The purpose of my letter is to enquire as to the possibility of our working together on a joint concert. I have attended one of yours and was very impressed by what I heard. I feel that our combined efforts will produce a musical event not to be forgotten in Lucca. I prepare much of our music and would be willing to arrange the orchestrations for whatever pieces your singers might wish to perform.
I enclose two tickets for our forthcoming Starlight Concert and hope that you will be able to join us as my guest for the evening.
I hope to receive your favourable reply in the near future.
Yours faithfully
Arthur W. Crowe
‘Oh!’ said the Contessa for the fifth time.
32
‘When did he call?’ asked Gregorio Marinetti, clutching his DECT phone as he stood in the shade of the umbrella, his naked body still glistening with the refreshing sparkle of water from his swimming pool.
‘Immediately before I phoned you,’ Nicola Dolci replied tersely. ‘You know I don’t like phoning you on the day of one of your concerts, but the gentleman who telephoned was quite insistent that he speak to you. He said that you did not answer your mobile, as arranged, so he phoned the shop.’
‘My mobile hasn’t rung at all – not yesterday afternoon, not today, not…’ He broke off as he bent towards the wooden recliner to retrieve the offending object from the pocket of his cotton beach wrap. Nicola wondered what the significance was of the mobile not having rung the afternoon before, but she thought better of saying anything. Her boss seemed twitchy enough as it was.
‘Look, I have no messages or…’ There was a pause accompanied by a considerable amount of mumbling. ‘Shit! Fucking thing’s flat – no fucking power!’
‘Pardon?’ asked Nicola, who had heard perfectly well; Gregorio had shouted it loudly enough for half of Lucca to have heard.
‘What!’ barked Marinetti as he flung the dead wonder of the technological age angrily onto the recliner on which his robe was piled in a mangled heap.
Nicola thought it best to simply continue the conversation. ‘The gentleman asked when you would be available and he also seemed quite a bit put out. I did not want to give him your home number. You’ve told me not to.’
That was true. In the past, he had been unlucky enough to have made the odd liaison, which had subsequently gone wrong, and thought it best to remain ‘non-contactable’ until the emotional threat of these depressing occasions had passed. But this caller had not been one of his recent disastrous affairs. He knew that this caller had wanted to talk to him about an important collection – one which should have taken place the previous day and one which had caused him to be preoccupied during the final COGOL rehearsal. As a result, he had made two silly musical mistakes. Eventually, he had had to force himself to switch his attention away from the source of his suppressed panic and onto his music. He not only had a stolen object to dispose of, in return for a substantial sum of money, he also had his considerable musical reputation to live up to. Everything had caused him to have a virtually sleepless Thursday night. Now, at what for him was an early hour of the day, his mind was giving a highly convincing impersonation of a tumble dryer in full revolution.
‘Did you take a telephone number?’ he asked, already knowing the answer. Agents who represented clients such as this one were not in the habit of giving out their contact telephone numbers. Any contact in matters of this nature was definitely a one-sided affair.
‘I did ask, but he said that he would call back later, at approximately four o’clock. I did not want to say that you were not in today. He was well-spoken and I thought that he might be interested in something with a high price ticket. He didn’t say what it was he wanted. As you know, we could do with the business…’ Nicola let the unfinished sentence hang in the warm morning air. Lately, with business being as quiet as it had been, she had often wondered how long it would be before she was told that her services were no longer needed at the shop.
‘Four o’clock. Alright, Nicola, I’ll be in at about a quarter to four. Oh shit … there is something I will have to collect first. If I can’t manage it on my own I’ll phone for Francesco to help me. Can you tell him that I might need his services a little earlier than planned.’
Snap your fingers and your lapdog comes running, thought Nicola. The way Marinetti treated her brother – even if he was a little different in the head from most other people – really annoyed her at times, but the money was reasonable and Francesco had little hope of finding anything else that would pay as well.
‘I will tell him,’ she said. ‘See you later.’ And then she replaced the receiver.
