“His skull is caved in from behind,” said Blume as she reached him. He bent down and lightly stroked the curly white hair at the back of the prostrate figure. “You can feel the concave indent here.” He cupped his hand slightly, making his fingers disappear. “Want to feel?”
“No thanks,” said Caterina.
“Not for fun,” said Blume. “Put your hand there. Touch the damage. You need to know.”
She bent down, pushing her satchel behind her back, put her hand at the back of the dead man’s white head, wrinkling her nose against the powerful smell of alcohol, urine, and something else.
“Deeper,” ordered Blume. “That’s the foramen magnum, where you have your fingers now, which is the natural hollow for the spinal column. Move your fingers up to the occiput… There!” he said as Caterina shuddered, closed her eyes, and almost lost her balance. “You’ve found it. It’s almost as if the foramen magnum just continued higher up into the skull than it should, but if you put your index finger in it now you can feel the circular edges. It’s like a divot from a bad golf shot.”
Caterina completed the examination, then stood up, and ripped off her latex glove. Smiling, Blume took the glove and held out a new one for her, which he seemed to have ready in his hand.
“You need to keep them on while we’re here,” he said.
“Of course, I don’t know why I did that. It was stupid.”
“You’re doing great. Find any suspicious stones?”
“No. I don’t think so. Two, maybe. But unlikely.”
“Don’t forget to give them to the technicians before they go,” said Blume. “But for now, I want you just to stand here. Do you pray?”
“Sometimes.”
“Really?” said Blume. “I don’t. Nothing out there to pray to. But I find it helps if you just stand as if you were praying. It gives a bit of respect back to the victim and helps empty your mind of noisy thoughts. It’s not the same thing as concentrating. Concentration is what we do next.”
He stood there, hands behind his back, head bowed, and she did the same, conscious of the risk that this could be a humiliating initiation rite and Rospo might right now be snapping photographs of her solemn, prayerful pose for the office bulletin board.
But she had to believe the Commissioner would not treat her like that. So she stood beside him, and did not turn or raise her head. The corpse staring up at them from the ground showed no visible signs of injury on this side, no blood, no bruises. His arms were at his sides and his legs were placed neatly, but that could have been the solicitude of the two policemen who had let him down gently. Green paper bags, like the ones her mother brought onions home in, had been put over his hands. He was wearing dark pants, with a brown belt, a blue narrow-rib corduroy shirt, and a dark jacket. His shoes were heavy, brown, scuffed, and messy, like Blume’s.
Blume’s lips seemed to be moving. Maybe he was praying? Hoping it would not earn her a reprimand, she bent down again, and lifted the dead man’s arm ever so slightly, then glanced back up at Blume.
“They’ve done all that stuff,” he said, but his tone was approving. “Rigor has set in. We got a body temperature reading that puts the time of death back at more or less when the German tourists say they found him. The magistrate, Bianchi, has already been and gone. He’s interviewing the German tourists and then he’s signing it over to his colleague, De Santis.”
“De Santis who’s investigating the muggings?” said Caterina. “So Bianchi is treating this as a mugging gone wrong and transferring the case just like that?”
“I am not privy to the workings of his fine legal mind,” said Blume. “But rarely have I seen a man less keen to take on a new case.”
She stood up and felt the soothing warmth of a beam of sunlight on the nape of her neck, as the sun cleared the building behind. The victim suddenly looked very white.
“His name was Henry Treacy,” said Blume, his voice still hushed. “He was Irish, born in 1949, in a place called Killken-, no Killarney, no that’s not it either. Kill-something.” He held out an ID card for her to see. “This was in his wallet.”
“Wallet?”
“Yes. You forgot to ask Rospo about that and he, of course, didn’t volunteer the information. It could still be an attempted mugging. Struggle, violence, death, and then the mugger runs off without his loot. But the presence of a wallet does open the way to new possibilities. As does the fact that this guy may well be foreign, but he’s no tourist. He’s been living here for years. Rospo knew him by sight. Did you notice the burn marks on the left side of his face?”
