by LJ Ross
On the other side, Armstrong smiled slowly.
“Well, well,” he purred.
CHAPTER 13
By the time they reached the Piazza di Santa Trinita, Anna had a newfound respect for life and limb. Although it was only a mile from the Villa Lucia, traffic conditions and speed restrictions meant that the journey should have taken up to fifteen minutes.
It had taken five.
Magda, it seemed, was a woman of many talents.
“Eccoci qui. Here we are,” she said, after zooming along the Via de’ Tornabuoni and executing a perfect parallel parking manoeuvre into a space Anna would have sworn was too small.
Anna stepped out of the car onto terra firma and looked around the square which was, somewhat ironically, triangular. In its centre was an ancient Roman column inscribed with the word ‘JUSTICE’ at the top and it was surrounded by several palaces and the church from which the square took its name. It was an upmarket part of the city, if the high-end designer fashion outlets and clientele were anything to go by. On the corner, an old fourteenth-century palazzo was now the global headquarters of one such brand and she watched a woman with an improbably small dog step out of its glass doors to teeter along to the next shop further down the street.
“The café is this way,” Magda said, walking around to stand close to Anna.
“You don’t have to—”
Magda’s expression was unwavering.
“I go where you go,” she said, simply. “Get used to it.”
Anna’s eyebrows flew into her hairline at the woman’s tone, but she had to admit she respected her for it. Not many would have stood their ground against their employer’s wife, after all.
They walked a hundred metres down a side street until they came to a pretty café with wrought-iron bistro-style tables set out on the pavement and creeping wisteria crawling up its ancient walls. It was set inside the ground floor of one of the many narrow old buildings that made up the city of Florence, with narrow, shuttered windows to the front. Ryan had told her that the buildings had been fortified in such a way as to protect its inhabitants from intruders, but they were often large and impressive inside, with blooming gardens hidden behind the austere frontage.
“This is it,” Magda said, casting her eyes up and down the street. “Who are you meeting?”
“Ah, his name is Andrea Conti,” she replied. “He’s a journalist with the Florence Daily News.”
Magda nodded.
“I recognise the name,” she said, clearly relieved.
“Let’s go and sit down,” Anna suggested, moving towards a pretty table beneath a twine of wisteria. “We still have a while before he’s due to arrive.”
Magda shot her a look.
“We’re early? I thought you told me we were running late?”
Anna gave her a breezy smile.
“Did I? Silly me.”
* * *
Andrea Conti was widely regarded as being the most knowledgeable newspaper hack in the city of Florence. He’d worked on most of the beats over the course of his thirty-year career but had mostly settled on reporting crime which, for the most part, centred around petty misdemeanours. Mafia-related crime had reduced in recent years thanks to a national crack-down, although whether it had succeeded in higher regulation and reduced corruption or the other way around, he couldn’t say with any degree of certainty. Conti’s world was filled with spider diagrams and torn bits of paper tacked to the cork board which covered an entire wall in his respectable one-bedroomed apartment. Information flowed towards him like irrigation channels from numerous sources dotted around the city and far beyond, informing his hard-hitting articles and weekly round-ups. He had a reputation for being immune to bribery, which had been the deciding factor when Anna had made her calls earlier that morning. She wanted someone whose information she—and Ryan—could trust, and who better than a man who would, by all accounts, have made a good policeman himself?
“Signora Ryan?”
Conti did not conform to the stereotype of a world-weary newspaperman. For one thing, he wore his fifty-one years with a certain irreverent flair and might have passed for any one of the affluent tourists who wandered past him.
“Signor Conti?” she replied. “Come and join us.”
He looked across at Magda with a question in his eyes and Anna cursed herself for not coming up with some plausible excuse.
“Ah, let me introduce Magda,” she began. “My—”
“I am her aunt,” Magda lied seamlessly in her native tongue. “Anna is visiting with me. I hope you don’t mind me tagging along.”
He looked between them and thought that, had he not been adept at reading human behaviour, he might have swallowed it. The age gap was about right and, although the younger woman’s skin was a shade or so lighter, they both had dark hair and eyes, and the kind of symmetrical features that might have belonged to the same gene pool. As it was, the young Mrs Ryan had need of company to look out for her wellbeing, which was interesting in itself. The only Ryans he knew of that might be of sufficient importance as to warrant personal security were the English family who owned the Villa Lucia, up on Viale Machiavelli. They’d visited the villa over the summer, he happened to know, but he hadn’t seen this woman before.
He’d look into it, he decided.
“Of course not,” he said aloud, settling himself at the table beside them. “How may I help you? I understood from your telephone call this morning that you have some information for me?”
Anna cleared her throat nervously. She’d only been able to secure a meeting at short notice on the promise of a juicy new lead but, now it came to it, she realised there was nothing she could tell him.
At least, nothing on the record.
“Before I come to that, I’d like you to tell me everything you know about Riccardo Spatuzzi,” she said, signalling a waiter for some drinks.
Conti placed an order for a beer and smiled again.
“Mrs Ryan, why should I tell you my secrets, if you will not tell me yours?”
