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

by Michele Giuttari

  ‘Reddish.’

  ‘What about the other woman?’

  ‘She was an attractive woman too. She had long black hair, tied up in a ponytail. A bit of an Amazon.’

  ‘Anything else you remember about either of them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you happen to see them again, could you please let us know?’

  ‘Yes, who should I call?’

  Venturi gave her his business card, getting in before Rossi, who was about to pull his out of his wallet.

  Rossi felt as if he’d been robbed.

  He stamped the transcript and, once Venturi had read it aloud, gave it to the girl to sign and told her she could go. She said goodbye and Rossi walked her to the exit, keeping as close to her as he could, intoxicated by the scent of her skin.

  In the meantime, Venturi was reflecting on her statement, thinking that, if the woman in the identikit was the one this girl had seen, she must have been wearing a wig when D’Amato, the mechanic, had seen her. Her hair could not have grown that much since early August.

  He decided he would comb the Mugello area even more thoroughly the next day, since, according to D’Amato, the woman had been driving in the direction of Borgo San Lorenzo.

  Having received orders from Ferrara to search Sergi’s desk and locker, Fanti was now back in front of the Chief Superintendent with all the material he had gathered.

  ‘Everything’s recorded under different headings,’ Fanti began. ‘Petrol, travel, motorway tolls, hotels, lunches. Sergi made a note of everything. Absolutely everything, down to the last cent. He was almost fanatical about it.’

  Because he was claiming expenses from the Secret Service, Ferrara thought.

  ‘There are also cash deposits into the bank round about the end of each month. Between two and five thousand euros at a time. And I found something else, chief.’

  From the top of the desk where he had put the material, already sorted with the precision for which he was known, Fanti picked up a folder labelled MISCELLANEOUS NOTES in black marker pen.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘They’re all reports, unsigned, and on unheaded paper. Some pages have Confidential written at the top. And they seem to refer to meetings he held with various private sources.’

  ‘Does it mention the Black Rose?’ Ferrara asked.

  ‘No, it’s never referred to. But on some pages he does mention that his “source” belonged to a secret organisation with foreign branches, especially in England.’

  ‘And what does he report?’

  Sergi’s source, Fanti explained, had promised to exert serious pressure on the Minister for the Interior to have him promoted, in return for information on the status of certain investigations. And he had provided it, because he needed to win their trust, although on some occasions he had passed on credible-sounding but false information.

  ‘But what really seems important to me, chief, is something else.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Sergi was in contact with someone here in Florence. He indicates several times that he would pass his information to a source known as “the Archivist”, who worked from home.’

  ‘The Archivist? Is there anything to tell us who that is?’

  ‘No, chief. I’ve examined every page.’

  ‘Leave them with me. Well done, Fanti, you’ve done a great job.’

  Fanti put everything back in the order in which he had found it and left.

  It seemed to Ferrara that at last there was light at the end of the tunnel. The darkness in which the investigation had been shrouded would disappear sooner or later. The important thing was to be ready when it did and seize the moment.

  49

  Teresa looked around, then got out of the car from the Headquarters pool. The driver kept his hand on his holster until he saw her go in through the front door.

  Ferrara had insisted that she should not take the short walk home from Headquarters alone and on foot this evening, in case someone was lying in wait for her.

  He had not yet figured out why the killer had chosen this particular member of his team, the newest arrival, as the recipient of the envelope containing Costanza’s eyes. Nor whether the burglary at her apartment was linked with their current investigation.

  Teresa went quickly up the stairs, panting at the top.

  But there was no surprise waiting for her this time.

  Only her cat was there in her silent apartment. She was on her usual kitchen chair and when she saw Teresa, she jumped down and started rubbing herself against her legs. Teresa picked her up, bowed her head and received the usual hair-licking. Mimì was back to normal.

  That night, a shadowy figure emerged from beneath the Loggia dei Lanzi in the Piazza della Signoria, walked quickly to the statue of Perseus, wrote E. G. on the base with a big red marker, and disappeared.

  Thursday 2 September

  Rizzo burst into the room right in the middle of a meeting.

  Ferrara was assigning tasks to the SCO and discussing the situation with Inspector Polito. So far they had only been involved in the new search of Enrico Costanza’s villa, looking for the briefcase in which the victim had put the money, but to no avail.

  Ferrara only had to look at his deputy to realise that something had happened. He hoped it wasn’t more bad news. He had only just arrived at his office when he had been subjected to a talking-to from the irate Commissioner about the defacing of the statue of Perseus. He could have done without vandals further complicating his life.

