Death in Tuscany (32 page)

'Oh yes, of course, that goes without saying.'

One April morning ten years earlier, a group of ruthless hitmen had opened fire on a car in the Via Rosselli, in Palermo, killing an entire family: a husband, wife and two children, both minors. Ferrara, in collaboration with his Sicilian and Calabrian colleagues, had managed to identify and arrest not only the hitmen - one of them a Calabrian, on loan from the Calabrian Mafia - but also the people who had sent them. At the time, Lupo had only recently entered the magistracy and was serving his apprenticeship in the Prosecutor's Department of Palermo. His superior was in charge of the investigation, and he had assisted him with all the enthusiasm of youth.

After the coffee, and the silence that followed this brief evocation of the past, Ferrara judged that the moment had come. 'I didn't come here just for the pleasure of seeing you again,' he said.

'I thought as much . . .' Lupo replied, his face darkening: it was a handsome, open face, still young but already deeply furrowed. And with all due respect, Chief Superintendent, I wouldn't like this meeting to be a source of embarrassment. You're on holiday, but I'm not and I have my job to do. Perhaps we could meet another time. I could come over to Marina and we could go for a swim

Stung but not surprised, Ferrara looked him straight in the eyes. 'It's not my intention to cause you any embarrassment.

And in fact I need you to do your job, not to have a swim. Not that I wouldn't like that, even though I don't think you'd appreciate the sea around here after Sicily'

'There's no need to beat around the bush, is there, Chief Superintendent? Not you and me. As I'm sure you must realise, I already know that you've involved yourself in an investigation by the Carabinieri, a murder investigation in which a friend of yours is a prime suspect. I also know that your behaviour hasn't exactly been exemplary, and that a request has gone through for disciplinary proceedings against you. Believe me, I felt sick when I heard about all this: sick at the thought that a friend of yours was so deeply involved, and even sicker when I was informed that Captain Fulvi had put in an official complaint about you. I tried to dissuade him, but it was too late. I'd have preferred not to be the person given the task of coordinating this investigation. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me. But it's happened, so what can I do?'

‘I’m glad it's you,' Ferrara said. 'Don't worry about me, you carry on. I trust you. Do your duty, see it through to the end, don't let anyone else influence you - and that includes me - and I'm sure everything will work out fine.'

Lupo looked at Ferrara as if he was putting on an act, or didn't really understand the gravity of the situation.

'Whatever happened in that villa,' Ferrara went on, 'Massimo Verga had nothing to do with it. He can't have been the one who killed Ugo Palladiani.'

Lupo was sympathetic. 'I'd have said the same, if it had been my friend. In fact, I'd go further: as far as I'm concerned your friend is innocent until we have evidence to the contrary. The problem is that while we're sitting here talking, the evidence is piling up . . . Unfortunately, sometimes reality is a lot tougher than our illusions. I understand, but I beg you, don't make my task any more difficult than it already is . . .'

Ferrara weighed his words before answering. Then, slowly and emphatically, he said, 'I'm not harbouring any illusions. I've always had my feet planted firmly on the ground, and I know what I'm saying. Massimo Verga is a profoundly honest man. The fact is, the case is much more complicated than it seems. There was a journalist who realised that, who's now been murdered. Do you know anything about that?'

Armando Lupo frowned. He didn't want to get drawn into this. It might well be a trick to gain time, which was something he had feared from the start, knowing Ferrara's catlike shrewdness. But the news was difficult to ignore.

'What do you mean? No, I didn't know.'

'We recovered the body this morning - you'll read about it in the papers tomorrow.'

'But didn't you say you were on holiday?' Lupo asked, and it was hard to tell if he was surprised, being ironic, or frankly annoyed.

'Forget about that,' Ferrara replied, and he told him everything, from his first phone call to Claudia Pizzi to the sad outcome.

'Have you brought the article with you?' Lupo asked, after what seemed to Ferrara like a very long pause.

Ferrara handed him a disk. 'I'm sorry, but I don't have a printer at the hotel
..."

Lupo stood up, went to the computer, put the disk in, and opened the file. As he was reading, Ferrara stood up in turn and without being invited went and sat down in one of the small armchairs facing the desk.

'Well?' he asked anxiously, as soon as Lupo took his eyes off the screen.

'Where did you say this poor woman's body was found?' Lupo asked, turning to him with an inscrutable look on his face.

'On the road to the quarries, above Carrara.'

'That means it's within the jurisdiction of another Prosecutor's Department - Massa-Carrara.'

Ferrara felt himself being plunged back into the same old nightmare. Was it possible Lupo intended to wash his hands of this, like Pontius Pilate?

'I know that, but doesn't it seem obvious to you that there might be a connection between the two murders?'

'According to you. It was a theory, and notice I say "theory", dreamed up by a reporter on a provincial newspaper, someone desperate for a scoop. Where's the evidence?'

