The Fatal Touch

by Conor Fitzgerald

  “So,” said Blume. “How was Pistoia?”

  “Great. The locals even sent a car to pick me up at the train station.”

  “That was a courteous touch,” said Blume. “Well, enlighten me.”

  “I found Manuela’s artist mother.”

  “Where?”

  “Working unhappily and inartistically in a bank, Cassa Di Risparmio Di San Miniato SpA, to be precise.”

  “Exactly as her daughter told us yesterday in the gallery.”

  “Her daughter told us a pack of lies, but like any good liar, she based it on the truth,” said Caterina with evident relish. She sat down in the armchair. “I had the local police take me to the bank, and the guard let me straight in. I had to wait for the manager in his office. He arrived at nine. I asked him if there was anyone called Chiara Angelini who worked in the bank. That’s the name Manuela gave us. Chiara Angelini. He said no.”

  She paused for effect, so to humor her, Blume said, “Wrong bank?”

  “No. Right bank, wrong name.”

  She paused again to let this sink in.

  “Look, just get on with it,” said Blume.

  Caterina took her time in producing her notebook, and then appeared to have difficulty in finding the right spot. Blume swallowed a sigh, which made his ears pop. Finally, when she judged she had made him wait long enough, she continued:

  “The bank manager said he was sure there was no one by that name, and since there were only twenty members of staff and he had been working there for ten years . . . So I asked him to pass round a quiet word that I had come up from Rome as part of an investigation, details of which I could not divulge, but that a girl called Manuela Ludovisi was in serious trouble. He went out and whispered this to the three members of staff there, and five minutes later, Manuela’s distraught mother, who is not called Chiara Angelini but rather Angela Solazzi, was sitting in front of me in the manager’s office, begging me for information and reassurance.”

  “So Manuela Ludovisi’s mother is called Angela Solazzi,” said Blume. “Angelini—Angela. Always good to keep a pseudonym close to the original. I suppose this means Manuela Ludovisi is not really called Manuela Ludovisi, and you were right all along?”

  “Yes, I was right. The girl’s real name is Emma.”

  “Emma . . . Manuela, another close match. Emma what?”

  “Emma Solazzi. She kept her mother’s name after all. But the part about her father being gone seems to be true.”

  “Solazzi and Ludovisi aren’t particularly similar.”

  “True,” said Caterina. “Not that it matters any more given what I found out this morning. I was right about the accent. Angela Solazzi and her daughter Emma moved to Pistoia just a few years ago. Before that, she and Emma, who you still think of as Manuela, lived in a villa near Nettuno. Oh, and the mother says her daughter hates Pistoia, and wanted to move back to near Rome as soon as she could.”

  “Why all these pointless lies?”

  “That’s what I wanted to know,” said Caterina. “We left the bank—that was her idea and the manager was so relieved to see me go he didn’t seem to mind—and went to a park bench, but she began to clam up and become unhelpful. I had to apply pressure.”

  “What sort of pressure?”

  “It’s not something I feel good about. In fact, I still feel a bit sick. I scared her about her daughter, as if something bad had happened. She kept asking me for reassurance, and I wouldn’t give her anything until I was sure she had told me as much as she could.”

  “That’s a perfectly good strategic ploy,” said Blume. “It’s legal, too.”

  “It wasn’t moral. And I was using the image of Elia in my own mind to make it more real, so she could see anxiety in me, too. I should have found a better way. But I was in danger of missing the train back, and I needed to work quickly.”

  “Deadlines make creative geniuses of us all,” said Blume.

  “She knew Emma had taken up a false identity in Rome for the purposes of getting a job in a gallery. So then I asked her why her daughter would do that, and she wouldn’t say. I asked if Emma has a criminal record of some sort, and she got all indignant and righteous, so I told her Emma was about to get a criminal record for giving false testimony to a public official, for possession of false documents, pursuant to Articles 476–80 of the criminal code and all that stuff, which kept her worrying. Then she tells me she was against the idea from the start, because it was always going to lead to trouble. At this point, she suggested we have a drink, though it was not even ten in the morning.”

