Bitter Remedy: An Alec Blume Case

by Conor Fitzgerald

  He smashed open the front door of the building with two sharp kicks, but found himself bathed in sweat and unable to run up the stairs. His fever was mounting again. Each foot fall shuddered up from heel through spine into his brainstem. He started hammering on the door of her apartment. No one came. He kicked it, centring the escutcheon with his heel, but though the door shuddered and the wood in the frame crackled a little, it hardly budged. He tried again, but this time his kick was less accurate. If she were dead in there . . . He needed the right sort of equipment and he had none. He was mulling over the complications of calling in backup, when he heard footsteps, fast and thunderous rushing down the stairs. Coming down the corridor, in arrow formation with the smallest in front and the largest two behind were the three Montenegrins.

  ‘Looking for Nadia?’ said Hristjian, the photographer of the day before.

  Blume looked at his options. He had the overwhelming sense that they were the only people in the building, and no one would hear him being kicked to death on the ground.

  ‘I am Police,’ he said. ‘And I need to know where Nadia is.’

  ‘You are an off-duty busybody,’ said the Montenegrin in his perfect Italian, which had a hint of Calabrese in it. ‘But you’re in luck.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘We’re looking for Nadia, too.’

  Blume, belatedly realizing she might be cowed inside, placed himself between the men and Nadia’s door. ‘What do you plan to do with her?’

  ‘Locate her.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Ask her if she knows where that fucker Niki has got to.’

  ‘Niki’s gone?’

  ‘He never came to the club last night. Neither did Nadia. He owes us money.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Wages, what else? He’s been putting it off, and breaking his promises for weeks. He said again yesterday that he would pay us, but he has taken off. His car’s gone. Not the SUV you’re driving obviously. His Range Rover. Then we noticed Nadia wasn’t around either.’

  Blume stood away from the door, and the oldest of the three nodded at the two behind him who, with a single unified and unexpectedly graceful movement, hit the door simultaneously, one with his shoulder, the other, slightly to his right, with his foot. The wood frame gave way with a short sharp crack and the door jumped open. Politely, Hristjian ushered Blume in first. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, you shouldn’t be trying to kick in doors in your condition.’

  ‘My condition?’

  ‘You do not look well. It had better not be contagious.’

  By way of reply Blume said, ‘We’re looking for a passport or any indication of where she might have gone.’ He walked through the living room, which showed no signs of struggle. He checked the bedroom where the bed was neatly made up. The furry blue gorilla and the panda bear sat exactly where they had been the day before. ‘She didn’t sleep here,’ he said, as much to himself as to the three large Montenegrins stumbling around the apartment, looking for clues and making a nightmare of any forensic work that might have to be done later.

  There was nothing in the apartment to indicate where she had gone. The Montenegrins might, he supposed, be playing an elaborate game for his benefit to divert suspicion that they had anything to do with her disappearance, but their imprecations and oaths suggested otherwise. They were seriously pissed off, and, if they were really trying to persuade a policeman that they had nothing to do with any violence that might have been perpetrated against Nadia, then perhaps they would not have repeated so often their plans to kill, burn, strangle, and slit the throat of Niki.

  Blume’s impression was that this was more than a question of unpaid wages. There was urgency and an edge of fear to the way they were behaving. If so, he was not going to look too deeply into it. He had enough on his plate already. He called over the leader, Hristjian, the photographer, as he thought of him.

  ‘I want to find Nadia. If I find Niki, I’ll let you know. This is not an official investigation yet. I don’t want bad things – more bad things – to happen to Nadia.’

  The man squinted at Blume, then nodded quickly.

  ‘Is Niki in financial difficulty?’ asked Blume.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Is this the first time he has missed a payment?’

  Hristjian frowned. ‘Yeah, I guess it is. He has been distracted recently. We thought it was because of Alina running off like that.’

  ‘So you think she ran off?’

  ‘I don’t know. She went. Niki was upset. He got distracted, and now there is serious trouble.’