'It's up to us to find it,' Ferrara said, and immediately corrected himself, 'us and the Carabinieri. I know perfectly well it's just a theory, but it's a theory that got Claudia Pizzi murdered!'

Lupo seemed to hesitate for a moment. 'Yes . . . and as usual it's the Mafia's fault! Is that what this journalist was trying to prove? What do you want me to say?' He shrugged. My advice is to contact the Prosecutor's Department of Massa-Carrara. Don't you think this Pizzi woman could have been
...
a bit out of control?'

'What do you mean?'

Lupo leaned back in his armchair, and sighed deeply. 'Surely you of all people should understand that . . . You maintain that Massimo Verga is an honourable man, and I want to believe you even though it has still to be proved, and then you bring me an article in which he's virtually accused of murder. On the basis of a prejudice, a cliche we're both familiar with. Massimo Verga is a Sicilian,
ergo
he's a Mafioso,
ergo
Ugo Palladiani was killed by the Mafia, not by his wife . . . Apart from the fact that according to this theory your friend is still a suspect, in my opinion it's also an insult to a whole region. We both know how much Sicily suffers from the presence of the Mafia, but fortunately the vast majority of the population are not Mafiosi. No, Chief Superintendent, I can't help you
...
all I can do is give you some advice. Trust me when I say it's sincere. I feel I owe it to you because of the esteem and respect I have for you. My advice is to drop the Pietrasanta case; the Carabinieri are dealing with it and they're making progress, I can assure you of that. If your friend is innocent, he has nothing to fear, I promise you. And if he gets in touch with you, advise him to give himself up, please.'

There didn't seem to be any point in continuing to argue his case. It was obvious that Lupo had made his mind up and didn't intend to change it, not even for a policeman he said he respected.

‘I’ll even bring him in myself,' Ferrara said. 'You can count on it.'

When he got back to the hotel, Petra just had to look at the expression on her husband's face to know that now was not the time to ask questions. And he did not give her any answers. They were for him to figure out during what looked certain to be another sleepless night.

That evening they did not have dinner.

They walked down to the beach and then set off along the foreshore, holding hands and not saying a word.

They walked towards the lights of the port of Viareggio beneath the stars, then turned back and went the other way as far as Forte dei Marmi. By the time they were back in Marina di Pietrasanta, they were both exhausted.

Ferrara opened two deckchairs he found propped against the wall of the hotel's bathing establishment, and threw himself down on one of them, like an empty sack. Petra left him, went inside the hotel, and soon came back with two thin blankets. She laid one over his legs and then sat down and covered herself.

In the darkness she searched for her husband's hand, and held it tightly as if by doing so she could unburden him of his mental anguish.

Ferrara saw again Lupo's furrowed brow, the shrug that seemed to admit that he could do nothing for him, the look of sympathy he had given him as he walked him to the exit, the kind of look you give someone who's defeated.

Above all, he kept hearing those brief phrases which Lupo had come out with, which had unwittingly been like knives piercing his skin:
a friend of yours is a prime suspect. . . a friend of yours was so deeply involved. . . while we're sitting here talking, the evidence is piling up . . . the Carabinieri are making progress, I can assure you of that. . .

The words went round and round in his head until, unable to fight any more, he closed his eyes.

In the half-sleep that preceded a sleep beset with nightmares, his last thought, perhaps an unconscious balm to distract him from his obsession with his friend, was that he hadn't heard from the office all day and had no idea how another murder investigation, the Stella case, was going.

19

Heraldry was the last thing in the world Inspector Riccardo Venturi would ever have thought he’d have to deal with when he joined the police force. He was the son of poor peasants from the Agro Pontino who had only ever known three coats of arms, the arms of Savoy, the Fascist emblem, and the shield of the Italian republic. He had only a vague idea that once upon a time, the counties, principalities, marquisates, bishoprics and other subdivisions of Italy had produced them in abundance, and that there were still a lot of people who liked to show them off, and even more people who aspired to have one.

To him, the servant of a country which was now and forever republican, this seemed a ridiculous, outdated aspiration, and those who had them sewn on their shirts or engraved on their cufflinks - another relic of a bygone era, in his humble opinion — were pathetic.

And yet here he was, this Saturday morning. First, he had gone to see Rizzo to hand over the pile of lists, papers and maps he had assembled relating to properties in the area where Stella had been found, as Ferrara had asked him to do before leaving. Now he found himself going around libraries,

archives, second-hand bookshops, searching for someone to throw light on that cufflink. Superintendent Rizzo had had the cufflink photographed, and the photograph enlarged and distributed to everyone in Headquarters, so that they could all get to work and identify the coat of arms and the symbol as quickly as possible. If in addition to identifying the symbol they could also discover the name of the man who owned the cufflink, better still. This was the best lead they had had so far in the hunt for Stella's killer.