AWEEK IN complete charge of the PR surrounding the stalled Clemente case had left D’Amico looking neater than ever. The whiteness of the French-cuff shirt peeking from under the shimmering gray of a finely cut high-buttoned jacked with peaked lapels was, frankly, a triumph.

Blume suddenly felt everything he owned was dirty and old. He sat down again.

“There you are!” said D’Amico, with the voice of an adult who has been playing hide-and-seek with a child. He stepped across the room to behind where Blume was sitting, and folded his arms on the swivel chair, so that he was looking down on the crown of Blume’s head.

“Maria Grazia is the investigating magistrate in charge of the Clemente-Ferrucci case. We’re treating it as one thing now,” he told the back of Blume’s head.

Blume half-turned backward toward D’Amico, but it hurt his neck.

“Move. You’re making me nervous back there.”

D’Amico came back around the desk, took the chair opposite Blume.

“You’re making people nervous, too, Alec.”

“Am I?”

“You come in here in a parlous state, start reworking the case which you are no longer on. That makes people who lack your commitment look bad. I just tell them that’s your American work ethic. But then you go and give them a real reason to be ner vous by meeting Sveva Romagnolo. It looked like a secret meeting, too.”

“You were watching?”

“Of course not. I am still your ex-partner, Alec. I don’t spy. But she was being watched over.”

“Watched over or just watched?”

D’Amico made a gesture with his hands as if releasing an invisible bird into the air. “It comes down to the same thing. I don’t know. Really, I don’t. I don’t even think they were cops. Trainee domestic spies, probably. SISDE operatives sent in by the uncle. The orange-faced minister in Forza Italia. Looks like a squirrel monkey. Same surname.”

“I know who you mean. But somehow the SISDE guys reported to you.”

“No. This is just stuff I heard. I did have some doubts about the story or your meeting her. Now I don’t. This investigation is doing your career no good, Alec. Leave it alone. You used to know when to leave things alone.”

“I just need to get this one person, then I’ll back out. You can handle it however you want, give the credit to whomever you want,” said Blume.

“Why do you care so much, Alec? You had pretty cynical ideas about justice when we were partners. It’s one of the reasons I quit the flying squad.”

“The suspect I have in mind . . . I think this guy will kill again,” said Blume. “I should have hauled him in the moment I clapped eyes on him.”

“Why didn’t you? It would have been easier then than now.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t have enough evidence. I was alone. I had been told to go after Alleva instead.” And, he thought to himself, I had my first date with a woman in eighteen months, and I was not thinking straight.

“Ah,” said D’Amico. “That’s not good. Well, I suppose we’ll have to find a way of getting this guy. Have you got good evidence now?”

“Not as such. But fingerprints, DNA, it’ll match.”

D’Amico frowned. “We need to go through the magistrates for that.”

“I know. In the meantime I sent Paoloni after the guy.”

“Paoloni is on leave of absence. That’s what the Holy Ghost told me. When did you send Paoloni in?”

Blume paused as if to think. He had suddenly noticed that D’Amico had not even bothered to ask for Pernazzo’s name. “A short while ago.”

“Has Paoloni reported back to you?”

“Yes,” said Blume. He could play the disinformation game, too.

“Really? That’s good, because Paoloni seemed to have disappeared from sight. The Holy Ghost has been invoking his safe return to the fold. He took leave, then vanished. I’m glad you’re in contact. Where is he?”

“No idea,” said Blume.

“Well, did he find your guy—what’s his name by the way?”

“Vercetti.”

“Did Paoloni find him?”

“Yes,” said Blume. For all he knew, maybe he had.

“Again, no arrest? It seems to me like getting the suspect might be harder than you have allowed for. You need a magistrate to direct inquiries, here, Alec.”

“I know.”

“And you’re not going to get one if it’s connected with the Clemente case. So you had better leave it completely, or leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do. Pass the evidence to me, I’ll make sure it goes to the right people. Get Paoloni to contact me, too, would you? We’ll organize something.”

“Right. I’ll send the evidence over this evening.”

“Great.” D’Amico stood up. “You should rest, Alec. Not come in looking for work.”

“What the hell is the sense in staying at home?” said Blume.

“You need family, Alec. Everyone has some family. You never visited mine when we were partners. Even Paoloni’s got a son.”

The door opened, and Vicequestore Gallone appeared, holding a yellow file folder.

Gallone did not welcome Blume back. He simply closed his eyes and nodded gently as if receiving a confession, and said, “Yes, yes,” in response to a question no one had asked. Then, with the air of a man anxious not to wet his shoes in a dirty puddle, he stepped into the room, reached over and placed the folder on Blume’s desk, and announced: “Road rage incident. A family man by the name of Enrico Brocca, shot dead outside a pizzeria after an argument over a minor car accident. Seeing as you’re so anxious not to let your excellent police skills rust, I can assign the two men I put on the case to other duties, leave it to you. When you require manpower to move the investigation forward, you will come to me, with the paperwork filled out.” He turned to D’Amico. “Good morning, Commissioner.”

D’Amico smoothed an eyebrow with his thumb. “Good morning, Vicequestore,” he said.

Looking at the two of them side by side, Blume was reminded of an old tailor fussing over a model. To Gallone he said, “This road rage case. Who’s the magistrate in charge?”

