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

by Michele Giuttari

  He knew he had decisions to make before the situation got out of hand.

  As it was starting to do.

  43

  ‘Does this face mean anything to you?’

  Inspector Venturi had returned to the restaurant near Costanza’s villa, accompanied by Officer Carlo Rossi. The owner had been joined by his son, Alessandro, who was wearing a pair of jeans and a flowery shirt. They were all sitting at a table in a private room.

  The father took the identikit of the woman and stared at it without moving an inch, then shook his head to indicate that no, the face didn’t mean anything to him. He had never seen the woman before.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. Who is she, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘Somebody a witness saw in the area,’ Venturi replied, without going into more detail.

  The picture was passed to the son. After looking at it carefully, he also categorically denied knowing her.

  ‘That face means absolutely nothing to me,’ he said firmly.

  ‘So can you rule out the possibility that she might be one of your customers?’

  The two men nodded.

  Venturi asked the younger man a few further questions, trying to discover more about the regulars and, in particular, who had visited the restaurant in the days immediately before the double murder. The man seemed irritated by this questioning, and merely nodded or shook his head in response. Venturi asked him to give clearer answers, but soon realised that he was not going to obtain any useful information, so he asked to show the picture to the waitresses.

  The owner got up to go and call them, and when the girls entered the room Venturi and Rossi recognised them immediately.

  One of the two, who had long curly hair, took her time over the identikit, as if the face wasn’t completely unfamiliar to her – or at least that was the impression Venturi got. But, in the end, she denied having ever seen the person in the picture.

  ‘Does this woman have anything to do with what happened near here?’ she asked. She was slim, in her early twenties, with a pale, intelligent face. Judging by her accent, Venturi thought, she could well be a foreign student working as a waitress to pay for her studies.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘No reason, it’s just that…’ She turned to look at the owner. He gave her a fierce look, making no attempt to hide his disapproval.

  ‘Oh, I forgot to mention, this woman drives an A-Class Mercedes,’ Venturi said.

  This detail did not garner any more positive response.

  Venturi stood up. ‘In case you do remember anything, ring me.’ He looked at the older man. ‘You’ve already got my business card.’

  ‘Yes, I kept it,’ the man replied. ‘Aren’t you going to stay and eat? We have excellent porcini mushrooms on the menu.’

  ‘No thank you, we have to get on with our work.’

  The two policemen said their goodbyes and left. The first thing Officer Rossi said to his superior was, ‘Inspector, did you see the look the old man gave that waitress?’

  ‘Of course, it was hard to miss. I think we need to speak to that young lady again at Headquarters. If she does know something, she’ll be more likely to tell us when she’s away from those two. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Just let me know and I’ll come and get her.’

  ‘You like her, don’t you?’

  ‘She’s cute.’

  ‘All right, I’ll let you take her the summons.’

  Carlo Rossi smiled and put the car into first gear. ‘Where next?’

  ‘To the other restaurants and bars in the area. Everything from here to Borgo San Lorenzo.’

  ‘What about food?’

  ‘You’re always thinking about food, you are. Get going, then we’ll see.’

  ‘At least a pizza, Inspector… ?’

  44

  Teresa was exhausted.

  She had spent the entire day examining and cataloguing the exhibits from Costanza’s villa. In the afternoon she had telephoned Fabio Biondi and asked him if he had managed to get any more interesting images from the video. He had told her he was still working on it and would let her know as soon as he had anything.

  By the time she left Headquarters, she had no wish at all to go straight home, so she decided to go for a walk. There were crowds of people in the streets. The cafés, pubs and restaurants were full to bursting, and a lot of tourists were hanging about on the pavements waiting for a table to become free.

  Thanks to the warm weather, small groups of young people had formed outside the bars along the riverbank, putting their drinks down on the low walls and listening to rock music at ear-splitting volume.

  Having reached the area near the British Consulate, Teresa stopped for a few moments to look at these youngsters. They all seemed cheerful and carefree, oblivious to the hate and rage simmering just below the surface of the city, ready to explode at any moment. Like young people anywhere, they had dreams. She almost envied their light-heartedness, their faith in the future, their sleep untouched by nightmares.

  For the first time, she wondered whether she had made the right decision in joining the police, or whether she would have been better off choosing a different profession that would have allowed her to live a quieter life. Perhaps, she told herself, the mistake had been to choose Florence as her place of work, attracted as she had been by the city’s beauty but unaware of its other face.

  She dismissed these thoughts. It was time to go home. She set off again, her face caressed by the evening breeze, accompanied by the voices of the tourists who crossed her path, a murmur that reminded her of a swarm of insects. She walked past historic buildings that bore witness to a prestige that had long been forgotten, and wondered what was hidden inside them. She thought about her cat, Mimì, who was waiting for her, and imagined her curled up on her usual chair.

