It would be fun to play football up here, Blume thought.
“Please, do sit down,” she was saying, indicating a circle of wicker chairs with brightly colored maroon and purple cushions. What happened when it rained? Not that it ever did anymore.
Even in the act of sitting, he asked his first question: “How long have you known our vicequestore aggiunto?”
“The vicequestore. God, what a title for Franco.” She let out a long breath.
“I have known him for…” She scrunched up her face, thinking, and finally Blume saw the creases of age in her face, “Twenty- five years? He was at La Sapienza with me. Class of seventy-six.”
“Old friends?”
“And nothing else. Absolutely nothing else.” Romagnolo gave her shoulders a small shudder as if shaking off a repellent image of Gallone touching her. “We grew apart. Met again sometimes. There was a group of us. It’s also where I met my husband.”
The woman did not look her age. In 1976, he had been a child in Seattle; she had been a political activist at university. He suddenly felt babyish in front of her. To compensate he added gruffness to his tone.
“So Gallone also knew your husband?”
“Not really. When they were younger their paths crossed a few times.”
D’Amico said, “Excuse me interrupting. We found this in the apartment.” He handed Romagnolo the mobile phone. “This is yours, isn’t it?”
“Yes, thanks. I need this.” She immediately started thumbing at the buttons, consulting the menus.
Blume reached into his leather bag, pulled out a pad of paper and opened it. “First of all,” he began, “may I express my deepest condolences for your loss. It must be a terrible shock.”
It was a stock phrase and he had used it or variants of it many times before, but it was not bereft of meaning. It was terrible losing a loved one. It went beyond words, which is why he had reconciled himself to using more or less the same phrase repeatedly. He also liked the covert accusation it contained. It must have been a terrible shock; it better have been a terrible shock.
Romagnolo finally laid her phone aside. Blume found himself looking hard at the widow’s hands, which were long-fingered and, he noted, showed the early wrinkles and spots of middle age that her face had yet to acquire. Whenever he was meeting the first of kin after a murder, he checked out the hands and wondered if they could have struck the fatal blows, pulled the trigger. Often they had, but so far the hands had belonged to men only.
Sveva Romagnolo thanked him for his kind words, and lapsed into silence. D’Amico had taken out a notebook, too, and was staring at it sullenly as if he had forgotten how to read or write.
As they sat in momentary silence, Blume became aware of the irritating trickle of the fountain behind him. Far in the distance, someone was trying to start a motor scooter, or a lawn mower. Blume was wondering about the child. Should he ask? He decided he shouldn’t, but his mouth betrayed him: “How old is your son?”
“Nine.” Romagnolo enunciated the number very clearly, to underscore its pathetic smallness and warn him away. She fixed her eyes hard on him as she said it. They were dark brown, almost black, and, he realized, a little too small. She didn’t have such nice eyes.
“How is he?” inquired Blume.
“Traumatized. Destroyed. Inconsolable. He’s been so hard to deal with. I’ve hardly had a chance to take it in myself.”
Blume nodded sympathetically. He was calculating her probable age when she had the child. She must have been at the very limit.
“When you entered the house, did you notice if the door to your son’s bedroom was open or closed?”
“No.”
“No which?”
“No, I didn’t notice. How the hell would I notice something like that with Arturo lying in…”
She brought her hand to her throat.
“You didn’t maybe close it yourself, then. You know, sort of protectively.”
“No! Is this normal, for the questions to be so irrelevant?” Romagnolo directed this question at D’Amico, who gave her his most fetching helpless smile.
“Do you eat peanut butter?” asked Blume.
“Are you serious?”
“Well, do you?”
“No. That was my husband. For the protein. He doesn’t eat meat. Didn’t eat meat.”
“Did your husband have a bag?”
“A bag, like a handbag?”
“Any bag.”
“A backpack. He usually went around with a gray backpack. He rode his bicycle a lot.”
“We didn’t find your husband’s wallet. The killer probably took it, but just in case, do you have any idea where it might be?”
“He usually kept it lying around the house, or in his pocket. No, I have no idea where else it might be.”
“His secretary says he didn’t have a cell phone.”
“He thought they were bad for his health.”
Blume allowed a few beats of silence to pass.
Romagnolo said, “Franco was talking about a man called Alleva. He tortures animals. My husband and a friend were making a documentary about this. I would have thought this Alleva would be in custody by now.”
“He will be, soon,” said Blume. “Apart from Alleva, did your husband have enemies?”
“Arturo campaigned really hard against illegal dog fighting. And that earned him a lot of enemies from the criminal underworld. People like this Alleva, I presume. He was responsible for Rome and the Lazio region. I remember he said there were three different gangs in the business, Gypsies-sorry, Roma-Albanians and Italians. He said he was dealing with the Italians, because he felt he had some chance of success, but…” she opened her palms to display her ignorance of the details.
“Can you tell us where these places were?”
“I can probably remember a few of them. But, given that my husband reported every encounter he discovered, the police should have detailed records. Unless, that is, they got trashed as soon as he made them.”
Blume ignored the barb, which applied more to the Carabinieri anyhow, and not the state police. What interested him was how little interest Romagnolo had had in her husband’s activities.
“Did you receive any strange phone calls recently?”
She glanced upward and leftward as she sought to remember.
“No.”
“Anyone new arrive at the house?”
She hesitated. “Not that I know of.”
“Did your husband mention any new friends?”
“My husband would not mention his latest friends to me.”
There. He had hit something. “What do you mean?”
“By what?”
Blume said, “He wouldn’t mention his latest friends. Are you talking about girlfriends?”
To her credit, she did not waste time on pretences. She said: “You can’t say girls. They were older women. They fell for what they thought was his big soft heart. A man who likes animals that much can’t be bad.”
“And was he-bad, I mean?”
“Oh no. Poor Arturo. He was a good man. He was just a bit vain. Vain and lonely, I suppose. Maybe not even vain considering the old babbione he chose.”
“He knew you knew?”
“I guess he must have. We never talked about that side of things. Could one of these… women have anything to do with what happened?”
Seeing no point in pretending otherwise, Blume said: “That’s just what I was wondering.” Then he added, “Did you notice any change in his daily schedules?”
“I told you, Commissioner, he did not have a regular working day like other people. And I’m so busy myself I could hardly notice. I am often in Padua.”
“Your electoral district.”
“Yes.”
“So you are often away from home?”
“I would go so far as to say I am mostly away from home. I spend far more time in Padua than in Rome.”
“I see,” said Blume. But he didn’t see. If you were married to someone, he reckoned, you should live with them. If you weren’t willing to live with them, then it was going nowhere.