Caterina started off for the villa; Blume into the garden.
He found her sitting with her back to Greco’s Madonna, staring at the cliff face. Her legs were drawn up, and she was holding her skirt up against her knees to stop it slipping down her thighs.
He came over and sat down beside her.
‘All those men down there,’ she said. ‘None of them know her. They know nothing. Nothing. I have known her since she was three. They have no idea of the things she did, and then they won’t let me go anywhere near her.’
You wouldn’t want to see her now, he thought, keeping his opinion to himself. He allowed some silence to settle between them.
‘How’s Niki?’ she asked.
‘Niki? No idea.’
‘I hope he’s OK.’ She looked at him, and smiled. ‘Niki came back for me. First he took me away, because he was afraid for me. He took me straight to your girlfriend, told me to tell her everything and not worry about incriminating him. I think he was thinking of leaving the country, but when Caterina asked me to call him back, he answered, and came straight back. He put his business and his own freedom second. You never believed he could be good.’
‘He’s not good,’ said Blume.
‘Are you?’
‘Let’s say, I’m not perfect.’
‘I am asking you a serious question. Are you a good man? Sure, with faults and weaknesses, but at your core, are you good?’
Blume thought about it. ‘I can’t answer that.’
‘I can,’ said Nadia. ‘I think you are a good man turning bad, and I think Niki is a bad man trying to be good. I prefer Niki.’
‘That makes sense.’
She looked at him. ‘You look like a 60-year-old. Someone at the end of his life.’
‘Sixty isn’t the end of life. And I am nowhere near that age.’
‘The number is not important. Someone with no generosity left. Always looking back, always judging. I hope you get to keep Caterina. She’s your last chance.’
Blume put down his bottle. ‘I don’t really wish Niki ill any more. But whatever happens, he’s going to be in some trouble.’
‘What am I supposed to do now?’
‘I don’t know. Go back home to Romania, try a fresh start?’
‘Idiot,’ she said. ‘And careful where you put your stupid water bottle. You’ve just spilled it all over my backside.’
‘It was empty.’ He could feel water, too, soaking into his trousers.
‘Then what’s . . . ?’ She stood up. ‘From the statue? It was dry here when I sat down. Cazzo, I hate this garden. What on earth are you doing?’
‘Filling my bottle like the doctor said.’
‘Don’t drink the water if you don’t know where it’s come from!’
‘No, I know about this water. It’s famous. It’s supposed to be very good for you. Curative. Magic, even. Here,’ He held out the bottle. ‘Taste.’
‘You taste it.’
‘Go on. You first. Trust me.’
‘Any reason I should ever trust any man again?’
‘How about Niki? He came back.’
She smiled. ‘A drug-smuggling, diabetic semi-pimp, and a doped-up cop. I heard what the doctor said. At least you kept your promise to find Alina, even if it was too late. What a pair.’
She held out her hand and took the bottle. ‘All right, all right, I’ll drink. I can’t bear to see you look so insulted. Now you look like a disappointed child instead of the old man you are. Are you sure it’s safe?’
‘Make a wish, Nadia,’ said Blume. ‘A big one.’
‘OK, old policeman. Noroc.’
She brought the bottle to her lips and drank.
A Note on the Author
Conor Fitzgerald has lived in Ireland, the UK, the United States, and Italy. He has produced a current affairs journal for foreign embassies based in Rome, and founded a successful translation company. Bitter Remedy is the fifth in his series of Italian crime novels.
www.conorfitzgerald.net
By the Same Author
The Dogs of Rome
The Fatal Touch
The Namesake
The Memory Key
The Dogs of Rome
On a hot summer morning, Arturo Clemente is brutally murdered in his Roman apartment.
Clemente is no ordinary victim. His widow is an elected member of the Senate, and Chief Inspector Alec Blume arrives at the scene to find enquiries well underway. The murder case seems clear-cut and a prime suspect is quickly identified, but Blume must fight to regain control of the investigation, aware from bitter experience that in Rome even a murder enquiry must bow to the rules of politics. The complex and uncomfortable truth he will unravel will shock even him, and his struggle for justice may yet cost more innocent lives...
‘A powerful and hugely compelling thriller. Dark, worldly and written with tremendous style and assurance … Conor Fitzgerald is a class act’
William Boyd
The Fatal Touch
In the early hours of a Saturday morning, a body is discovered in Piazza de’ Renzi. If it was just a simple fall that killed him, why is a senior Carabiniere officer so interested?
Commissioner Alec Blume is immediately curious and the discovery of the dead man’s notebooks reveals that there is a great deal more at stake than the unfortunate death of a down-and-out... What secrets did he know that might have made him a target? What is the significance of the Galleria Orpiment? And why are the authorities so intent on blocking Blume’s investigations?
‘Alec Blume is an inspired creation ... Highly recommended’
Guardian
‘Set in Rome in the murky world of art forgery, it’s beautifully written and has a deliciously laconic sense of humour’
Irish Times
The Namesake
When it comes to murder it’s all in a name.
When Magistrate Matteo Arconti’s namesake, an insurance man from Milan, is found dead outside the court buildings in Piazzale Clodio, it’s a coded warning to the authorities – a clear message of defiance and intimidation.
Commissioner Alec Blume, all too familiar with Rome’s criminal underclass, knows little of the Calabrian mafia currently under investigation by the magistrate. Handing control of the investigation to now live-in and not-so-secret partner Caterina Mattiola, Blume takes a back seat. But while Caterina questions the Milanese widow, Blume has an underhand idea of his own to lure the arrogant mafioso out of his hiding place...
‘Exquisitely written in a quietly elegant style, and dotted with nuggets of coal black humour’ Irish Times
The Memory Key
On a freezing November night Commissioner Alec Blume is called to the scene of a shooting.
The victim is Sofia Fontana, the sole witness to a previous killing. Blume’s enquiries lead from a professor with a passion for the art of memory to a hospitalised ex-terrorist whose injuries have left her mind innocently blank; from present day Rome’s criminal underclass, to a murderous train station bombing in central Italy several decades ago.
Against the advice of his bosses and his own better judgement, Blume is drawn ever deeper into the case, which looks set to derail his troubled relationship with Caterina...
‘The American-born Blume is an engaging hero who might just have the potential to fill the gap when Michael Dibdin’s death ended his Italian detective Aurelio Zen’s investigations’
Sunday Times
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First published in Great Britain 2014
This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © 2014 by Conor Fitzgerald
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Bitter Remedy: An Alec Blume Case Page 27