‘Blast it!’ snapped Gregorio as he spread his towel on the paved surround of his pool and tried to settle down to his yoga routine. Despite the fact that his principal, misguided reason for enrolling in Tezziano’s yoga course had come to nothing, he had kept up the exercises and felt much better for it. He was finding it difficult to remain calm and would have preferred to have kept his mind clear of everything except the evening’s concert. The reality was that he was becoming more and more worked up about everything with each passing moment. He would have to go to his lock-up, collect the screen – hopefully without having to summon Francesco’s reliable but painfully slow muscle power – then drive into Lucca and close the deal. After all of that, he then had a concert to sing. It just was not fair on him!
‘Fucking people!’ he shouted out in uncharacteristic fashion. He was not prone to the use of socially unacceptable language, but he was making up for his avoidance of it now. ‘They say one thing, do another and then change their minds again! Bastards!’ he yelled. In his jangled state, it never occurred to him that he had not charged his mobile for well over a week and that possibly the present situation was largely of his own making. Acknowledgement of his appallingly bad decision to try gambling his way out of his financial woes also never entered his head.
A flock of birds, alarmed by the sudden shriek, took flight from the safety of the row of tall trees, which lined the southern boundary of his property.
‘Take steady breaths … in … out … in … out,’ he gasped as he tried to create the pre-concert ambiance, which was so vital to his preparations for a good performance.
After five minutes of pointless effort he was no nearer a state of inner calm than he had been before Nicola’s telephone call.
‘It’s no use,’ he muttered angrily, finally admitting defeat; ‘there’s too much going on to let me relax.’
He got up and was about to dive into the pool once more when he remembered that his mobile needed charging.
‘Fucking thing!’ he snarled as he picked it up and glared at the dead screen. ‘I now have to abandon my concert preparations and plug you in to charge!’
He had not had a good week and, so far, he was not having a good day either – and it was not even noon.
33
Inspector Michele Conti looked questioningly at Sergeant Pascoli, who stood in the doorway of his office with an ‘it’s to be expected’ look on his face.
‘Well, Sergeant?’ asked Conti, who had been distracted from reading a discreetly folded copy of that morning’s La Nazione newspaper.
‘Not really, sir… Seems he’s quite ill, actually. At least, that was the message Signora Bramanti left.’
Questore Bramanti’s health had been a topic of debate for some time amongst the staff of the Questura.
‘Is he in?’ asked Conti, leaning back in his chair.
‘No. So I suppose that makes you senior officer until he gets back,’ replied the unsmiling sergeant, who was well known for being an expert on finding things via the Internet, but not for possessing a detectable sense of humour, ‘or until Florence decides to send someone else up here,’ he continued.
For a moment, Michele Conti sat and thought what this situation implied. Then, being a policeman who usually followed thought with action, he sat upright in his chair. ‘Right then,’ he said in a ver
y matter of fact manner, ‘let us get on with the business of the day. What do we have?’
Whilst Pascoli had filled the doorway, Conti had been reading yet another speculative article about the Lucca murders. Lack of any progress in the cases – including the latest one in Montecatini – had pushed the reportage to page five, but it was still there and the public were still unhappy with the lack of results.
‘Anything new on the murders?’ he asked, thinking that it was as good a place as any to start.
‘Well, yes and no,’ replied the sergeant, who still stood in the doorway.
‘What do you mean, yes and no?’ asked Conti.
‘No, nothing new of any significance has turned up since yesterday … and yes, something new has turned up this morning.’ He took a couple of steps into the office and stood next to the inspector’s desk.
‘So…?’ prompted the inspector, who found Pascoli’s occasional attempts at theatrical revelation, which were anything but convincing, rather annoying. ‘What’s new?’
‘This…’ replied the sergeant, putting a sheet of paper on the desk in front of Conti with a flourish. ‘It’s hot off the fax machine.’
The inspector stood up, clutching the fax in his right hand. It had been sent from Florence, copied to Assistant State Prosecutor di Senno and it was, indeed, ‘hot’. He finished reading to the end and then turned to look at his subordinate. It was his first, totally unexpected day in charge of the forces of law and order in Lucca and this had to be the first thing to cross his desk.
