Death in Tuscany (17 page)

But was the 'he' a 'she'? he thought suddenly. Didn't the initials CP. at the end of the article belong to Claudia Pizzi, the very same woman who had given him the nickname II Gatto?

For now, there were other things that needed to be done. He picked up the receiver and asked the switchboard operator to get him the commanding officer of the Carabinieri station in Pietrasanta. 'Tell him it's me and put me through only when the marshal himself is on the line.' 'Of course, chief. I understand.'

A few minutes later, the phone rang and he lifted the receiver before Fanti could do so.

'Chief, Marshal Belsito to speak to you.' 'Hello?'

'Marshal Angelo Belsito here.'

Ah, Marshal, hello. This is Chief Superintendent Ferrara, head of the
Squadra Mobile
in Florence.'

'Nice to hear from you. I know you tried to reach me yesterday and I'm sorry I didn't call you back, but we were very busy until late last night. What can I do for you?'

'I was hoping to talk to you, Marshal, because I received your memo. Now I've just been reading in
Il Tirreno
that this could well be a murder case and I wanted to find out more.'

We're still in the early stages,' the marshal replied, vaguely. As I'm sure you realise, it's still too early to speculate.'

The allusion to a possible murder, especially coming from the head of the Florence
Squadra Mobile,
must have made a spark of the age-old rivalry between the police and the Carabinieri flare up in the marshal. Since the case had been reported to the Carabinieri, it belonged to them, and the marshal was clearly determined to defend his jurisdiction.

'Of course,' he continued, 'we know a man is dead and his wife is missing. As is her lover, Massimo Verga. All we need from you, Chief Superintendent, is routine information on the two of them, as is normal. Nothing else, at least for now.'

'Yes, of course, Marshal, that's what I understood from the memo,' Ferrara replied, coldly. This was the first he had heard about Massimo being Simonetta Palladiani's lover, and the news naturally increased his anxiety. 'But what exactly do the results of the autopsy say?'

'I'm sorry, Chief Superintendent, but I'm not authorised to tell you that. You know how these things are. I'm sure you understand. Do you mind my asking why you're so interested?'

'Because Palladiani is from Florence, and so is Massimo Verga. In fact, I don't think Signor Verga is someone who could ever have been involved in something like this except by chance. In my opinion, he's completely innocent.'

'Why, Chief Superintendent, do you know him?' the marshal asked after a very slight pause. Ferrara realised that he suddenly seemed to be paying close attention.

'Yes I do, Marshal. I know him very well. In fact, I've known him a long time . . . and I'd vouch for him with my life!'

A long pause followed. Then Marshal Belsito, now in a more official tone, said, 'Perhaps, Chief Superintendent, since we're dealing with a friend of yours, you'd be able to come here so we could talk to you.'

You bet I could!
Ferrara thought. 'No problem, Marshal. . . I could come right now. Will you be there?'

'I'll be waiting.'

'I'll see you later, then. As soon as I get there.' 'I'll be waiting,' the Marshal repeated, in a curt, formal tone. To Ferrara it sounded more like a threat than a promise.

10

The Carabinieri in Marina di Pietrasanta occupied a small, red, two-storeyed villa one block from the sea, where two side streets met. On the small balcony at the back, washing was hanging out to dry. The front was separated from the street by a small, well-tended garden protected by a low white perimeter wall.

The driver double-parked in front of the side gate. The word
Carabinieri
was on the name plate next to the entry-phone, while the blue and white sign was inside, above the main door. A woman in a sarong passed Ferrara, pushing a pram, with a little boy and a smaller girl in bathing costumes attached to the sides by leads. Around her waist, the girl was wearing a plastic life preserver shaped like a duck, and the pram was full of beach toys.

Ferrara rang the entryphone.

A sentry appeared almost immediately.

‘I’m the head of the
Squadra Mobile
in Florence,' Ferrara said, showing the badge that said
State Police - Chief Superintendent
at the top, and just under it a photo of himself in plain clothes.

'Please come in, Chief Superintendent. The Marshal is waiting for you.'

In the small waiting room, the air conditioning was full on. The room was sparsely furnished, and the only decorations on the walls were prints commemorating the deeds of the Carabinieri. A few in-house magazines lay on a low table in front of an imitation leather sofa.

The sentry left the room for a few minutes, then came back and asked Ferrara to follow him.

