The Fatal Touch Read Online Free PDF

number.”
    “Who is it?” asked a woman who was restraining her son from running about by holding onto the schoolbag on his back.
    “It’s that English drunk,” said another.
    Caterina singled out the speaker. She was a thin woman made up entirely of wrinkles, and she was standing there in a blue dressing gown, brown stockings, and white hospital clogs.
    “How do you know that?” asked Caterina.
    “Hah!” said the woman, looking around for approbation and, indeed, getting some. “I was right, see? I live on the fourth floor,” said the old woman. “I can see clearly from there. I recognized his white beard. He won’t be singing any more loud songs late at night now, will he?”
    “Do you know his name?”
    “What would I know his name for?”
    Caterina took down the triumphant little woman’s name, and asked if there was anyone else about who might know the man’s name.
    “None of my friends,” she declared, wagging her finger.
    Caterina stepped out of the doorway and looked over at Blume and Panebianco. They were still there, but the coroners were closing the doors on the wagon. It was almost over.
    She could call Elia any time now. She reached into her bag for her phone, but before she got to it she heard a commotion to her left.
    Grattapaglia had just pulled his nightstick and truncheoned the Spanish diplomat to the ground.

Chapter 4
    “Snatching his diplomat’s card and throwing it to the ground might have been mistaken for pique, but you ground it under your heel,” said Blume. “Classy.”
    Sovrintendente Grattapaglia smiled broadly. It took him a long time to realize his cheerfulness was not being reciprocated, and Caterina squirmed in her seat, mortified on his behalf, wondering how he had failed to see the anger in Blume’s face. Eventually and with defiant slowness, the Sovrintendente allowed his smile to fade, then shrugged, and said, “I didn’t know he was a diplomat.”
    Blume’s face showed a mixture of contempt and puzzlement, as if he was coming to accept but still struggling to fathom the depths of Grattapaglia’s idiocy. For one who had so casually turned to violence a short while ago, Grattapaglia seemed oddly defenseless now, like a huge child in big trouble. She felt bad for him, and resolved to speak up. “Before the Sovrintendente assaulted . . . I mean, before the incident, that diplomat—”
    Grattapaglia jerked his index finger at her, as if in warning. She stopped speaking, trying to understand why he didn’t want her backing. Keeping his finger pointed at her, Grattapaglia turned to Blume and said, “You know as well as I do, it’s her fucking fault. She shouldn’t even have been there if she can’t do her job.”
    Caterina felt her eyes widen and her mouth drop open. She was aware of it, but couldn’t help herself.
    “I’d like you to explain that to me,” said Blume.
    “Explain what? It’s obvious. She didn’t warn me. She just said troublemaker, like that covered it. If I had known he was an ambassador, you think I’d have done that? I told you she wasn’t ready for fieldwork.”
    Blume mock-reprimanded Caterina. “You didn’t think to warn him not to batter a member of the public in front of three dozen hostile witnesses in the middle of a crime scene?”
    “So I made a mistake,” said Grattapaglia. “But she should have given me a heads-up.”
    As Blume’s face darkened, Grattapaglia adopted a less aggressive tone, somewhere between conciliatory and plaintive. “All I’m saying is she doesn’t even lower herself to speak to me.”
    “You mean she hasn’t ever come to you looking for advice?”
    “No. Never.”
    “On what, Salvatore, on how to deal with obstreperous diplomats with direct connections to our administrators?”
    Grattapaglia slumped back into his seat, defeated.
    The three of them were seated outside a bar on Via Giulia, having crossed the Sisto Bridge. Blume was buying her breakfast because, he insisted, she had won the