“They killed our colleague. We were going to teach them a lesson.”
“No, Beppe. You were going to kill them. Off duty, at night, with untraceable weapons. Alleva knew too much. You tipped him off, but more than that, you were on his payroll, and I’m pretty sure now there was other stuff. How much was he paying you?”
“Not just me. Everyone. People like that pay off everyone. I was not acting just to save myself. And they killed a cop. Most of what I got from him I recycled to pay for more information. It’s how it works.”
“You will have plenty of time to explain all that. Maybe Alleva himself will do the explaining for you if this address turns out to be accurate, and if he’s still there.”
“You’re sending me to pick him up now? That doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re not going there alone, Beppe,” said Blume.
“I get it. You’re coming with me.”
“Not me. A small team of officers is being picked right now.”
Paoloni’s face was still a strange mixture of yellows from the bruising.
He looked battered, defeated. “Who’s doing the picking?” he said.
“The Holy Ghost himself. By the way, I said you got the tip-off. I prefer it that way. I don’t think you’re in a position to challenge me.”
“You want me to accompany Gallone to Alleva’s hideout?”
“Gallone and his team. I think he’s called in the press and the forensics, in that order. It should be quite a scampagnata.”
Gallone appeared at the doorway. He was in full uniform and smelled of aftershave.
“Questore, sir,” said Blume. “Chief Inspector Paoloni is ready as soon as you are.”
“I have been ready from the moment I received your phone call,” said Gallone. “I have already settled jurisdiction complications with the local prefect and questura in Civitavecchia. But I need to know where this information comes from.”
“Paoloni can explain all that on route,” said Blume. “As for me, I’ve got to get back to the case you assigned me.”
Paoloni shot Blume a questioning look and Blume understood his dilemma. He needed to know if he had any leeway left, if he could try to spin more lies, find his way out of the trap. Blume could have simply informed on him, or ordered him to confess, but he did not want to use evidence from Innocenzi against a colleague, no matter how rotten. And he sort of knew about Paoloni anyhow, if only he had admitted it to himself. So Blume returned his glance with a blank stare. He had not decided yet what he wanted to happen to his second-in-command.
After they left, Blume went to pick up his desk phone and call in for the files on the road rage incident when he noticed that the voice mail light was flashing. He picked up, keyed in the voice mail number and listened to the message. A voice belonging to an unknown youth told him to call Chief Technical Director Dottor Alessandro Cantore at the crime labs on the Via Tuscolana. Blume noted down the number, called and waited patiently as his call was answered and he was passed from one person to the next.
He had seen how the scientific unit handled their calls. A few cordless phones lay around on the Formica tabletops, and whenever a call came through, whoever was not busy and happened to have a cordless lying near at hand would pick it up and then wander around the lab looking for the right person.
After five infuriating minutes, someone handed the chief technical director the phone.
“Yes?” The important dottore made no attempt to hide his annoyance at being interrupted.
“Blume,” said Blume matching the unfriendly peremptory tone.
“No, wrong number,” declared Cantore, and hung up.
Blume replaced the receiver with exaggerated care. He placed his left palm flat on the table, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply.
Blume was beginning to calm down when his phone rang.
“Yes?”
The same youthful voice explained that Chief Technical Director Cantore had just remembered that Blume was returning a call. He wanted to know if they could meet in half an hour. Blume said they could not, since it would take him at least forty minutes to get to the labs. He was not going to put a flashing light on his car and drive fast with one functioning arm, and he was not sure he wanted to request a patrol car. If this was about Clemente, he preferred not to draw attention to himself. The youth sounded worried, went away, came back and asked if Blume could meet Cantore in an hour.
“Talking on the phone is beneath the great man, eh? Is this helpful to the Clemente or the Enrico Brocca case?”
The youth did not understand.
“Get him on the line.”
The phone went thunk as it was put down on a table again. Eventually the voice was back to tell him that Cantore did not want to talk on the phone, because it was a confidential matter.
What the hell. He had promised Giulia he would find her father’s killer.
This was part of the price to be paid.
37
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 7:30 P.M.
ALESSANDRO CANTORE WAS in the farthest, most inaccessible, and darkest part of the lab, as if he was trying to avoid Blume. He was powerfully built, his bulk exaggerated by his proximity to a very young and wispy girl who was looking into a microscope. Heavy hands clasped behind his back, he was slightly bent over her and seemed to be peering into the waves of her thin hair with the same intensity of interest with which she was gazing at whatever was wriggling under the lens. He straightened up slightly as Blume entered. Although Cantore’s big face and square spectacles, which resembled a pair of old TV sets, were fixed on him, Blume was not entirely sure that he had been noticed. The Scientifics all had a haunted white and slightly absent look as they stared intently at their samples of blood, dust, semen, skin, hair, soil, spit, and poison.
Blume leaned against a table scattered with chemicals, litmus paper, and a Gordian knot of electric wires leading to various blue and infrared lights, and waited to be acknowledged.
The director had a booming Venetian accent. “Are you Bellun?”
