A Florentine Death (32 page)

Ferrara, Rizzo and Polito, each at the head of a team, would simultaneously enter and search the rooms on all three floors - Ferrara on the ground floor, Rizzo on the first floor and Polito on the second.

While Ferrara explained the operations inside the villa, the man from forensics projected images from the land registry maps showing the internal structure of the villa and the layout of the rooms.

'One very important thing,' Ferrara said. 'To communicate among ourselves, we'll use portable radios equipped with earphones. As we don't want anyone listening in, we'll be using a private frequency'

He knew the press often listened in to police frequencies to keep up to date, and he had no desire for them to know what was happening in the villa.

'Will there still be anyone outside the villa?' Rizzo asked.

'One man on each side to make sure no one throws anything out of the windows or shoots at us or tries to escape. We already have people outside the perimeter wall, but we need to keep an eye on the villa from close up, too.'

'What about helicopters?'

'I'll tell the commander of the Airborne Squad to keep one ready. We'll use it if we need it. They can get to us in a few minutes, if necessary'

The meeting ended. There was nothing else to say.

They went down in groups to the courtyard and took their places in various police cars and one unmarked van. They were all wearing bulletproof vests and had their weapons at the ready. Some carried sub-machine guns and Ml6s, others lethal-looking pump rifles.

As they were going downstairs, Polito whispered in Ferrara's ear, 'I wasn't expecting such a display of force. I thought the two of us would be going in with a few men. What if Ricciardi's not at home and sees this little army as he's coming back? Isn't that a big risk?'

'No. If he gets as far as that, he's already in our trap. There's only one access road and it'll be guarded by plain clothes men who'll keep well out of sight. Once in, he won't be able to get out. If on the other hand, he's barricaded himself inside the house, then the more precautions we take, the better. If he was inside and it was just the two of us going in, we'd be perfect targets, wouldn't we?'

Polito nodded.

The cars and the van left Headquarters, in ones and twos in order not to attract attention, especially from the journalists.

When they arrived, Ferrara went up to one of the men on guard.

Anything new?'

'Nothing, chief. I don't think anyone's at home. No signs of life from inside.'

Ferrara rang the bell at the gate twice. There was no reply. He ordered the gate to be forced. Everything went according to plan. They swept into the grounds and reached the front door. As they had half expected, it was made of metal. The NOCS men blew it open and within a couple of minutes, they were inside the villa and proceeding as ordered.

The portable radios immediately started to crackle. Every message said the same thing: there was no one in the house. So there was no exchange of fire, no escape, no arrest. Nothing.

They went ahead with the search of the house in a completely different frame of mind.

On the first floor, only one room seemed to have been refurbished, and it was the only room with a light switch that worked.

'Chief, come here,' Ferrara heard through his headphones.

It was Rizzo, who must be on the first floor.

Ferrara and Sergi went upstairs. With all the windows and doors flung open, daylight now illuminated the corridors and stairs.

'Careful, Sergi,' Ferrara said, stopping him from treading on a couple of stairs stained with something red that looked like congealed blood. 'I want a man to stay here and make sure no one steps on that.'

Rizzo greeted Ferrara on the first floor. 'There's something you should see, chief. Follow me.' He led him along the corridor.

'What is it?'

'You'll see. We're nearly there.'

Ferrara followed him into the one intact room on the whole floor. 'Look.'

He pointed at the bloodstains.

They had no time to say anything because at that moment Polito joined them. 'Valentina Preti lived upstairs,' he said. 'All her things are there.'

But the surprises were not over yet.

Ferrara's radio crackled.

The NOCS commander had found the entrance to the cellar.

'You should come and see this, Chief Superintendent. Immediately.'

Followed by the others, Ferrara hurried downstairs. The NOCS men showed him the way. They went down a flight of stairs into a large space surrounded by brick walls.

'What the hell is this?' Polito exclaimed.

