The Garden of Evil nc-6
Page 31
“Nino,” Agata intervened. “That was him.”
Teresa nodded. “Good guess.”
“I knew these men,” she objected. “Not well, but I saw them quite often. Franco was their leader. Castagna and Buccafusca were his henchmen. Nino was subservient to all of them. This nonsense Franco believes in, about the life of the knight, his right to behave as he wishes… Nino was a frightened little man. He couldn’t have felt that way for a moment.”
“We have no evidence Nino Tomassoni took part in any of the sexual acts or the murders,” Teresa confirmed. “It’s undeniable from the pictures we found in that house he was there. Maybe he was a bystander.”
“And the rest?” Falcone asked.
Silvio Di Capua picked up a couple of folders of reports from the nearest desk and waved them in front of him.
“We have Castagna and Buccafusca identified without a shadow of doubt.”
“Two dead people,” Grimaldi moaned. “Thanks…”
Silvio Di Capua clenched his small fists and let out a brief scream, then said, “For Christ’s sake, man. Use your imagination. We have one sample that remains unidentified. It has to be Franco Malaspina. All we need is a chance…” “Imagination?” Grimaldi shrieked. “We’re on the brink of getting sued for harassment as it is and you want me to go in front of a magistrate and talk of history and imagination? When will you people learn? We can’t screw around with this individual anymore.”
“We should know our place,” Costa said quietly.
“I didn’t say that!” the lawyer objected. “Do you think I like this? Do you think I want to defend this monster? He’s a murderer and a crook and I’d give my right arm to see him languishing in a cell for the rest of his life. The only way we can do this is through the law. What else do we have?”
Agata looked at him and smiled, a quizzical expression on her face. “The law is an ass. Who said that?”
“Every last stupid cop who thinks I should be able to close a case he can’t,” Grimaldi snapped. “Give me something to work with. Something that isn’t several hundred years old.”
“Like most lawyers, Toni, you have a very closed mind,” Teresa Lupo observed in a censorious tone. “Silvio? Let us talk genealogy.”
Six
Di Capua walked over to the main desk. They followed and watched him unroll three long family charts, two of them clearly printed and official, the third scribbled in the tight, clear hand Costa had come to recognise as the forensic scientist’s own. Di Capua was the department magpie; if an avenue of research existed that didn’t interest him, Costa had yet to see it.
“Alessandro de’ Medici. The Moor,” Di Capua said, and threw a photograph on the table. It was the portrait of a pale-faced scholarly individual dressed in black. He appeared to be drawing, unconvincingly, the face of a woman on parchment with a metal stylus. The man might have been a cleric or a philosopher. His young face was solemn and plain, with a skimpy beard. His skin…
Costa leaned down and looked more closely. Agata was there with him instantly, smiling, pleased, it seemed to him, that someone else had been looking at paintings for a change.
“Do you know this?” he asked her.
“Am I supposed to be familiar with every work of art there has ever been? No…”
“It’s in Philadelphia,” Di Capua explained. “You’re the expert. What do you think of the pose?”
Agata frowned. “It’s a joke. This man was the capo of the Medici dynasty, as ruthless and venal as any. Here he is pretending he can draw, as if any of these great people could do that. Their talent lay in sponsorship, if at all.”
Di Capua produced another photograph: it was of a painting depicting the same man, seated this time in a suit of armour, with a lance on his lap, his face only half seen, turned away from the artist and the viewer, his skin again oddly underpainted, as if the artist had refrained from finishing the final tone.
“A sport in the blood,” she said firmly. “This is the one I know.
Giorgio Vasari. It’s in the Uffizi. Vasari’s timidity is even more obvious in the flesh. They wouldn’t dare admit it, would they? You know the story. We all know the story.”
“Yes,” Grimaldi agreed. “It’s a story. His old man had an affair with a black kitchen maid and the bastard got to inherit the family silver.”