  ‘Did Alina like Niki as much as he seems to have liked her?’

  The man scowled at him. ‘Girls worry about that sort of shit. Do I look like a girl?’

  ‘No, you can rest assured on that point,’ said Blume. ‘But they were together?’

  A shrug. ‘Ownership has its privileges.’

  ‘This has to do with more than just wages, right?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why you’re so anxious to find Niki. It’s a debt of some sort, which puts you in danger. I’m thinking drugs.’

  The man took a menacing step towards him, but Blume stayed put. ‘Speaking as a policeman, but one off-duty and not interested in doing you any disservice . . .’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘No matter what, you need to front the money. Pay whoever it is with your own money, if you have enough. You can get Niki later. Pay up: I have seen what happens in these cases, and I think you have, too.’

  ‘With our money? Niki’s debt?’

  ‘Yes. Because if they don’t find Niki, you’ll do instead, as an example. You know how it works.’

  The man regarded him levelly, then imperceptibly nodded. With that nod, Blume had confirmation that Niki was in the drugs trade. He hoped Hristjian would follow his advice. He needed his prosecution witnesses to be alive.

  Hristjian evidently felt he had been helpful enough. He clicked his fingers and said something in whatever it was they spoke in Montenegro, and the three of them left the apartment with its splintered door.

  Ten minutes later, after a quieter and more scientific search of the apartment had yielded nothing, he went outside again. The sun was strong now and he donned his orange Gucci sunglasses. As he was climbing into the SUV, his phone rang. It was an unknown number from a landline with the local area code.

  ‘Alfredo here. The parts have arrived. Your car will be ready tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I don’t care . . . No, wait. Listen, there was some sort of accident in the town today. Do you know anything about it?’

  ‘Oh that. The maresciallo is being very secretive. Earlier this morning, Pino – you won’t know him, he’s an ancient greengrocer uptown, terrible prices and lousy fruit – well, this Pino says he saw a body lying at the bottom of a ravine below his back garden, which is where he gets most of the lousy fruit he sells, by the way. A few other neighbours looked over the wall, and concluded it was just clothes. No one really listens to Pino, you see. Then one of these neighbours fetches a pair of binoculars, and they take turns staring down at these clothes, and it turns out that Pino was probably right. It seems to be a body.’

  ‘Any idea whose?’

  ‘They’re not saying if they know – also because they are only getting down there now with their ropes. It’s a long drop to the bottom. But word is no one in town is missing, thanks be to God, so it was probably an outsider. Maybe a gypsy thief. It’s unlikely to be a tourist, since we don’t get any. The fire brigade arrived with ropes, you know, to pull the body up, and had to carry them up the last bit. I expect we’ll hear soon enough.’

  That had better not be you, down in that ravine, Nadia, Blume thought to himself. And if it is, I am sorry.

  Chapter 28

  ‘Alec!’ Silvana was delighted to see him. ‘I thought you were Niki. Did he lend you that car? He hardly ever uses it. Are you coming in?’

  ‘Is your father abo
ut?’

  ‘Somewhere in the garden, as always. Why, do you want to talk to him?’

  ‘Maybe later,’ said Blume. Maybe later, after he had delivered his message, she would fall weeping into his arms, fly at him with her fists, or, and this was his objective, leave the house and garden under his protection.

  She smelled of pears. Her dark hair was wet and shining and sleek, she must have just showered, and some drops of water had fallen onto her sleeveless top. She was barefoot. Her feet were the same golden colour as the rest of her skin. He thought of his own feet, whiter than the rest of him, cold, flat, waxy, like the feet of a corpse.

  As he passed her on the way into the lodge, she laid a reassuring hand lightly on his arm. ‘You look terrible, Alec. I’ll get you something.’ She brushed by him on her way to the kitchen.

  He sat there staring at his arm, defying it to lose the tingling sensation it had received when she touched it. She came back with a green liquid in a glass and sat down in a chair opposite.

