The Dark Heart of Florence: Number 6 in series (Michele Ferrara)

by Michele Giuttari

  ‘Senator Costanza was killed a few hours after he was here in the company of another man. To all intents and purposes, the staff who served him in your restaurant and bar were the last people to see him alive.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘All I’d like to know is whether the man who was with the senator was one of your guests?’

  ‘What’s his name?’ the manager asked, turning to look at the register.

  ‘If I knew his name, I wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘In that case, if you don’t mind waiting, I’ll have to ask my staff.’

  ‘I’ve already talked to the barman.’

  ‘What day was it?’

  ‘Last Saturday, between seven and eleven in the evening.’

  ‘Please bear with me a moment.’ He went behind the reception desk and leafed through another register. ‘They’re on duty tonight, between six and midnight.’

  ‘Can you give me their names?’

  The manager seemed undecided at first, then resigned himself. Rizzo made a note of the names of the maître d’ and two waiters in his notebook. Then he took a business card from his wallet.

  ‘I’d like you to contact them and tell them to come in to Police Headquarters this afternoon, before they go on duty.’

  ‘They won’t miss their shifts, will they? I’d have real trouble replacing them. We have several staff on holiday at the moment.’

  ‘No. If they come in by three o’clock, they’ll be able to start their shifts as usual.’

  The manager nodded.

  Rizzo said goodbye and started towards the main entrance, but turned back after a few steps. ‘Did you see the senator that evening?’ he asked.

  ‘No. It was my day off. I normally have Saturdays off when I’m working on Sunday.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Once outside, Rizzo looked at the front of the building for a moment and saw that there was a CCTV camera to the side of the entrance.

  And they’d told him they didn’t have CCTV…

  He wanted to go straight back, but decided to question the barman’s colleagues at Headquarters first.

  Maybe he had been hiding something.

  41

  The meeting was not at all pleasant.

  Having been summoned by the Commissioner, Ferrara found him particularly agitated.

  There and then, he assumed Adinolfi must have received a dressing down from the powers that be in Rome. That was fairly predictable: everything pointed to the fact that ‘the Romans’ were putting pressure on the Commissioner to serve up the culprit on a plate as soon as possible. It didn’t really matter if the accused person was acquitted after his trial due to lack of evidence or, worse still, released by the Prosecutor’s Department during the preliminary investigations because of a lack of clear pointers to his guilt. All that mattered was to provide the public and, most of all, the media with an immediate answer.

  But this time, Ferrara was wrong.

  Yes, Adinolfi was preoccupied, but by something else. Having remained completely silent, with an absent expression on his face, the whole time Ferrara was giving him the latest updates on the investigation – unfortunately, they still weren’t making much headway, apart from the ballistics results – the first thing he said, when it was his turn to speak, was: ‘Chief Superintendent, I would urge you not to waste your time making prison visits.’

  Ferrara stared at him, wondering how on earth he knew about that. He certainly hadn’t told him and, apart from the staff at the prison, only his closest colleagues were aware of the visit.

  ‘You also need to get the men from the SCO more involved,’ Adinolfi went on. ‘Further reinforcements will be arriving this evening. The Head of the State Police is sending them. Don’t just have them going round in circles, do you understand? Use them, then you’ll be able to concentrate on your other cases.’

  ‘But Commissioner —’ Ferrara started to reply.

  Adinolfi cut him off immediately, raising his voice. ‘There are other things getting our citizens upset, especially the shopkeepers. Thefts, bag-snatching, muggings, the sale of counterfeit goods in the main streets in broad daylight. Think about the state of the Via de’ Calzaiuoli. It’s a real mess. Quite intolerable. You can’t even walk straight down it these days, you literally have to zigzag to avoid treading on the merchandise. And what have you got to say about the arson attack on that lift? We could have found ourselves faced with a mass murder. If we don’t find the culprit or culprits, people will be killed and we’ll all be in the firing line, me in particular.’

  Adinolfi’s eyes were blazing. Ferrara said nothing for a while, unsure whether or not to defend himself. He would have liked to point out that it was the job of the city centre police to prevent the sale of illicit merchandise – that same body whose one goal seemed to be to hand out as many parking tickets as possible, singling out the vehicles of the State Police in particular.

  ‘But Commissioner —’ Ferrara tried to reply again, but once again he was not allowed to finish.

  ‘No “buts”, Ferrara. Those are my orders. You should never concentrate on just one case. Be content with your recent successes, don’t go chasing ghosts. It’s a waste of time. There aren’t any.’

  Ghosts? Ferrara thought. What was Adinolfi raving about?

