by LJ Ross
“He was convicted in 1999 of killing his boyfriend, Andrew Wharton, in late 1998. Manetti was a local journalist working for The Enquirer and Wharton worked as a shop assistant. Wharton was found dead in the flat they shared—Manetti was the one to call it in but always maintained his innocence. He claims there was a witness who would have confirmed his alibi, but it was never disclosed by the prosecution. He was released after numerous failed appeals in October 2016; that’s shortly after Edward Clarkson set up his new life in Warkworth.”
“How much notice do you think he would have had that Manetti was planning to appeal again? Surely if he’d appealed before, and been unsuccessful, Clarkson would’ve had nothing to worry about.”
“Manetti wasn’t released on appeal,” MacKenzie told her. “He’d served almost twenty years and was deemed to be no danger to society.”
“They might have been wrong,” Anna muttered.
“I’ll ask Yates to send through the complete file and to request his prison records,” MacKenzie said, shifting excitedly. “I get a funny feeling about this one.”
* * *
Matteo Alfonsi arrived precisely on time for his interview with the Gruppo, clutching a flash drive in his hand which contained the footage of the party. Ryan had heard something before about Greeks bearing gifts but was prepared to keep an open mind, especially since they hadn’t been able to ascertain how the cameras had been temporarily compromised.
“Grazie mille, Signor Alfonsi…”
Inspector Ricci began with his usual patter, asking a series of starter questions to put the interviewee at their ease.
“Now, this one looks nervous,” Phillips said, and popped an olive into his mouth.
Ryan was about to agree with him, then did a double-take.
“Where in hell did they come from?” he asked, pointing at the small jar of black olives.
“The supermarket, o’ course,” came the easy reply. “Want one?”
Ryan popped an olive into his mouth and then re-focused his attention on the interview. Phillips was right about one thing: the Head of Security looked nervous. Sweat was beading on his forehead and running in shiny rivulets down his rounded face.
“He must be used to talking to the police,” Phillips went on. “Must chat to them all the time. Can’t be first-time nerves, can it?”
Ryan gave a slight shake of his head.
“I want to see his bank accounts,” he said, quietly. “He’s a strong bribery risk and I want to see whether he, or his wife, have made any large deposits in the last three months.”
“Aye, seems sensible,” Phillips said. He could always spot the ones on the take. “Could be somebody slipped him some pocket money in exchange for him wiping the footage for an hour or two. Must have been a fair wad of cash, to tempt him.”
“We don’t know that’s what happened, yet, but it would explain a lot.”
“Ricci will get to the bottom of that. Seems a decent bloke.”
“He’s a stranger,” Ryan said. And therefore could not be trusted, he added silently.
“What’s he asking now?”
“He wants to know whether anybody asked to see the security room, anybody out of the ordinary. Matteo says everybody wanted to see their operations; representatives of the Spatuzzi family, the head of the publishing house and several private security staff belonging to local television celebrities.”
“Real Housewives of Florence? Is that the kind of thing?”
“Pretty much,” Ryan agreed, reaching out for another olive. “Can’t say I keep up with it as much as you.”
“Hey, man. Nowt wrong with a bit of mindless telly, to wind down at the end of the day.”
“A book is better,” Ryan argued. “Hang on a sec.”
He paused chewing as he watched Banotti reach for a file of papers.
“She’s asking him about a complaint made about him almost a year ago, by Martina Calari. She accused him of sexual harassment and her fiancé got into a fight with him about it. He says she made it up.”
Ryan listened for a few minutes, then turned to his sergeant.
“When I spoke to him yesterday morning, Matteo Alfonsi waxed lyrical about the lovely young woman who reminded him of his daughter. Never once did he mention the real relationship they must have had.”
Phillips did a funny little jig and rubbed his hands together.
“Ooh, the skeletons are all flying out of the closet now.”
CHAPTER 36
While they waited for Yates to send through the remaining files on Tony Manetti, MacKenzie and Anna decided to take a walk into the centre of town. If not exactly happy about it, Magda was appeased when she learned they would be travelling together, and there were still a couple of hours of daylight left. Indeed, it was the most pleasant hour of the day, the wind having died down to a light breeze that whipped the crusted leaves from the ground and sent them dancing on the air.
“It’s lovely here,” MacKenzie said. “I wonder why Ryan never mentioned it before?”
“He’s embarrassed, I think. He never really felt part of the world he was born into and finds it unequal, when compared with the kind of poverty he sometimes comes across.”
MacKenzie thought of her own tough upbringing. There had been few pennies to rub together back at the tiny cottage where she’d grown up, one of seven children. Looking back now, she could admire the landscape of her homeland but regretted that there had been no work for a young woman who…well, who’d needed to get away.
It reminded her of the wedding, which was becoming a bigger headache than she’d ever anticipated.
“Frank’s doing his best to arrange the perfect wedding,” she said, pleased to talk about something other than murder. “But we’re being thwarted at every turn. I keep telling him, I don’t need a big wedding, but it isn’t just that. My family are being so difficult, it doesn’t matter how many guests we have.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Anna said. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Not really, it’s just the way they are. If I say we’re having fish, they want meat. If I say we’re having a civil service, they want traditional Catholic. Then, there’s the predictable complaints about the age gap between Frank and me—”
“I never notice it,” Anna said, and made her friend smile.