“Yes,” said Caterina. “They look old. I guess he grew the beard to hide the scars.”
“Just what I think,” said Blume. “He already has a beard in the photo on his ID card which dates from eight years ago. You can just make out the scar there. See?” He showed her the disintegrating ID card.
She read: “Eye color: blue; height: 182 cms.” So far it was a description that suited Blume better than the sad shadow lying at her feet. Surely he wasn’t that tall? She took the card out of Blume’s hand and read the rest of the details: “Nationality: Italian; civil status: single; profession: artist; distinguishing marks: left-handed.”
“That’s strange,” she said.
“What him being Italian but born abroad?” said Blume. “No, that’s perfectly normal. Lots of people are born abroad.”
“No, the bit about left-handedness. Usually that’s for things like a mole, a missing finger, or in his case, scar on left side of face. Visible stuff.”
“So he must have felt being left-handed was important to others instead of just to himself,” said Blume. “If you ask me, that is just the sort of self-centered bullshit you would expect from an artist. Artists need to be knocked down the social scale again, maybe to about the level of barbers. Same goes for dentists and surgeons and musicians. All hands, no brains. Overpaid for being a bit dexterous. Like soccer players, if you think about it.”
“Not a tramp, though,” said Caterina, daring to interrupt. She was pleased. She did not want her first body to be a nobody.
Blume said, “He had three euros in coins in his wallet. Not a single banknote.”
He paused, and Caterina realized she was meant to contribute. She said, “So he must have spent it.”
“You think so? Why not assume someone stole it? If we are hypothesizing that someone hit him over the back of the head, then it is logical to assume a theft-if assuming on the basis of a hypothesis is a logical way to proceed, which it isn’t by the way.”
Caterina stayed silent for a moment pretending to understand, then spoke cautiously, watching Blume’s face for signs of irritation. “They’d have taken the wallet itself, not just the money inside. And if it was in his pocket, they would have had to remove his wallet, take the money, then put it back, leaving fingerprints. It doesn’t work.”
“Good. I agree,” said Blume. “But of course, the wallet was bagged and taken off by the technical team who will look for fingerprints anyhow. Now, that dimple mark on the back of his skull, what weapon could have caused that?”
Caterina didn’t know where to begin.
“I don’t know either, but it’s more consistent with falling and hitting your head on a protruding cobble while drunk than being hit over the head with a heavy weapon like a bat. Maybe I’m wrong. We’ll see from the autopsy. Two receipts were found in his pocket. They give us the name of two bars, one he visited last night, one from a few nights ago. I have two men on that already. Both bars are closed at this time. So we’re tracking down the owners, find out who was serving last night. The main thing is to identify who Treacy was with, if anyone. We need to find out who was the last person to see him alive.”
Caterina heard the sound of a two-stroke motor ricocheting up the walls of the houses. She waited and a few moments later, a black-and-blue three-wheeled Piaggio Ape van carrying nets of carrots and a thin man appeared, got into animated conversation with a policeman at the closed-off entrance on Via della Pelliccia, then retreated, motor snarling.
“That guy just breached my security cordon,” said Blume.
“Maybe he lived in one of the three houses between Via del Moro and here,” said Caterina.
“Which is why your idea to close off only this piazza was better than my idea to block off the connecting streets,” said Blume. “When you see I’m being stupid, let me know, will you? We need to close off the piazza now.”
Caterina realized the city was coming to life. She could hear vehicles moving down Lungotevere Farnesina, rushing while they still could. Shutters had opened, and coffee smells had percolated down to the piazza. Radios were playing and front doors were opening, and people were trying to step out into the piazza from the surrounding buildings, then stopping as a uniformed policeman yelled at them. Hardly any of them stepped back inside, but their not moving forward and intruding on the crime scene was accepted as a fair compromise.