In the centre of the room stood a rudimentary wooden tripod topped with a pyramid-shaped wedge with a sharp point. Just above it there hung an iron ring supported by ropes tethered to the walls, and another rope hung from the ceiling directly over the tip of the wedge.

'Let's leave this to forensics, boys,' Ferrara ordered. 'The villa will have to be turned over from top to bottom.'

He was clearly disappointed.

Further examination of the house might explain the purpose of that mysterious contraption and would surely give them valuable clues as to the killer's identity. He would direct the search himself, calmly and methodically. But he had lost this move, he knew that. As his friend Massimo had said after studying the messages, he was dealing with an unusually intelligent killer. And the truth, when you came down to it, was that he had let him escape. Months of searching and now that he'd had him within his grasp, he'd let him slip through his fingers!

He thought about the tip he'd fed Ahmed Farah, and felt a fool.

PART THREE

the
hunt

1

Lorenzo Ricciardi had read Ahmed Farah's article on the train taking him back to Florence immediately after the latest murder.

He was sitting in an almost empty first-class compartment, smiling bitterly to himself. His plan had been thrown into confusion and needed to be rethought. Not because of a journalist's article, which was probably just a publicity stunt, but because of his own weakness, which had taken him by surprise. All because of a woman, as fate would have it.

Valentina . . .

He sat back in his seat and closed his eyes. He felt sad, tired, drained.

He had never known love until he had met her. He had never known a mother's affection, never had any friends, male or female. And then, on the very day he'd started carrying out his plan - the plan he'd prepared meticulously during his stay in the United States, only adding Ferrara as the final link in the chain after he'd seen him shooting wildly in that TV broadcast and had realised he was at the bottom of it all - on that very day, Valentina had burst into his life with devastating force.

Fate played strange tricks, he thought.

In the unlikely event that they tracked him down, his date with Valentina in Greve was supposed to have been his alibi, the reason he was in that little town on the very day that Stefano had been killed. Instead it had become the start of an unsettling adventure with a bitter ending.

He had really loved her, but he would never have let her stand in the way of his plan for revenge, which was guided by the Lord and carried out in the name of the Father - both of them, the one in Heaven and the natural one.

It had been a difficult path to tread, between the cold execution of the murders and Valentina's warm embrace. Perhaps it was inevitable that it would end like this. But that didn't make it any less painful.

Now that game was over for ever and he had to think about the rest of his plan.

His mind, dulled by these sad memories and the monotonous rhythm of the train, became clear and alert again.

Knowing the press, he was sure the news about an imminent arrest was exaggerated. Knowing the police, he thought it likely they'd planted it. But even if that were the case, he decided that it wasn't worth taking any risks.

He wouldn't go home.

All he had with him was his Beretta and his knife, a little money and his diary, which was nearly finished. He was reserving the remaining blank pages for a minute description of the torture he would inflict on Ferrara.

Of course it was a problem, not being able to go home. What's more, he wouldn't be able to use his credit cards, or withdraw money from the bank, because that would help them trace him. He would have to make do with what he had, try not to be noticed, make himself as anonymous as possible. The best thing to do would be to disappear for as long as it took to figure out whether that news item was genuine and to rethink his strategy.

He knew what to do.

When he got to Santa Maria Novella station, he went straight to the toilets, where he threw his sunglasses in a litter bin and took out his contact lenses. His light chestnut-coloured eyes were no longer ice-cold. Then he set off on foot towards the eastern edge of the city, keeping his eye open for mopeds, looking for easy pickings.

He found a red Ciao, so old its owner hadn't bothered to chain it properly. Stealing it was a walkover. Its rear light was broken, but if he only used it during the day he wouldn't have any problems.

Still heading east, he stopped in a little village just before Pontassieve and entered a modest-looking barber's shop.

'How would you like it?' the hairdresser asked, once he'd sat down in the chair.

