THE DOGS of ROME

by Conor Fitzgerald

  “We all get found out in the end.”

  Pernazzo found himself in the corridor, the earless old man behind him. He moved down the staircase as if it were an escalator. At the bottom of the steps stood a youth in a white tracksuit, who looked hardly older than a child. He had a bum-fluff moustache, a hairless chest, and doe-like eyes. He was also holding a pistol and pointing it casually at Pernazzo’s heart. It was an elegant model, like Massoni’s.

  The kid seemed nice enough. Pernazzo looked slowly to his right. The raw-faced woman had sat down, her big feet pointed in his direction. She was twisting something in her hands and staring at him with her small blue eyes, never taking them off him, all the time working the gum in her jaw. The old man’s phone rang, he pressed it to his mutilated ear, murmured something about five minutes, put it away.

  “Move,” commanded the boy. They left by the front door, and the boy suddenly gave him a hard shove, as if the house had kept him polite and he was only now coming into his element. Pernazzo slipped on the grass, went sprawling forward, and considered breaking into a sprint, but the boy was just behind him with his long-barreled pistol. Pernazzo saw two four-by-four vehicles parked in front of the gate. How had he not heard? They circled the house, and he was in the back garden again. There was the broken window, the shining glass shards.

  As they approached the thicket at the end of the garden, he tensed, ready to make a break for it, but though the top of his body felt light and ready to burst into flight, the lower part seemed to be wading through water. The youth whispered “Stop,” and his voice was so close that Pernazzo felt the hairs in his ears tingle.

  Pernazzo walked on a few paces, wondering whether his mother could see him now.

  “I said ‘stop.’ ” There was no annoyance in the soft voice.

  Using the energy surging through the upper part of his body, Pernazzo bent down and grabbed a broken elm branch, but it was as light as cork. He spun around, stick in hand, but the kid was five paces behind and out of reach. He didn’t even seem to have noticed Pernazzo’s weapon.

  “Wait a minute!” said Pernazzo. He raised the rotten stick above his head. “This is too light. I need . . .”

  “What?”

  But Pernazzo could not think of anything to say.

  The kid shot him through the right elbow. When he heard the crack, Pernazzo thought the wood had exploded over his head. And, then, suddenly, the pain was so bad he wanted to tear off his right arm with his left.

  The next bullet buried itself in his kneecap and did not come out. As he went down, he felt vomit rise from his throat, and when he hit the ground he sucked it all back in again and couldn’t breathe. He wriggled over onto his side and dislodged enough to be able to gasp for air. Something infinitely strong and merciless grabbed his shattered arm and pulled, causing the agony to move from his elbow to his entire body. Far above him stood the darkened face of the young man and above him a blue sky with clouds like faint chalk marks.

  Pernazzo had not planned for the pain. It left him no chance of clarity. Most of all, it was not fair. He had no chance, lying there. A distant idea was beginning to form in his mind, somewhere behind the pain. He would need some time to work it through. Time to recover. It had something to do with change. He was sure it was going to be a beautiful idea.

  “Wait,” said Pernazzo, “I think I may . . .”

  The young man in the white tracksuit shot Pernazzo twice in the forehead, putting an immediate end to the thrashing movements. He used his foot to push the scrawny corpse over and, never one to take a gamble, delivered two more shots to the back of the head.

  55

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 11 A.M.

  WHAT ABOUT THE dogs?”

  The speaker was Sveva Romagnolo, and Blume couldn’t believe her question. He had just finished describing the discovery of Pernazzo’s body at Di Tivoli’s country villa in Amatrice, and this was her idea of a suitable response.

  “The dogs?” He took the phone way from his ear and looked at it as if it were responsible for the ludicrous question. His main concern now was what to do about Paoloni. He could not come to a decision.

  “I know it may sound like a strange question after all you have been telling me, Commissioner, but you see, I’ve already heard all about what happened to Pernazzo. Your boss Gallone was very pleased to be able to give me every detail, along with assurances that he would handle the media. I don’t want to hear any more. Not for now. And it’s the very first thing Arturo would have asked. So now I’m asking for him.”

