Free The Fatal Touch by Conor Fitzgerald

questions about her mother, Pistoia, school, her friends. She took down a few names and addresses, got the girl’s cell number. Caterina was doing a good job, so he left her to it, and wandered around the hall, looking at the portraits, glancing back at the two women seated at the desk. There was an undertow of tension and a sort of subliminal tussle going on between them, but they were managing it with composure. He thought of the shouts and obscenities, the threats, spit, slaps, kicks, arrogance, imbecility, intoxication, and noncooperation that characterized so many of the “interviews” between male suspects and tired, stressed-out cops. Watching the girl’s face and lips, the way she crooked her elbow as she straightened a bright strand of hair, with Caterina poised and calm, observing her carefully, he felt humans, or some of them, were worth it after all.
    The eight portraits showed young men and women dressed in red or blue standing in front of Roman ruins, with idealized landscapes behind them. The faces were photographic, and some were far more handsome than others, but the artist had somehow managed to render each face slightly idiotic. It was something to do with the pursed lips and smirk.
    The interview between Caterina and Manuela seemed to be over, and Manuela, with the air of a vindicated adolescent, arose from her seat and came over to him.
    “Five of those are by Pompeo Batoni,” she said. “Three are by Treacy. And no one can tell the difference without checking the signatures on the back.”
    She said this with unaffected pride, as if there was nothing untoward in the way that Treacy imitated another painter’s work.
    “Batoni charged his customers up front. These are all English and German tourists. He’d do their faces in about two or three sessions, then fill in the rest afterwards and have them shipped. He charged extra for details. If you wanted, say, a dog or a broken classical column, it cost you extra,” she said.
    “Oh,” said Blume. He focused on them again. “I don’t like them much,” he said after a while.
    The girl laughed, and Blume smiled knowingly, as if he had always intended his comment to be witty.
    “Nobody likes them,” she said, then became grave again. “No one except Henry. He loved Batoni. Whenever he came into the gallery, he’d wave at the people in the pictures and shout, ‘Good morning, English cretins!’ He said Batoni had no pretention as an artist. All the pretention was in the buyer, whose face is in the picture. He spent a lot of money collecting these.”
    Blume looked around and saw Caterina opening a pair of double doors at the far end of the room. He went across to join her, and Manuela followed. The room they entered had a very similar leather-topped desk and a handsome oak bookcase. It was extremely orderly and had no pictures on the walls. Most of the books seemed to have been bought for decorative purposes.
    “This is Nightingale’s room,” said Manuela. “He never uses it, really. Except to make phone calls.”
    The other room was bursting at the seams with objects, books, and paintings. Some paintings and books were stacked on the floor. Behind the desk a full-length portrait, done in modern acrylics, showed a young man with a thin face slouched against a broken pillar, his blue eyes looking slightly sideways and half closed as against the smoke from his cigarette, yet gazing out at the viewer. The man held the cigarette between two lips curled like two tildes, his black shirt was open to reveal a smooth chest whose muscles the artist had exaggerated almost to the point of parody. Something about the man was extremely familiar, and Blume found himself staring at the painting for some time.
    “I know him from somewhere,” said Blume. “But I can’t quite remember.”
    “That’s Henry Treacy,” said Manuela. “It’s a self-portrait from 1966. It’s one of the only original works with his signature, and is worth quite a lot. At