Agata scowled at the lawyer. “His old man was Giulio de’ Medici, who became Pope Clement VII. Not that Giulio admitted it. He got his cousin to put his name to the child. It was inconvenient for a Pope to take his offspring to Rome. We know this for sure.”
“How?” Costa asked.
“Someone like me can go places police officers can’t,” she said, smiling. “The Vatican keeps records.” The body of the crucifix played in her fingers for a moment. “This all happened just sixty years before Caravaggio came to Rome. It’s my job to know. If this cadaver is Ippolito Malaspina…” She reached out and touched the curving line of the rib cage, close to the point where it had been torn apart. “He is the grandson of Alessandro de’ Medici, the greatgrandson of Lorenzo, the Duke of Urbino. He comes from a line that produced three Popes and two Queens of France. Do you wonder they took out his heart, even though they killed him for a traitor and a thief?”
“Can we use any of this?” Falcone asked.
“It’s fact,” Agata insisted. “I can give you the names of any number of historians who will swear to it in court. Alessandro was the son of a future Pope and a black kitchen maid. But the idea that the Malaspinas were in part the Medicis’ illegitimate line… It was just rumour. Gossip among the nobility. Centuries old.”
“No,” Di Capua insisted, and pointed to the second family tree, that of the Malaspinas, running from the 1400s and ending three centuries later. “It wasn’t rumour. See this woman…”
He pointed to a name: Taddea Malaspina.
“She was Alessandro’s mistress. It’s documented in the Medici archive. Gifts. Love letters. Alessandro wasn’t the most faithful of men. But he loved Taddea. This painting” — he pointed to the Philadelphia portrait — “was given to her as a gift.”
Agata looked impressed. “That must have meant something. Alessandro was murdered, if I recall correctly.”
Teresa stepped in. “He was slaughtered by his own cousin, supposedly on the way to some bedtime appointment. They smuggled out his body in a carpet and even I can’t give you DNA from that. But…”
Agata laughed and clapped her hands. “They opened the tombs a few years ago,” she declared. “I read about it in the papers.”
“Correct,” Teresa answered. “In 2003 the Florence authorities began a methodical examination of the Medici tombs in order to check the structural state of the building. At the same time, they let in a few friendly scientists to look at the bones.” She stared at them all. “The remains of Alessandro are lost. His father, Lorenzo, is buried in the chapels, in a tomb by Michelangelo. There can be no mistake about his identity.”
She gave a set of papers on the side table a sly glance. “It took a little persuasion with those damned Florentines. However, I now have their reports, and preliminary tests back on the DNA from the remains we recovered here yesterday. They need confirmation before we can put them into a form that is good enough for a court. But what I can tell you is this…”
She paused, for obvious effect, then ran her finger along the skull of the skeleton in front of them. “This dead man was a descendant of the duke in the Medici chapels. The unidentified DNA found in the semen on all of these murdered women is a part of the same line.” Her fingers rattled on the cadaver’s ribs as if they were a child’s musical instrument. “These bones belong to the line of Alessandro de’ Medici. That semen comes from the same recognisable dynasty, ten, fifteen, twenty, who knows how many generations on… Who cares?”
Grimaldi smiled for one brief second, then gave a brief nod, as if to say “Well done.” This was, Costa thought, the most enthusiastic sign he had displayed all day.
“Do you see this?” The assistant was pointing at the open jaw. “Both front incisors are missing. We only took one. We only need one. Someone else snatched out that other tooth, and they did it recently. You can see that from the socket.”
“Why on earth would someone steal a dead man’s tooth?” Grimaldi asked, bemused.
“For the same reason we did,” Teresa butted in. “The same reason the heart was removed. To find out whether the rumours were true. Look…”
Di Capua produced a printed report bearing the name and crest of an American medical institute in Boston. “If you want to find out about black heritage from DNA, there is only one place to go,” he went on. “This lab specialises in tracing African ancestry from the most minute of samples, however difficult it might seem. They’ve built up a database over the years, tracking down slave movements from all over Africa to the rest of the world.”