The commanding officer came towards him and held out his hand as soon as Ferrara entered his office. 'Marshal Belsito.'

Of medium height and solid build, he was probably closer to sixty than fifty The most salient feature of his deeply lined face was his thick grey moustache, drooping at the ends: the classic image of the provincial marshal.

'Pleased to meet you,' Ferrara replied. There was no need to introduce himself as the sentry had already announced him.

And this is the captain,' Belsito said, introducing a young man who had risen from an armchair and approached them. He was about thirty, and so tall that he towered over both of them. He had a severe blond crew cut and, with his athletic physique, looked naturally elegant in his impeccable uniform.

'I'm Captain Renato Fulvi, and for some months now I've been commander of the detectives' unit in the Lucca provincial command.'

He had a northern accent, perhaps Piedmontese.

'Pleased to meet you. Chief Superintendent Ferrara, head of the Florence
Squadra Mobile.'

'Please take a seat, Chief Superintendent,' Marshal Belsito said, indicating one of the two visitors' armchairs in front of the desk.

Ferrara sat down, and so did the two carabinieri: the marshal in the other armchair and the captain behind the desk, where the marshal should have been sitting. It was a strategic arrangement, surely deliberate, which he didn't like. It seemed to be intended to make him feel like an ordinary citizen who had been summoned by them to be interrogated.

As if to confirm this, the captain, without any preamble, not even the polite formulas expected in a meeting between colleagues, went straight to the point and asked his first question. It was as if he wanted to make it clear that in these circumstances matters of rank were unimportant. And Ferrara did not know if he should be irritated or even more worried about Massimo's position.

'The marshal tells me Signor Massimo Verga is an acquaintance of yours, Chief Superintendent. Or should we say
...
a
friend?'

'He's a very good friend of mine,' Ferrara replied, dryly. 'That's why I'm here, isn't it?'

'I thought you were here to find out what happened in the villa where your friend was staying?' the captain said, giving the marshal what seemed to Ferrara a vaguely smug look. Ferrara was feeling increasingly irritated.

'That, too, now that you've told me he was staying there,' Ferrara said. 'I didn't know before.'

'But you're a police officer,' Captain Fulvi replied in an unbearably pedantic tone. If it bothered him that he had given away a piece of information, however trivial, which Ferrara had not known, he did not show it. And you should know that we're dealing with the case, not the police.'

This was debatable: for certain types of crime, Marina di Pietrasanta was within Ferrara's jurisdiction. But he preferred to let that go. He decided instead to try a friendlier approach.

'Of course I know that, Captain. I have plenty to do in Florence, believe me, I have no intention of meddling in this case . . . But, as I said, Massimo Verga—'

'—is a friend of yours, we understand that. But for us he's a citizen like any other and will stay that way until our investigation is complete.' It was clear from the captain's tone that, as far as he was concerned, Ferrara had adopted completely the wrong tactic. 'You know perfectly well that while it's in progress, there are no friends, or friends of friends.'

The assertion was so blunt and, since it was uttered in the presence of another member of the Carabinieri, so serious that Ferrara was surprised he managed to control himself. If he hadn't, he could happily have hit this arrogant young man whose only training had probably been in some safe barracks in the north where he'd been stuffed full of theory. Perhaps it was only the sense that this was part of his strange nightmare which held him back. He simply stared in astonishment at the two men.

Why had his relations with the Carabinieri always been stormy? He thought he had left behind him for good those long-gone times when he had taken his first steps as a detective.

The episode was fresh in his mind.

It was in Catanzaro. His chief had given him the job of delivering an arrest warrant. 'Go after eight in the evening,' he had said. 'The man's on probation and is supposed to be at home by then.' The man was a well-known Mafia boss, and Ferrara had gone to his home, trembling somewhat but determined to carry out this important mission - one of his first — to the best of his ability. He had knocked at the door and the small, unassuming woman who opened it had said that her husband wasn't there.

'That's not possible, signora. You husband is on probation and has to be at home at this hour!'

'He's gone to the Carabinieri with his lawyer, signore,' the woman had replied.

So Ferrara had gone straight to the Carabinieri.

The sentry had tried to stop him going in, saying that the marshal was busy and could not be disturbed, but he had simply ignored him. The marshal had not been well pleased by the intrusion. He had two men in his office, both smartly dressed in dark pinstriped suits, so that Ferrara had not been able to tell at first which one of them was the man he had come to arrest.