“It’s morning, Inspector,” said Blume.
“Good morning, Commissioner,” she said. She should phone her son who woke up early, even on Saturdays. Especially on Saturdays.
“This is the beginning of chaos,” said Blume. “And I want you to do your best to manage it, Inspector. You have eight uniformed policemen plus yourself. Not me, not Panebianco, nor any of the technicians. We can’t help. Sovrintendente Grattapaglia will be here soon. Let him show you the ropes. He’s got years of experience at crowd control, setting up the house-to-house interviews, picking out likely witnesses, all that sort of stuff. He’s known to be grumpy in the mornings, mind, so don’t annoy him. Every civilian you talk to is going to have an unassailable reason for having to traverse the area, so don’t talk to them. There are going to be doctors on call, surgeons on their way to save a child’s life, politicians with connections on their way to an important vote, a surprising amount of people working for essential services, engineers on their way to rescue old women locked in elevators, teachers giving exams, lawyers with cases, judges with sentences, criminals and rebels who want to compromise the scene on principle. You’ve got your work cut out for you here. Think you can do it?”
“Yes.”
“I bet you the price of breakfast you can’t stem the flow for more than twenty-five minutes. But that’s all we need, or, better, that’s all we can expect to get. You can’t close down a place like this for long.”
Caterina would have preferred to be invited to do the walk-through with Blume and Panebianco than to be sent off to do sentry duty, but she did as ordered. First she walked in a circle staying close to the fronts of the buildings around the piazza, telling people to step back inside the doorways, but it was like a game of Whac-a-mole. As soon as she passed, they reappeared. She went over to a group of three policemen standing at the corner of Via della Pelliccia, where they had stretched a piece of crime scene tape across the lane, tying it to a no-entry road sign on one side, and a leg of one of the bar chairs on the other. The bartender, who had put out his chairs and tables, was now inserting a patio umbrella pole into a metal base.
She called out to the nearest policeman, the younger of the two she had seen in the dark, and instructed him to walk counterclockwise around the piazza, making sure people stayed indoors. “Don’t talk to any of them, just order them in,” she told him. He lingered for some time, on the verge of refusing, but eventually set off at a very leisurely pace. She turned to the barman who had unfolded the vinyl beer umbrella with Tuborg written on it. “That can wait.”
The bartender looked skywards, then fitted the umbrella pole into its base. “I know. The sun doesn’t reach here until two. But customers like these umbrellas to be up. Makes the place more visible.”
“You’re setting up your bar in the middle of a crime scene. I said it can wait. Step inside your bar, please, and keep it closed until we say you can open. Is that clear?”
“You want me to send out the two policemen having a cappuccino, then?” said the bartender, and opened the umbrella.
“Yes, I do.”
The bartender put his hand against the door jamb and called out, “Agenti, you’re wanted.”
Di Ricci came out, wiping milk foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. Rospo followed, holding a cornetto pastry. Caterina pointed at him. “You. Go plant yourself twenty meters down Via del Cipresso. Over there.” She pointed. “That way you can stop people before they even get to the piazza. Di Ricci, take up position there at the corner of Vicolo de’ Renzi.”
Rospo softly tore his pastry in two, and inserted half into one side of his mouth, and stood there, cheek bulging and jaw moving, looking at her.
“It’s a direct order from Blume,” she added.
He shrugged, pushed the other half of the pastry into the other side of his mouth, and moved off.
Caterina had made two rounds, glancing back into the middle of the piazza where Blume and Panebianco were moving up and down in a narrow grid pattern around the area where Rospo said the body had been found. The coroner’s unit was zipping up the black body bag, the last technician was taking down a video camera, when she walked into a short man in a gray suit who had gone out of his way to block her path.
“I have diplomatic immunity,” said the man in the suit.