  ‘Now who’s going to talk to the mayor, the city prefect and the Romans?’ Adinolfi had shouted at him down the phone. ‘We might as well pack our bags right now!’ He had finished by slamming down the receiver.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Ferrara said to Polito and moved towards the door, followed by Rizzo. They stopped in the outer office.

  ‘What is it, Francesco?’

  ‘Beatrice Filangeri was found hanged in her cell this morning.’

  Ferrara’s face clouded over. He took a few steps, then leant back against the wall. He felt as if he had suddenly been punched in the stomach. He could not breathe.

  ‘Go on, Francesco.’

  Rizzo told him the details he had just received from the prison administration. Beatrice Filangeri had cut up her sheet and fixed one end to the bars over her window and the other round her neck.

  ‘She had her hands tied behind her back, although not very tightly. According to the prison doctor, the way they were tied is quite compatible with suicide.’

  ‘Why would she have tied her hands?’

  ‘Maybe to avoid having second thoughts. At least that’s what they told me.’

  Ferrara would have liked to send Rizzo straight to the scene, but he dismissed the idea. He knew that the investigation of such deaths was the responsibility of the penitentiary police, who tended to play things close to their chests. His one obligation was to inform as soon as possible whichever deputy prosecutor was on call, and take any orders from him.

  He let a few moments pass, then looked at Rizzo and said in a low voice, ‘Inform the deputy prosecutor and make sure you’re kept informed of the post-mortem results. Then remember to show the photo of Presti to the staff at the Hotel Villa Medici.’

  ‘I’ll do it this morning, chief.’

  ‘You’re still calling me chief, even though we’re alone.’

  ‘Sorry, Michele.’

  Polito noticed the drawn expression on Ferrara’s face as soon as he came back into the office. Instead of inspiring confidence, it made him worried.

  They carried on with the meeting, but Ferrara’s mind was elsewhere.

  There was one question he really wanted the answer to immediately: had Beatrice Filangeri really committed suicide or had she been killed?

  In the past ten years, the number of suicides in prison had risen almost three hundred per cent. This was almost always connected with the poor conditions in Italian prisons, but also the lack of staff, who were unable to
be as vigilant as they should.

  Ferrara was perfectly well aware of this situation, but there was no way Beatrice Filangeri’s death could not strike him as suspicious. Particularly since he had discovered that his visit was more widely known about than he had assumed.

  Had they struck even there? he wondered.

  The case was slipping through his fingers.

  The thought that the woman might have died because he had gone to see her was going to haunt him for a long time now, maybe for ever.

  It was like a curse.

  50

  He was puzzled. For the last seven and a half miles he had been driving down a narrow winding road, wondering whether the SatNav might be wrong, but then he noticed a sign saying San Gimignano and realised he was actually taking the shortest route.

  It wasn’t the first time the machine had selected a less than easy ride just to save a couple of miles, or even only a few hundred yards.

  In the vicinity of the Porta di San Giovanni, he found an empty space in a pay and display car park, then set off on foot along a pedestrian street flanked by shops selling ceramic items: plates, vases, lampstands and souvenirs. There were also a few wine shops. As he walked, he glanced briefly into the windows. He really quite liked the local ceramics. Before he left he would like to buy something to take back to England.

  He reached the Piazza della Cisterna, just a short walk from the Collegiate Church with its Romanesque façade.

  He looked around and decided to take a seat at one of the empty tables in the café and ice cream parlour opposite a branch of the Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank. He checked the time on his Rolex. He was on time. In fact, he had arrived ten minutes early. He ordered an iced coffee.

  Sir George had arranged to meet him right here, in this magical piazza. He looked at the octagonal travertine limestone well that had once been used as a source of water but was now just a place for tourists to be photographed. Then his gaze was drawn to the Torre del Diavolo on the south side of the square. As he was staring up at it, Sir George arrived, a bundle of newspapers under his arm. He stood up to greet him, and they shook hands.

  ‘Did you have a good journey, Richard?’

  ‘Excellent, Sir George.’

  The waiter came over and Sir George ordered a cup of tea.

  Neither of them noticed a couple queuing outside a packed ice cream parlour a short distance away, looking at them in an apparently unconcerned manner: a man and a woman, dressed like so many others in jeans, T-shirts and Converse high tops. And later when they moved away towards the well, ice creams in hand, they walked confidently and were soon swallowed up among the other visitors.

  Richard and Sir George discussed the latest developments, particularly those in Rome.

  ‘It wasn’t their doing, Sir George. Someone beat them to it, someone who wasn’t from an organisation known to us.’

  ‘There must have been another motive. But what? And who could it have been?’

  ‘I hope to be able to find out soon. As regards the other matter, mission accomplished.’

  ‘We knew we could count on you, Richard.’

  51

  It was no longer a matter of an isolated case.

