‘It’s a suspension of pure liquorice,’ she said, coming over with the lemons, one of which she had halved, the other quartered.
‘Liquorice liquor. Then it’s alcoholic,’ he said. ‘I don’t drink alcohol.’
She rolled up the dangling sleeve of her shirt, and pushed the lemons towards him. ‘If you want to get rid of your headache, drink that cordial.’
Blume drank. It was powerful. He could feel it painting his tongue and the roof of his mouth black, and it burned the back of his throat even though it was extremely sweet. The glass contained at least three measures. He put it down half empty. Already he could feel the fumes going to his head.
‘All of it, come on. You’re a big man.’
Blume took a second long draught and snapped the empty glass back on the wooden top. It was like drinking a cough medicine.
‘Those lemons are sweet enough to peel and eat like oranges, but they will taste sour after the licorice. Nothing is sweeter than licorice. Bite into the quartered lemons,’ she instructed.
‘I don’t think I will. We need to talk.’
‘Do it. You can talk at the same time.’
Blume did as she said. She was right about the lemon being sour, but the effect was invigorating and the taste delicious. He finished two quarters with two quick bites, attacked the third, and said, ‘You know who I am?’
‘For now, you are just an unhappy man with a headache.’
‘Commissioner Blume. I am a policeman.’
‘You just said that a minute ago.’
‘So I did. I apologize. The reason I am here, Mrs Curmaci, is.. ’ He stopped. He did not sound credible to himself. He finished the last quarter lemon as he thought of something to say.
‘Now take the two half lemons, and press them against your temples.’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘No. But if you think you’ll look stupid,’ and here she smiled sweetly at him, ‘and you will, just hold half a lemon in your hand and keep smelling it. Your headache will be gone in ten minutes. In fact, it’s already fading.’
She was right. As soon as he thought about it, he felt another pulse, but at least thirty seconds had passed since the last one. And the sensation of the pain trying to break out was diminishing fast.
‘You can use lavender, too. Shall I get you some?’
‘No. I’m fine. This,’ he brought the lemon to his nose and inhaled deeply, ‘is working.’
The nausea was fading fast too, and he had finally stopped sweating. He looked gratefully into the face of the young woman across the table and saw her eyes shift sideways and her face become anxious. He followed her gaze to the kitchen door, where staring at them was a youth on the verge of manhood.
Blume raised his hand in greeting, but the teenager continued to regard him in grave silence. Blume looked at the mother for guidance. He had never mastered the etiquette of speaking to children. All he knew was that after they reached a certain age, asking them their names and age sounded as strange to them as it would to an ordinary adult. And yet he could not for the life of him imagine what else to say.
He looked back, and saw the boy was gone. Mostly he felt relieved, but he also found the sudden disappearance and the utter silence that preceded it disturbing.
‘That’s my son.’ She smiled. Her eyetooth was slightly crooked. ‘I have another son upstairs, and if he wakes up I’ll have to go to him. His name is Roberto. Robertino we call him. The little one. My son here, the one you saw…’
Blume ran his mind’s eye over files from what seemed like years ago and plucked the name Ruggiero from the air, and said it to her.
‘That’s right, Ruggiero.’ Her voice softened as she pronounced the name, and she expressed no surprise that he should know it.
Blume felt very pleased with his brain and with the lucidity of his thoughts, then realized, almost with a shock, that the pain had simply floated out of his head. Tentatively, he rolled his head backwards to feel the tension in his neck. Nothing. It was gone, and he felt energy returning to his whole body.
‘How are you feeling?’
Happy was the right response, but he could not really say that. ‘That liquorice seems to have done the trick,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t mention it. Now what am I going to do about having not just a man, but a policeman visiting my house? I hope you’re going to make a call and a fleet of cars will drive up and you’ll arrest me now. Nothing else would look right.’
‘Well… I suppose I could…’
‘And it needs to be made clear that the time we spent together in here was dedicated to discussing what was to be done about the children. I was refusing to leave the house until arrangements had been made for them. In fact, that’s true. I am going to make a phone call to the Megales across the road, and send Roberto over with Ruggiero. Can you make the call to your colleagues, make sure there are a lot of flashing lights and squealing of tyres?’ She rolled up her shirtsleeve, which had fallen down again, and held out her arms. Blume could see tiny blonde hairs against her smooth brown skin. Her wrists were thin, one encircled by a silver bracelet, and her fingers long, one encircled by a golden ring.
She shook her lovely hands at him. ‘Maybe you could put handcuffs on me?’
‘I can’t just arrest you like that. I need a magistrate to bring charges. And I can’t call in the local police. It doesn’t work like that.’
She pulled her arms back and folded them across her breast. ‘So what are you doing here?’
‘I thought you might need help.’
‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘In a moment of weakness, I made a telephone call. But you don’t look like you came either to arrest me or to help me. You’re all alone, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not here to arrest you.’
‘Do you even know what I am talking about?’
‘Yes. You made a call to Magistrate Arconti,’ said Blume. ‘But maybe you had no choice?’
‘Of course I had a choice.’
‘If you have been under pressure or threat from your neighbours, from people around here, I think I can help you understand why. But first I need to ask you this: has your husband returned?’
She shook her head, not in denial but in refusal to answer.
‘I need to ask you this again,’ said Blume. ‘Has your husband returned?’
This time the shake of her head contained a warning.
‘Suppose your husband had returned,’ said Blume. ‘Do you think he could resolve this problem that has arisen? I am referring to your reputation in this community.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Without bloodshed. Because if he could just make sure, without bloodshed, that everyone understood your phone call was made in good faith, then I would be happy with that.’
‘Who knows about it?’
‘Only a few people,’ said Blume. ‘It does not have to become known to anyone else.’
Maria Itria bit her lip as she considered this. ‘What do you want in return?’
‘Nothing. But if you decided to follow up on that phone call and talk to a magistrate, I think it would be a good thing.’
‘Betray my husband, my family?’
‘Talk openly to someone. Even to me. Not to Arconti, he’s leaving the profession. Did you know he has been taken ill?’
‘Poor man, it must be the stress of all those lies he tells about honest people.’
There it was. The flash of cynicism he had been waiting for. But still she sat there, beautiful and seemingly vulnerable, a youthful mother with two children in the house.
‘Did you hear about the murder of Matteo Arconti?’
‘I thought you said he had been taken ill.’
‘Not him. His namesake.’ Blume told her the story, watching her face as he did so. She seemed keen to hear the details, and her eyes shone with interest when he spoke about how they had tracked down the van to the abandoned Falck steelworks in Sesto San Giovanni. She grimaced sympathetically as he described the bullet wounds in Arconti’s body, shook her head sadly as he remembered how Magistrate Arconti had been overcome by apoplexy on the floor of his office.