“Blume,” he corrected in a neutral tone. They had met three times before.
“Ah, that’s right.” Cantore tottered on the edge of an apology, but held back. “Come into my office, we can’t talk here.” He nodded significantly at the slip of a child looking down the microscope. She did not seem to have heard a word. She had not, in fact, moved at all.
Cantore barged past Blume and led the way through the middle lab, ignoring the startled looks of two whey-faced interns sloshing a liquid around in a reagent tray.
“In here,” he instructed, pointing at a pale green door that looked like a utility cupboard. He opened the door with his shoulder.
Blume followed, expecting to find himself in a claustrophobic hole. In-stead, the office was roomy. It had space for two bookshelves, and Cantore’s desk was the size and shape of a ping-pong table. It was piled with papers and books, and someone, presumably Cantore himself, had been using plastic petri dishes for ashtrays.
Blume sat down on a chair so low that his eyes were just level with the surface of Cantore’s overflowing desk. Cantore busied himself stacking the piles of paper, cups, and ashtrays into even higher mountains. With a final grunt of satisfaction, he positioned himself carefully in the center of the frame, sat, and glowered down his paper canyon at Blume.
“Clemente case,” said Cantore. “I hear you’re off it. Pity. I was looking forward to more dog hairs.”
“That’s what must be so good about your job, Professor,” said Blume.
“A dog hair this week, who knows what trea sures next week will bring.”
Cantore clapped his hands twice, either celebrating Blume’s sarcasm or marking the end to the opening formalities. “I think I remember you now. Awkward foreign bastard,” he said.
“I’m investigating a new case,” said Blume.
“There was tons of evidence!” shouted Cantore. “Not in your new case. I’m talking about the Clemente case. Positively tons
of it. Either the killer was an idiot . . .”
Blume waited. “Or?” he said eventually.
“Or nothing. The killer was just an idiot,” said Cantore, and burst out laughing. “So what we have here”—Cantore thumped at the desk as if indicating a photograph, but Blume couldn’t see anything—“is a bar of soap with a great big perfect thumbprint, three fingerprints. The same prints were found on the body, on the wall, on the bathroom mirror, in the wardrobe, on the front door, on a box of shopping, everywhere we looked.”
“And they belong to Clemente’s killer?”
“Not all the victim’s friends were cooperative in giving their prints, and we’ve still got some unaccounted for, but, yes, let’s say they belong to the killer.”
“But you got no result from the AFIS database,” said Blume.
“I sent them to Guendalina—you know Guendalina?”
“No.”
“Nice girl, Guendalina. She manages the AFIS database. Always helpful. Lovely woman. Really very . . .” Cantore lowered his voice so suddenly that Blume missed the rest. Then, returning to full volume, he continued:
“So anyway, I told Wendy—that is to say, Guendalina—what the case was, and she told me she had heard it was very important, and was being much talked about up there in the corridors of corruption.”
“And?” prompted Blume.
“She got nothing. But you know this.”
Blume asked, “Why did you call me?”
Cantore hoisted two plastic bags above his head with an air of triumph. One contained a torn pink booklet that Blume recognized as an old-fashioned driver’s license, the other a green and red credit card. “Enrico Brocca’s driver’s license.” He glanced up at his other hand. “And his credit card,” he added. “Your new case.”
Blume looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“We got prints on them,” explained Cantore.
“You’re only getting around to that now?”
“No, we got these print ages ago. Level two friction ridge identification, but the print on the license is excellent.”
“Great,” said Blume. “And you ran them through the AFIS database?”
“Yes. But we got no match,” said Cantore, settling back in his chair, and disappearing for a moment behind the papers.
Blume leaned forward to bring him back into view. He did not understand what Cantore was saying. He asked, “No match? I already knew there was no match on the AFIS. If there had been, we’d have arrested someone by now.”
“Well, if it interests you, the no-match will become a definite match when the AFIS database is updated.” Cantore smiled revealing a row of square teeth the color of tea.
“I’m not following you anymore,” said Blume.
He heard a click, a shuffle sound behind him, and turned around to see Principe entering the room.
“The prints from the Brocca murder scene go into the database, obviously, though we can’t associate them with a name,” continued Cantore. “Filippo, I’ll get someone to bring you a chair.”
“It’s all right Alessandro, I can stand,” said Principe from behind Blume. “I see you’ve almost finished explaining it to him.”
“I have finished,” said Cantore.
“No you haven’t,” said Blume. “The no-match on the driver’s license . . .”
“And on the credit card,” chimed in Cantore.
“And on the credit card,” said Blume. “They are no-matches. What the hell good is that?”
“I didn’t say they were a no-match,” boomed Cantore. “What would I call you all the way down here to say that for? What I said was they don’t match on the AFIS, because the AFIS has not been updated to include them.”
Principe stepped from behind Blume until he was on his left side.
Blume stared down the desk at Cantore, who had stopped speaking and was looking at Principe with a “you-explain-it-to-him” sort of look.
