blume stood back and scowled at her. ‘There was no need for that. OK, have it your way. I don’t think Curmaci or the Ndrangheta is involved in this.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Alec. There is no need to exaggerate. How stupid do you think I am?’
‘No, seriously,’ said Blume. ‘The Ndrangheta is the “quiet” Mafia. This draws a lot of attention to them, and for what? It is not as if Arconti’s investigation was going to the heart of the organization. Maybe Arconti, the magistrate, had other enemies. Maybe this other Arconti from Milan did.’
‘Alec, I’m not listening to this.’
‘Well, you should.’
Caterina lowered her voice. ‘You spoke to me about a guy called Agazio Curmaci. Do you think…?’
‘I hear the wife is on her way down from Milan to identify the body,’ said Blume, glancing at his watch and realizing it was not there.
‘Yes, she should get to the morgue in about three hours, more or less at the same time as her husband’s body. But unless we bring up the Curmaci and Ndrangheta angle at once, the wife risks undergoing heavy-handed questioning from the investigating magistrate.’
‘How do you know he’ll do that?’
‘Experience of magistrates. Unless it’s a she, which would be better.’
Panebianco came over and pointed at a man strolling towards them, hands behind his back, his Venetian- blond hair visible from this distance.
‘Here comes the investigating magistrate. That’s Nardone.’ He exchanged a look with Blume.
Caterina followed his glance. ‘I don’t know him. What’s he like?’
Blume seesawed his hand back and forth to indicate that Nardone was less than perfect. ‘There are worse. He’s fifteen years younger than you.’
‘No way!’ said Caterina.
‘Really.’
Caterina folded her arms across her breasts. ‘How old do you think I am?’
‘I don’t know, about fifty?’
‘You’re not funny. Now, if I am not to think about the Ndrangheta, what line of approach should I take to the fact this body was dumped in Rome in front of the courthouse?’
‘Maybe the victim came down here to Rome by himself.’
‘No,’ said Caterina. ‘The body was moved after death, you can see that from the lividity, the way the clothes are rumpled and soiled. He’s been dragged around, left lying on the ground for some time. Also, there should be more blood. If he was moved directly after death, there would be more bloodstains on his shirt and jacket. So he lay where he was shot long enough for the blood to coagulate and stop moving. Rigor mortis has completely gone, the skin has a greenish hue. The medical examiner, who seems to have a problem with women, won’t say how long…’
‘No, no. That’s just Dorfmann,’ said Blume. ‘He doesn’t hate you because you’re a woman, he hates you because you’re a breathing human. In his loathing of all living beings, he’s a paradigm of sexual equality. He’ll do a thorough report.’
‘If you say so. But the time of death is at least eighteen hours earlier. And the place of death was not here. He’d have been discovered before today, and anyway there’s no blood at the scene. So I’m going to assume he was killed closer to where he went missing, which probably means Milan. Which means even if this investigation is not appropriated by the DIA, it will probably be transferred there on the grounds of a “positive contrast” between the magistrates.’
‘Technically, it’s more likely to be a “negative contrast,” ’ said Blume. ‘Milan won’t have opened a murder inquiry, so it will be up to Nardone to declare the case as outside the scope of his competence. He will: most things