'Close shaven,' he replied in a perfect Italian accent, at last abandoning the character of the American which had served him so well. If they'd broadcast the photofit of a fair-haired foreigner, which seemed likely once he'd been seen by that woman in Bologna, nobody would pay any attention to him and he could move about with greater ease. His hair, when it had grown back, would be its natural chestnut colour.

In the next village he bought a padded anorak and a pair of mountain boots in a general store.

The prospect of a few nights in the open didn't bother him.

Ferrara turned Lorenzo Ricciardi's passport over and over in his hands. It had been found during the raid. A week had passed.

Everything useful they had found in the villa had been brought to Headquarters, and both his own men and the forensics team had gone through it with a fine-tooth comb.

Ferrara was kept constantly up to date. Right now, the enlarged photos of the wanted man were spread out on his desk, ready to be broadcast.

He wasn't sure, though, that this was the right moment to do it.

He had managed, miraculously, to keep the press in the dark about everything, and he didn't think it would be sensible to alert Lorenzo Ricciardi again. What had seemed a good idea when he hadn't yet known the killer's identity, a way of forcing him out into the open - and the thought still nagged at him that it might have been the wrong move - might well be counterproductive now.

But he didn't want to be wrong again, and for once in his life he really didn't know what to do.

The other thing that bothered him was that Ricciardi might have gone abroad. It was common sense, after all. If he knew he'd been found out, why on earth would he stay in Italy waiting to be caught?

The day after the raid on the villa, word had gone out for a watch to be kept at airports, ports and border posts, but for someone with Lorenzo Ricciardi's intelligence and means, evading it would be child's play. That was if he hadn't already got out immediately after killing Cinzia - which was quite likely, as they'd lost all trace of him since then.

Almost everyone at Headquarters thought Ricciardi had left the country. Ferrara seemed to be the only one who still refused to accept it. This passport, which he kept turning over in his hands as if to ward off bad luck, was the only evidence he had - not very strong, admittedly - to support his stubborn belief that Ricciardi was still in the country.

In the past few days, he had taken out his frustration on Rizzo and Anna Giulietti in particular, bombarding the first with instructions on the investigation, and the second with requests for search warrants, bank checks, phone taps, even letters to police forces abroad. But both were increasingly sceptical, and his nerves were ever more on edge.

A week had gone by, seven days of constant effort, which Ferrara had directed doggedly. Officers armed with Ricciardi's photograph had checked railway stations, bus stations, taxi ranks, large stores, newsstands, pharmacies, tobacconists' shops and bars, both in Bologna and in Florence. They had discovered that no weapons permit had been issued in Lorenzo Ricciardi's name. The ownership of the villa had been traced back to a Swiss holding company, but they hadn't been able to get any information from them about their client: apparently no one in the company had ever met him personally. All the arrangements, they were told, had been made through a bank in the Bahamas, and it would be even more difficult to obtain anything useful from that source.

A trace had been put on Ricciardi's mobile phone, but he hadn't used it again. Nor had he had any dealings since 16 March with the bank which had issued the credit card he had used to pay the agency that had supplied Nenita. Nenita herself knew less about her employer than they did. Which wasn't much.

The most useful items found in the house related to the six years Lorenzo Ricciardi had spent in the United States, where he had graduated in philosophy and had then done a master's in journalism. He had apparently been an excellent student. Part of the course had involved research into the FBI's procedures and methods for identifying and capturing serial killers, a fashionable subject at the time. Through his teachers, he had been able to spend a little time at the FBI Academy in Quantico. That was obviously when the photograph above his desk had been taken. In it, his hair was chestnut brown rather than blond, a detail that didn't escape Ferrara. He had done well on the course and his teachers had praised him as a lively and attentive pupil, who had made a notable contribution through his research.

All this, combined with his extensive library, proved beyond doubt that Lorenzo Ricciardi knew his subject well -well enough to play games with the police. He had devised each murder in such a way as to give credence to the theory that a serial killer was at work, and lead the police along lines of inquiry that had nothing to do with his real motives.