Principe explained: “What he means, Alec, is that there will be a match as soon as the AFIS database has been updated with the fingerprints from the Clemente crime scene. The reason is that the unidentified fingerprints from Clemente’s house and the unidentified fingerprints on Enrico Brocca’s credit card and license are one and the same. The same person did both killings.”
Blume eased himself around to face Principe. “You knew this?”
“The connection between the two cases, yes. Now you have to use it.”
Cantore bellowed some clarification from behind the desk, “It depends on which time frame you choose to use, Inspector Bellun. It is self-evident that Public Minister Principe and I knew of the connection before you. But we have not known about it for long.”
“Alessandro, it’s Commissioner, not Inspector, and Blume with an M. Let’s use first names and ‘tu’ here.”
“If you say so,” said Cantore.
“Dottor Cantore informed me of the match two nights ago,” Principe told Blume. “I got the road rage case assigned to me, then put you on it. I could not be explicit over the phone.”
Cantore suddenly heaved himself out of his chair. “I am not interested in hearing these details,” he said. “I just thought you should know about the fingerprint match.”
Principe said, “I appreciate it. Do you mind not mentioning it to anyone for a day or two?”
“Why would I mention it ever again?” said Cantore. “In fact, I don’t even see why I should be here. I have too much to do as it is. You’re welcome to use the office, though.”
Cantore passed Principe and gave him a friendly thump on the back, then stood before Blume, a massive form filling his entire field of vision. An enormous doughy white hand emerged from the bulk. “Commissioner Bellum . . .”
They shook hands and he left.
As soon as Cantore had slammed the door, Principe said, “I was not able to be forthcoming on the phone. There were people in my office.” He gave Blume an appraising look.
“I thought I detected something in your tone,” said Blume.
“That was for appearances.”
“I understand that now . . . It’s a busy place, the Prosecutor’s Office, especially in Rome. Where were you before you got transferred here? Foggia?”
“Foggia, that’s right,” said Principe. He took a sheaf of papers from his inside pocket, and prepared to read.
“Any interesting cases when you were there?” asked Blume.
Principe lowered the papers in his hand, peered over the top of his glasses at Blume, and said, “Alec, it sounds to me like you’re trying to say something.”
“I was talking to Innocenzi earlier today,” said Blume, watching Principe’s face closely.
“You got to talk to him?” Principe looked surprised. Then Blume saw his mouth open in a tiny o of recognition, and then form a pained smile. “The murder of Innocenzi’s wife. That’s what this is about.”
“Yes, that.”
“Innocenzi works like that, Alec. Divide and rule, sow seeds of distrust, know more than everyone else or pretend you do.”
“I know, he explained it to me. He calls it kompromat.”
“What does that mean?” asked Principe.
“It means he’s got something on you.”
“He’s got nothing on me,” said Principe. “There was no evidence against Innocenzi at the time. Many people thought he had arranged the murder of his wife, but there was nothing to prove it.”
“What did she do? Betray him?”
“I don’t know, Alec. Maybe she did nothing. Motivation was one of many things missing.”
“People kill with little motivation.”
“Sure,” said Principe. “I know that. But there was no evidence, no clear motive, just suspicion. The case would never have stood up in court. And if it had, then it would have required a hell of a lot of fabrication on our part. That’s what the chief prosecutor wanted. I didn’t.”
“You managed to persuade him.”
“It wasn’t that hard. The ma
gistrate in charge was old, ignorant, corrupt. The case was never going anywhere. It was easy to terminate his line of investigation. A lot of people were happy to see me force a change of direction.”
“And you were happy to do as they asked?”
“Sometimes the wrong people want the right thing for the wrong reasons. This was one of those cases.” Principe looked directly down at Blume.
“You have known me for eleven years. It took—what? Half an hour in Innocenzi’s company to undermine that? Decide what you think, then tell me.”
Blume remained silent for a full twenty seconds. Principe settled back on the desk and waited.
Finally, Blume said, “Sorry. I should have thought it through.”
Principe nodded, apparently satisfied.
But Blume could not quite tell what he really felt. He was angry with himself. If he had stopped Pernazzo, stayed on him instead of keeping his date with Kristin, the child’s father might be alive. Bad enough though it was, he kept this thought in the foreground, because underneath was an even worse one, which was that he had somehow goaded Pernazzo into murder. He had called him a loser, a failure, and so Pernazzo had gone out to kill, while Blume was trying to make Kristin feel sorry for him with talk of his parents.
“Pernazzo’s got an alibi that I don’t think is real,” said Blume, and told Principe about his conversation with Rosati.
Principe unfolded the sheets of paper he had taken from his pocket and began to read. “I hate it when there’s computer stuff involved. It’s all above my head. But the main point is we now have another way into the Clemente case through the unfortunate Enrico Brocca. Or you do. But we may have to use the child as a main witnesses.”
“It wasn’t road rage, it was part of a game,” said Blume.
“A psychopathic game, you mean?”
THE DOGS of ROME Page 30