  “Sounds like she was nervous,” said Blume.

  “I think it would not be the first time she had had a morning drink. She must have been very good-looking once, like her daughter, and she’s still good-looking now, but slightly bloated, and her eyes have the watery-lazy look that you see in drinkers. We had cappuccinos instead. All she would say was that Emma needed a different identity to work at the gallery. It was never meant to fool public officials, or even the tax authorities, or so she said, and that was more or less it. Except I did miss the train.”

  Blume looked at his phone clock. “You got back quickly enough.”

  “The Pistoia police drove me all the way to Florence, saw me on board the Eurostar. They were great.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said Blume. “I’m not sure what it tells us, but it’s interesting. Your instinct was right. I apologize for almost getting in your way.”

  “But I haven’t told you the best bit, yet.”

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” said Blume, and she really was. He had never seen her so happy, seen a smile light up her features quite like this.

  “I was leaving some coins on the table to pay for my share of the coffees,” said Caterina, “and Angela was sort of looking into the middle distance when I had an illumination, or an insight or whatever you want to call it.”

  “When I hear what it is, I’ll decide what to call it,” said Blume.

  “I said, off the cuff, that we knew John Nightingale was Emma’s father. She went deathly pale. Then she asked how I knew.”

  Caterina stretched out her legs and leaned back, plainly enjoying both the memory and Blume’s expression of surprise.

  “That was a damned good question,” said Blume. “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. But the reason I guessed is from another thing that I think will interest you. On the train up, I was leafing through the photocopy of Treacy’s notes looking for a mention of Nightingale and the Colonel together, and I found one. And it makes sense that both Nightingale and the Colonel would be anxious to stop Treacy from publishing, if only for this part of his writings.”

  “You read this bit on the train?” said Blume.

  “Yes.”

  “I have read through the notebooks twice,” said Blume. “What’s the passage you are referring to?”

  “Basically, it’s where Nightingale and the Colonel sold forged paintings to a Cosa Nostra boss in Trapani,” she said.

  “That’s toward the beginning of the second volume,” he said. “Do you have the photocopy with you now?”

  “Yes.” Caterina bounced out of her chair and came back a minute later holding the photocopies.

  Blume glared at her. “Where were they?”

  Caterina’s step faltered. “In my desk. Locked.”

  “You brought them here?”

  She nodded.

  “And you just said you had them on the train, too. What if you had forgotten them there? What if Panebianco or Rospo or someone had found them in your desk?”

  “They were locked in a drawer.”

  “Fuck it. That’s not good enough, Caterina. I asked you to be extra careful.”

  “So where are the originals, Commissioner?”

  “In a safe place,” said Blume.

  “Here?”

  Blume hesitated.

  “Or maybe somewhere in your apartment? So which one of us is physically guarding the
m. Actively looking after the documents? You or me?”

  “Sorry,” said Blume. “It’s more the idea of them being on your desk out there than anything else.”

  “In my desk, not on it. There’s a difference.” Caterina sat down again, her face creased. She seemed ten years older than a minute ago. “You could have said thank you for what I achieved this morning. Maybe not thank you, even though you and I both know this is now your private little investigation. How about a ‘Well done, Caterina,’ something along those lines?”

  Blume held up his hands in an exaggerated gesture of surrender. “Sometimes I’m not so good with people. It’s something I can’t seem to do much about.”

  “Then you’re not a good commander.”

  In the silence that followed, the loudest noise was the sound of the scratch of Blume’s pen as he amended something on his notepad. Caterina sat mutely listening to the heavy slowness of Blume’s breath, punctuated by a strange sound that seemed to come from far away but, she realized, was coming from him. He was humming broken bars of some song very softly and intermittently to himself, apparently without being aware of what he was doing. She realized she could look up, since he was bent down, attending to his work. Her photocopy sat unopened on his table.

  After a while, she said, “Do you at least want me to show you the piece I am referring to?”

  “Well, just to be sure.”

  She opened the section, which she had marked with a Post-it note.