Agata rolled her eyes in amazement. “So they could even find my father?” she asked.
Di Capua nodded. “With a match. With two samples. Even from just yours they could look at the DNA and tell you whereabouts in Africa he came from. We contacted these people yesterday and sent them the preliminary results of our own tests. They looked them up for us. This is still early. As Teresa said, we need to work on the confirmation. But this corpse and the semen sample from the Vicolo del Divino Amore show clear connections with female DNA from the Bamileke tribe in what we now call Cameroon, an area plundered regularly for slavery for centuries.”
He threw an indecipherable scientific graph, covered in lines and numbers, on the examination table next to the bones there.
“This is the mark of Simonetta, the kitchen maid some Tuscan aristocrat impregnated in Florence in the autumn of 1509.”
“I told you,” Agata sighed, her eyes full of wonder and elation. “They are us. We are them.”
“It’s in this skeleton,” Di Capua went on, regardless. “It’s in the semen on those dead women. The reason we got to know that so quickly…” He flashed a covetous glance at Teresa.
“It was your call, Silvio,” she said gently.
“He was there before us. Franco Malaspina first sent the heart, hoping they could work with that. It was too old. The man knew nothing about forensic pathology and what was required of remains this old. So later he took that tooth, on the direct instructions of the only laboratory in the world you’d go to if you wanted to trace some black ancestry from a sample of ancient DNA. They already had the work done. They could fingerprint the black strand and come up with some rough geographical location too. It was just a matter of looking up the records.”
No one said a word.
Di Capua made a faux-modest little bow, then took out one more sheet from his folder and placed it next to the skull.
“One final thing. I found this in the archives of the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s by an artist called Pontormo.”
Agata was poring over the image in an instant, holding it in her shaking hands.
“Jacopo Carrucci…” she murmured.
“Pontormo,” Di Capua corrected her.
“It’s the same man,” she said, smiling, and placed the object in front of them. “I have never seen this before.”
“It’s certified that it was painted in 1534 or 1535,” Di Capua went on. “The work is recorded in the Medici archives. This is a genuine representation of Alessandro de’ Medici, the only one that ever acknowledged who he really was.”
They began to crowd around the image. It was a full-face portrait of a young and apparently sensitive man, clearly the Alessandro of the two earlier images, but this time seen at close quarters, where there was a baleful, almost malevolent look in his eyes, and some militaristic metal brooch at his neck. His skin was almost the colour of Agata’s, darker than any native Tuscan, and his lips were full and fleshy.
“It’s Franco,” Agata whispered. “It is him.”
Costa stared at the painted face of this long-dead aristocrat and felt an icy shiver grip his body. The hair was different and the skin had been lightened a little, even in this frank depiction of the man. But the resemblance was obvious and disturbing.
Falcone turned on the lawyer. “Is this not enough for you?” he demanded.
Grimaldi shrugged. “A picture? Some old books? And many, many circumstantial connections? Of course it’s not enough.”
Teresa swore.
“All the same,” the lawyer added quickly, “this business in Boston. It’s here. It’s now. If I can prove he was in contact with them, that he dispatched first the heart, then the tooth on their instructions…” Toni Grimaldi burst into a broad grin that changed his countenance entirely and made him look like a grey-suited Santa shorn of his beard. “If we have that, then we are home. It places Malaspina in the Tomassoni house, at the centre of everything, with undeniable knowledge of those stolen paintings. I will push the swab into his mouth myself. After which we will throw so many charges at the bastard he will never walk free again.”
“The swab is mine,” Teresa said softly.
“So,” Grimaldi added, beaming, “these people in Boston will provide an affidavit. A statement. We can take such things by email these days. If I have that tomorrow, I go before a magistrate immediately.”
The two pathologists stared at each other.
“When I say it came from Malaspina,” Teresa continued carefully, “what I mean is we know it came from Rome. A year ago. It was a very expensive business. Not something one would do lightly.”