He moved sideways to stay in front of her. His accent was funny and he smelled slightly of balsam and moss. He was holding out a plastic-covered card. A miniature elongated silver cross enclosed in a circle was pinned just below the buttonhole of his lapel. “The Embassy of the Kingdom of Spain to the Holy See,” he explained. “I need to go to my office now.”
Caterina glanced at her watch. It showed 7:12. The coroners had their shiny zinc stretcher propped up beside the black bag, all ready to go.
“I think we have just about finished, Ambasciatore,” she said. “Maybe if you waited five more minutes?”
“I have already waited long enough. I have been very patient. And I am not ambassador rank. Yet.” So saying, he stepped past her and traversed three meters of crime scene territory. Keeping her hands at her sides, Caterina moved forward to intercept the Spaniard. Finding her in front of him again, he continued to move forward, pushing her breasts with his chest, touching her inner thigh twice with his knee.
Caterina looked behind her and saw other residents from the building, waiting to get out, watching the drama playing out in front of them. Then one or two broke cover, looking left, right, left, as if about to cross a busy street, and walking quickly, leaning into the graffiti-stained walls as if this would stop them from being noticed. Caterina spun around looking for help. Blume was standing in the sun, Panebianco in the shade. She spotted Sovrintendente Grattapaglia, who must have just arrived.
“Wait, please. I’ll see what I can do,” she told the diplomat. “I’ll get the most senior policeman here to talk to you. But in the meantime, will you please return to your place by the front door? I’m sure the Commissioner will escort you personally out of the area.”
The Church diplomat snorted, but turned back. The other fugitives had been halted by the policeman at the far end of Via della Pelliccia, and were receiving unsympathetic treatment. Good.
She had no intention of doing anything for the diplomat. All she had to do was make sure he stayed where he was for five minutes, maybe ten. She moved over to Grattapaglia quickly.
“Get over there. Don’t let that guy through. He’s a troublemaker. Ten minutes. Tell him I’ve gone to get someone important for him.”
Grattapaglia opened his mouth to say something.
“No,” said Caterina. “Don’t make me repeat myself. The Commissioner put me in charge of this situation, and now I am giving you an order. Mess this up, and you’ll be answering to him, not me.”
Grattapaglia seemed to be about to say something, then dismissed his thought, or her, as unworthy. He hacked up mucus and swallowed it, then ambled over in the direction of the protesting diplomat.
Voices from the increasingly large group of people gathered at the middle door of the pink building called out their impatience, “ Aho, guardie? How much longer do we have to wait?”
“Ehi, annamo.”
“Anvedi ‘sta ficona che ce fa aspetta.’ ”
“Macche ficona.”
She went over to them. “Can you people wait five minutes? I promise that’s all it will take. Anyone who needs an official note for being late to work can contact me, this is my card.” She handed out her business card and three or four hands took one. She added, “Also, if anyone heard or saw anything at around two last night, please call that number.”
“Who is it?” asked a woman who was restraining her son from running about by holding onto the schoolbag on his back.
“It’s that English drunk,” said another.
Caterina singled out the speaker. She was a thin woman made up entirely of wrinkles, and she was standing there in a blue dressing gown, brown stockings, and white hospital clogs.
“How do you know that?” asked Caterina.
“Hah!” said the woman, looking around for approbation and, indeed, getting some. “I was right, see? I live on the fourth floor,” said the old woman. “I can see clearly from there. I recognized his white beard. He won’t be singing any more loud songs late at night now, will he?”
“Do you know his name?”
“What would I know his name for?”
Caterina took down the triumphant little woman’s name, and asked if there was anyone else about who might know the man’s name.
“None of my friends,” she declared, wagging her finger.
Caterina stepped out of the doorway and looked over at Blume and Panebianco. They were still there, but the coroners were closing the doors on the wagon. It was almost over.
She could call Elia any time now. She reached into her bag for her phone, but before she got to it she heard a commotion to her left.
Grattapaglia had just pulled his nightstick and truncheoned the Spanish diplomat to the ground.