The Fatal Touch by Conor Fitzgerald Read Free Book Online

way,” said Caterina.
    “Sure.” Blume lifted his bag onto his shoulder. “Treacy lived a few minutes from here. We’re going to check his house, see what we can find.”
    Grattapaglia stepped forward, “I’ll take that bag for you.”
    “No, it’s not heavy – also, you’re staying here. Continue coordinating the house-to-house interviews, watch this area, note who comes by.”
    Grattapaglia stepped back without a word.
    Blume nodded to Caterina. “Inspector, shall we go?”

Chapter 6
    Blume spoke as he walked down the lane, “We still have to treat a death from unknown causes as if it was a murder. Because it could be a murder. And to do this properly, we have to convince ourselves that it is a murder, which means ignoring all my experience which says it isn’t. Are you following?”
    “I wish you had not humiliated Grattapaglia like that in front of me,” said Caterina. “You were the one who said I had to start getting on better with people.”
    “Too bad. You blew your chance. I detailed you and him to go door-to-door together, and you didn’t.”
    “So you’re punishing me too, by angering him all the more?”
    “Sort of. You need to learn to handle this sort of petty stuff. I don’t know what it was like in Immigration Affairs, but it seems to me you must have been surrounded by selfless superior beings such as the rest of the force can only dream of.”
    Caterina increased her pace to keep up as Blume hurried down Via Benedetta. She caught up with him as they reached Piazza della Malva. “Most of my old colleagues were petty bastards, too. Was he married?”
    “Treacy? Not according to his ID card, but he could have been living with someone. We’ll see now. You know, I’ve been turning that name over in my mind. It’s familiar to me. He was an artist, according to his ID card.”
    “A painter?” asked Caterina.
    “I guess so. It’s bad enough putting down ‘artist’ as your profession, but it’s almost justifiable if you’re a painter.”
    “Or a musician.”
    “Yeah, a musician might do that, but it would not be justifiable. As long as he was not a writer or a photographer, I’ll forgive him his pretention.”
    Blume waited till a small knot of American students outside the John Cabot University had passed, then turned on to Via Corsini. Caterina wandered over to the first house on the short terrace to check the number. “Which house?” she asked.
    “Number 15. Down the far end, probably,” said Blume.
    Only one side of the street had buildings on it. The other was flanked by railings that fenced in the overgrown courtyard of Villa Corsini. The last house was number 14.
    In front of them was the entrance to the Botanical Gardens, to their left was the Podogora barracks of the Carabinieri.
    “Where the hell is number 15?” asked Blume.
    “We could ask the Carabinieri for directions,” said Caterina.
    “That would look good, wouldn’t it?” said Blume. “Phone lovely Linda and get a confirmation of the house number.”
    He stood at the front gate of the Botanical Gardens and found himself looking directly at a dark-suited park keeper with a full beard, who sat in his white booth gazing down the strangely rustic street with a proprietorial air, like some Sicilian gabellotto . Blume folded his arms, nodded, and was ignored. He decided to let it go and drifted over to the side of the street out of the man’s line of vision, and found himself before a green wooden door that seemed to be a side entrance into the gardens. A square marble slab was attached to the wall beside the door, the number 15 chiseled into it, off-white against white. Below it was an intercom with a clear plastic button and a single name: Henry Treacy.
    By the time Caterina arrived to say they had confirmed the address, Blume had pressed the intercom button three times.
    “Nobody there,” he said after a while. He put his bag on the ground and stood back, looking up to the top of the wall as if he