“You shouldn’t but, if you don’t, we’re at a stalemate,” she said, taking a delicate sip of her water. “I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey.”
He let out a booming laugh which caught the attention of the neighbouring table.
“You’re a tough cookie,” he said, appreciatively. From the look of her, a strong gust of wind could take her away, but he was delighted to find there was backbone beneath.
“Alright, I’ll tell you this much,” he said, leaning forward so that only they could hear him. “Be careful who you speak to about Riccardo Spatuzzi. There are people who would pay a lot of money for information on his whereabouts and others who would kill for it. Ask too many questions and they may start to believe you know something about it.”
He paused, clearly wondering the same thing himself.
“Perhaps that’s the lead you spoke of, signora? You know what happened to Riccardo Spatuzzi?”
His face became animated and he began to reach for his phone so that he could record the conversation.
“No! No, I don’t. I—look, all I want to know is whether he was embroiled in something…something bad. Were you investigating him at all before he died?”
Conti looked between them, weighing up his options, then blew out a long breath and leaned forward again.
“You must know that Riccardo is the son of Monica Spatuzzi?”
Anna stole a glance at Magda, who gave a small shake of her head to signal that she had no idea who he was talking about.
“Who is Monica Spatuzzi? Someone famous?”
Conti laughed again and ran a hand over the back of his neck.
“You could say that,” he replied. “Spatuzzi is mafiosa. The head of the family. Riccardo is her eldest son.”
Anna gulped down another mouthful of water.
“They have a villa in the hills in Fiesole. They say it used to belong to Michelangelo,” Conti continued. “My sources tell me Sp
atuzzi was beside herself when she heard Riccardo was missing. There’s been a rise in local crime since it happened.”
“So you’re telling me Spatuzzi believes another one of the families has taken her son and she’s given the order for punishment?”
“You’re catching on,” he said, downing the last of his beer before signalling for another. “They’re trying to find out who is responsible, and she’s promised a fortune to whoever can bring her information. Be careful, signora, people would do a lot for money like that.”
Anna nodded.
“I understand—and thank you—but I don’t really know anything.”
“You know more than you think and, as for the rest, people can guess. For example, I know that you must be the wife of Max Ryan, the son of David Ryan, the former diplomat who has the Villa Lucia. I heard that Ryan became a detective in London, years ago, and the papers reported the death of his sister around the world. I wrote a piece about it, myself,” he added, with a timely pause as a mark of respect. “It would not be unusual for Ryan to have brought his wife to visit his family’s villa, but he is not here with you, he is at the Commissariato San Giovanni this morning.”
Anna was shocked.
“You are surprised, signora, but it is my business to know these things. When a little bird tells me a senior inspector goes to the airport twice in the same day and brings back an English detective with his beautiful wife,” he raised his glass of beer towards her. “My interest is piqued. So, I asked another little bird, who told me the English detective is visiting to assist an enquiry into a missing person.”
He wiped the edge of his mouth with a napkin.
“And, here you are, asking me about Riccardo Spatuzzi,” he finished. “It would seem, signora, that you know who has taken him and, moreover, that your husband is working with the police to charge that person.”
Magda shot Anna a look of sheer panic, but Anna put a hand on her arm to reassure her and then looked Conti straight in the eye.
“What do you want, signore?”
He polished off the last of his beer and set the glass down on the table before answering.
“I want full exclusivity,” he said. “Everyone is going to want a piece of this story when it breaks but I want to be the first. If your husband speaks to anyone, he speaks to me. In exchange, I’ll keep this to myself. For now,” he tagged on.
Anna thought of all the unknown faces passing them in the street and wondered how many might work for the Spatuzzi family. How many might, even now, be reporting back to her. If Conti knew of their arrival and of the reason for it, there was no telling how many others.
“Deal,” she said simply.
CHAPTER 14
By the time MacKenzie reached the Royal Victoria Infirmary, she was deeply regretting her decision to stop off at the Pie Van for a bite to eat on the way. The organic couscous salad was sitting heavily in her stomach and she knew that it would take a monumental effort to keep it all down once she had completed the next unenviable task on her ‘to do’ list.
The mortuary at the RVI was home to the senior police pathologist attached to the Criminal Investigation Department, Doctor Jeffrey Pinter. He was a lanky man in his mid-fifties who had the misfortune of reflecting some of the physical characteristics of the dead he cared for, owing to a long-term deficit of Vitamin D. However, he was a cheerful man whose idiosyncrasies she was prepared to overlook because he was the best pathologist across several command divisions by a country mile.
“Morning, Jeff!” she called out to him as she keyed in the security access code and stepped inside the chilly interior of the mortuary.
“Morning!” he called back.
She looked around the room, seeking out the direction of his voice, then a balding head popped around the side of one of the large immersion tanks.
“Lovely to see you, Denise,” he gushed, in the manner of a man who had never quite lost hope of a last-minute change of heart before her forthcoming wedding. “Ah, no Frank today? How’s he faring?”
“He’s well, thanks Jeff. Can’t say the same for poor Edward Charon.”
Taking his cue, Pinter turned to the business at hand.