“Your friend Principe,” said Gallone. “You’ll spend the rest of the day reading the reports. There are no witnesses in this case. We are still looking. Maybe you could find us some witnesses. Contact the magistrate, inform him that you are on this case, and await instructions. I expect he’ll want you to go out tomorrow and interview the widow of the murdered man.”

Blume opened the file, not wanting to look at any of them. “Fine,” he said.

Gallone glanced at his watch. “So I’ll phone up the Office of Public Prosecution, tell them the case has been assigned to a detective, shall I?”

He left without waiting for a reply. D’Amico lingered.

“What?” asked Blume. “What do you want?”

“Goodbye then,” said Blume, opening the folder and beginning to read. He did not glance up when he heard the door shut.

The report was an exercise in minimalism. The bare essentials of time and place, a ballistics conjecture, the name of one witness. There had been a pizzeria full of people, groups of people on the street, and yet just one witness, a young woman. Crowds are made up exclusively of cowards.

There had been no real follow-up. Blume looked at the police sketch of the gunman. It looked like it had been done by an abstract artist. The image was as unhelpful as it could get. It was possible to project almost any face into the almost blank outline. The chin tapered a little, maybe indicating a thin face. The eyes were small, and the nose, too, as if the artist did not want to commit himself to grand statements. The mouth was small and seemed to have been made to look slightly puckered, or else to indicate incipient hair on the upper lip. It was by no means clear. The accompanying notes explained that the children and the widowed wife had not been able to describe the killer in any detail. They had averted their eyes. But the report also said that they had had two occasions to see the killer. Surely a better job could have been made of it than this?

His mobile rang and Paoloni’s name appeared on the display.

“Beppe. Where the hell have you been?” said Blume. He went over to his office door, checked no one was around, then returned as Paoloni gave one of his typically laconic answers.

“Unfinished business. Then I had to fade a bit into the background. I’ll tell you about it when we meet.”

“What about Pernazzo?”

The one second of silence that followed this question was all it took for Blume to realize that Paoloni had not followed up.

“I got a more important lead. I was following it up. But it came to nothing.”

“I told you to go get this Pernazzo,” said Blume. “You said you would.

Are you still the same person that was beating his breast and blaming himself for the death of a colleague, or are you back to your normal truculent self?”

“I’m definitely the person who cares about his colleague’s death more than anything,” said Paoloni. “Which is why I didn’t make Pernazzo a big priority.”

“You came to me and asked for help, I gave you something to do, and you didn’t do it. And what’s with the leave of absence?”

“I got injured, remember? Same as you.”

“Are you still on leave now?”

“Prognosis was fifteen days. I had my first day yesterday. You want, I can go get your suspect now.”

“You are on leave. I’m not sending an off-duty cop to a suspect’s home.”

“It doesn’t have to be by the book,” said Paoloni.

“It doesn’t have to be absolutely against all the rules in the book either,” said Blume. “What’s with the sick leave, and the switched-off telephone, and now this attitude?”

“I need a break, Alè. I just need to get out of this world of killers and cops and cop-killers for two weeks. I’m sorry if I didn’t do what you asked.”

“What I ordered,” corrected Blume. But it had not been an order, because he did not have the authority to give an order to arrest a suspect like that. Paoloni was right, it had been a request, which made his refusal to comply worse.

“Are we still OK?” asked Paoloni. He sounded more resigned than hopeful.

“I don’t know,” said Blume. “Come back on duty. Waive your sick leave and report straight to me. In an official capacity. Look contrite when I next see you.”

Blume hung up. Paoloni had sounded different. Flatter, less scoffing, less explosive than usual. Something was up there.

Blume glanced at the photo of the murdered man. Killed for a parking place, according to the report. Jesus Christ. He laid the image aside and called the courthouse, got Principe on the line.

“I see we got fobbed off with a road rage incident,” he began.

“What do you mean ‘fobbed off’?” said Principe. “This is one of several important cases I am working on, now that the Clemente affair is in more capable hands.”

“And you want me to follow it up?”

“Not high-profile enough for you, Commissioner?”

“What’s with the tone, Filippo?”

“What tone? It’s just sometimes I get fed up with the way some cases get the red carpet treatment, others get kicked into the long grass. This was a family man, murdered in front of his children on his wife’s birthday. You don’t think that’s worthy of your notice?”

Blume hesitated, unsure what to make of Principe’s attitude. “Of course I do,” he said.

“I want you to stay focused on this case, and on this case alone. Is that understood?”

Blume was perplexed. First Paoloni going quiet, now Principe blustering like this. Principe continued, “Because it’s the only one you’ll get, Commissioner. Leave the Clemente case alone.”

Blume began to suspect Principe was speaking to the gallery. His tone was too rhetorical.

“Have you read the report, Commissioner?”

Calling him Commissioner three times like that was a sort of code. Principe was not on his own in his office. They might even be on speakerphone.

“Yes,” said Blume. “There’s not much to it. An unknown assailant, possibly to do with a fight over a parking place. No witnesses.”

“Get to it, then,” said Principe.

Blume put down the receiver and rubbed his ear as if a small white grub had crawled down the line and into his head, and left the office wondering what the hell had gotten into Principe. Even with an appreciative audience, there had been something too manic in the magistrate’s tone. A road rage case. Pathetic assignment.