‘The Foreign Ministry in Rome has been contacted by the German Government in Berlin and has requested the Carabinieri to “assist” us with the investigation into the murder in Montecatini, due to its international dimension,’ he said, reading from the sheet. Sergeant Pascoli had adopted an ‘I know’ expression, because he had already read it on the way to Conti’s office. ‘That means they’ll be all over us with their arrogance and innuendo at our perceived incompetence. Blast it!’ He put the fax back down on the desk, thought for a few moments and then crossed to the door. ‘If anyone wants me, I will be in the lavatory. I could be gone quite a time.’
34
‘I have a call for you,’ rasped the elderly voice of Signora Litelli. ‘It is Signor Doriano Peri from Florence.’
‘Thank you, Signora,’ replied Riccardo Fossi as he settled into his comfortably upholstered leather armchair. He mused that the ever hyper-efficient Signora Litelli, given another ten seconds with the caller, would probably have deduced his eye colour, the colour of his hair and when he had last had sex. She had a knack of finding out all sorts of things. ‘Doriano, come stai?’ he asked warmly, using the less formal form of address, usually reserved for family members or very close friends.
‘Good. And you?’
‘Fine … fine,’ replied Fossi, turning slightly to look across the expanse of his office and out of the large window. He was in a good mood. There was Renata, the evening concert and the as-yet-unconquered Miss Yvonne Buckingham. He was in a very good mood.
‘Just a quick call,’ continued Peri, ‘to let you know that the matter we discussed earlier in the week – well, I have no information whatsoever on that topic … nothing locally, anyway.’
He was careful not to give any details away. Even calls made from the Florence Flying Squad Headquarters ran the risk of the occasional eavesdropper and it was always advisable to err on the side of caution.
‘That’s good news and a big relief,’ replied Fossi, turning his attention back to his large desk and fiddling with a pen, which lay on the desk blotter. ‘Thanks… I owe you one, my friend,’ he continued.
‘Funnily enough, Riccardo, I had thought of that,’ replied Peri, chuckling. Then his voice suddenly took on a sharper edge. ‘Just because I haven’t found anything doesn’t mean to say that the topic of discussion does not exist. It could be that we just don’t know about it. You know the sort of thing – left hand doesn’t know about the right hand.’
Fossi stopped fiddling with the pen. ‘How do you mean?’ he asked.
‘I was thinking that perhaps you could help us, you know. If you proceed with the topic and then find out something we don’t know, about the topic, you would let us know … wouldn’t you?’ There was a prolonged pause as Riccardo Fossi’s pleasurable good mood suddenly developed a slightly sour tinge. ‘It’s nothing more than we would expect from an upstanding pillar of the community such as you. It would be your duty,’ continued Doriano.
‘Of course.’ Fossi’s voice caught in the back of his throat. He coughed and it returned to its normal placing. ‘Of course,’ he repeated, the melodious sonority of his voice restored, but the doubts he had harboured about Signor Daniele di Leone and his olive oil were as alive as ever.
35
Julietta Camore sat at her piano doing a leisurely warm-up routine of vocal exercises and scales. It was still early in the day and she would mark her arias until the evening, when she would give full voice to them in the performance. She had wanted to sing the showpiece aria ‘O don fatale’ from Verdi’s Don Carlo, but had had her nose put out, somewhat unkindly, when she had mentioned it to Renata during a casual encounter in Lucca, only to be told that the Contessa had already approved Renata’s choice of the same aria. Julietta had suspected that Renata had walked on past the next bend in the street and then phoned the Contessa to lay her claim to the piece before Julietta could. There had been little love lost between the two sopranos for some time now. As a result of Renata’s perceived dishonesty, Julietta had been obliged to select something else. She had settled on Abigail’s aria from the second act of Nabucco. The Contessa’s fingers would make short work of the rousing introduction to the recitative, filling in the missing chorus and playing the accompaniment to the aria like a full orchestra. Besides, given the way she felt about Signora di Senno, the sentiments expressed by the daughter of King Nebuchadnezzar, the Nabucco of the title, seemed quite apt: ‘O villains all! Upon all you will see my fury fall!’ Fair enough, Julietta had not just discovered a document proving that she was not actually her father’s daughter, but the displeasure she felt towards Renata amounted to much the same thing in its building intensity.
