A Florentine Death (36 page)

Now he obviously couldn't go back to the villa. His escape was tantamount to a confession, but he couldn't stay here waiting for the monastery to be overrun by police. The die was cast: he was playing a game against time now, and he would see it through. Greve in Chianti first, to execute Father Sergio, then Ferrara. He wasn't sure which of them to give the last letter to. He might end up with one corpse too many, he thought with a sardonic smile.

After that, they could arrest him, kill him, it didn't matter. Once his task had been accomplished, his life would be meaningless now that he had lost Valentina.

He had tried to start the moped, but it refused to respond. After trying several times, he had thrown the vehicle to the ground and set off on foot. He knew the forest and the short cuts from his childhood, and it wouldn't be difficult for him to get back on the road long before the police got here.

With his pistol in his hand, Ferrara felt better able to protect the monks. For once he really appreciated having a weapon. He was still moving cautiously, even though the fact that Ricciardi hadn't yet shot at him led him to think that he was not in the immediate vicinity, but had vanished into the forest, where it would be harder to catch him.

He was about to turn back when the gate opened and the prior and a large group of monks came out, among whom he recognised many of the lumberjacks. They were carrying simple sticks and a few machetes.

'Go back!' he cried, irritably.

They refused to obey him.

'He escaped on foot,' Brother Anselmo said, seeing the moped lying on the ground. 'He won't get far. The brothers will find him.'

'No,' Ferrara protested. 'He's armed and dangerous. My men will be here any minute.'

But the lumberjacks had already set off.

'You can't stop them,' the prior said. 'They need to find him. The forest can be dangerous at night, and the man doesn't know the risks he's taking. There's been a lot of snow and the wolves are hungry - they've started moving around in packs again after all these years.'

Ferrara ran to catch up with them. It would have been presumptuous of him to even attempt to take command of the operation, even though he was the only one who had a firearm.

These men knew the terrain. They advanced calmly along the dirt road, spotting tracks in the dim twilight that he would never have been able to recognise.

'It'll be night soon,' one of the monks said. 'The wild boar come out at night. And so do the wolves. There are about twenty species and they're not very friendly these days.'

They continued to advance, slowly but surely.

'Here,' another monk said. He had noticed a few newly broken branches at the sides of the road, and a small space between the brambles.

At this point they moved off the road into the forest.

They walked through the thick vegetation for another half hour, occasionally returning to the road, then leaving it again. In the patches where there was snow, footprints were clearly visible, confirming that they were on the right track. It was more difficult where the snow had melted and they were walking over beds of slippery pine needles.

Ferrara kept looking at his watch, hoping at any moment to hear the rotors of helicopters followed by the roar of police cars, but all he could hear was the murmur of the forest and the howling of the wolves, subdued at first then increasingly distinct.

A gunshot rang out.

Ferrara saw the flash and immediately answered the shot, hoping he hadn't killed the fugitive. 'This way!' a monk cried. None of them had been hurt. Darkness had fallen suddenly.

The monks lit matches and applied them to the tips of their sticks, which burst into flame. The dense forest was immediately alive with torches.

'Look, blood!' another monk said, when they reached the spot from which the gunshot must have come.

'He must be wounded,' a third monk said, turning to Ferrara. 'The wolves will smell the blood - we have to hurry'

'He's armed, he'll defend himself,' Ferrara said. 'Don't risk your lives. He's already shot at us once and with these torches we're a perfect target.' He was trying to persuade them to be just a little bit more careful, but they did not seem to care what happened to them.

'Look,' one of them said, pointing to bloodstains on the ground.

They were moving quickly now. Ferrara peered around him, trying to cover them as best he could.

It wasn't another gunshot that steered them in the right direction this time, but the fierce, angry snarling of wolves. The gunshot came after that, soon followed by another one, then a high-pitched whine.

They ran, found the bloodstained body of a wolf, and set off again. The snarling, more intense now, guided their steps.

A man lay on his back on the ground, being attacked relentlessly by a large pack of wolves.

'Careful!' the monk leading the group cried.

Ferrara took aim at one of the wolves. He could see the animal's eyes glowing in the dark. He fired. The wolf was hit between the eyes, and fell. The other wolves reacted by dropping their prey. He fired again and a second wolf fell.

'Get ready!' he cried, as the third shot rang out, and the remainder of the pack turned on the monks.

They easily defended themselves with the machetes, and the few wolves left soon ran off.

