The Memory Key (14 page)

‘An e
tho
logist. Not an
etiolo
gist.’

‘I beg your pardon. Can we use animal behaviourist?’

Ideo shook his head in disbelief and exasperation. ‘No, because an ethologist does it in the wild, a behaviourist works in the lab.’

‘But you work in the lab,’ Blume pointed out.

‘I do
now
. But I am an ethologist. I spent an entire year on the island of Lampedusa. You know, we think of Lampedusa as ours, but if you go there, you’ll see it’s really part of Africa.’

‘All the illegal immigrants?’

‘No! Are you being deliberately stupid? The flora and fauna.’ He grabbed a sheet of paper covered with equations and dropped his cigarette butt into it. He crumpled it into a tight ball, which he dropped on the floor.

They watched the paper ball unfold itself a little, and then waited a little longer to see if it would burst into flames.

‘It’s so sad,’ said Ideo. ‘Poor Sofia. But, you know, in a way she lives on.’

Blume suspected a religious gambit in these last words. He parried by pulling out his notebook and flicking it open as if to check something. ‘My notes tell me you studied in La Sapienza?’

‘Just across the road. Graduated, travelled the world, wrote some pretty groundbreaking studies and three books, the last of which I wrote directly in English. It was published by Duckworth, and they didn’t even come back to me with any corrections: it was that precise. And then I ended up working more or less where I studied. Story of my life.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing. Just an expression. It’s as if I were born into a circle that I have to stay inside, even if I have travelled widely. I get up in the same house as I did 30 years ago, go to almost the same place as 30 years ago.’

‘You live in the same house?’

‘I travelled the world for years. I didn’t save for a home, and I, too, served my time as a poorly paid research assistant.’

‘The address I have here is the family home, then?’

‘Exactly.’

‘And does anyone else live there?’

‘No. Apart from my mother, of course.’

‘So, you’re not married?’

‘Don’t your notes tell you that?’

Blume nodded. ‘They do, they do . . . So, now Sofia has gone, what happens her job?’

Ideo rubbed his small hands together. ‘It’s open. That lot in there will start fighting each other for it. That’s why I set them on a project together. Also, I made sure it’s a particularly pointless project. They have to modify the feeding system in the cages, then design a fish maze. Fish, by the way, have terrific memories. I think if we could hear them scream we wouldn’t be so blasé about angling and trawling. There’s definitely more going on in their heads than we know. But, yes, before you say it, I am doing a little bit of experimental psychology with my researchers. Don’t tell them, though, if you are going to talk to them, will you?’

Blume promised he would not. ‘Can you confirm that you are 48 years of age?’

‘Almost 49,’ said Ideo.

‘Yes, you’re right.’

‘Of course I’m right. It’s my birthday next week!’

‘Have you been following the murder investigation?’

‘Absolutely!’ Ideo could not find his cigarettes and whipped off his lab coat in the hunt for them.

‘There,’ said Blume. ‘You left the packet next to that . . . that . . .’

Ideo snatched up the packet as if rescuing it from a thief. ‘Thanks. It’s a centrifuge. Broken, of course.’ He lit another cigarette, smacking his lips.

‘We move through life at the speed of light,’ he announced. ‘Death is just a sudden deceleration and a movement into a different and slower dimension.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Blume was keen to avoid this sort of talk. He stayed quiet to let the philosophy blow over, and watched Ideo’s nervous movements as he sucked and tapped at his cigarette. ‘So who will replace her?’

Ideo shrugged. ‘I’m not sure, but she’ll never be as good as Sofia.’

‘She?’

‘Well, you saw in that room. They are all women.’

Blume pictured the room. There had been as many men as women. Plus one on his lunch break.

Ideo seemed to read his mind. ‘The suitable candidates for the post are women.’

‘You prefer to work with women?’

Ideo opened his wide mouth showing yellow teeth. ‘Don’t you?’

‘It depends,’ said Blume.

This time Ideo chose to stub the butt out on the floor. He watched the ashes and sparks scatter, and when he raised his face it had a serious expression. ‘What do you think women want?’

Blume shrugged. ‘I wish I knew.’

‘You, too, huh?’

Blume did not like the assumption of complicity. ‘No, I’m fine with women.’

Ideo’s eyes lit up ‘Successful, you mean? Is it your rank? Maybe the weapon you carry? They like power.’

Blume felt increasingly disinclined to agree with the man in front of him. ‘They like strength.’

‘They don’t like a man to have any weaknesses, do they?’

‘Not true,’ said Blume ‘They love men with weaknesses. They just don’t like weak men.’

Ideo went for another cigarette, then thought better of it.

‘Well . . . I am working, and this is my time you are wasting. Tell me what you need.’

‘Nothing, really,’ said Blume. ‘I just like to meet the people connected to a case, no matter how peripherally. I wanted to make your acquaintance, and now I have.’

It was a relief to get away from Ideo and his smoke, and from the Institute and its smell of antiseptic and rodents.

Blume returned to the station and spent most of the early afternoon doing paperwork. The only person in the front office when he arrived was Rospo, a man so disliked by all that he had become as essential as electricity to the smooth running of the department. Whenever two colleagues were bickering over something, whenever a betrayal of trust had taken place, or someone had made a joke that did not go down well, whenever someone was not pulling his or her weight, or was slacking off, Rospo was there to remind them all that human beings could turn out worse in looks, conduct, and intelligence. Even better, some of the higher-ups in the police and judiciary thought he was a useful spy. Thanks to Rospo, sending disinformation up the chain of command was a cinch. Of course, the more intelligent senior officers knew that Rospo was an unwitting conduit of false information, but the more intelligent senior officers were also the ones who did not rely on spies.