  She went into a snack bar near the Piazza del Mercato Centrale to buy something to eat. She had to make do with a quarter of roast chicken and potato croquettes, the last five in the place. There was nothing else. She would reheat them in the microwave she had bought just a few days earlier and had not yet used. It was the perfect opportunity.

  As she was about to open the door to her building, she saw a group of young immigrants under the portico to her left, their voices raised in animated argument. She went in and climbed the stairs to her top-floor apartment. As she got to the door, she froze.

  It was ajar. Someone had forced it open.

  The second nasty surprise in less than twenty-four hours.

  She had to stay calm.

  She took her gun from its holster, pulled back the slide release, and inserted a bullet in the chamber. Then she took a deep breath and went in, her heart pounding in her chest. Gritting her teeth, she immediately flicked the light switch to her right. As she did so, her bag slipped from her hands and she felt her heart beating faster than ever. She was starting to sweat. She advanced step by step.

  What if it was a trap?

  But it wasn’t. There was nobody here. Just complete chaos: objects strewn over the floor, her travelling bag open in the living room, the tap left running in the bathroom. The typical signs of a burglary.

  Why here? What had they been looking for? Certainly not money or valuables.

  Her breathing returned to normal and she put her pistol back in its holster.

  Now she would have to do an inventory of the missing items. She looked everywhere and established that the thieves had taken her stereo, her camcorder and the family photograph album which she always kept on her bedside table so that she could look through it often, sometimes just before she went to sleep, to bring back happy memories and drive away the nightmares.

  Devastated, she slumped onto one of the kitchen chairs.

  What about Mimì? she suddenly wondered. Where had she gone? Had she taken advantage of the half-open door and run away?

  She stood up abruptly and started looking for her.

 
; No, she hadn’t run away.

  Teresa found her curled up in a ball under the bed. She reached her arms in and pulled her out. She hugged her tight and gently stroked her fur. The poor thing was trembling.

  She took out her mobile and dialled Rizzo’s number.

  ‘I’ll be right over,’ Rizzo said, reassuringly.

  The apartment was a small one, and the two forensics technicians took just over an hour to search for prints. They found a few, but were unsure whether or not they would be useful.

  In the meantime, a patrol car had checked out the immigrants under the portico. They were still arguing, although their voices were noticeably more subdued now. They were Moroccans, and only one of them was without an up-to-date residence permit. When asked whether they had seen anyone go into the building, they all said no.

  ‘It’s a strange burglary, Francesco,’ Teresa said to Rizzo after listing the stolen items.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  Why on earth had the burglar taken the photograph album? he wondered. What did he intend to do with it? Could someone have been trying to intimidate Teresa?

  And he couldn’t help remembering Costanza’s eyes.

  Before leaving with Rizzo, the forensics technicians did a temporary repair job on the apartment door. Once she was alone, Teresa decided to call it a night. She was too tired and upset to do anything. She took a quick shower, got into bed, huddled beneath the covers like a little girl, and switched out the light. She closed her eyes and fell into a restless sleep.

  She woke with a start just after five. Her mouth was dry and she felt really thirsty. She had dreamt that she was in a swimming pool and someone was trying to strangle her.

  When she realised that she wouldn’t get back to sleep, she got up. She was hungry. She remembered the chicken and the potato croquettes. She had left them in the kitchen, still wrapped. She reheated them in the microwave and ate them. The chicken wasn’t bad at all. She looked at Mimì. Strangely, the cat lay curled up on the chair, staring at her without moving. She must still be traumatised by that unexpected visit, thought Teresa.

  How many of them had there been? Just one, or more than one? What a pity Mimì couldn’t tell her.

  After a while, the cat shook herself, jumped down from the chair and ran towards the bedroom, as if she were being chased by a huge dog. She had never done that before.

  The poor thing was terrified.

  Teresa put her Neapolitan coffee pot on to boil. She didn’t feel like going back to bed, and she wouldn’t feel safe until there was a new lock on the door. Right now, she needed at least two cups of coffee.

  She also needed to think about what had happened.

  Sitting there, with her gun beside her on the kitchen table, she came up with hypothesis after hypothesis, but each one ended up collapsing like a sandcastle battered by the waves. There was only one possible conclusion: it must have been a straightforward burglary, carried out by one of the many small-time crooks who operated in the city centre and grabbed only what they could easily take away with them.

