The Dark Heart of Florence: Number 6 in series (Michele Ferrara) (14 page)

‘We’ll be eating in a quarter of an hour or so,’ Eleonora said.

Rizzo had been watching her in silence from the doorway for several moments while she cooked. He liked his wife’s attention to detail as much now as when they had first met.

This evening she was wearing a striped yellow apron and was cooking spaghetti carbonara, one of his favourites.

‘OK, darling,’ he said, his mouth already watering.

He went back into the living room and slumped onto the sofa. This was the room he always dreamed about when he was in the office trying to solve a case.

He thought back over the last few hours, and then over everything else that had happened during that hellish summer. He thought about Leonardo Berghoff’s letter, about Antonio Sergi, a colleague whose possible collusion with the lodge he found hard to believe, and about the words in Costanza’s diary, which might well actually refer to Sergi. And he thought ahead to the inquiries he would have to make the next day, as ordered by the chief.

There were lots of questions and too few answers.

For example, how were they going to tell the Prosecutor’s Department that they had hushed up the existence of the letter? Would they be accused of hiding it so as not to wash their dirty linen in public?

Eleonora’s voice shook him out of his thoughts.

‘Dinner’s served, Francesco!’ she called him, carrying the saucepan down the hall to the dining room. ‘Open a bottle of red wine.’

Yes
, he thought,
time to think about eating now. Tomorrow is another day.

Once they had had their coffee, he got up from the table and went to look in on his little girl. When he had got home, she had been asleep and, not wanting to wake her, he had simply glanced in through the half-open door. She was almost a year old and slept in a cot next to their double bed.

She was just waking up and as soon as she saw him leaning over her, she became agitated, kicked her legs, then started to cry. Eleonora ran into the room and put her dummy in her mouth, stroking her back and murmuring sweet nothings to her. After a while, the girl calmed down.

‘It’s because you’re never here, Francesco,’ his wife said, with a touch of reproof. ‘She doesn’t recognise you. As far as she’s concerned, you’re a stranger.’

He did not reply. The thing was, it was true. His work kept him away from his loved ones. Feeling dejected, he went back to the sofa and switched on the TV. It was time for the latest local news bulletin.

He recognised the familiar face immediately, that sensation-seeking reporter who was never absent from the scene of a crime. He was standing on the pavement in front of a small apartment block whose front door was blackened by smoke. Next to him were a couple of firefighters who had just finished putting out the flames. In the background were two uniformed carabinieri who had been the first on the scene.

The reporter closed his report with the words: ‘Has the Lift Maniac struck again?’ This was the nickname the media had given to an arsonist who set fire to the lifts of apartment buildings, leaving quite long intervals between his attacks.

As if Florence didn’t have enough problems, they were having to deal with this too. These crazy people just came along one after another.

He picked up the remote, pressed the
OFF
button and got up. Time to put an end to yet another day it was best to forget.

The restaurant, a few streets away from the Via Veneto, was half deserted. It had recently changed hands and the prices had inexplicably gone up.

A couple of confused-looking American tourists were waiting to be served, biding their time by looking with interest at the paintings on the walls, all of which depicted views of the city.

Two men were sitting at another table. ‘This is very good, I like it,’ the younger man exclaimed, in a marked foreign accent.

‘It’s
bucatini all’amatriciana
,’ his companion explained. His voice left no doubt about his origins: he spoke with a strong Roman accent. He was fifty, fifty-five at most, decidedly well-built, with a bull neck. The nail on the little finger of his left hand was long and pointed. He was wearing a Loro Piana suit.

As they waited for their second course, the foreigner looked at his watch. It was five to ten. The moment had come to discuss the main reason for their meeting, which he himself had urgently requested. A few days previously he had given the bull-necked man a delicate task to perform, in return for which he would get a considerable quantity of cocaine, destined for the Roman market, at a very reasonable price.

Business was business. It brought money, riches and power – all the things that were taking this new Roman group to the top echelons of organised crime, almost on a par with the Magliana gang, which had been headline news in the seventies and eighties. Just like the Magliana gang, it boasted of its connections with the Mafia and with deviant Masonic lodges.

But something had gone wrong. Someone had got there first.

And now they needed to find out who it had been and at the same time handle a new assignment, to be carried out as soon as possible.

The foreign guest put his hand in the inside pocket of his jacket, took out an envelope and gave it to the bull-necked man, who took it and opened it. Inside were two photographs. Both showed the same person but in different poses and locations.

‘Let me give you the details,’ the foreigner said.

The other man listened to him attentively and, when he had finished, replied with an arrogant smile, ‘Rome belongs to us now, and not just Rome.’

‘I know that. But we don’t want any more mishaps.’

‘Don’t worry. We’ll soon find out what really happened. Whoever got there before us will pay for it dearly.’

‘Good. Contact me the usual way.’

‘OK.’

At that moment, the waiter approached their table carrying a large tray. The air grew rich with the smell of roast lamb, potatoes and grilled vegetables.

Another Roman speciality the foreigner was tasting for the first time.

Seated at a table by the wall at the far end of the restaurant, two men in dark suits were talking in low voices and glancing towards them from time to time.

These glances did not escape the foreigner’s attention. Before they parted, he asked the bull-necked man who they were.

‘Friends of ours, regular customers here,’ he replied. ‘They work for the Ministry of the Interior, although they’d rather this wasn’t known.’

‘Secret Service?’

The man nodded.

At that hour it was completely deserted.

