Lojelo did so, as Ferrara joined Petra.
The ringing was clearer now, although still distant.
The ground to the right of the rock fell away steeply in an almost vertical trench between the trees and the undergrowth, which was fortunately not too thick at this point. Two electricity cables, or perhaps phone cables, were stretched across the opening of this trench, just above the ground.
Lojelo called to one of his men.
'Go down, but take care. I'll keep the line open.'
The officer came back up a little while later holding a leather shoulder bag, which he had found about twenty yards lower down, snagged on the branch of a bramble bush. Inside, among other things, were the mobile and a wallet containing Claudia Pizzi's ID.
'We have to look further down,' Ferrara said. 'Is there anyone you can call for help?'
'There's a Carabinieri station here in Bedizzano . . .'
'Better to call the Forest Rangers, they know the area,' he said quickly. 'And an ambulance.'
*
Claudia Pizzi's body was found almost at the foot of the precipice with five bullet wounds in her back. Retrieving it was a long and laborious operation. The body could not be moved until the forensics team arrived from La Spezia. Claudia was still holding the strap of a Nikon with a powerful telephoto lens. Both the camera and the lens had been broken in the fall.
While waiting, Lojelo and Ferrara questioned the woman who ran the souvenir stand, but didn't get much out of her. It turned out that the Renault had been parked there all the previous day. The woman had seen it when she had arrived and it was still there when she had left in the evening.
'Why didn't you call the police? Didn't you think it was strange?'
'A bit,' she admitted. 'No one usually stops here that long. How was I to know? Maybe it was someone who'd gone on an excursion in the woods . . . Then I thought, what was it doing there, taking up all that room? Seeing it again this morning, I'd probably have started getting worried.'
They obviously weren't going to get anything else out of her.
Later, after the ambulance had driven off with the body, it was Lojelo who said, grimly, 'We'll have to tell her father.'
'We'll see to that,' Ferrara said, encouraged by Petra. In such circumstances, a female presence can be a great help: compassion is a feminine trait, and a man accepts it without feeling that he is being pitied.
Before they got to Amilcare Pizzi's place, Ferrara phoned Il Tirreno and asked to be put through to the editor. He told him the news and then asked him about the piece which Claudia had been putting the finishing touches to on the night of the 8th, but which had not appeared the following day.
The editor, shaken by the news, told him he knew nothing about it, but he would find out and call him back. But he could assure Ferrara of one thing: the article definitely hadn't been censored, his paper never did that.
He phoned back ten minutes later, as Ferrara was parking. The reason the article hadn't appeared was that the local news editor had decided it had wandered off the point and was full of hasty judgements unsupported by evidence.
'Can I talk to him?'
'Of course. Hold on, and I'll put him through.'
After a little while, a younger voice came on the line. 'Francesco Gustavino speaking.'
Ferrara put him in the picture.
‘I’m speechless,' was all the man could say.
'I know how you feel. I knew her, too. It's terrible to think that someone so young has gone. But you can help me.'
'Tell me how.'
'Why didn't you publish her last article?'
'From a professional like her, it was far too personal. Reading between the lines, she seemed to be attacking the Carabinieri and hinting at all sorts of things without really explaining them. I thought it was all a bit cryptic. I was planning to talk to her, to get her to clarify some parts of it. I really wanted to feel that we could support her in what she was saying, but I didn't get a chance to talk to her. I tried to reach her the other day when I got the piece, but there was no reply. I tried again yesterday, but still couldn't reach her.'
'What exactly did the article say?'
'Basically that the case was somehow related to the marble quarries. Claudia had been interested in that area for a while. She kept saying she wanted to do a big story on it. But the connection she was making in that article between the murder in Marina di Pietrasanta and whatever she had discovered, or hoped to discover, in the quarries seemed a bit forced to me . . . It's as if she was trying to fit the murder into a preconceived theory'
Ferrara knew exactly what he meant. For a detective, too, there is always the risk of bending the facts to fit a theory he finds hard to give up. It was a risk he himself always tried to avoid by not neglecting any line of inquiry and constantly reviewing, as objectively as possible, the whole process that had led him to that theory - calling it all into question if need be.
'But she did die near the quarries,' he said.
'Yes,' the news editor murmured bitterly.
'Could you send me the article?'
'I don't know . . . Now that she's dead . . . It's Claudia's material ..."
'Signor Gustavino - It is Gustavino, isn't it? - do I need to say it again? Claudia Pizzi died, in fact was murdered, near a quarry, and her article mentions the quarries. And do I need to remind you that I'm a police officer?'
'I'm sorry, it's just that it's so—'
Ferrara cut him short, giving him the email address he could send the article to.
Claudia's father burst into tears, which may have stopped him from fainting. He had gone as pale as the purest marble and Petra quickly went and looked in the dining room sideboard for a liqueur and a glass.
His wife had died the year before; his son - Claudia's older brother - had emigrated to Australia, and now he was alone, without any real reason to carry on living. His daughter had been everything to him, he admitted in despair.
Only much later, thanks to Petra's comforting words, did he feel up to going with Ferrara to Claudia's apartment. Ferrara wanted to have a better look at it with the help of Lojelo and his men.