“Yes, indeed. Well, I’ve finished my preliminary report. I’ve got a couple of the technicians working on the last few details before I submit my final report, but the overall opinion is unlikely to change.”
“I appreciate you turning this around so quickly,” she said.
“It’s been a slow week, as it happens,” he remarked, scratching a bony finger against his earlobe in a manner she found vaguely nauseating. “Come on through and I’ll give you the lowdown.”
She followed the billowing tails of his lab coat through the main, open-plan mortuary room with its bank of metal drawers and overpowering lemony stench mingling with something undoubtedly rotten. It was a unique scent, one she would recognise anywhere but could never quite find the words to describe. It was unlike anything else, being both chemical and organic fused into one noxious-smelling gas.
“Bit heavy today, isn’t it?” Pinter threw over his shoulder, as if he had known what she had been thinking. “We had a lady in here earlier who hadn’t been found for rather a long time, I’m afraid.”
“How sad,” MacKenzie murmured, and wondered what kind of woman she had been; the lonely Eleanor Rigby character the Beatles had so deftly written into song or something else entirely? She supposed there was no sense in worrying about things she could not change.
“I’ve put our Mr Charon in here,” Pinter said, opening a side door marked ‘EXAMINATION ROOM A’.
As she stepped inside, MacKenzie thought briefly of all the other victims of crime she’d visited in the same room, with its clinical white-washed walls and impersonal metal trolley, and of how many more to come. The strip-light buzzing overhead shone a stark, grey-white light, serving to enhance the overall sense of gloom, and there was no time to prepare herself before Pinter whisked away the paper shroud covering what remained of Edward Charon.
“What can you tell me?” she asked, after a few seconds’ adjustment.
“Well, for starters, it was tricky to estimate the precise time of death,” Pinter said. “Charon’s core temperature had regulated itself to the ambient temperature of his surroundings, which were below zero for most of the night he was lying in the hermitage. Set against that, the low temperatures effectively delayed the process of putrefaction we would ordinarily expect to see in predictable stages, which made life harder.”
“I understand,” she assured him. “I just want your best guess.”
“In that case, I’d put the time of death at anywhere between fourteen to twenty hours before he was found.”
MacKenzie winced.
“That’s quite a gap,” she said. “On the other hand, we may be able to narrow it down looking at the other facts. If we put his death at somewhere between two o’clock and eight o’clock on Wednesday, give or take, I can tell you straight away that he was still alive and rowing visitors across to the hermitage until four o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, when the castle closed. Apparently, he liked to have a final row up and down the river until around four-thirty, when he would stow the boat and the oars and head home. He spoke to his colleagues at around ten past four on Wednesday as a couple of them walked home via the riverbank. They seem to have been the last to see him alive.”
“So, the post mortem interval reduces to somewhere between, let’s say, four and eight o’clock on Wednesday evening.”
“Much better,” she said, with the hint of a smile. “I can work with a four-hour window. What about cause of death?”
Pinter pulled out a retractable pointer from some unseen orifice and unfolded it with a loud click.
“Massive cardiac arrest following organ failure. I’ve cleaned him up as much as possible, so you can see pretty clearly that he was dealt a fatal blow which was then followed by a series of lesser blows. They all seem to be centred on the same area of his hea
d, which is unusual.”
MacKenzie made a small sound of agreement.
“If Charon had turned to run or otherwise tried to defend himself, it would be harder to aim for the same spot again, wouldn’t it?”
“Exactly,” he said, in the sort of tone one might use to praise a good pupil. “Taking into account the direction of the blow, which is from behind, it seems safe to assume Charon was taken by surprise.”
“That’s what we thought at the scene,” MacKenzie told him, but asked the next question as a matter of good procedure. “Any defensive wounds, or signs of tampering?”
Pinter shook his head.
“Nothing obvious,” he said. “We’ve swabbed beneath the nails and I’ll let you know when those results come through, or Faulkner will be in touch directly. That’ll be a hard job, too, given the number of animal DNA profiles contaminating the scene.”
MacKenzie looked down at Charon’s hands which were encased in small plastic bags that were slowly ballooning as natural gas emissions left his body.
“We thought that, too,” she said, and signalled that he could cover the man’s body. “Thanks, Jeff.”
“If I come across anything important, I’ll be in touch.”
She nodded, casting one last thoughtful look at the shrunken figure on the trolley.
“I don’t mind telling you, Jeff, this one may turn out to be a tough nut to crack. It seemed obvious how Charon died, even when we saw him in situ, and everything you’ve told me today confirms it.”
She half-turned to leave.
“It isn’t so much the how that I’m worrying about, it’s the why. I’ve got a terrible feeling that question won’t be easy to answer, not this time.”
Pinter gave her a lopsided smile that transformed his narrow face into something approaching human.
“If anyone can do it, you can.”
She smiled in return, then a moment later she was gone.
* * *
Across town, Phillips and Yates crossed the River Tyne and made their way south towards the village of Cleadon, which straddled the county lines of South Tyneside and County Durham. It was one of the oldest villages in the region, with a history spanning over a thousand years, and was a well-to-do suburban area with the kind of amenities that made it popular to professional couples and families alike.