Julietta spent some time polishing her interpretation of Abigail’s great outburst. Then she reached up to the pile of scores on the piano to retrieve Lucia di Lammermoor. Last evening’s rehearsal had gone quite well, but there was a section of the sextet which had been rather insecure, caused, it had seemed, by a sudden lack of concentration on the part of Gregorio Marinetti. The Contessa had covered it up from the keyboard, but Julietta wanted to run through it, just to be on the safe side. As she reached up and took the score she knocked her diary off the top of the pile. It cascaded over the piano’s music stand and landed with a discord on the keyboard. It had landed open, face down, at the page on which she had written the name of Ruggiero Mondini. She had still not told the Contessa about this young man with the outstanding voice, this unbelievable find who had been personally recommended by her sister, Mirella. Julietta had never met this young Mondini, who was shortly to commence his studies at the university in Pisa. Unfortunately for him, his association with Mirella had tainted any hope of a pleasant relationship with Julietta. She slammed the diary closed and placed it on the piano stool beside her with a thump. She had already resolved to tell the Contessa about him and his marvellous voice only if this ‘singing angel’, to quote her sister, actually telephoned her. Mirella had given Julietta’s phone number to others in the past, much to the latter’s annoyance, but in her own inflated opinion, it was Mirella’s firmly held conviction that all of her friends were socially improving contacts. Despite this, nothing had ever come of Mirella’s assurance that by doing so, her sister would benefit from any possible contact.
36
‘Can you put my mother on the line please, Elizabeth?’ asked Luigi di Capezzani-Batelli. He had been busy with an intriguing case of suspected murder, which, of itself, was nothing
new to him. That was, after all, what constituted a large part of his job; not the actual act of murder, naturally, but the often complex unravelling of the method used to send the unfortunate victim on their way.
‘I’ll have to be after doing the stairs. Herself is on the balconie upstairs, resting herself for the conceit tonight. Can you be doing with a message? ’Twould be easier than anything else.’
Elizabeth was always very down to earth in her assessment of a situation, particularly if she could avoid undue physical exertion.
‘That’s kind of you to offer,’ replied Luigi, who had long ago learnt to hoist the maid with her own petard, ‘but I really do have to talk to her myself … if it’s not too much trouble. I know how busy you are.’
‘Oh, ’tis never too much trouble for Elzeebit to do this and to do that,’ replied the housekeeper with more than a generous dose of sarcasm in her voice. ‘Hold on to this thing,’ she snapped before a deafening crash in the earpiece confirmed that she had unceremoniously deposited the handset on the hall table on which the telephone stood.
With the hindsight of many years of experience, Luigi had anticipated her action and had conducted the last few lines of the conversation with his handset held well away from his ear. He knew he would have to wait some considerable time, as the mumbling retainer went from floor to floor before summoning his mother to the telephone. As he sat waiting, he ran his eyes over the images of the scans the radiographer had taken of the victim, but they revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Then he turned his attention to the medical records, which accompanied the corpse. The elderly male had had a pacemaker fitted several years before, in order to stabilize the rhythm of his heart. Since then, he had been in good health until his sudden and unexpected demise. According to the polizia report, his son had found him dead in bed one morning and, in a state of extreme hysteria and distress, had reported it. The general assumption was that the victim’s heart had finally given out, possibly due to the failure of the pacemaker. It was recorded that the victim’s son had said that he couldn’t remember when the battery in the pacemaker had been changed, if at all. The interesting thing revealed by Luigi’s physical investigation was that the pacemaker was working perfectly and still continued to send impulses to the long-dead heart. His next step would be to investigate for signs of smothering. He was in the middle of making a note on the subject when Elizabeth, wheezy and a little out of breath, came back on the line.
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