  “Ferrucci said he would look after that,” said Blume. “But after he got . . . well . . . it got forgotten.” What ever he did, he would not report Paoloni to the authorities. Paoloni could do that himself.

  “You know where the creatures were kept imprisoned, don’t you? The details were in Arturo’s files.”

  “Somewhere near Ponte Galleria, I think,” said Blume. He had been working with Paoloni for seven years. Until now, the differences of style had not mattered.

  “And no one has gone to rescue them yet? In all this time, no one thought to rescue the dogs? That’s . . . It’s unspeakable.”

  Blume brought his mind back to the surreal conversation he appeared to be engaged in. “Ferrucci wanted to do something, I remember. The dogs will be dead by now, I suppose. Unless someone was giving them water.

  I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “Well, think about it now.”

  “If they’re not dead, they’ll have escaped and they’ll be feral,” said Blume. He needed to confront Paoloni now.

  “Get a team and go there,” said Sveva.

  “It’s the responsibility of the municipal police or the local health board,” said Blume. “Not a matter for the flying squad.”

  “So call them. Call someone. Then call me back, let me know.”

  Blume had just sent the last of the case files to the Halls of Justice. It would take the best part of the day to get the files back, find Clemente’s notes on the whereabouts of the damned dogs . . . Unless.

  Blume looked up the number of LAV on his computer and called Clemente’s office. The doleful secretary answered. She remembered him, without much fondness, but seemed to soften a little at Blume’s unexpected display of humanity. More to the point, she was able to suggest a place where the dogs might be caged. He could do that, then deal with Paoloni who, wisely enough, had returned to sick leave.

  Just under an hour later, Blume stood in the middle of a field, head bowed in an effort to get his nose out of the wind and away from the smell it was bringing with it. About 250 meters in front of him, set amongst collapsing prefab huts and rusting vehicles, were silent metal cages. He could just make out inert lumps and dark shapes in them, and he was not moving a step further. He kept his head down and examined the knotty grass growing out the sand, mud, and crushed seashells.

  Blume stayed like that for ten minutes until a four-by-four with the letters ASL and the Lazio coat of arms came rolling over the field and a three-man squad from the Health Service arrived with blue-and- white overalls, orange protective gloves, and an armory that included not only restraining poles and a narcotizing projector but also a shotgun. They all wore masks. They seemed to think it was his task to bring them all the way to the cages.

  “Not without a mask,” said Blume. One of them went to the van and came back with a mask. It was impossible to talk with the mask on, so they walked the last stretch in silence.

  It was already evident from fifty meters that every dog was dead. Some of them, those at the far end, were already mummifying. The ones nearest the closed off water tap were almost invisible behind the swarms of flies.

  One cage seemed to contain one dead dog and the ripped remains of two others. The rest contained one dog each. One of the team handed his companion his dart gun and pointed a fogger machine between the bars.

  Blume moved back from the billowing white smoke toward a broken-down shed, avoiding an incongruous ref
rigerator, also crawling with insects, and leaned against a decaying caravan propped up on three cinder blocks. The ASL team could deal with this foul mess themselves.

  The fumigation fog seemed to have gotten into his mask, or maybe it had steamed up inside. Blume pulled it off, got hit by the stench, and put it on again quickly. That was worse. He could see nothing. He leaned down and pulled it off again.

  As he did so, he thought he saw a small amber light flicker on beneath the caravan. He hunkered down to check what it was. As he registered the presence of another amber light, he felt a prickling of danger run up to his hairline from his neck. They were not lights; they were eyes. Then he heard it, a growl, and before he had time to stand up again, two canine fangs appeared in the blackness and a huge, heavy, stinking black shape rushed from under the caravan and hurled itself on top of Blume, sending him crashing to the ground. As he fell on his back, he could see the civil protection team twenty meters away, enveloping themselves in smoke, oblivious behind their masks.