  “The Trapani deal with the Colonel. What made you associate this with Nightingale’s being Manuela’s father?”

  “Emma, not Manuela,” corrected Caterina. “The girl’s real name is Emma.”

  “Right.”

  “My own fears.”

  “Of ?”

  “That some criminal event will break into my private life. I often wonder what I would do. And I was also thinking of Emma’s generous pay, the apartment, her confident manner. I’d like to see Nightingale.”

  “I forgot, you didn’t meet him the other day.”

  “No. In fact, I wanted to ask you what he looks like and the color of his eyes.”

  “Bald. Gray . . . pink. I have no idea. Who notices these things?”

  “Emma has blue eyes, fair skin, fair hair,” said Caterina. “She looks more northern European than Italian, really. Her mother, Angela, has dark hair, graying now, dark-brown hair, huge brown eyes, and sallow skin. They don’t look alike at all. But it’s not just that. If Nightingale really did feel under threat from Cosa Nostra, it makes sense for him to hide his daughter’s identity. It’s what I would do if I knew how. Nightingale does know how. He invents histories. So when I got confirmation that Emma’s history was partly made-up, it made me think of him. He creates provenances for works of art. Emma is his work of art. Fear of proxy reprisal seemed an excellent reason for hiding her identity.”

  “If he was anxious to hide her identity, it doesn’t make sense to have her working with him,” said Blume. “That puts her right back in danger.”

  “I know. I thought about that later. But it keeps her close, too.”

  “So we have Nightingale, Angela, and their daughter Emma,” Blume traced an imaginary triangle on his desk. “Mother, father, daughter. You know, more than anything else, it looks to me like some sort of plot to exclude Treacy. So Nightingale did not like or trust Treacy enough to reveal the existence of his daughter.”

  “Which raises an interesting possibility,” said Caterina. “By inviting his daughter to work in the Galleria Orpiment, Nightingale was making a fool of his partner. Or imagine a very pretty woman arrives in the gallery, maybe Treacy thinks he can make a move on her, ignore the gulf of years. She tells her father, or maybe Nightingale sees it happening, gets very angry, confronts his partner, they argue, or he hires someone, or he just comes up behind him at night, flattens him with an iron bar.”

  “It was an inspired deduction,” said Blume.

  “A lucky guess. If I had thought about it more, I might have discounted it again.”

  “It makes Treacy a bit of a bastard for putting them in danger by writing about how they defrauded the Mafia.”

  “I agree,” said Caterina. “I don’t think I’d have liked Treacy all that much.”

  Chapter 19

  I am not a thief. It is not part of my identity. I made that choice the day I returned the Jack Yeats to Mrs. Heath. But like any sensible person, I will cave in to pressure.

  Nightingale made a couple of stupid moves with some big dealers, and we suddenly found ourselves in trouble with Lieutenant Farinelli who, for the first time, had some real leverage in the form of witnesses and proof of false provenance. Farinelli had contacts up and down the hierarchies of crime, politics, and even the military, which in those days hovered over everything in Italy like a thin mist, best visible from a distance, hard to notice, but still limiting when you were in the middle of it. Farinelli was there in 1969 when the Carabinieri formed the “Unit for the Protection of Artistic Heritage,” and was an officer in 1971 when the unit became a fully independent division. Independent as in Farinelli’s fiefdom, until, in one of those obscure maneuvers that no one, not even the participants, ever properly understands, a challenge was mounted to his authority. The challenge came from outside, in 1983, when a series of de Chirico works were stolen from the home of Angelica Savinio, the artist’s niece, a person I am proud to call my friend.

  Giorgio de Chirico, as it happens, had been something of a hero of mine. Not only did he share my belief that the only true art is an imitation of past art, he even liked to put false dates on his works. Sometimes he signed paintings that imitated his style. He forged himself. He encouraged me, was kind to me, and was a man of great integrity.

  When the Carabinieri unit arrived to investigate the theft, Farinelli made his usual recommendation, which was to keep the whole thing as quiet as possible. Angelica Savinio was told that the best way to get her paintings back was simply to wait. Then, with any luck, when the thieves made a false move or tried to sell the paintings, Farinelli and his team would pounce.

