Death in Tuscany (48 page)

They all looked at him uncomfortably, waiting for him to continue.

Again Ferrara remembered the head nurse's words:
he got quite angry when he saw the girl.
They put d'Incisa in a very sinister light if read as evidence that he already knew the girl before she was brought in to the Nuovo that morning, which in turn might mean that it would have been convenient to him if she died without talking. But if d'Incisa was the killer, and the Stella case was solved, where did the cufflink fit in -or was Captain Fulvi right after all? — and, above all, what became of their jurisdiction over the Palladiani case?

Of course, it was possible that Palladiani and d'Incisa, both Masons, were accomplices. d'Incisa might have finished off what Palladiani had started: Palladiani had dumped her at the edge of the clearing thinking she was dead, and the consultant had found her in hospital still alive . . . But this was conjecture within conjecture. So far, there was no evidence of any connection between Palladiani and d'Incisa. It was a point he would have to insist on, but later.

'Doctor Leone's discovery,' he resumed, 'suggests something more than an error, don't you think?'

'What do you think, Doctor?' Anna Giulietti asked Leone.

Taken by surprise, Leone hesitated. 'Frankly, I don't know. I wasn't intending to arouse any suspicions. The way I see it, there's no doubt that Stella was taken to hospital in a critical condition due to an overdose. Her reaction to the Narcan, which is documented in her medical record, confirms that absolutely. No, the fact that the first blood test revealed nothing is probably due to laboratory error, which is what I would have liked Professor d'Incisa to clarify. Unfortunately that won't be possible now

'But don't the traces of heroin in the second test place the taking of the heroin too close to the time when her body was found?' Ferrara objected.

'Yes, half an hour before, at the most. Possibly a little more, it depends on how each organism reacts, but not much.'

'That isn't proof of anything,' Anna Giulietti retorted. 'Theoretically there was time to take her there from the factory . . .'

'Very theoretically' Ferrara commented sarcastically, thinking of the distance from the warehouse, the time it would have taken for the drug to take effect, then the time to dress her again, load her in the car . . .

Anna Giulietti silenced him with a cutting look. 'Let's stick to the facts, if possible. We've asked for you to be reinstated, Chief Superintendent, since there is a well-founded suspicion, on the basis of his ownership of the factory and the letter P on the cufflink, that it was Ugo Palladiani who killed Stella . . .'

'And Palladiani was about to run away' Rizzo said, unexpectedly.

'What do you mean?' Anna Giulietti asked.

'We've checked his bank account, as you asked, chief, and you authorised, Prosecutor. Palladiani's account is practically empty. Almost everything has been transferred to an account in his name in a bank in Nice, France.'

'If he was afraid his paedophile ring was about to be discovered, I'm not surprised,' Anna Giulietti said with satisfaction. 'One more clue, if we like. d'Incisa is another matter. It's true he also had dealings with Stella, but there could be several reasons for his suicide . . . Let's investigate and then we'll decide. But they're separate investigations, there's nothing specifically connecting d'Incisa and Palladiani.'

'Did you search the apartment thoroughly?' Ferrara asked Rizzo. 'Weren't there any documents, diaries, anything suggesting a connection between the two of them?'

'It wasn't a thorough search,' Rizzo admitted. 'We followed standard practice, and only collected things relevant to d'Incisa's death for later analysis. Since there was no suggestion of a crime, at least as far as we knew, we weren't authorised to confiscate documents or any personal material belonging to the dead man.'

'For the moment that's certainly the case,' Anna Giulietti confirmed. 'Unless his wife gives her consent, which I doubt she will. Don't forget that Professor d'Incisa was a high-profile figure with powerful connections: you know what I'm talking about.

His wife has been informed and is coming back to Florence today. She's not in a condition to drive and there was no one to bring her back last night. I'm sure she'll ask us to handle the affair as discreetly as possible. She certainly won't want a scandal to blemish her husband's memory and his family's reputation. I'll go and see her today. Superintendent Rizzo, I'd like you to go with me. I somehow don't think she'll ever agree to a search like the one you suggest, Chief Superintendent Ferrara. That's why I say we should concentrate on what we have and draw conclusions from that as to how to proceed with the investigation.' ‘I’ll come, of course,' Rizzo said.

'I've authorised the autopsy. I'd like you to do it as soon as possible, Doctor Leone, and get the results to me immediately. You can call me any time on my mobile.

'Let's keep any idea that d'Incisa was murdered out of the equation for the moment. We'll only consider that as a last resort, if our other inquiries don't yield anything. Assuming that we're dealing with suicide, it was either motivated by a sense of guilt, or by something else we don't know about. If we manage to establish that it was guilt, we'll be able to proceed as Chief Superintendent Ferrara would like, but only if we're certain that d'Incisa really has something to do with the death of Stella. At this stage there's not much to suggest that, do we all agree?'

