Fatal Touch cab-2

by Conor Fitzgerald

  “You know,” he said, looking at the black, purple, and red squiggles of paint all over the walls, “my apartment block is covered in this shit, too.”

  “Every building in Rome is. The Vigili Urbani aren’t so good at catching the kids,” said Caterina.

  “You know what the message scrawled on my building is?”

  “ W la fica, Fuck The Police, Debora ti amo, Lazio Merda?” asked Caterina.

  “No. It’s ‘impossible is nothing.’ That’s an advertisement for a watch or a soda or something. These kids are spouting corporate messages. They aren’t rebels; they’ve no philosophy, no message, and no courage. Look, there are your putti.”

  Caterina looked. Carved into a niche was a bas-relief of little boys with angel wings intent on beating each other up, same as the painting in the Pamphili Gallery. But here they had been spray-painted and their features chipped off.

  In front of the entrance was a second door, warped by damp and age. There was no padlock or chain, and though closed it was not locked. The space behind was a narrower, darker version of the first chamber, and Caterina took out the flashlight and shone it around.

  The room was airless and lifeless, almost without insects. A few withered leaves on the ground made an unpleasant scratching noise as they moved in the slight breeze.

  “More graffiti, and an old blanket,” she said, shining the flashlight along the walls and concrete floor. “Cigarette butts and an old Rizla packet.”

  “This is mostly old-style graffiti,” said Blume. “Less spray-paint, more penknife cuts and indelible pens.”

  “The graffiti archaeologist,” said Caterina. “There’s an erect penis, there’s another, and, oh, look, there’s another.”

  “Pair of tits over there,” said Blume. “Not bad. Some soccer scores from bygone years. Liverpool 4 Roma 2. A gloating Lazio fan spent some time in here, in the early ’80s.”

  “This one Kossiga = Amerika comes from the seventies or eighties,” said Caterina. “ Juden Raus, now there’s an old favorite. Someone’s done a sweet little bunny rabbit face.”

  “I got a Smurf over here,” said Blume.

  “What sort of person penetrates a hidden room to deface a piece of baroque architecture with a picture of a rabbit or a Smurf?” said Caterina. “Someone’s done a picture of a dog fucking a cat. It’s pretty good, actually. So is this one. It’s a rifle sight and there’s the face of someone in the middle. Cossiga again, I think.”

  “I used to do that as a kid,” said Blume. “In fact, I still do. I draw circles around faces and add in the crosshairs.”

  “Lots of Celtic crosses and anarchist ‘A’ symbols,” said Caterina, waving her flashlight about, and looking up at the ceiling. “We can’t reach the top of the wall without something to stand on.”

  Blume was running his left hand along the walls, stopping now and then to rub his fingertips clean on his jacket.

  “Let’s start by looking in areas that are easy to reach,” he said. “Let’s start at eye level. Now this entire back wall is very slightly dusty, so there is some damp coming from the embankment behind. I wouldn’t put it there. But the wall between this chamber and the one in front is perfectly dry.”

  “It could be in the first chamber, too,” said Caterina.

  “It could,” said Blume. “But if I were hiding something, I’d choose this room where there is no chance of being seen from outside rather than the first room. If it was daytime, the sunlight reaches into the first room, so that would have been a risk, and if it was night, then he definitely would not want to be in the first room because any light he used would be very visible from outside. Also, I think we need to remember that at this point, he’s just concealing it in a safe place, not hiding it from anyone who is in here specifically looking for it. He wanted Angela to find it.”

  “The walls are smooth plaster. Could he have plastered over that well?”

  “Sure. He made his own frames, paints, ink, boards, paper, solvents, I’m sure he had a go at fresco painting. He’d be an excellent plasterer.”

  “That meant he had to carry a bag of plaster in here.”

  “Yes,” said Blume. “Maybe he left it in here the day before… what are you doing?”

  “This.” Caterina had taken the crowbar from the bag and slammed it against a crude image of an ejaculating penis.

  “Ouch,” said Blume as he saw the shock travel up her wrists and arms. “Try stabbing it at the wall instead.”

  Caterina did so, but only left pockmarks and scrapes.

  “We could try the battering ram,” said Blume.

  “Let me try your side first,” she said.

  Blume moved out of the way. “I was thinking,” he said, “that knocking a hole into a solid wall and then refilling it is a lot of work. You would choose a place that already had an alcove or shelf, then cover it over. So we should tap the wall and listen for where it might be hollow.”

  Caterina shone the flashlight at the wall against which Blume had been leaning. “There’s another of your telescopic sight things,” she said.

  “No,” said Blume. “That’s supposed to be the peace symbol.”

  “Right,” said Caterina. “Someone’s even put a peace dove next to it, and some wag has painted a rifle sight over it. All this clever irony going to waste in here.”

  But Blume did not reply. He took the flashlight from her. Then he turned it on the graffiti showing the dove caught in the crosshairs of the rifle sight.

  “Do you know what the Pamphili symbol is?” he said.

