The Namesake (24 page)
‘Placement, layering and investment,’ said Blume.
‘Exactly. When it comes to investments, Megale seems to work more with Agazio Curmaci than with his own son, or with the
contabile
who’s supposed to be in charge of finances,’ said Konrad.
He paused to measure Blume’s reaction. Blume kept his eyes on the road ahead.
‘Curmaci comes between the layering and investment phases,’ continued Konrad. ‘He’s the last connection back to the Ndrangheta. Everything downstream of him is clean. He’s like a filter.’
‘I see,’ said Blume.
‘And that is why his violent and rash reactions to his wife’s cousins being arrested are completely out of character. I am wondering if your Investigating Magistrate Arconti managed to provoke him in some way.’
‘Not enough to justify what happened,’ said Blume. ‘I find it odd to be talking about Curmaci all of a sudden with you.’
‘The criminal world gets small at the top of the pyramid,’ said Konrad. ‘Curmaci rather than Megale junior seems to be second to Megale senior. Would you say that’s right?’
Despite himself, Blume was impressed. Without any change in his characteristic mixture of self-aggrandizement and moodiness, Konrad had reversed the direction of the questioning.
‘Am I right in thinking,’ said Blume, ‘that one of the reasons you agreed to travel with me was you were hoping
I
might give
you
more information on Curmaci?’
Konrad shook his head. ‘No, I don’t need any more information. I had no choice about accepting you. I would prefer to be left alone for this.’
Blume guided the camper van halfway into the emergency lane to avoid being sideswiped by the vehicles passing them. Eventually he said, ‘The main reason I am here is I am interested in joining the DCSA or maybe getting a recommendation that would allow me to apply to the DIA. I wanted to get away from my colleagues and my desk. But I have nothing special to give you on Curmaci.’
‘I thought you said you had a girlfriend who worked with you?’
‘Yes . . . what of it?’
‘Why would you want to leave her behind and spend your time travelling on missions?’
‘That’s got nothing to do with anything,’ said Blume.
‘It seems to me you are running away.’ Konrad might have said more, but an unmistakable thump followed by a scuttling noise from behind caused him to freeze and whiten.
‘Yeah,’ said Blume casually. ‘There is a rat in there. Maybe two. They must have got in with me.’
Konrad made a choking sound and he grabbed at the door handle, as if intending to hurl himself out of the vehicle and into the path of the cars speeding past them.
‘Please, stop. We must get out.’
‘I can’t stop in the middle of this highway, Konrad. And the emergency lane has just disappeared. I saw a sign back there for a service station. We’ll pull in there.’
Konrad unbuckled his seatbelt and twisted around in his seat to watch the back. ‘How far?’
‘A few kilometres. We’ll be there in a minute or two. You really don’t like rats, do you?’
Konrad had a wild look in his eyes and his teeth were clenched. He was attempting to stand, back to the windscreen, and his whole body was twisted into a hideous shape, his limbs jutting out like bent straws.
‘I think it’s fair to call this rat thing a phobia,’ said Blume, ‘but no problem, we’re there already.’ He headed towards the ramp leading into the service station. ‘I don’t like them either, but I keep my fear in check. But I suppose you’re terrified a rat will bite you and you’ll get that virus that turns you into an Italian. Go on, hop out, go into the Autogrill, and get yourself coffee and a sandwich or something. I’ll deal with the rat in the kitchen. Tell you what, get me one of those frozen coffee things. You know them? You pull out a tab, shake the container and the coffee goes really cold? Don’t make the mistake of getting the red container, which turns the coffee hot. And get me some sweets. A pack of fruit Mentos would be nice. Are you listening?’
Konrad had the door open before Blume had even stopped the camper van.
Rome
Caterina knew that this fair-haired magistrate with his chin-strap beard was bullying her because he in his turn had been humiliated. Appointed to conduct an investigation into a potentially important case, he, like her, had spent his weekend gathering evidence and background information. In fact, he had been playing catch-up with her, since she was further ahead with her inquiries. Then the whole thing was taken from him and transferred to the Milan section of the anti-Mafia magistrates before he had had the chance to issue his first executive order.
‘The police in Milan have just confirmed that the burned-out van in Sesto San Giovanni was the same one you were attempting to trace from Rome to Milan. Presumably the two burned bodies they found are the people you were looking for.’
Caterina and her colleagues had spent almost three full days on the reconstruction of the movements of the van, tracking it at the north Rome Tollgate, picking it up again using the traffic speed cameras near Florence, getting decent-quality images of the occupants when they stopped at a service area after Bologna. Their best stroke of fortune had been when the driver paid for fuel by credit card. They were able to get an identification of the driver, a certain Teodor Popescu. The card and the van were registered to an office-cleaning company set up by a building renovations group associated with a real-estate management firm specializing in decommissioned and disused buildings whose holdings included warehouses in Sesto San Giovanni where, as it turned out, the driver and occupant of the van were both killed. Dutifully and promptly, Caterina and her team had handed all the information to this young magistrate, practically in a gift box with a bow on it. The magistrate had somehow botched his effort to steal all the credit for it as he passed it on to Milan, since the head of the investigation there had asked not for the opinion of the magistrate, but had asked for her by name.
Caterina merely nodded as he told her that she should have spent more time investigating the scene of the crime. He conceded it was hardly her fault. Her commander had vanished and left her, a woman with a child and insufficient experience, to run a full investigation.
‘Thank you, Caterina,’ he said as she was leaving. ‘Are you sure you have held nothing back from me?’
‘Nothing. But call me Inspector Mattiola, Signor Giudice, not Caterina.’
She left the door open on her way out, hoping it annoyed the magistrate as much as it annoyed Blume, which, she admitted, was hardly possible.