  He looked at it suspiciously. ‘What’s this, a cabbage smoothie?’

  ‘It’s not cabbage, silly.’ She aimed a playful kick at him and he moved his leg to make sure she got him. To be polite, he brought it up to his nose.

  ‘Go on! You’re like a child, Alec. It’s rock rose, impatiens, clematis, star-of-Bethlehem, cherry plum and crab apple. It’s absolutely delicious. And it’s good for curing trauma.’

  ‘Why is it so green: is that the apple?’ He took a very small sip.

  She leaned forward. ‘Shall I tell you a little secret?’

  For a moment, he thought he might let Greco off the hook. After all, it was a long time ago, and Greco had taken him up to the clinic. All he had to do to preserve the happiness of the young woman in front of him, was to keep quiet. But what of afterwards? How could he leave Silvana ignorant of the true nature of her father, and, possibly, in danger from a man her father seemed happy to marry her off to? He had a duty to release this girl, who had now brought a finger up to her lips, as if warning him not to broadcast the great secret she was about to tell.

  ‘I put food colouring in! Isn’t that so naughty! It’s supposed to be all natural, no adulteration, the vibration of the Bach Flowers, and, sure, I believe in all that, but that green is just such a far-out lovely colour, and then I find out that food colouring, if you buy the right one, is vegetable based! By the way, my secret ingredient is a thing called glucomannan, it’s a dietary fibre from the root of the konjac flower, from Asia. It adds body to the drink, and it’s really good for you. It’s great for the heart, I read that. Or is it the bowel?’

  He went for another reluctant sip, and said, casually, ‘Seen Niki recently?’

  ‘Dear Niki. He’s so busy at work, then rushes over here to be with me as soon as he has a minute. I am often afraid he’ll have a car accident.’

  ‘That would be terrible,’ said Blume.

  She wrinkled her forehead at him then and squeezed a few more drops or water from her hair onto her loose-fitting T-shirt. ‘You loathe Niki, don’t you? I thought when I saw you get out of his car that there had been some sort of reconciliation. Lending his car is just the sort of generous thing he would do.’

  ‘I have seen the way Niki bosses you about. It is the mark of a bully and a violent man. You know what I’m saying.’

  Silvana ran her tongue over her bottom lip, and sighed. ‘Niki only does that for show. It was because you were there. When we are on our own, he is the sweetest guy on earth.’

  He thought of her chubby, childish handwriting. ‘Isn’t he a bit old for you? And when I say a bit, I mean a lot?’

  ‘Age can’t stop you loving, but loving can stop you ageing,’ said Silvana, looking at him earnestly.

  ‘New Age cant. You found that platitude on the internet, probably with a picture of two old wrinklies dressed in white staring at a sunset, holding hands, and figured you should learn it to explain the fact you’re throwing yourself away on a creepy little criminal almost twice your age.’

  ‘You would be far more attractive if you were kinder.’

  ‘Kind like Niki who beats you?’

  ‘He does not hit me.’

  ‘I saw it, for God’s sake.’

  ‘You never think you might have mis-seen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Always clear-headed, are you?’

  Blume sat back and let out a long, long breath, releasing a lot of the tension in his chest. This was so frustrating. Why was this woman not responding better to him? ‘Just say the word and I can get you out of here.’

  ‘Where would you take me. To your house?’

  ‘No! I mean, there would be room, but no, of course not. Wherever you wanted to go.’

  ‘In Rome? I have been to Rome. I studied there.’

  ‘You should have found someone there and stayed.’

  ‘I did. I found a boyfriend there, too. An older man. Almost drove Niki to distraction. They never met, which is probably a good thing.’

  ‘You like older men?’

  ‘Yes, Commissioner, I do.’

  Blume averted his gaze and began looking around the room for something to look at that wasn’t her face, legs, bare shoulder, the way the T-shirt fell away when she leaned in.