  Then he told her that a lot of stolen art was recovered by means of negotiation. It was a sort of plea-bargaining system, he explained. The system was to catch one of the dealers trying to fence a stolen work, find out from him about other works, and if he cooperated, not press charges. Maybe he would even be allowed to pass on some small stuff in exchange for the Carabinieri getting the big items. Angelica told me the more Farinelli spoke, the more it seemed her uncle’s works were being held to ransom. To get back what was hers, Farinelli seemed to be demanding a kickback.

  So she agreed to all he said, then went and did the exact opposite. She went straight to the press. She told everyone. Every newspaper, every TV station. She even called in the foreign press. Her husband spoke English and talked to the British and American newspapers. She kept this publicity campaign going and going, reasoning that de Chirico was so famous that his paintings would be unsalable once word was out that they had been stolen. And she was right. They never got to the market.

  This act of defiance was a catalyst, or a signal of something, for Farinelli’s power finally began to ebb. First, he got a sideways transfer to headquarters in Piazza Sant’Ignazio, removing him from direct access to some of the recovered works of art and reducing his interaction with the criminal underground. He did not lose much power, and it was only the beginning of the end. But he recognized it as such, and it was in the middle of Savinio’s press campaign that he visited me.

  Having arm-twisted some pusillanimous magistrate into accusing me of being involved in art theft, he arrived with a warrant to search my home, which he did with more brutality than efficiency, ripping my signed works from the walls, overturning furniture, emptying drawers without even looking at the contents, opening my food press, and sweeping his arm across the bottles, sending them all crashing to the floor. I am pleased to say I remained impassive throughout. Then he started destroying the tool
s of my trade and I began to lose equanimity. Finally, he took out a paring knife to slash the work on my easel, something on which I had been working for a considerable time, and of which I was not only proud, but extremely fond. The work in question was a restoration of a religious painting by Bassano which had been stolen decades ago and then cut up into smaller pieces, each of which had been sold separately to crooked dealers. With Nightingale’s approval and assistance, I had acquired three, perfectly legally, and was completing the missing fourth. The deal was that we would either sell the newly united and completed work (we had not decided whether the missing piece was to be attributed to me or not) or, once I had finished my project, the work would be redivided and sold onwards at a profit.

  So when I saw this overweight, swaggering bully approach my work with a knife, I hurled myself upon him. It was all planned of course, and I was soon hauled off and kicked half senseless by three of his men, but not before I managed to land two very rapid punches to his pudgy face, one of which had produced a satisfying crack from his nose. Evidently he had underestimated my speed.

  I spent four weeks in Rebibbia, the scariest four weeks of my life. I was charged with resisting arrest, outrage against a public official, and some other minor charges. I sat there waiting for the charges of forgery, fraud, deception, illegal export, and so forth to be brought, and was expecting to be brought face-to-face with Nightingale any moment. Instead, to my amazement, the PM then charged me with possession of illegal substances and dangerous chemicals with the intent to cause injury. I was remanded again on charges relating to bomb-making and terrorism. Looked at in a certain way, said Farinelli, the kerosene, petrol, oils, chemicals, boilers, gas canisters, bleaches, the bottles of nitrocellulose, white spirit, and the plant fertilizers outside, the tins, pots, and cans in my house—they all pointed to one conclusion only. “It’s a miracle that cottage of yours has not self-combusted,” said Farinelli. I fully expected to go back to Rebibbia. At least if I declared myself a political prisoner, I might gain some respect and protection.

  Instead I was led out into a small room with compensato on the walls. A room from which not much noise could escape. My hands were handcuffed behind a chair and Farinelli came in. I looked in vain for a sign of the black eye or bent nose from my fists, but his face showed no sign of injury. He took out the same sharp little peeling knife with which he had attacked my painting, watching me all the time, smiling. Then he dug his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a peach. He skinned it, then cut off a slim disk, and popped it in his mouth.