Unlike Blume, Caterina was a glutton for the summer heat, even in the city. She loved the way it bounced off the pavement back at her face in the early afternoon, then radiated from the buildings in the evening. When the sun heated her hair, it felt like a soft electric current was running through every strand. In the heat everyone walked more slowly and deliberately. She loved the way Roman drivers eschewed air-conditioning, preferring to leave the window open and droop an arm against the side of their car, raising their hand sometimes to direct a refreshing airflow up their arm, sometimes to greet people, more often to insult other drivers with languid gestures. The gleam of the light off the windscreens and metal of the incessant traffic lifted her spirits. The blaring horns, which were full of violence and irritability in the winter, seemed now to be celebratory and bear no ill will. Happy motorbikes and scooters roared through gaps in the traffic and across dangerous intersections, the riders sounding their horns in delight at the way the rushing warm air kept them dry and alert. She passed an old man sitting on a broken bench milking the sun, oblivious to the traffic. She remembered her grandfather sitting on a park bench like that, his face pointed up, as blissful as a lizard.
And yet she wished Blume were here to spoil it all for her. He’d have a jacket on and be sweating underneath it. He’d clump around in his heavy shoes, which he wore off duty and on, contemptuous of men wearing ‘Jesus sandals’ as he called them, appalled at the ugliness of people’s feet. When it became too much even for him to wear heavy clothes, he’d appear wearing the T-shirt he had had on in bed, shiny running shoes and shorts, and pretend day after day that he was going to the park for a run until eventually he did go running, if only to save face (but not his knees, as he would make perfectly plain for the next few weeks). If he were here now, instead of avoiding her and sneaking off on a mission, he’d be complaining of the dust and the grime, and would be seething in rage at the people walking too slow, the drivers driving too fast, the stench of the unemptied skips, the starling droppings and the sticky residue of the lime trees on the bonnet of his car. But he was always funny, intentionally or not, when raging against the heat and his adopted city.
Caterina entered the Gelateria dei Gracchi, to which Blume had introduced her. He said their ice cream was better even than Toni’s on Colli Portuensi, and he was possibly right, but still she preferred Toni’s. He had brought her here on one of those rare days they had been able to spend in each other’s company.
She now ordered herself a rich yellow, cream and walnut cone, and ate it, reflecting on how well she had handled that little shit of a magistrate. The sun had disinfected him out of her mind. Blume absorbed all his rage deep into his body and let it seep out slowly through sarcasm and headaches and intestinal problems he never mentioned and would be mortified to think she knew anything about.
Caterina was considering whether or not to eat the cone. It seemed ridiculous to worry about the few calories left in her hand after she had said yes to the whipped cream on top five minutes earlier. Her minor quandary was resolved by the trilling of an incoming call. She dropped the cone into the overflowing rubbish bin outside the
gelateria
, and kissed her fingers clean, before fishing the mobile phone from her bag. She glanced at it and saw an unknown number of a few digits. An institution of some sort, she guessed.
‘Inspector Mattiola?’ A woman’s voice.
‘Yes.’
‘I am Doctor Silvia La Verde, Consultant Neurologist at the Gemelli Hospital. I am phoning on behalf of Magistrate Matteo Arconti, who is unable to make the call.’
‘He’s awake?’
‘Absolutely, and he’s sitting here right beside me. He has some difficulty in holding a phone and pressing buttons . . .’
Like Blume, then, thought Caterina.
‘. . . but I am confident we can deal with that over the next weeks and months. He has no problems, or only very minor problems relating to muscle control, in speaking. I’m going to put the phone to his ear now.’
Caterina waited a moment.
‘Eeeola?’ said the voice, which sounded like it was coming from the other side of the tomb.
‘Eeola?’ she said.
‘Attrina Eeeola?’
‘Caterina Mattiola, yes, sir, that’s me. How can I help?’
Silence. Then some voices in the background, someone exclaiming something.
‘Chief Inspector Mattiola,’ said the same voice, almost perfectly normal now, apart from a slight slurring. ‘Magistrate Matteo Arconti here. Sorry about that. It turns out I can speak perfectly fine if the phone is at my right ear, but I become almost aphasic if it’s at my left. Half my brain seems to be numb. Dr La Verde here is very interested in this. I think she’s writing a book about people like me.’
Caterina allowed her silence to convey that she had no idea what he was talking about.
‘I was wondering, could you find time to pay me a visit. Just you, mind. I have a few things I’d like to ask you.’
‘Can’t you ask me about them now?’ said Caterina. She had just used up her last stores of tolerance for pompous magistrates.
‘I have a consultant neurologist acting as a phone holder. I really think you should come here, Inspector.’
They always did that, conversationally demoted you by one rank when they sensed a lack of deference.
Perhaps sensing an imminent refusal, Arconti added, ‘If you really want to know, I don’t so much want to ask you questions as to tell you a few things. They concern Commissioner Alec Blume, and a little trouble he has made for himself.’
He could have said that to begin with.
‘I’m on my way,’ she said.
Castellammare di Stabia, Naples
Blume waited till Konrad had gone in, then, instead of parking in front, backed up and drove the camper van around to the rear and squeezed behind a semitrailer. Moving quickly, he left the cab and opened the door to the living quarters, and stomped in, lashing out with his feet at anything he thought he saw moving. He flicked on the light, but it only cast a buttery glow on a section of the ceiling, and illuminated nothing. He saw he could let in more light by opening the curtain that closed off the driver’s cab.
The rat, the size of a small cat, was attached to the curtain, perfectly motionless, its pink feet digging into the fabric. It had positioned itself right behind the passenger seat, inches from where Konrad’s head had been. Its nose was pointing up towards the ceiling, its tail swinging almost imperceptibly to and fro to offset the gentle sway of the curtain.