  “I would have said bees, but from the way you’re staring at that dove… If that’s what it is. A bird with backward wings like that could never fly.”

  “The Barberini family were the ones with the bees, the Pamphili are doves. But there is something you don’t know, because I never thought of mentioning it until now. The third of Treacy’s notebooks had a fore-edge drawing. You know, a picture drawn on the edges of the pages.”

  “I used to do that with school textbooks, while you were drawing sharpshooter sights and crosshairs,” said Caterina.

  “Right. Well, the image Treacy drew on the edge of the paper was a dove. It just seemed like a doodle, which is what it was. You would never have seen it because you only had a photocopy, and the Colonel, too, would never have seen it.”

  Caterina was standing beside him, crowbar in hand. “Shall I?” she said.

  “Go for it.”

  She jabbed the sharp point of the crowbar at the eye of the dove, and drove a hole straight through the plaster.

  Chapter 52

  Moving the crowbar back and forth she easily levered away pieces of plaster. The aperture she had opened was arched, more or less the same shape and size as the flap of a mailbox. The wall on either side was made of tufa and every time she hit it, crumbles of orange and yellow grit poured out at their feet, but she was not making much progress.

  “Try striking downwards,” said Blume.

  “Shut up. And keep the light steady.”

  She raked away at the wall with the gooseneck. The plaster and loose cement gave way easily, causing her to sneeze. Within a few minutes she had hollowed out a keyhole-shaped aperture in the wall.

  “It’s a narrow niche, a bit like the ones on the outside. There is probably one next to the other side of the door as well,” said Blume. “But this has to be the one we want.”

  Caterina hunkered down and clicked her fingers impatiently over her shoulder until Blume handed her the flashlight, which she shone into the narrow space. Then she stood up and made an attempt at dusting herself down.

  “It’s there,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “There is a package wrapped in yellow cellophane and some sort of masking tape.”

  “Can you reach it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why didn’t you pull it out?”

  “I thought you might want to do it,” said Caterina.

  “You do it,”
said Blume.

  He held the light as she put both hands in and pulled out the heavily wrapped package, small enough to fit under one arm.

  Caterina propped it against the wall and they stood there in the semi-darkness. She allowed herself to lean against his shoulder a little, and felt him lean back into her.

  “We can hardly see anything in here,” said Caterina.

  Without saying a word, Blume stooped down, picked up the package, and put it under his arm. “I am going to take this back to my house. I will wait for you. Go back to the station, sign in the squad car, collect your own, and come back out to my place,” he said. “But off duty.”

  She drove him back in perfect silence. He sat there clutching the package, looking straight ahead.

  “See you here in an hour,” was all he said as he got out of the car.

  She was back in thirty-five minutes. The package was intact, propped up against the slashed sofa cushions.

  Blume sat on the floor of his living room, box-cutter in hand.

  “It’s in a carrying box, from the feel of it.” He slashed the blue plastic, and started pulling away reams of bubble wrap, a silicon sheet, white cotton strips, and finally a backing board. Then he turned it around for her to see.

  “It’s brown,” was all that came to her. The small work, no bigger than a folded newspaper, seemed to consist of three shades: coffee, tea, and piss. Her disappointment was as enormous as the picture was small.

  But he was looking at it with reverence.

  “I know you don’t get it, yet, but wait… ” He left the room and returned so quickly with a large art book, that it must have already been ready and open in the next room. “Look. The woman to the left pushing back the red curtain and looking down at the spinning wheel. Now look at the painting. No curtain, no spinning wheel, no color, but look at that pose. It’s a study for the same thing. Look at the canvas, look at the line… I don’t know. I’m not an art expert but I believe this. I believe Treacy. This is genuine.”

  “You trust the word of a dead forger?” She did not want to deflate him, but nor did she want to get carried away on a wave of misguided belief.

  “I trust his story.”

  “Why?” asked Caterina.

  “Because he did not write to deceive. He painted to deceive, but even then he left the real lies to Nightingale. I believe he was earnest in his writings. They allowed us to find this.”

  “It is all that valuable?”

  “Oh God, yes, Caterina. Beyond reason. Once they prove that this is really by Velazquez, it will sell for-I don’t know. Tens of millions of euros easily. It will take a lot of time for it to be proved that this really is his. Especially since Treacy is the source. The notebooks will help. That means I might have to go back on my word to Kristin.”

  “Who’s Kristin?” said Caterina.

  “A woman at the American Embassy-I’ll tell you some other time.”

  “Tens of millions?” It did not seem right that a yellowing rectangle was worth lifetime after lifetime of work by her and her colleagues.

  “Yes,” said Blume. “Tens of millions. In a few years, perhaps, once it has been completely authenticated. But take this to the right people, make some promises, they’d spot you an advance of a few million. If you wanted, you could turn this into serious money in two days.”

  Caterina sat down. From this angle the picture looked black rather than brown. Blume’s eyes were bright, as if he had a fever. She moved her head and the work seemed to change color again. Now it reminded her of dried old glue on the broken spine of an old dictionary. Blume had sat down beside it and was cradling his arm over the frame, glancing at it sideways, shifting it to catch different light angles.