“Neither do I,” MacKenzie replied. “That’s what love does to a person. He could be James Dean or Quasimodo, and I wouldn’t notice the difference.”
She paused.
“Well, I might notice if he was Paul Newman.”
Anna laughed.
“Anyway, the band cancelled last-minute, the caterers are useless, and we’re trying to arrange a wedding in Ireland from our base in Newcastle. I’m almost tempted to elope!”
Anna merely smiled.
“And if you could elope, where would you go?”
MacKenzie scuffed her toes through the leaves as they followed the pathway down Viale Machiavelli and allowed herself to imagine the perfect setting.
“I think, after all the hassle, I’d just have our closest friends,” she said. “You and Ryan, obviously. Melanie and, of course, Jack Lowerson. I hope he’s feeling a bit better,” she added.
“He’ll come through it,” Anna said, thinking of their friend who had lost so much, lately.
“I’d like somewhere small and picturesque,” MacKenzie said. “Somewhere I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”
“You’ve got your dress already,” Anna said.
“The dressmaker ruined it,” MacKenzie replied, glumly. “That’s another thing for me to sort out, when I get home.”
“Should be easy enough to find a similar style,” Anna said, half to herself.
MacKenzie let out a shuddering sigh.
“Anyway, listen to me, ranting on about a wedding while there’s a job to be done. C’mon,” she said, quickening her pace. “Show me where everything is.”
Anna matched her pace as they headed into the c
entre, two attractive women with a purpose.
“What’s our first calling point?” MacKenzie asked.
“First stop, gelato,” Anna said. “It’s been at least ten minutes since we last ate.”
“I’m surprised I haven’t passed out, by now.”
“In that case, better get a double scoop.”
* * *
The last interviewee of the day was the journalist, Andrea Conti. He was a self-assured man, well respected around Florence, and he wore his reputation with a certain flair.
“Bit of a Flash Harry, this one,” Phillips decided. “Is this the guy Anna spoke to?”
Ryan nodded.
“He has a reputation for knowing all about the underbelly of the city,” Ryan said. “He worked out that I was over here investigating Armstrong in connection with Riccardo Spatuzzi’s disappearance and warned us about the Spatuzzi family, in general.”
“He’s one of the good guys, then?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Ryan said. “He wants his pound of flesh—in exchange for not reporting everything he knows, he gets first scoop, when this is all over.”
“Aye, some things are the same all around the world,” Phillips declared.
“Ricci wants to know when he first met Armstrong,” Ryan said, then took a step closer to the glass to listen more closely.
Phillips looked between his friend and the interview room in confusion.
“What?”
“Conti says he first met Armstrong about fifteen years ago. Apparently, Armstrong was researching some extra details around the real Il Mostro. He says it was a surprise, considering he hadn’t been in touch during his research for the original story. Conti assumed he was writing a follow-up.”
“Would have thought Conti was too young to have been around for Il Mostro,” Phillips said. “Those murders happened way back in the sixties and seventies, didn’t they?”
“Yes, but he’s a bit of an expert on the subject,” Ryan said. “Conti learned his trade from the guy who worked the crime beat back when it all happened, so he’s pretty close to it all.”
“In that case, I agree, it’s a bit odd that Armstrong didn’t look him up when he was researching his book,” Phillips said, using the brim of his Panama hat to fan his face. They’d been inside the observation room for hours with only a short break to snaffle a sandwich, and things were heating up.
“Maybe,” Ryan said. “He might have relied on other people to do that for him.”
There was a short pause while they watched the people seated around a table in the next room, like characters in a film.
“Keeps coming back to that book, doesn’t it?” Phillips said, suddenly. “The reason Armstrong is here, the reason for the party, it’s all because of that book.”
His words chimed like the bells of the Duomo.
“You’re right, Frank. I think the book is the key to all of this. I only wish I knew why, or how.”
CHAPTER 37
Late in the afternoon, the foursome met at a small café overlooking the Arno where, Ricci had told them, you could find the finest osso bucco in all of Florence. The atmosphere was convivial, and nobody paid any attention to the four visitors who settled themselves in a quiet corner of the restaurant, far away from prying ears.
“We’re following a lead on the Warkworth case,” MacKenzie said, smiling at the waiter who brought them a carafe of Tuscan wine.
“Oh, aye?” Phillips was intrigued. “That wasn’t looking too promising, when we left.”
“Yates sent through a list of people who were released from prison around the time Edward Clarkson changed his name and moved away. I’ve asked for the full files on one in particular—a man called Tony Manetti.”
Ryan looked up at that.
“Italian? Quite a coincidence.”
“You always say there’s no such thing,” Anna murmured.
“So I do,” he smiled. “Tell us more about this Mr Manetti. Why did he stand out?”
“Well, he was the only one on the list who served an almost full life sentence. I don’t know very much except that he was convicted of the murder of his boyfriend in ’98—”
“1998?” Ryan interrupted her.
