He walked back one hundred and fifty meters to Paoloni’s building. He caught the front door as it swung shut behind a woman with a shopping bag, blocking the door with his hand before it hit his face and sweeping away the woman’s apology with his other hand. Still smiling politely, while absently filing away aspects and curves of the woman’s body in memory for later contemplation and evaluation, he stepped into the elevator, which took him to the third floor. As he stepped out, a door at the far end of the hall clicked softly closed, as if he were not the person they had been waiting for.
The air held a scent of something volatile, pleasant but alarming. It was the smell of someone cleaning brass with pink rubbing alcohol, of a dentist’s waiting room, of a blue flame hovering over brandy. It was pungent and slightly sweet. It was the after-smell of gunfire.
Blume quickened his pace with the idea of smashing into Paoloni’s door at speed and bursting it open, but the apartment was in the middle, not at the end of the corridor, and the best he could do was to check his pace and not overshoot the entrance.
Only as he slid to a sudden stop did he think to ring the doorbell. It rang like a firebell, but nobody answered. He pressed the button till his finger was bent back and whitening. Finally, he let go, stood back, pressed himself against the opposite wall behind, and focused on the point below the keyhole where he wanted his foot to land. He put out of his mind the certain knowledge that he had never seen anyone kick in a door of this type and, for a moment, he was certain it would burst open. He visualized himself crashing into Paoloni’s dark living room. He kicked hard, heel first, and managed to hit the very point he was aiming for. It was enough to make the strike plate shudder. The door seemed to rock on its hinges, but didn’t give. He drew back to deliver another kick, but stopped himself.
He pulled out his badge and marched down the corridor to an apartment door, from behind which he was sure he was being watched. The neighbor opened before he got there.
“Are you the police?”
“Yes.”
“They only sent one?”
“What?”
“I called when I heard gunshots. I knew they were gunshots. There was shouting too. Then the door slammed.”
“Stay there,” ordered Blume, pulling out his phone.
“I was not planning on going anywhere,” said the neighbor. He was a balding man in his sixties, and he seemed calm. Calmer than Blume.
The wailing sound inside his head resolved itself into real-life sirens, and he heard the police arrive. Four of them, from the sound of it. The elevator whirred and disappeared down the shaft, heavy footsteps came banging up the stairs.
Both policemen had their Berettas drawn, down by their sides. Blume held his badge up, pointed at the door. The elevator stopped and two more, a Sovrintendente in charge, emerged, one holding a long cloth bag, which they unzipped immediately to reveal a two-handled blue battering ram. On the second blow the deadlatch burst out of the strikehole and the door swung open and hit something on the floor. Blume was the third man in.
Everything and more than he needed to see lay there in front of him, but for some reason, his eye was drawn first to the bullet hole in Paoloni’s flat-screen TV. It was a neat puncture in the upper left. It looked like the TV might work even now, if he turned it on. Lying before the screen, face up, arms thrown forward like he was doing the back crawl, was Paoloni. The mess of gunshots to the head seemed nowhere in evidence, which did not make sense for a moment, until he lowered his eyes and saw the splashed table legs, the glistening skirting boards, and darkening sofa cushions. The final shot had been delivered to his upturned face. Paoloni’s weapon was on the floor, just out of his reach.
The heavy black object that had been blocking the door was as lifeless a lump of anything as Blume had ever seen. The Sovrintendente was kneeling down looking at it.
“Poor thing,” he said. “Looks to me like it took three bullets in its haunch before it let go. It’s a Cane Corso. Or was.”
“I know,” said Blume.
The policeman snapped on latex gloves, then he bent down and pulled the dog’s mouth back. “Some pressure in those jaws.” He peeled back the black lips some more. “I was right. Look there. That’s cloth and blood. It looks to me like this dog attacked the killer before he got shot. He may even have done some real harm to him. We’ll certainly get a good DNA sample from this.”
The Sovrintendente stroked the dog’s face. “Good boy,” he said.
One of the young officers came over, his face first-timer white.
“I know who that is. That’s Chief Inspector Paoloni. And I know who you are, sir. You’re Commissioner Alec Blume. I worked in Collegio Romano three years ago.”
The policeman’s face was familiar.
Blume said, “He’s dead, right?”
The young policeman looked at him in astonishment, the older one with pity.
No matter how bad the crime scene, even one that included a child, Blume knew that if he waited, something would click in his mind and his thoughts could detach themselves from his emotions and float into a state of forensic serenity. But for now the feeling would not come. He could not bear to look at Paoloni, nor even at the dead black beast by the door. He checked an impulse to run, battled down a rebellion in his gut and stomach and a heaving in his chest.
After ten minutes, he began to reassert control. He still could not look at Paoloni, but he was able to start checking the apartment, making plans for his next moves, deciding on how he would deal with colleagues as they arrived.
He conducted a search of the kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, followed by the Sovrintendente, who was trying to be casual about making sure the Commissioner did not compromise the scene.
“What are we looking for, sir?”
“Anything,” said Blume.
Paintings, which would not be here, he thought to himself. Paintings that, if he had left them alone in the wardrobe of his own house, would not have led to this. Paintings that were cursed.
“Sovrintendente, start calling all the hospitals in the city now, find out if anyone is being treated for dog bites. But this is not my crime scene. Seal it. Call in the forensics, the PM, medical examiner-the usual.” He walked toward the door.
“Are you leaving?”
“Yes. I arrived outside the door approximately five minutes before you, I’ll write up a report and respond to questions later. OK?”
The Sovrintendente deftly interposed himself between Blume and the front door, saying, “Don’t you think it would be better to stay here, Commissioner?”
“No,” said Blume and barged past.
Chapter 44
When he reached his car, he delivered several hard kicks to the body and dented the door so badly that it was hard to open, which gave him an excuse to pummel it with his fists.
Blume phoned Caterina to get her to look up the Colonel’s home address. She answered with what sounded to him like the epitome of irrelevance.
“Have you seen Emma? She was supposed to get back to me, tell me about how her talk with her mother went.”
“Get me the Colonel’s address and phone straight back,” said Blume and hung up. He started driving back toward the city center, heading in the direction of his station until someone told him where to find the Colonel.
Then, clear as if a voice had spoken from the backseat, so clear that Blume checked his mirror, half expecting to see Paoloni there, grinning, whispering secrets, he realized where he was going. With a jerk of the clutch and a sharp pull on the steering wheel, he pushed the car into the left lane and accelerated hard, switching on his siren as he came racing up to within a centimeter of the car in front. He gunned the motor, wobbled the steering wheel side-to-side looking for a way around, and hit the whoop function on the siren. Reluctantly it moved away, and he went roaring up behind the next car.