They all nodded.

'If he killed himself out of a sense of guilt, we'll have to reconstruct his movements and his network of acquaintances, and try to demonstrate that he had connections with Palladiani. I trust you and your men, Superintendent Rizzo.'

'Of course.'

'Finally, and this is the most important thing, we need to trace any other possible accomplices of Palladiani - in other words, the people who were present at the party where Stella the victim may have been drugged.' 'I agree,' Rizzo said.

'Good. I think we've covered everything and now we can get down to work. We all have a lot to do. You can go, but if Chief Superintendent Ferrara would be so kind as to stay, I still have something to discuss with him. Superintendent Rizzo, I'll call you as soon as I know when we can go to see Signora d'Incisa. Thank you, everyone.'

When they were alone, Anna Giulietti retained her formal tone: they still had official matters to discuss, and a rule was a rule.

'First of all, I'd like to confirm that the request for your reinstatement was presented to the Head of the State Police this morning. As soon as they tell me it's approved, I'll be able to put you back on the case.'

'Thank you, Deputy Prosecutor.'

'But now I want you to tell me in detail this story about the drugs in the port of Carrara.' Ferrara did so.

Anna expressed her anxiety over the size of the find, which made this a particularly serious, difficult and dangerous case and placed an extra burden on all of them. 'How do you intend to proceed now?' she asked.

'First of all I have to locate this Salvatore Laprua. Then I have to figure out how Simonetta Palladiani fits in to all this, if they killed her and why.'

Even though he had avoided mentioning the name of Massimo Verga, Anna Giulietti knew perfectly well what such a discovery would mean for him. She hesitated before replying.

'Why would they beat up and almost torture her husband?' she asked at last. 'You do realise, don't you, that this latest turn in the Palladiani case makes it all the more unlikely that it has anything to do with the Stella case? I can't imagine two things more different than a criminal organisation of that size and a bunch of perverts. If it then emerged that it was d'Incisa and not Palladiani who killed Stella, as you seem to believe and were stubbornly trying to get the others to believe as well, then you can forget about our jurisdiction over the Palladiani case!' Her tone had become less formal now.

'Of course I realise that. But right now the Palladiani case is the only one I'm interested in. Operation Stella is close to being solved, it's just a question of work and luck in tracking down the whole ring. You and I both know, and so do the others, that technicalities aside, the girl was killed by d'Incisa, with or without help from Palladiani . . . Stella was drugged quite some time before she was found, that much is clear, and when they did the first blood test, the drugs had already metabolised. Only she didn't die, and to make sure d'Incisa drugged her again. Do you agree?'

'Absolutely,' she said.

'So, good as you are, why didn't you find a legal ploy to go straight ahead and seize d'Incisa's papers?'

'Because I don't consider it convenient for you, for us, for the investigations on the coast, which have priority right now. To me, it seems obvious. As you yourself say, the culprit is almost certainly d'Incisa. What if we found something among his papers
...
for example, something that showed he'd rented the factory? And what if that let Palladiani off the hook, apart from the cufflink - and as Captain Fulvi kindly pointed out, we still haven't proved it even belonged to him? How would I then justify to Lupo your direct involvement in the investigations in Pietrasanta? If I'm not mistaken, you don't want this drug business to come out yet, and without the drugs and the possible involvement of Palladiani in the Stella case, Lupo would ask me, quite rightly, to take you off the case, don't you see? You don't want that because you'd like to find your friend, and I don't want it because right now I'm up to my ears in this whole drug operation - all thanks to you.'

'There's still the fact that Palladiani was about to make a run for it,' Ferrara suggested, weakly.

Anna Giulietti gave a rueful smile. 'If you were the wife of a man who was trying to get away with the family fortune, wouldn't you try to stop him?'

Ferrara smiled too, defeated. That argument was grist to Captain Fulvi's mill.

'Let's not forget,' Anna went on, the tension inside her obvious in her tone of voice, 'that time is running out. We can't put off seizing the drugs forever, and they mustn't leave the port of Carrara. By the twenty-third of August, the National Narcotics Division will have to be informed of everything, so that the drugs can be seized and the people waiting for them in America can be identified and actively pursued. It's a huge quantity and we're playing with fire
..."
She gave him a severe look, swallowed, and concluded with a sentence that clearly made her uncomfortable. 'Slowing things down just to find your friend may cost us more than our careers.'

'We're not slowing things down,' he immediately retorted. 'We're tracing them to their source.'

'I really hope so,' Anna Giulietti said finally. Her words echoed like a warning in that solemn, austere room, and Ferrara took note of them.

'I'm ready to hand in my resignation,' he said, 'if you feel I've let you down.'

31

In the afternoon, while Rizzo was tied up visiting Signora d'Incisa along with Anna Giulietti, Ferrara asked Fanti, Ascalchi and Sergi to come over to his apartment.