‘Rospo! Working hard, I see,’ said Blume as he passed by. Rospo had tried to shut down the gambling site he was visiting, but the screen was covered in multiple pop-ups advertising sex sites, free music, poker apps, and video games.

Towards five, Caterina came in without knocking, leaving the door open behind her, as if they had nothing to hide, which they didn’t, but that did not alter the fact that doors were for closing.

She collapsed into a chair. ‘Where were you today, Alec?’

If she had not looked so haggard and exhausted, he might even have reminded her to shut the damned door. They had a deal. He would take his shoes off as soon as he came in and never lie on the bed with his ‘outside clothes’ on. He had adapted, but she couldn’t be bothered.

He walked over, shut the door to his office, and decided the bad news about Principe could wait.

‘Left it open, sorry,’ she said in a totally unsorry voice.

Blume looked at her face, and realized she, too, was ageing: where her lips ended at what had once been the merest shadow that threw her bright cheeks into relief had become a fold, so that the cheeks were now divided. It was not that they were sagging, it was just that it was now possible to make out where the sag line would be. Her hair was lank and had an unwashed look, and she seemed to have gained weight around the throat so that the tendons were no longer visible. If this was the result of her dieting and jogging three times a week, she might be better off giving it a rest, but he did not want to get into that conversation again. She was wearing no make-up. He appreciated this in her, or had always appreciated it, but now, as he looked at her, he thought she might look a bit better with lipstick and whatever that stuff was women used to give their face colour. Rouge – or was that a word from a different century?

‘Meeting Principe.’ Blume waited for her to ask why, but she sat there like a fattening, ageing doll, and asked him nothing, too involved with her own tiredness.

‘I just spent the afternoon with a family of fucking troglodytes,’ said Caterina. ‘One’s worse than the other.’

‘Valerio’s family?’ asked Blume.

She nodded. ‘Me and Panebianco. I wish I were more like him. He really detaches, you know? Floats away in a cloud of indifference. I can’t do that. These people. We should have been comforting them, instead we were threatening them that if they took any action against Adelgardo or his family, they’d end up in jail. Not that our threats made any difference.’

‘You still think a man like that should end up in the same prison as a hardened criminal?’

‘I think it is the natural result of what he did. What do you want, a special prison for the middle class, because that’s basically your problem here, Alec.’

‘He’s an old man.’

‘Sorry, a special prison for the
elderly
bourgeoisie,’ said Caterina. ‘And we both know he’s not going to prison, so why argue?’

‘No, he’s not,’ agreed Blume. He remembered something. ‘How’s your father?’

She shrugged. ‘Not good. He’s entering the aggressive stage. Apparently it commonly comes at the end of stage three, before he enters a total vegetative state.’

‘Maybe it won’t come to that,’ said Blume.

‘Meaning let’s hope he dies before then.’

A while ago, she had told him that the fact her father had Alzheimer’s greatly increased her chances of the same. ‘I need you to plan what to do if that happens,’ she had told him. Blume had not thought much about her eventual Alzheimer’s; instead, he had obsessed about her assumption that they would reach such an advanced age together. Now as he looked at her slumped in the chair, and thought about Principe, about Stefania Manfellotto propped up on her pillows, he tried to imagine her in hospital, an older version of himself standing there, wisely deciding on throwing the switch, or stopping the feeding, or using his service pistol, fighting with Elia, now a man calling him a murderer.

‘You’ve had your hair cut,’ said Caterina.

‘No . . . Well, yes, just a trim.’

‘It wasn’t long. You had it cut two weeks ago.’

‘I just caught sight of myself in the mirror this morning, and I decided I needed a haircut.’

‘How vain. Where did you go?’

Blume waved at the wall. ‘Down there . . . just off the Via del Corso. There’s a place.’

‘I’m surprised a barber can afford the rent,’ said Caterina. ‘Was it expensive?’

‘No, no. Ordinary price. Fifteen, no twenty . . . -two. I had a shampoo, too. I guess the shop must be his own. He bought it years ago when prices were lower.’

‘He told you this?’

‘No, of course not. I’m just imagining that’s how it must be.’

‘So he was old.’

‘Yes, an old barber,’ said Blume. He switched subjects. ‘You know, you don’t look all that great. Are you coming down with a cold? It’s chilly out.’

‘You sound like my mother. By the way, she’s got over her shock at your penis, and is prepared to visit the house again to help with Elia.’

‘Help him with what? I mean how old is the kid?’ said Blume walking into his own rhetorical trap. Maybe she wouldn’t notice.

No such luck. ‘Are you asking me that because you can’t remember?’

‘Sure I can,’ he lied. ‘My point is, isn’t he old enough to look after himself after school?’

‘He gives structure to my mother’s life, Alec. Who is she supposed to cook and wash and clean for now that Papà’s in hospital and is never coming out? Would you deprive her of that?’

Blume figured he would, at least for a while; just long enough for Caterina’s mother to work out she was there on his forbearance and was not really needed.

‘So how old is he?’

‘Thirteen,’ Blume spoke confidently.

‘Wrong.’

‘Fourteen.’ Maybe the kid was only twelve.

‘I’m going home now, Alec. Will you want dinner when you get in?’

‘Actually, I’m going to be a bit late. I’ve got something I need to do.’

‘OK.’

He was relieved she had not asked for details, and furious at her incuriosity.

Chapter 15

Blume took out his notebook, and wrote out all that he knew about the case so far. It took him an hour to get everything down as he wanted it. He looked at what he had, and picked up his desk phone and called Principe’s mobile phone, but it went straight to voicemail. He had to go to the old steel cabinet next to the window, slide open the sticky drawer, and retrieve an old Rolodex he had thought he had done with to get Principe’s landline number.