'Are you sure you'll be okay? If you like, you can give me the keys.' He had to say it, although the presence of Claudia's father would be very useful.
'No, I want to be there.'
They got to the apartment at the same time as Lojelo and the forensics team. Amilcare Pizzi opened the door, and they went in.
'I hope you don't mind,' Ferrara said, 'but as I'm sure you'll understand, this time we really have to check everything.'
'If it helps the investigation, do whatever you have to do. I want you to get them . . . whoever they are.'
The forensics team got down to work. It didn't take long, especially as far as taking video and photographic evidence was concerned, since it was a small apartment. The furniture and objects were so clean and tidy, with hardly a trace of dust, that any prints were invisible to the naked eye. They first had to be enhanced by spreading a special silver-grey aluminium powder with a paintbrush over the surfaces, then lifted with black adhesive tape, and finally photographed.
They then proceeded with the search, the results of which would be reported to the Prosecutor's Department, along with the first documents relating to the finding of the body.
There were a large number of books, magazines, newspapers, notepads and exercise books, as well as diaries used more for notes and memos than to record appointments. Writing down news items and notes for articles on the pages of a diary was an old habit of crime reporters.
Among the diaries was one from this year.
It was from the Florence Savings Bank.
Ferrara started leafing through it, from the beginning. He noticed that some pages had been left blank, as if Claudia Pizzi hadn't worked on those days or else had used a real notebook.
He got to August.
Here the notes came thick and fast, day after day, as if Claudia Pizzi had lived very intensely during this
last period. There were phrases which Ferrara surmised had been spoken to the journalist by informers or witnesses, some indicated with a letter. Grazia Barberi's statement, for example, which Ferrara recognised, was indicated with a capital G.
He also noticed that Simonetta Palladiani's name appeared several times, and next to it one or two question marks. Massimo Verga was not mentioned by name, but there was a reference to a 'bookshop owner from Florence' who had rented the guest apartment.
There were also some numbers which seemed to refer to particular quarries.
Suddenly he was struck by a phrase written on a sheet of squared paper tucked inside the cover: Check presence Sicilian companies in Tuscany. Why specifically Sicilian companies?
'Let's take all the diaries and notebooks away' he suggested to Lojelo. 'We need to have a proper look at them.'
'What about the computer?' Lojelo asked, pointing to the Toshiba laptop on the desk.
'That too . . . and the disks,' Ferrara replied. Then, turning to Amilcare Pizzi, 'Signor Pizzi, for the moment we have to take all this material away. You'll get back whatever we don't need.'
Pizzi nodded.
Ferrara turned back to Lojelo. 'You should have this, too.' He handed him the envelope with the two photos which he had found on his previous visit.
Lojelo gave him a puzzled look.
He explained how he came to have the envelope, and said, 'I'll put it in writing.'
When at last he said goodbye to Lojelo, he asked him not to give his name to the press.
They got back to the hotel in the afternoon. There were no phone messages, a sign that nothing of any particular importance had happened in Florence. As soon as they were in their room, Ferrara switched on his laptop and checked his email. There were no messages from the office - he didn't know if he felt relieved or sorry - but there was Francesco Gustavino's email with Claudia Pizzi's article as an attachment. He read it.
We learn from a reliable source that Ugo Palladiani was murdered. Ferrara shuddered. Obviously she had finished writing this after talking to him. It has also been ascertained that a third party was present in Simonetta Palladiani's villa, a bookshop owner from Florence who had been renting the guest apartment and who also seems to be missing. Given that there is already a rumour that the owner of the villa and the tenant were more than 'just friends', we seem to be getting into the oldest, most obvious story in the world, still all too common in our little country: the eternal triangle!
So, while the Carabinieri, who are only doing their duty, ponder what they probably consider the flight of two homicidal lovers, the hope that they will ask themselves some searching questions seems to be vanishing into thin air. Questions such as why the husband of a woman who still holds the lease on a number of marble quarries saved by a Sicilian businessman was killed. Questions such as how this businessman somehow managed to make a success of these quarries - Nos. 206, 219 and 225 — which everyone in the area assumed were exhausted, and which had ruined the woman's parents. And our astute Carabinieri have not even noticed the strange coincidence that the disappearing tenant also just happens to be Sicilian . . . These may perhaps be the idealistic ravings of the present writer, who will never believe in the guilt of Simonetta Palladiani - a woman who has been nothing but an asset to this area - but is instead convinced that the activities of the Saviour of the quarries ought to arouse suspicion.
'Should "saviour" be spelt with a capital letter like that?' Petra asked, reading over his shoulder.
'No . . . Perhaps she was trying to be ironic, comparing this Sicilian businessman with Jesus Christ... or perhaps it's just a typing error, you know how it is when you write quickly on the computer. I do it all the time.'
'If it is an error, it's the only one,' Petra commented.
But Ferrara was already on the phone.
'Superintendent Lojelo? Ferrara here. Would it be possible for you to find out who manages quarries 206, 219 and 225?'
'Of course. Has it got something to do with the murder?'