  Blume shouted, then instinctively brought his arms up to his throat, but the animal did not attack him there. Its tactic seemed to be to use its weight to immobilize him before tearing at him with its teeth. The beast opened its huge mouth over Blume’s damaged arm. He could feel its tongue and breath on his hand, and tensed as he waited for the jaws to shut and sever his fingers. Blume started thrashing about, and realized the animal was not as heavy as it looked. He punched with his good arm and connected with the animal’s cold nose. It barked and took its weight off him completely. Scrambling to his feet, Blume delivered a massive kick to the flank of the animal, which shuddered and yelped. He kicked it again, and it rolled onto the ground, assuming almost the same posture as Blume had been in a few seconds ago.

  Blume brought his foot up, ready to strike with his heel this time, but the big black dog just lay there, breathing fast. A muffled yell came from behind, and Blume turned to see the men running toward him. One shouted something from behind his mask, then ripped it off and shouted again: “Stand back!”

  One of the team, still in a mask, was pointing the shotgun, the other a tranquilizer gun. Blume started to step back, and the one with the shotgun was the first to step forward. Blume stepped back to where he was.

  “Get away! That’s a Cane Corso. It can rip out your throat with a single bite.”

  His companion with the shotgun took off his mask to observe, “A bit small for a Cane Corso.”

  “It’s young. Also, it’s badly malnourished. But don’t let it fool you.”

  Blume looked at his bandaged arm and hand. The animal had covered it in saliva.

  “Stand back, Commissioner.”

  The dog had had plenty of opportunity to bite his arm off. But it had not used its teeth. Even as he had thrashed about and hit it, the animal had done its best to continue licking his hand. That’s all it had done. He realized now that he had managed to smash his fist into the dog’s nose because it was trying to nuzzle him. Blume moved a little closer, and the animal thumped its ugly cropped tail back and forth, then closed its strange tiger-ish eyes.

  “What are you going to do with it?” asked Blume.

  “We’ll put it to sleep with this.” He slotted a feathery red dart into the light rifle.

  “Then what? He gets put down?”

  “Phenobarbital overdose. If I had to choose a way to die, I might just choose that. Very peaceful.”

  Blume hunkered down and stretched out his arm. The dog lifted a mud-caked paw and made a sort of whinnying sound. Blume patted the muscular neck, still sleek and clean.

  “Can we get him some water?” he asked.

  56

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 9 P.M.

  DID YOU FIND the dogs?” asked Sveva Romagnolo as she answered the door to Blume later that evening.

  “Yes.” He was not sure he liked doing this woman’s bidding, but being here postponed his meeting with Paoloni to another day.

  “They were all dead, as you said they would be, weren’t they?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Not all of them? I suppose they had to be put down immediately. Fighting dogs can’t live in human society. All they know how to do is kill. Arturo always said that, you know. Everyone thinks that loving dogs is an unconditional thing, but he was tough, too. He would have banned certain breeds entirely. It is an act of gross irresponsibility to keep certain types of dog in the company of humans. You may have noticed he had no dog of his own. Anyhow, thank you for coming.”

  Blume stepped into the apartment. The doors to the terrace were open, and a warm night breeze was blowing in.

  “Let’s go out on the terrace,” she said.

  Blume sat in the same wickerwork chair as last time and described his meeting with Pernazzo. He told her about the computer games, the gambling, the connection with Alleva, the murder of Enrico Brocca outside the pizzeria.

  Sometimes she winced, more often she nodded as he spoke. At no point did she display much anger, though her features were indistinct in the half darkness.

  When he had finished, she said, “And do you have any idea who killed Pernazzo? Your boss Gallone will only tell me investigations are ongoing, and none of my other contacts seem to have any idea . . . or interest, really. The important thing was for me to react well, which I did. The case itself is unimportant to them.”