  There was a brief pause while the Commissioner picked up some of the papers in front of him and locked them away in one of his desk drawers. At that moment, the telephone rang. Adinolfi was so nervous that the receiver slipped from his fingers as he was lifting it to his ear.

  ‘Just a moment,’ he said to the caller. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and asked Ferrara in a whisper to wait outside.

  Ferrara nodded, got up, and joined the Commissioner’s secretary.

  He was filled with anger and bitterness. The same old thing, he thought. There were certain people you just couldn’t touch. Damn this job!

  Just over five minutes later, Ferrara was back in front of Adinolfi’s desk.

  ‘Tell your staff they need to show the witnesses more respect,’ the Commissioner resumed, even before Ferrara had sat down. From his tone, Ferrara realised that this was not just a request, but an actual warning.

  He stared at Adinolfi and realised that his face was even redder than usual. He would have liked to ask for clarification, but right now he could not find the right words. He had never imagined, not even vaguely, that he would ever be subjected to such a reprimand.

  ‘I have been informed that you’ve been giving Senator Costanza’s friends a rough ride, and actually have further interviews planned. Some have already received a summons.’

  He seemed on the verge of exploding with rage.

  A rough ride? Ferrara thought. What was he talking about?

  He decided to be tactful and answer with generalities. ‘We’re doing what we normally do in such cases, Commissioner. Asking questions and comparing testimonies is part of our job.’

  ‘Your job? Is that how you do your job? I’ve heard that you’ve been questioning them for hours on end, almost giving them the third degree. Some of them must have felt they were actually under investigation themselves.’

  ‘None of them are under investigation, or even under suspicion. I can assure you of that.’

  ‘Call off your deputy, Superintendent Rizzo. And leave the Freemasons alone. All these questions about the lodge. I’m informed that you’ve approached Interpol for further details about certain names you found in Costanza’s papers. Foreign citizens – English to be precise.’

  So that was why they hadn’t heard back from Interpol yet.

  ‘Well, Commissioner, our initial investigations seem to point in that direction. Enrico Costanza was a Freemason and the head of a secret lodge here in Tuscany.’

  ‘If it’s secret, how do you know about it? Who told you?’

  At that moment, Ferrara realised that he had made a mistake and gone too far. Adinolfi did not know about Leonardo Berghoff’s letter.

&
nbsp; ‘An informant,’ he immediately replied.

  ‘An informant? The usual informants who talk nonsense. Drop them. There are no more informants. There are only criminals who turn State’s evidence. They’re the people who get us the results we want. The world has changed, investigative methods have changed, and you have to adapt. You have to change too.’

  ‘But Costanza’s foreign contacts, especially the English ones, could be useful to us. At the very least they could help us get to know the victim better.’

  He would have liked to add what Father Giulio Torre had told him and the conclusions he himself had drawn from Berghoff’s letter, but he preferred not to go into detail, both to avoid revealing his sources and to keep his remaining cards close to his chest. His instinct told him to keep things vague, especially because this conversation was giving him a strange feeling. Did he need to be wary of Adinolfi? Maybe the less he knew the better.

  Moreover, the Commissioner’s brief was not really criminal investigations, but the maintenance of public safety, which meant he did not have the right to know what Ferrara and his men were doing. No, he certainly wouldn’t be telling him any secrets.

  ‘Chief Superintendent Ferrara, I’m telling you what’s come down to me from higher up. I have been strongly advised to treat these people with the respect they deserve and to leave woolly theories about the Freemasons alone. I don’t think I need say more.’

  This time, unusually, he had lowered his voice: maybe he didn’t want even his office walls to hear what he was saying.

  Absolute silence fell in the room.

  From higher up? Woolly theories? Some things never changed, Ferrara thought. Once again, the upper echelons in Rome were trying to interfere in his investigations and keep him under control. How on earth was he supposed to work like that?

  ‘All right, Commissioner.’

  ‘Good, Chief Superintendent. I’m sure you’re not going to cause me any problems. You’re an intelligent man, you’ve understood what I’ve said. Let’s draw a veil over this Freemasonry business. As I’ve already said, let the men from the SCO do more on the murder investigation while you take more of an interest in your other cases. Especially the arson attacks. That’s a time bomb that could blow up at any moment.’

  Ferrara nodded a few times. He knew he had no choice. He was at fault. He hadn’t managed to solve anything, which meant that he was in no position to protest.

  ‘Of course,’ he replied with a barely contained sigh.

  ‘One last thing, Chief Superintendent – you’re an excellent police officer: resolute, creative, capable, cunning, all useful qualities in our institution. The competition may be getting tougher every day, but don’t let it get the better of you.’

  Ferrara nodded again.