  Everything in the room seemed to be made of wood: the walls, the parquet floor, the cherrywood shelves stocked neatly with dark orange bottles in the style of a ninteenth-century chemist. The bottles had handwritten labels on them identifying their contents. The writing was not a stylized calligraphy but again those bulky, childish letters. The room smelled of pine and vanilla. In the centre, a table contained a pile of articles, the pages black around the edges and in the middle from inexpert photocopying.

  Then he remembered the exercise book, which he had left in the car.

  ‘I brought your notebook back, the one with the stories? You left it the other day, and I’ve been meaning to return it, but what with one thing and another . . . It’s in the car. I can fetch it.’ He stood up.

  ‘Never mind. You can do that later. Or just leave it in the car, since it’s Niki’s. Did you read the stories?’

  ‘They are . . .’ He wandered across the room to look at the collection of herbal bottles and avoid her questions. ‘I don’t think I am your target audience.’

  ‘Don’t you have children?’

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Well, then.’ She stood up and skipped over the room to where he was. ‘I’m hoping to have them published as soon as I find a decent illustrator.’ She brought her hand up to his brow and furrowed her own. ‘Are you feeling all right, Alec? Because you don’t look well.’

  ‘I may have a touch of the flu,’ he admitted, pulling back. ‘It’s been trying to break through for the past 24 hours.’

  ‘I could give you an elixir or an infusion. Would you like that?’

  He nodded, then asked, ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘An infusion is made with water, but for the delicate flowers we don’t boil the water like when making tea. We leave the flowers suspended in water for several hours in the sun. We do use boiling water for the woodier plants, like hornbeam. And for the tinctures, we use Italian brandy. Tomorrow night is special because there is going to be a super-moon, when the moon is both full and nearest to the earth. It looks huge in the sky and its influence is enhanced. Tomorrow will be an ideal night to make tincture.’

  She pointed to the first bottle. ‘Remember this yellow one? Agrimony. It’s an autochthonous plant. Autochthonous means it is native to Italy.’

  ‘I know what autochthonous means,’ said Blume.

  ‘Really? I had to ask Papà to explain. Anyway, not all of them are native. My father grows this in his herb garden. Actually, he’s grown all of them except for the tree one, which was already here.’ She swept her slender arm through the air to indicate the large outside world.

  ‘And what’s it for?’

  ‘It cures people who look cheerfu
l, but are tortured inside. People who fear the unknown. That’s not you, though, is it?’ She laughed. ‘I mean you don’t look all that cheerful on the outside either.’

  ‘I am extremely cheerful on the inside.’

  She looked at him and bit her lip as if considering this as a real possibility before passing on to the next bottle. ‘Now this one here is centaury, or Centaurea minore to use the Latin. We prescribe it to people who can’t say no to others, people who are a bit weak-willed and get exploited. I have prescribed it to myself, actually.’

  ‘Any improvement?’

  ‘I think so, yes. I feel a good deal stronger than I used to.’

  ‘So you let Niki bully you less?’

  She ignored his question. ‘This here is chicory, which a lot of people eat anyhow. It’s for people who are very possessive and will even hurt others to make sure they stay under their control.’

  ‘Presumably I would have learned about this on the course.’

  ‘Yes. I was going to teach all that. Another time, I suppose.’

  Blume leaned against the wall, which was pleasantly cold to the touch, and folded his arms, watching her. ‘It is a shame you had to cancel it,’ he said. ‘What was it again? Some problem with the licences from those bureaucrats at health and safety?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And the vigili came down and ordered you to close down the wing of the house you had done up, right? And so you sent out the emails cancelling the course, the one I failed to read.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what happened.’

  ‘Funny thing, though,’ said Blume. ‘I happened to bump into Fabio, the vigile. Literally bump into him as you may have heard. And, well, he denied doing any such thing. He never executed any order from the ASL to shut you down.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ She stood still for a moment, and her shoulders seemed to tremble. He was torn between the desire to put his arm around them and the wish to push home an advantage that he had not yet turned into an insight.