But what those motives were remained a complete mystery.

'This was in Ricciardi's VCR,' Rizzo said as he came in, waving a video cassette. Gianni Fuschi of Forensics was with him.

Ferrara shot a questioning look at Fuschi. 'I've just finished examining it,' Fuschi said. 'You should have a look at it, it's interesting.' 'Put it on,' Ferrara said to Rizzo.

To the left of the desk, on a low cabinet next to the window, there was a TV set and a VCR. Rizzo inserted the tape and started it. It was the programme about the Monster of Florence which had featured Ferrara.

'I've got the idea,' Ferrara said, irritably. 'So what?'

'Wait,' Fuschi said.

Ferrara had no great interest in watching the tape. The broadcast hadn't left him with a very pleasant memory. Fuschi stopped the tape during the file footage, freezing the image of Ferrara shooting at the building where the bosses of the Calabrian Mafia were meeting.

'Congratulations,' Fuschi said. 'I didn't know you were such a good shot. You don't even like carrying a pistol. Not a big fan of firearms, our Chief Superintendent, is he, Rizzo?'

'To be honest, he's a bit undisciplined in that area,' Rizzo said, straight-faced. 'He's supposed to have a pistol on him at all times, and he doesn't. We hardly ever see him at the rifle range. If we do it's only because he has to talk to someone —'

'Have you come here to take the piss out of me, or do you have something important to tell me?' Ferrara exploded. It wasn't so much the jokes that bothered him as that footage. It had been the host's idea to show it, and it had come as an unwelcome surprise. Seeing it again now was intensely annoying.

'Yes, I do have something to tell you,' Fuschi replied, somewhat surprised by what seemed to him an excessive reaction on his friend's part.

'Well, what are you waiting for?'

'First the label,' Fuschi said, taking the tape out of the VCR and handing it to Ferrara. There was one word on the label:
FERRARA.

'I see,' he said.
'Ferrara,
not
The Monster of Florence
or something similar, which is what you'd expect given all the other material about serial killers found in the villa

'Precisely. Secondly, the tape itself. It was originally a brand new tape, but it's been watched repeatedly, I'd even say obsessively. And the parts of the tape that are the most worn are not the discussion about the Monster, not even the bits with that actress - I must admit, I'd have spent more time watching her. No, the part he watched most is the file footage of that shootout, especially the close-ups of your face.'

'It's as if the killer wanted to memorise you,' Rizzo said. 'Especially how you are when you're in action.'

'That's possible, considering I'm one of his targets,' Ferrara said, but his mind was elsewhere. He was thinking about that night when he had lain awake wondering why the killer had chosen him. 'In your opinion,' he said, apparently going off at a tangent, 'could that shootout have been avoided?'

'How?' Rizzo said. 'It was the only way to force them out of the back of the building, where your men were waiting.' 'But we lost one of them.'

'Yes, the man who died. But come on, chief! If we had to feel guilty every time someone died . . . And what about our people? How many of them do we lose in a year?'

'I'll leave you to your philosophising,' Gianni Fuschi said, standing up. 'Especially as my contribution hasn't been much use. You don't seem to care much about this Ricciardi. Do you want to understand who you're dealing with, or not?' He walked out.

'Right, what have we learned about him?' Ferrara asked after a while, almost to himself. He and Rizzo were alone in the office.

'To begin with,' Rizzo said, 'he's done his homework, but he's obviously not a professional killer.'

'No, he's self-taught. He's clever - very clever - and he's arrogant, but he's an amateur. A professional killer wouldn't have bought a car as conspicuous as a Porsche, especially not in his own name. And he certainly wouldn't have been so stupid as to get a parking ticket! No, he's obviously not working for anyone. And he's not part of a gang. He wouldn't last five minutes.'