'Quite possibly. I'm emailing you the last article Claudia Pizzi wrote. It never appeared, and when you read it you'll understand why'
'Thank you, Chief Superintendent. You're doing us a great favour.'
Immediately afterwards, Ferrara called Fanti.
'Try to find out all you can about Sicilian companies operating in Tuscany over the last ten years . . . no, make that fifteen years.'
'All of them?' Fanti asked in surprise.
'How many there are, what line of business they're in, where they're distributed. That's all I need for now'
Ah,' Fanti replied - it was hard to tell whether he was relieved or not. 'I'll get right on to it. But . . . when are you ("coming back, chief?'
'Never . . . No, of course I'll be back, but I don't know when. Why, aren't you getting on with Rizzo?'
'It's not that, chief . . . But is everything all right there? Are you making progress? Do you need anything else?'
'No, that's all for the moment. But please, Fanti, call me when you have the information or send it to me.'
'Okay, chief.'
As soon as he had hung up, Ferrara looked at his watch and decided the time had come to make a call he had been putting off for too long.
17
ALEX: You, leave him alone - leave him alone! [sounds of a scuffle]
ALEX: No be stupid! Want to finish up separate cells? ZANCAROTTI: That's fine by me if it means I don't have to
see him any more.
NARD: Nothing to do with me!
ZANCAROTTI: Do you hear him? Do you hear him? Did I tell him or didn't I to put on his seat belt? Did I tell him or not? A thousand times, I must have told him . . .
[brief pause]
ZANCAROTTI: He got us caught and now we're fucked, am
I right? NARD: [incomprehensible]
ZANCAROTTI: What the fuck did he just say?
ALEX: He say shut up, no pay attention . . . He scared . . . ZANCAROTTI: Poor thing, is he trying to get to sleep?
ALEX: He scared, scared! Me scared also.
ZANCAROTTI: I swear I'll kill him when we get out of
here ... I don't give a fuck that he's your brother.
ALEX: He kill all of us first, Emilio. Not forgive.
ZANCAROTTI: Nor will Zitturi - we've fucked it up for him, too.
ALEX: He not find us in time, we dead first! [long silence]
ZANCAROTTI: No, I'll kill him first!
NARD: [incomprehensible words] ZANCAROTTI: I'll kill him.
ALEX: He say quiet or he strangle you. He can do it. ZANCAROTTI: Me too.
ALEX: He my brother, Emilio. Maybe we stronger than you.
[Long silence. After forty minutes, sounds of snoring.]
Francesco Rizzo finished reading the prison transcript and concentrated. With a red felt-tip pen he underlined the 'he' in 'He kill all of us first' and drew a circle around the word 'Zitturi'. Then he called Inspector Venturi, who was particularly good at searching through the records, Ascalchi and Ciuffi. It was 9.30 on Friday 10 August. At that very moment, Chief Superintendent Ferrara was waiting for the firemen to recover Claudia Pizzi's body from the bottom of the gully.
'One of them must be the supplier and the other one the person the drugs were meant for,' Rizzo said to Venturi. 'By getting caught, they've screwed both these people, and now they're scared. It may play into our hands. They might be ready to cooperate rather than get themselves killed.'
'The Italian maybe,' Ciuffi conceded sceptically. 'The Albanians won't talk - they're tough, I know them. Even Zancarotti will be hard to crack. He won't want to lose face, he has too much to lose. With the time it'll take to go through the courts and maybe a good lawyer . . .'
'Couldn't we infiltrate someone into the cell before the lawyer gets them out?' Ascalchi asked.
'Not a bad idea,' Ciuffi said. 'I could get one of my men out of mothballs. They're good at blending in and they may be able to get them to talk. It's worth a try, even
though I don't hold out much hope. It was a major operation. We're talking here about big shots, really dangerous people. These guys are just couriers, it won't be easy to get them to open up. You've seen how scared they are already . . .'
'Let's try all the same,' Rizzo said. 'Does the name Zitturi mean anything to you?' 'No, never heard it before.'
'Venturi, that's up to you. Go through the records. If necessary, check out all the Zitturis in Italy. It isn't a common name - maybe with a bit of luck
'All right, chief,' Venturi replied, immediately adding, 'provided he's Italian. This is an international gang. What if he's Greek or Moroccan? Maybe they pronounced the name wrong.'
'Then we're fucked. But I see your point. You'll have to check with Interpol as well.' 'Yes, chief.'
'What's going to be more difficult is identifying the guy they refer to as "He". He must be the Albanians' boss. Any ideas, Luigi?'
'Nothing at the moment. We're analysing the two brothers' mobiles and have asked Deputy Prosecutor Cosenza for authorisation to put a trace on the last calls they made and received. All my men are on the alert, and we're hoping to get something from our informers. A job as big as this doesn't go unnoticed, there may have been a leak.'
'Perfect,' Rizzo said. 'I don't think there's anything else for the moment. You can all go.'
*
A little while later, as he was going to see Fanti to ask if there was any news of Ferrara, Rizzo was stopped in the corridor by Chief Inspector Violante.
'I was just coming to see you. We've identified the owner of the phone card which was used for the emergency call. The Stella case, you know?'
Death in Tuscany Page 16