Ferrara and the monks approached Lorenzo Ricciardi and bent over his wounded body. He was still breathing. One hand was clutching a Beretta. There was a book sticking out of his pocket, a notebook with a black cover and a gold cross.

Only then did they hear the noise of the helicopters, and a few moments later a powerful beam of light swept over the scene.

The monks gave Lorenzo Ricciardi first aid, and then they had to walk a whole hour to reach the ambulance, which took him away.

During that hour, while Rizzo directed operations, Ferrara reflected. He wondered if he had done the right thing in not publicising the image and identity of the wanted man. As always in these cases, there was no simple answer. If he had, it was likely that Ricciardi wouldn't have sought refuge in the monastery, and so wouldn't have killed Brother Attanasio. But of course Ricciardi was cunning enough to get into the abbey anyway, if he'd wanted to. On the other hand, it was only because he hadn't known he was being hunted that he'd been bold enough to continue with his vendetta, which had finally led to his capture.

It was a meagre satisfaction. Now it was all over. Lorenzo Ricciardi had killed all his tormenters except Don Sergio — who in any case had sentenced himself to a voluntary incarceration - and Ferrara, the last link in a tragic chain that had started in Reggio Calabria and had reached its culmination within the walls of a monastery. But Ferrara wasn't thinking about himself. He was thinking about those two poor girls, who didn't fit into the vendetta.

He wouldn't learn the role they had played until that night, at home, reading the diary that began with the terrifying confession:
In your name, Father, I have killed . . .

EPILOGUE

At Easter, Michele Ferrara and his wife visited Petra's parents in Germany, as they did every year. But instead of taking the St Gotthard tunnel, they went a longer way round, via the Brenner Pass.

Ferrara wanted to spend a few days in the mountains and had booked a long weekend for them at the Hotel Passo Selva in San Vigilio di Marebbe.

Giorgio Preti, the owner, was not there to greet them. Since the death of his daughter Valentina, he had left the running of the hotel to his nephew and now lived in seclusion with his wife in an apartment on the top floor.

They had both aged since the tragedy, and rarely went out.

Ferrara only saw them twice.

The first time, they emerged from the lift in silence, both wearing dark clothes, and walked unobtrusively across the foyer, as if apologising for disturbing the life of the hotel. Their faces were sad, and there was no light in their eyes.

Petra had realised from the start that her husband hadn't chosen San Vigilio at random. Ferrara's intention had been to ask Valentina's parents to tell him more about the girl than he had learned from Lorenzo Ricciardi's diary. Her image, for some reason, had remained imprinted on his mind. Cinzia Roberti had been an innocent victim, too, but it had been Valentina, who'd been unlucky enough to become the object of a killer's love, who had struck him the most.

When he saw the grief so clearly etched on her parents' faces, his resolution wavered. He did not have the courage to intrude on their private pain: it was the only thing they had left of their daughter.

What he did do, however, was visit the cemetery on the last day of their stay. His excuse was that cemeteries in small, historic villages were often well worth seeing.

Petra went with him: she always supported her husband's whims. At the gate, Ferrara bought a bunch of violets. They walked for a while between the graves, lingering over the ones that seemed especially curious or interesting.

And then he found her.

A simple stone, with the inscription

VALENTINA PRETI 1978-2000

and above it, an oval photograph cut into the marble.

'How beautiful she was,' Petra said, almost with surprise, while Michele placed the bunch of violets in the only free space he could find among the big vases of what were almost certainly freshly-cut flowers. 'She looks like the Madonna by Filippo Lippi. You know, the one in San Lorenzo.'

As they turned to go, they were surprised to see Valentina's parents, standing not far from them and looking at them uncertainly, almost as if trying to remember who these people were who were paying tribute to their daughter.

As they passed them, they nodded briefly by way of greeting. No one considered it necessary to ask or give explanations, and the Ferraras hurried on their way, like two children caught in a prank. But Ferrara had seen a fleeting gleam in Giorgio Preti's eyes, the age-old bond that unites human beings in the face of grief.

As they were leaving the cemetery, Petra noticed that her husband had an almost radiant expression on his face. She hadn't seen him looking like that for a long time.

"What is it, Michele?'

He smiled enigmatically. 'I don't know, maybe I just remembered that I'm going to die . . .
Memento mori,
remember that?'

His wife looked at him in surprise.

He stopped, took a cigar from his pocket, and lit it with ostentatious delight.

Are you surprised? But what could be more beautiful than that, when you come down to it? Even death is a sign. It reminds us of what we are. Mere mortals, doomed to disappear . . .'