“Yeah, why?”
“Same year Il Mostro was published,” he muttered. “Phillips and I were only just saying that, in one way or another, everything seems to lead back to that book.”
“I can’t see how the murder of a barrister-turned-ferryman could possibly relate to what’s happening here,” MacKenzie said. “They’re two different worlds.”
Ryan said nothing.
“There’s something else we haven’t really thought of,” Phillips said. “We already know that Gregson was active around the time Eddie Clarkson was practising and that he probably bribed Gregson to get out of fines and things like that. Stands to reason, if Clarkson wasn’t above bribery in general, he might have got himself embroiled in some of the heavier stuff. Maybe he was part of the Circle,” he suggested, referring to the corrupt and murderous cult Gregson had been a part of throughout his time as a senior police officer.
“It would explain why Clarkson had such an extreme reaction,” MacKenzie agreed. “The Circle was punishing anyone who renounced them during that time, so it would have been a real concern if he thought Gregson was sending someone after him.”
Ryan nodded, but his mind circled back to Manetti.
“We could speak to Gregson, but he was no help to us the last time we tried. The man has very little remorse for what he did, so I don’t think he’d feel any special inclination to be helpful now.”
The others nodded their agreement.
“It still leaves us with Tony Manetti or, if not him, whoever was responsible for putting the fear of God into Edward Clarkson. What else do you know about Manetti?” he asked.
“Only that he was working as a journalist for The Enquirer, at the time he was arrested,” MacKenzie said.
“Might be worth giving the paper a call,” he suggested. “They may keep employment records, or there may be people still working there who remember what he was like. Did you find anything reported online about the murder?”
They paused while their food was delivered, then resumed after the first couple of bites.
“Back in the late nineties, some of the smaller regional news outlets were still figuring out the digital side of news reporting and they haven’t uploaded their archived pieces, but I found something from a couple of the broadsheets,” she said. “The story goes that Tony Manetti was an Italian national living in Newcastle on a work visa. He was living with a man called Andrew Wharton, who was from the area and worked as a shop assistant. In the early hours of an autumn morning, the police were called out to the flat they shared in Fenham and found Manetti clutching Wharton’s body. Apparently, it looked like they’d had a violent row which culminated in Manetti strangling Wharton.”
Ryan looked up again, very slowly.
“Wharton was strangled?” he said. “With what?”
MacKenzie shook her head.
“The news reports didn’t say, but I’ll find out when the case files come through from Yates. Why does it matter?”
“It’s just another coincidence,” Ryan said. “How old would Manetti be now?”
“Somewhere in his late forties or early fifties, from what I can gather.”
“Just like Armstrong,” Phillips said.
“Yeah, just like Armstrong,” Ryan muttered.
CHAPTER 38
With no further information available on Tony Manetti, the talk turned to the men and women who had been interviewed by the Gruppo throughout the day.
“Of the people we saw, there are only four who could possibly tick all the boxes,” Ryan was saying. “If we’re looking for someone who could pass for Nathan Armstrong in general build and height, that number reduces to three.”
“Alright, lay it out for us,” Anna said, as their plates were cleared.
“Fi
rst, we have Gabriele Marchesa. He’s the CEO of Elato Publishing which is financed, for the most part, by Monica Spatuzzi.”
“I’m sure she’s just a great reader,” MacKenzie rolled her eyes.
“As it happens, she has an enormous library…but that’s another story. The financial health of that publishing house will be a matter for the Italian CONSOB—”
“The what-ty?” Phillips asked.
“That’s the Commissione Nazionale per le Societa e la Borsa,” Ryan explained. “They regulate financial activities in Italy, other than insurance. If Spatuzzi is laundering money through the publishing house, that’ll be a matter for them. As far as we’re concerned, I want to know if its CEO is all he’s cracked up to be.”
“Did he give you reason to suspect otherwise?” Anna asked, curiously. “He seemed happy enough, when he was showing Armstrong around the party last night.”
“People can be wonderful actors,” Ryan said. “In terms of hard facts, we know this: he’s the right age, height and build to impersonate Armstrong. He had full access to the Uffizi and to Martina Calari, before she died. He knows the city and its corridors and passageways. He only recently returned from abroad, where he was living the life of Riley, by all accounts, but we need to investigate his movements further. He was estranged from his family until his brother’s death, which is very convenient—if he happened to have been in prison rather than on a luxury yacht, somewhere.”
“It still doesn’t tell us why he would want to ruin Armstrong.”
“We don’t know the answer to that, yet,” Ryan agreed.
“Okay, who’s the second on your list?”
“A man called Nico Bellucci,” Ryan said. “He’s an art dealer who was involved in planning the party and he supplied that hideous ice sculpture. He’s about the same height and build as Armstrong, perhaps a little shorter. He knows everyone who matters, and yet, he’s new on the social scene in Florence and he was vague about where he was before.”
“He doesn’t strike me as the type,” Anna was bound to say. “For one thing, I’m not sure he would have had the capacity to overpower you, given the state he was in last night.”