  Ferrara took a piece of paper and wrote:

  Murders of Costanza and Rodriguez: night of 28-29 August.

  Murder of Antonio Sergi: discovered Wednesday, 1 September.

  Suicide(?) of Beatrice Filangeri: Thursday, 2 September.

  He went through each death one by one, noting down significant details, a method he had often found useful. He would come back to these notes when necessary.

  Once again, though, he was unable to establish a definite link between these events and ended up wondering whether it could all be coincidence. No, there were too many of them and they had happened within too short a period of time to be coincidental. And what about the Black Rose: that, surely, was a common denominator? The only difference between these deaths was the manner in which they had happened.

  Costanza and Rodriguez had been murdered by a ruthless professional killer who had planned the crime in detail, without leaving the smallest clue behind, whereas in the case of Sergi, the murder did not seem to have been premeditated.

  Filangeri’s suicide was extremely suspicious. Beatrice had been Leonardo Berghoff’s partner and had killed Madalena with him and other, as yet unknown, accomplices.

  He kept scribbling on the sheet of paper, trying to see his way through the tangle of thoughts in his head. Why had his visit to the prison not been kept a secret as he had requested? Who had spilled the beans to the Commissioner? Who had wanted to keep Beatrice Filangeri quiet?

  Regarding Sergi’s murder, he wondered how the fracture of the cartilage to the left of the hyoid bone could be explained, given how well-built the man had been. Maybe they’d dragged him by the neck when they pulled him out of the water.

  He could not help thinking about an old case: the death of a well-known businessman in another lake. No post-mortem had been performed, and the death had been classified as either an accident or suicide. It was only many years later, when the body was exhumed, that it was discovered, precisely because of a hyoid bone, that the man had been murdered.

  He re-read the relevant section of the pathologist’s report that had been faxed to him from Rome: The objective fracture in the upper left cartilage, which is believed to have occurred while the subject was still alive, makes it highly probable that the cause of death was violent mechanical asphyxiation produced by constriction of the neck (either manual strangulation or strangulation by ligature) carried out with murderous intent.

  He underlined ‘murderous intent’ several times, thinking as he did so that it must have taken more than one person, at least two or three, to overpower a man of Sergi’s physique.

  He thought again about the Commissioner’s suggestions: Forget about the Freemasons. Don’t go chasing ghosts. Stop questioning Enrico Costanza’s friends. Focus on your career. Make sure you’re on the right team!

  He remembered the sight of Guaschelli deep in conversation at the crime scene at Lake Bracciano, and his presence there now seemed even more suspicious. That dwarf had been putting a spanner in the works for some time now, he was sure of it. It was just a feeling, but his instinct told him to proceed with caution.

  The investigation into the deaths of Costanza and his butler had not made much progress. There were still no leads, not even from that identikit of the woman driving the Mercedes, assuming she had even been involved in the crime.

  Could he actually be dealing with a perfect murder? No, he found that hard to believe. In reality, the perfect murder didn’t exist. What did exist, on the other hand, were imperfect investigations, either where an important detail had been overlooked or misunderstood, or where the investigators were unaware of possible mistakes made by the killer.

  He thought about Enrico Costanza’s final telephone call to Cosimo Presti. What was the nature of Presti’s relationship with the senator?

  Maybe that had been the mistake.

  Ferrara looked up from the sheet of paper on which he had been scribbling, and let his gaze wander round the room. He couldn’t get Berghoff’s letter out of his mind. The same question kept recurring: should he tell the Prosecutor’s Department everything or continue to keep quiet?

  The first option would, in all probability, have immediate consequences for his career. He might even have to face disciplinary proceedings. They could reasonably accuse him of failing in his duties as an official of the State Police, let alone as head of the most important criminal investigation department in the whole province.

  But if he chose the second option, he would still have to square things with his own conscience. As a man first, as a police officer second.

  He couldn’t even think of a third option.

  It was a real mess, but he had dug himself into this hole with his own hands, and nobody else could help him get out of it.

  Perhaps the moment had
finally come to write a full report and attach Berghoff’s letter to it. If he had done that straight away, it would have been easier to obtain authorisation from the Prosecutor’s Department to speed up the inquiries into foreign nationals and continue with the questioning of the victim’s friends.

  He decided to sleep on it.

  Just then, the telephone rang, dragging him from his thoughts. It was Fanti, telling him that there was an international call for him.

  Could it be Interpol?

  No, it wasn’t Interpol. It was the last person Ferrara would have expected to hear from at that moment: his opposite number, Markus Glock, head of the Criminal Investigation Department in Munich. They had met at the beginning of July, when Leonardo Berghoff had fled to Germany.