Death in Tuscany (28 page)

'No be stupid!' Alex said. 'Want to finish up separate cells?'

'That's fine by me,' Zancarotti said, 'if it means I don't have to see him any more.'

'Nothing to do with me!' Nard protested, returning to his bunk.

'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

Alex said nothing.

'He got us caught and now we're fucked, am I right?'

'Qetesi!'
Nard cried.

'What the fuck did he just say?'

'He say shut up, no pay attention . . . He scared.'

Inspector Oliva of Narcotics held his breath, hoping they wouldn't stop there.

He was in a small room on the same floor of Sollicciano prison as the warden's office, a long way from the cell where the three men were, but as soon as he'd heard the first words, he had stood up from his chair, gone to the listening post and put on the headphones. He didn't want to lose a single word of what these men were saying.

The Albanian brothers Alex and Nard Dakaj had been living in Italy illegally for several months. They had been arrested several times for dealing, found guilty and deported, but each time they stubbornly returned to Italy with different papers. They had so many aliases, they probably didn't know their real names themselves by now.

The third occupant of the cell was a Florentine, Emilio Zancarotti, the owner of the car, and its driver when they had been stopped by the traffic police.

Narcotics had had their eyes on them for several weeks after a tip-off from an informer, a young Romanian prostitute who'd had enough of Alex's violence and had turned herself over to the police in Montecatini, who had then contacted Narcotics in Florence.

The brothers had turned out to be regulars of a bar in the Santa Croce area, run by Emilio Zancarotti, who was already suspected of collecting money from criminal activities and sending it to Albania, where it was used to buy drugs for the European market and women to work as prostitutes in Italy. But it was not clear who he was working for. Under authorisation from the deputy prosecutor, Giuffi had done bank and postal checks on him, but so far they had not produced any results. Since Ferrara had asked him to help on Operation Stella, he had increased the surveillance on the three men.

That night, in the confines of their narrow cell, they continued to trade accusations and threats, but did not come to blows. At about midnight, once all their frustration and anger had finally been vented and they fell silent, except for their snoring, Inspector Oliva started transcribing, word for word, what he had heard and recorded.

16

They were both awake, after yet another sleepless night spent trying to suppress their anxiety and brooding over memories and regrets, when the receptionist put through Lojelo's call.

'They've located the phone. It's near the quarries, over towards Bedizzano. We're on our way there now.'

‘I’ll join you,' Ferrara said. 'How do I get there?'

'After Carrara, follow the signs to Colonnata. Make sure you take the road that goes to Bedizzano.'

‘I’ll be there,' he said and hung up.

'Can I come, too?'

Ferrara looked at his wife. It was the first time she had ever asked to be present at a police operation. He could understand it if they had been going to find Massimo, wherever he might be and if he was still alive, but this . . .

Petra's face was drawn, with deep rings under the eyes. She had taken to wearing her blonde hair drawn back, and her complexion was even more pale and transparent than ever. She looked as if she had aged a few years in a couple of days. But Ferrara loved her just as much, if not more: with sudden emotion, he realised that the passing of time and the difficult period they had been going through had not in any way diminished the beauty of that face, but rather gave it an authority consistent with the resolve and steadfastness of her character, which had been such a boon to him over the years.

There was no imploring in her bright green eyes: it had not been a request, more a statement.

'But Petra . . . it's only the journalist we're looking for. Most likely all we'll find will be the mobile phone, abandoned somewhere. It'll be just one more line of inquiry that leads nowhere, but unfortunately we have to follow it up. It doesn't have anything to do with—'

'I can't just stay here all day, sitting in front of that stupid TV set,
mein Gott!
And don't think I want to go to the swimming pool or the sea

Ferrara resigned himself. There was almost certainly no danger: if the mobile was still ringing, it was unlikely that Claudia had been kidnapped or anything like that.

They got dressed quickly.

By 6.15 they were already on the autostrada, and half an hour later they were climbing the curving road from Carrara towards Colonnata.

The landscape was dramatic, perfectly in tune with their state of mind. As they got closer to their target, the deep scars the hand of man had inflicted on the mountain over the centuries became more evident, gaping chasms that were almost blindingly white appearing in the first light of the August sun.

It was still early, but there were already a few tourist coaches on the road, slowing them down.

Three police cars were parked at the Bedizzano exit, where the road meets the lorry lane also coming from Carrara. There was only one police officer beside them.

Ferrara parked the Mercedes on the right, leaving space for

any vehicles coming from the branch road to manoeuvre, and got out. Petra followed him.

‘I’m Chief Superintendent Ferrara,' he said, showing his badge.

'Superintendent Lojelo is waiting for you up there,' the officer replied. 'How far?'

'About half a mile. But the road is narrow, I don't know if you'll have room for your car. Do you want me to drive you up there?'

He looked at Petra, who shook her head. 'I prefer to go on foot, thanks.' They set off.

To the right, the hill sloped upwards, thick with oaks and ilexes; to the left it descended in a series of stone embankments above sudden precipices. They had more than half a mile to climb, perhaps as much as a mile, and it was hard going because of all the bends. But by the time they realised that, it was too late to turn back.

As they got closer, they caught occasional glimpses of police uniform through the vegetation on either side: that was where the officers were busy searching.

After a last bend, more or less halfway between Bedizzano and Carrara, they came within sight of a low corrugated iron building painted yellow, a souvenir stand, in front of which was an open space where two cars were parked. One was a police car, and Lojelo stood beside it with his mobile stuck to his ear. The other car was a dark green Renault Clio.

As soon as Ferrara had joined him, Lojelo pointed to the Renault. 'That's Claudia Pizzi's car,' he said. 'It fits the description her father gave us and the licence plate is registered in her name.'

A
bad sign,
Ferrara thought, as Lojelo tried his mobile again.

'I keep calling at regular intervals,' he explained. 'Fortunately the battery is still working, but the signal is weak. I hope she hasn't put it on vibrate and one of my men hears it. It's been located to somewhere around here, but not to an exact spot, and as you can see this is a very wooded area. It won't be easy. The only hope is if we hear it ringing.'

Just as Lojelo was about to switch his phone off, Petra, who had lingered to look at a small altar fixed in the rock and adorned with buttercups, probably in memory of someone who had died in a road accident, heard a faint ringing.

'Try again, Superintendent!' she cried, coming forward a little.

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.'