  She decided she did not like it.

  “What are we going to do with it?”

  “We could both become very rich,” said Blume.

  “Our ownership would be challenged. We’re public servants. This belongs to the state. For now.”

  “If you find something like this, you get to keep it,” said Blume. “That’s how it works. Use the money to buy lawyers, then more lawyers. Unmanageable wealth in a few years. You’re not into this, are you?”

  “No. The Colonel had me convinced for half a day that you could be bought, and then you proved him and me wrong, and I was ashamed,” she said. “But now… ”

  “You are afraid.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Do you not find it tempting?”

  “Yes. But it disgusts me and frightens me, too.”

  “Great art is for keeping the people down, you know,” said Blume. “That’s what it’s all about. We can’t help but think something is great if it fetches a great price, or if a lot of rich and educated people talk about it a lot. Treacy knew this, but I still think he really enjoyed this find. It’s a sketch for something that came later, became part of the canon. What’s exciting about this is the potential. The drawing in itself… Who knows how good it is?”

  “I don’t want to have anything to do with it,” said Caterina.

  “It’s the size of the sums involved, isn’t it?” said Blume. “Suppose you and I got, what, fifty million euros each. Think of all the Ikea furniture you bought, the making do with old things, slowly building up your collections of books, that nice carpet that was a big extravagance but you don’t regret. All those years and years on the lowest-paid police force in Europe suddenly blown away. It would retroactively mock all that effort. You could buy a lifetime’s possessions in a single afternoon, using less than one year’s interest on the principal. That’s what I don’t like about the idea of sudden massive wealth. It would invalidate all your earlier struggles, make your life up to now seem pointless.”

  Caterina felt her chest relax as he said this. She had not realized how tense she had been. Hearing him say these words was a huge relief, and she was still nodding in happy agreement with his reasoning, when he said, “But sudden affluence, now that is a different matter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean imagine getting enough money to buy a larger house, to send Elia to college abroad, go on vacations, have a home help, and not have to work as a policewoman any more. Not untold wealth, just a large amount of money that would make your life easy and would not humiliate your past efforts at making do or propel you into an alien social circle. That would be better, wouldn’t it?”

  “I suppose,” said Caterina, looking at the black object squatting on the sofa beside Blume. “But… ”

  “Wait. Who does this painting really belong to?” asked Blume.

  Ridiculous though it seemed, Caterina feared it was a trick question, and thought for some time before answering.

  “The Republic of Italy, I suppose. Or Angela. If it was Treacy’s to begin with, then he definitely gave it to her,” said Caterina.

  “Exactly. So the beneficiary is Angela and, by extension, Emma. She’ll inherit the wealth afterwards. The daughter who pushed her father dead on the ground,” said Blume. “Maybe, after a fifteen-year legal battle, they will show their gratitude. Even if they gave you half a percent of the probable value of this, you could probably quit the force.”

  “What about you?”

  “I don’t want to quit the force. I would not know what to do with myself or where to go.”

  “Neither do I,” said Caterina.

  “Think about it. Think about your son. You’re on your own. It’s a dangerous job, poorly paid, bad hours, and you carry the violence you see every day inside you. Maybe someday the violence will hit you and your son will be left to fend for himself. Richer people live longer. Don’t just say no to the idea. Think about it.”

  “While I think about it, what happens?”

  “I think I’ll carry out my plan anyhow, give this back to its rightful owner. Then if she offers you a reward, as I think she will, you can decide then.”

  “But you’re not taking anything?”

  “I don’t need to. I’ve no o
ne depending on me. I’ve no children, relations, or debts.”

  “Always on your own.”

  “Yes,” said Blume.

  Caterina went over to the sofa, removed the painting from beside him, and sat down in its place.

  Chapter 53

  She pulled the sheet over her shoulders, shivered a little, and said, “It will never get published, will it?”

  Blume pushed the sheet off himself and contemplated light burn marks on his forearm. “I doubt it. He never got to finish it. And Treacy doesn’t get to live happily ever after, does he?”

  “You mean he is not eternal like you are?” said Caterina. She reached out and yanked his ear. “Up close like this, I can see your wrinkles, and did you know you’re going gray at the sides?”

  “Silver hair, not gray,” said Blume. “He got killed by his own daughter. I hope to do better than that.”

  “Maybe you should beget yourself a daughter first before you jump to optimistic conclusions. I think it’s sad that no one will read Treacy. I didn’t even get to read it in the end. Just the beginning bit with you, and then I went ahead on my own for a while before I had to give up. How does it end?”

  “With the narrator lying dead on a cold Trastevere street and an Inspector called Mattiola feeling the base of his skull for evidence of a countercoup blow,” said Blume.

  Caterina shook her head. “That’s not nice. How does it end, really?”

  “I can’t remember exactly,” said Blume. “He was not always chronological; some of it is cryptic, sometimes impenetrable. And we do know the ending. We know it better than he does.”