  The coffee aroma, which smelled of a brand new day, made her feel sad. There was nobody sitting opposite her. She longed for a companion, someone she could share her life with: both the good things and the bad. And she realised that this was something she had never thought about seriously. She was single, in spite of having been the object of her colleagues’ attentions on more than one occasion. There was one in particular, Maurizio, who worked at Headquarters in Rome. He’d been in touch several times lately, asking to see her again, and she had put him off with one excuse or another. Now, though, she would have liked to have him here, next to her.

  What an idiot she’d been to turn him down!

  It was time for a change.

  PART FOUR

  FURTHER MYSTERIES

  45

  Wednesday 1 September

  It was first thing in the morning and they were already pestering him.

  Ferrara recognised the Commissioner’s number on the screen of his mobile. He pressed the green button and answered.

  The call was a brief one, but Adinolfi was clearly agitated.

  ‘Headquarters, straight away,’ Ferrara ordered his driver as soon as he had hung up. ‘And fill her up with petrol as soon as we get there, there’s no time to lose.’

  There had been another death.

  And they would have to go out of Florence this time.

  Barely twenty minutes later, the Alfa Romeo 156 set off along the A1 autostrada in the direction of Rome.

  In addition to Rizzo, Commissioner Adinolfi was on board. He had insisted on coming in person. With the light flashing on the roof and bursts from the siren when they hit traffic jams, they reached the Magliano Sabina junction. From there, they travelled along a series of A-roads until they got to Lake Bracciano.

  The lake, which had volcanic origins, had once also been known as Lake Sabatino. It was here that, whenever he could, at weekends or on periods of leave, Inspector Antonio Sergi, Florence’s Serpico, would get away from the accumulated fatigue of his work and forget his problems. At least that was what he had always told his colleagues. ‘I’m going fishing,’ he would say. ‘There are plenty of fish in those waters. And don’t even think of calling me. I’m not picking up my phone for anyone.’

  He would actually switch off the phone, making himself completely unreachable. At Ferrara’s request, Rizzo had discovered that Sergi had been spending the last few days there, making up for all the overtime he had worked and not been paid due to lack of funds.

  During the journey no one had said a word. They found it hard to believe that anything could possibly have happened to Sergi.

  Of them all, Adinolfi seemed the most pensive. From the moment he had got in the car he had been completely silent, his eyes fixed straight ahead. He had turned them to look out of the window at the countryside once or twice, but only for a few moments.

  Ferrara and Rizzo on the other hand, sitting in the back seat, had exchanged a number of troubled glances. They would have liked to talk, but Ferrara had decided that it was best to say nothing.

  Maybe because he had stopped trusting Adinolfi.

  The body was lying on the beach, surrounded by police officers, some uniformed, some in plain clothes.

  Some thirty feet away stood a group of men dressed in suits and ties, looking alternately towards the corpse, then towards the waters of the lake.

  Somewhat further off was a crowd of onlookers. They had been attracted by the flashing lights of the police cars and Carabinieri, which had been left randomly on the road, some double-parked.

  The car carrying the Commissioner, Ferrara and Rizzo pulled up at a spot where the road widened slightly. As soon as he got out, Adinolfi gave his clothes the once-over and hurried towards the group of men in suits and ties.

  Ferrara glanced around. In the distance, he could make out the Castle of Odescalchi, one of the most beautiful aristocratic residences in Europe. His eye fell on a poster advertising an event to be held locally: a three-day Buffalo Bill-style contest between cowboys and the butteri, herdsmen from the Maremma, involving two hundred horses.

  He was just about to go over to the body when he looked at the group and froze. What were the National Security Coordinator and the Head of the State Police doing here in person?

  He exchanged a quick look with Rizzo, then said, ‘Come on, let’s go and find out what happened.’

  Rizzo nodded. He had also recognised Guaschelli, Head of the State Police, but said nothing. He did not know the other official.

  They introduced themselves to the officers from the Rome Squadra Mobile and the Carabinieri from the local barracks.

  ‘Two fishermen found him in the water this morning,’ one of the Roman officers said. ‘He went out yesterday afternoon and didn’t return. That’s according to the man who looked after his motorboat. He’s being questioned at the barracks right now.’

  Ferrara took a closer look at the body. It was
Sergi. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and was quite bloated. The T-shirt had rolled up almost to his neck.

  ‘Did he drown?’ Ferrara asked.

  ‘We think so,’ the marshal in command of the barracks replied. ‘It must have been an accident.’ He had been the first on the scene and, in line with standard procedure, he would be in charge of the investigation, which would be coordinated by whichever deputy prosecutor was on call.

  Ferrara looked at the lake. Its waters were dead calm. At Headquarters, Sergi was known to have been an excellent swimmer. Ferrara found it hard to believe that he had drowned, unless he had suddenly been taken ill. It was puzzling to say the least, but he said nothing for the moment.