The crowds of tourists who had livened up the area all day until early evening had dwindled away, as had the parked coaches.

It was the middle of the night and still hot. The stars were out, casting a glow over everything. It was a breathtaking sight.

A figure slowly approached the statue of David and walked to the back of the statue so as not to be seen from any passing vehicles.

As usual, he had thought of everything. If any cars belonging to the police or the Carabinieri were sighted in the area, a warning message would be sent to his mobile.

He opened his nylon backpack, took out an envelope and placed it at the foot of the statue.

Then he walked back the way he had come. As he walked, he wrote a text. A single word.

The back streets were empty and silent, just the way he liked them.

He met just one grizzled old tramp and a lone junkie. The tramp was sitting on a cardboard box, a bottle clutched to his chest, tears running down his cheeks. The alcohol clearly wasn’t helping him see the world in a less gloomy light.

The junkie, who had a dog with him, swayed as he walked. He had the empty eyes of someone on the verge of completely destroying his brain.

He looked at these two characters absently.

Florence seemed calm in the dead of night.

But it wouldn’t be calm for much longer, not when they saw the great present he had given them.

He was euphoric.

Teresa lay on top of the bed, unable to sleep.

When she was little, she used to fall asleep to the sound of her father’s voice. He would tell her stories that didn’t come from books, stories he made up off the top of his head as he sat on her bed. They were never quite the same, although they were very similar, because the same characters recurred and the beginnings were almost identical. There was just one protagonist, a brave young girl who managed to catch the little thieves who stole her snack, another time her sweets, and another time her doll’s house with the miniature dolls.

She jumped when the phone rang.

It was the switchboard operator from Headquarters.

And what she heard sent her leaping out of bed.

On the way there, she mulled over what the operator had told her: that an envelope addressed to her had been picked up in the Piazzale Michelangelo following an anonymous call. The caller had said that it was related to the Costanza case.

When she arrived at Headquarters, she found it all lit up.

In the inner courtyard there was a constant coming and going of officers changing shifts. There were a few lights on in the
Squadra Mobile
’s offices too. Maybe someone was still in there, she thought, or maybe whoever had left last had forgotten to switch them off. That often happened.

She went straight to the top floor, where the Operations Room was located, with its computers and screens and luminous maps of the city on which little red lights indicated the positions of the patrol cars.

She walked through it to the duty inspector’s room.

That was where the members of the Auto Unit would have taken the envelope once they had picked it up.

‘That’s the one,’ the inspector told her, gesturing towards a desk. He was an older man, nearing retirement, who had to do night shifts instead of staying at home and spending quality time with his family. The Operations Room was as understaffed as everywhere else.

Teresa went to the desk and read her own name stencilled carefully on a padded brown envelope. She was tempted to touch it, but restrained herself.

‘Was the call recorded?’ she asked.

‘No, the stranger called the switchboard, not 113. But the operator’s writing up a transcript.’

‘Has Ferrara been informed?’

‘Not yet, because we don’t know if it’s a hoax. We need to check out the contents first.’

‘Well, if we’re going to open it I think we should call Forensics. We can’t rule out the possibility that it’s a bomb.’

‘Yeah, OK.’

‘By the way, have you touched it?’

‘The only people who’ve touched it were the officers who went to pick it up, but they had gloves on.’

‘Where exactly did they find it?’

‘Behind the statue of David in the Piazzale Michelangelo, just where the anonymous caller said it would be.’

The perfect place to leave something compromising that you wanted found, Teresa thought. There were no houses nearby, just a restaurant on the far side of the square that would be closed at that hour, like all the other restaurants and bars on the edge of the city. And at night there was no traffic except the occasional car driven by someone who lived locally.

He’d been clever, she told herself.

‘Have they traced the phone the caller used?’ she asked.

‘The operator’s checking. It doesn’t look like it came from the city.’

First, an external examination was carried out.

The technician made every effort to discover fingerprints or biological liquids.

Then he carefully opened the envelope and tipped the contents onto the desk: a folded page from the previous day’s newspaper, with something inside it. He unfolded the page to reveal a transparent plastic bag, like those used for collecting evidence.

What they saw in the bag sent a chill down their spines.

Two eyes.

The balls looked like glass jellyfish. The fibres of the muscles and the white filaments of the optic nerves were clearly visible.

‘Shit!’ the inspector exclaimed in a loud voice, bringing his hand up to his mouth. He couldn’t help himself, and ran to the toilet to throw up.

In the meantime, the forensic technician had extracted a piece of white paper, folded into quarters, from the bottom of the envelope. On it were a few typed words:

You were missing these, Superintendent Micalizi.
 

Followed by a signature:

GENIUS
 

He showed the paper to Teresa, who was already on the phone to Ferrara.

‘There’s a message, too, chief,’ she said.

‘I’ll be right there.’

As she waited for Ferrara, Teresa interviewed the switchboard operator.

‘Can you describe his voice?’

‘I had the impression it was disguised, as if he was talking with a handkerchief over the mouthpiece.’

‘Was it a man?’

‘How can I be sure of that? The voice was distorted.’

‘Any distinctive inflections?’

What kind of fucking question is that?
the operator thought. Out loud, he said, ‘No, Superintendent,’ while wondering why he was being given such a grilling.

‘Did you find out where the call was made from?’

‘Yes, from a public phone box in San Piero a Sieve.’

‘Good. Write up the transcript straight away so that the Chief Superintendent can read it as soon as he gets here.’