The lawyer’s smile disappeared. “Did they give you his name?” he asked.
“The lab said it came from Rome. Who the hell else could it be?” she pleaded. “How many other people here had the motive, the money, and the opportunity?”
“I need his name,” Grimaldi emphasised. “On a piece of paper.”
“This is medical research! There are ethical issues! Of course they won’t give me a name.”
The man in the grey suit swore. “Ever?” he asked.
“Show a little faith,” Teresa pleaded.
“This is not about faith. Or justice. Or anything other than the law.”
“The law is an ass,” Agata repeated quietly, staring at the bones on the table.
“The law is all you have,” Grimaldi muttered. “I have wasted Christmas Day. As have you. Excuse me. I will leave you to your bones and your books and your fantasies.”
“Sir,” Agata said, and stood in his way.
She had the photo of the portrait from Chicago in her hands.
“Look at him,” she implored. “We all know this face. We all know what he’s done. There is a man here” — she glanced at Costa — “who lost his wife to this creature, and I am only here thanks to this same man’s courage. Do not abandon us.”
Grimaldi’s face contorted with a cold, helpless anger. “I abandon no one. Give me a case and I will work day and night to put Franco Malaspina in the dock. But you have none, and these officers know it. I have a duty to those who will be harmed in the future by this paralysis he has created in our investigative procedures. It cannot be allowed to continue.”
He turned and looked at them all. “In the morning I must tell Commissario Esposito the truth. I have no confidence we can bring this man to book. We should… sue for some kind of peace that lets us go back to catching fresh criminals the way we wish. We draw the line with Malaspina. In return we negotiate to be allowed to bring back the old evidence rules he has removed from us, with no retroactive clause applied to him. I am sorry. Genuinely. That is my decision.”
“Toni…” Peroni began.
“No. Enough. We do not have the resources or the evidence to defeat this man’s money and position. There comes a time when one must admit defeat. I see it in the eyes of all of you, yet you refuse to let it enter your heads. This is your problem. Not mine. Good day.”
Teresa Lupo watched him walk out the doo
r, then muttered something caustic under her breath.
“No.” Falcone was holding the photograph of Alessandro de’ Medici and spoke in a quiet, dejected voice. “He’s a decent man who has the courage to tell us the truth. We’ve done what we can and we’ve failed. Malaspina has defeated me as surely as he defeated Susanna Placidi. Money…”
“Tomorrow—” Costa said firmly.
“Tomorrow this all becomes history too,” Falcone interrupted him. He pointed a long bony finger at Agata Graziano. “Tomorrow you will go to that safe house in Piedmont. Until we have concluded these discussions with the man. I will make your safety a precondition, naturally.”
“You will not negotiate with this evil creature on my behalf, Leo,” she shouted. “How can you even think of such a thing? How?”
He waited for her fury to subside.
“If we cannot prosecute this man, then negotiating something quietly, through a third party, is the best we can achieve.” He cast a brief glance in Costa’s direction. “I’m sorry, Nic. Truly. That is the way it must be. Now, go home all of you, please. It’s Christmas. We should not spend it in a place like this.”
PART SIXTEEN
One
Two years before, they had dined together on Christmas Day: Falcone, Peroni, Teresa, he and Emily, all of them at the farmhouse on the edge of Rome, watching a rescued Iraqi orphan build a snowman among the vines outside the back door in the fields that led to the tombs and churches and monuments of the old road into the city.
It seemed a memory from a different lifetime. The streets were deserted by the time they climbed into the cars of the convoy, and a steady drizzle fell on the cobblestones of the centro storico. A chill wind was now beginning to build from the north. There would be no snow, not even a little. Costa felt sure of that, and a part of him regretted the thought, because he would have liked to show Agata Graziano the Pantheon in that kind of weather, would have enjoyed the look of wonder on her face at the line of soft flakes swirling through the oculus.