  ‘If you want to progress in your career, the qualities I’ve mentioned aren’t enough. You have to back the right team. That’s the only way you can win. And the right team is Guaschelli’s team. Have I made myself clear? Nothing is gained by opposing him. Don’t try and be like David fighting Goliath.’

  ‘You’ve made yourself very clear, Commissioner.’

  ‘Now, get to work and bring in whoever started that fire. If you do, I’ll put you forward for an official commendation, which will do wonders for your career.’

  As he went down the stairs, feeling more frustrated than he ever had, Ferrara told himself that the conversation he had just had was proof of what kind of official Adinolfi was. A bureaucrat. A slave to the system. A nonentity. Was that how you became a commissioner? he wondered. If so, they could all go to hell! He was, always had been and always would be, a free man.

  But there were people above Adinolfi, people with the right contacts in both the police and the judiciary, people who had developed a complex system of protection that allowed them to keep out of trouble, to make everything go away. Unfortunately, this was nothing new in Florence, a city in which there was a secret world determined to give the orders and decide what could and could not happen in politics, the law, and even criminal investigations.

  The Black Rose.

  There was a risk that nobody would pay for the double murder, especially now that the investigation, through the increased involvement of the SCO, would be subject to the long arm of Armando Guaschelli.

  No, he wouldn’t let that happen, not while he was head of the Squadra Mobile.

  He was all the more determined given that, according to the law, he was in charge of criminal investigations for the whole province. It was to him that the Prosecutor’s Department had to report. Yes, he would give the men from the SCO a more positive role in the investigations from now on, but he would make sure they were always supervised by himself or one of his most trusted men.

  A number of thoughts began to torment him, one more than the others: did they want to see him transferred?

  It would not be the first time.

  It had happened before when he had poked his nose where it was not wanted, including his investigations into the possible masterminds behind the Monster of Florence killings.

  There were certain circles that were untouchable.

  It was just after seven in the evening when he received the results of the forensics tests on the envelope and its contents that the killer had sent Teresa.

  There wasn’t a single print on the page from the newspaper or on the note. The one thing that was certain was that the note had been typed on a computer in twelve point Times New Roman, except for the signature, which had been written in bold twenty-point lettering.

  The paper was a common brand, widely available in supermarkets. The note had been printed on an HP inkjet printer. Also quite a common make.

  It was a dead end.

  42

  That evening, Sir George arrived at the Tuscan residence he had inherited from his family: one of his ancestors, a bishop, had bought it back in 1618.

  The villa was in the countryside between San Gimignano and Certaldo, the area where Boccaccio was born.

  His trusted retainer, who had acted as his gamekeeper for more than twenty years and lived in a cottage on the estate, had been waiting for him at Pisa airport.

  After a relaxing hot shower, he went straight to his favourite place.

  He had a long torch in his right hand as he opened the iron gate and switched on a series of fluorescent lights on the side walls. He went down a dozen stone steps to a large space where two walls facing each other were lined with enormous wine barrels, some covered in spider webs. He looked around. Everything was just as he had left it last time. He could go on.

  There were several passages, all with vaulted ceilings made from bricks or very old stones. The damp got into your bones.

  He went to a wall and pushed a button hidden in a niche behind stones and earth. A moment later a doorway opened. He went through it.

  Holding the torch straight out in front of him, he started to descend the stairs, misshapen now through years of use. As he advanced, he lit big wax candles, two on each side of every step. At the bottom of the stairs was a series of passages and spaces of varying sizes. It was like a labyrinth of galleries and vaulted areas, some of them so low you had to bend your head to avoid touching the ceiling. It was a fearful place, reminiscent of medieval torture chambers.

  He took the longest of the passages.

  Halfway along it, he turned right into a spacious room with a high domelike ceiling. The air was damp and stale. The floor was of earth and the walls were made of great blocks of natural stone.

  Once, a very long time ago, the place had been a Roman temple. A number of relics bore witness to this, including the iron crucifix planted in the ground, behind which, on the wall, was a drawing of a shell: the coat of arms of the bishop from whom he had inherited the property.

  Sir George was fully aware of the history of his family and knew that this had been his predecessors’ favourite place, starting with the bishop. Now, though, the crucifix had been turned upside down. It was his father who had
done that.

  He sat down on a large stone, switched on an old record player and closed his eyes to savour a piece of music that was very familiar to him. It was Bach. He loved to listen to it in this place; he loved the sensations it aroused in him, which he only felt here and nowhere else.

  He concentrated and started to think – as he had done before at difficult moments, far from the hubbub of the world.

  No one knew about this hiding place, except his eldest son, who had promised to keep it a secret after his death. It was a jealously guarded secret, to be passed only from father to son.

  Time did not matter here; it slowed down, came to a halt.