  “If I tell you who I think killed Pernazzo, you won’t insist on my going public with it?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “And you won’t advance the hypothesis in my name, even when you see the investigation peter out without anyone being brought to justice?”

  “I won’t use your name. I may make a fuss, though.”

  “It was probably Manuela Innocenzi. Eventually you’ll hear this from other sources, too.”

  “That . . . woman?” Now he could hear anger and disgust in her voice. “Have you any evidence?”

  “More likely, she asked for it to be done. I don’t have direct evidence, but I got a call from Benedetto Innocenzi the other day that points in that direction. He called a few other people, too, to give the same message, which was not to think of importuning his daughter or there would be reprisals, and, above all, compromising revelations.”

  “I will insist on a proper investigation.”

  “You are within your rights,” said Blume, then instinctively ducked as an orange-and-white football bounced off the back of his chair. He turned around to see a child with long hair and a babyish face scowling at him.

  “Tommaso!” said his mother. “This is Alec Blume. He’s a policeman.”

  The child continued to stare at Blume. It was a hostile stare, but it contained no real malice.

  “You play football?” said Blume. There, that was precisely the sort of inane thing that grown-ups said. Quite rightly, the boy ignored the question and went to retrieve his ball, then began slapping it on the tiles directly behind Blume, canceling out any hopes of conversation, while his mother smiled apologetically not at Blume but at the child. Time to go.

  Blume stood up and watched as the boy bounced the ball too high and lost control of it again.

  “You’re not very good at that yet,” said Blume.

  Sveva Romagnolo stared at him in outrage.

  The child retrieved the ball, tucked it under his arm and said, “I am good.”

  “Not yet. I think maybe it’s because of your hair. It’s too long. It gets in your eyes.”

  “Tommaso has beautiful hair,” said Sveva. “You were leaving, Commissioner?”

  Tommaso bounced the ball five times in succession, then said, “You believe I can do it faster than that?”

  “I do. I think you might be a natural, but you need to practice. A lot. And when you can bounce it all day using your hands, then you have to learn to do the same with your feet. It takes ages, but, like I said, you look like a natural to me. Get someone to cut your hair, see if I’m right.”

  “Commissioner Blume! Tommaso, say bye-
bye to the policeman.”

  “Bye, Tommy,” said Blume.

  “Tommaso. Not Tommy,” said Sveva.

  She strode across the living room, thumping her bare heels against the floor.

  Tommaso followed as far as the French window, and called out, “If I learn to do more than a hundred will you come back and watch?”

  “Sure, I will,” said Blume.

  Sveva stopped dead in her tracks and looked at her son, standing framed in the doorway, holding the ball above his head. Then she looked at Blume.

  “That is grossly irresponsible of you. Suppose he really does want you to come and watch him. What then?”

  “Call me, and I’ll come over,” said Blume. “And cut his hair. He’s not a girl.”

  “I realize my son is not a girl. But he’s never had his hair cut since he was a baby,” said Sveva.

  “That’s why you should do it now. Don’t pretend nothing has changed for him.”

  57

  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 10 A.M.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING Blume, finally off duty, gave himself the luxury of a lie-in until ten. He had breakfast in his local bar, running down some of the credit left by Sveva. He phoned Paoloni and got no reply. Here we go again, he thought.

  So he phoned Kristin in the embassy and was surprised when she invited him to her place for dinner. Seven o’clock. Blume figured he should arrange to meet Paoloni at around four. The pain of the meeting would be lessened by the prospect of seeing Kristin immediately afterward. But first, he had two other important appointments.

  After breakfast, he walked down to Via Tuscolana to the vet and asked about the dog he had brought in the day before. The receptionist, whom Blume couldn’t help thinking of as a nurse, told him to wait. He sat beside an elderly woman with a cat in a cage. The cat had three legs. The woman narrated events as they happened.

  “And here is a nice man come to sit beside us, Melchior,” she told the cat. “He’s hurt his arm, just like you hurt your leg. Though of course, his arm is still attached, isn’t it?”