by LJ Ross
Something about his tone and the set to his jaw convinced her that, in that moment, he could have done anything.
“Alright. An hour, tops, before I call Ricci.”
She tugged on his shirt until she could take his face in her hands.
“Look after yourself,” she warned him, and then bestowed a deep, heartfelt kiss to remind him of all he stood to lose.
Ryan waited until the red tail-lights of the scooter disappeared around the corner and then carried on walking for another hundred yards until he reached a set of tall, forbidding gates that had been twisted into a traditional Florentine style. He hadn’t stepped within five feet of them before two guards appeared like apparitions on the other side and said something in Italian that was far from being a welcome.
Ryan held his hands out, palms open, and stood perfectly still.
“I’m alone and unarmed,” he told them. “My name is Ryan.”
“You are English?” one of them asked.
“Yes,” Ryan replied. “I’d like to speak to Signora Spatuzzi, concerning her son, Riccardo.”
At his mention of the man’s name, the guards tensed visibly, and one moved to rest his hand on the butt of a weapon concealed inside his blazer jacket.
“Who are you?” they snarled, searching his face as if they might recognise him from past dealings. “Who do you work for?”
“I don’t work for any of the families,” Ryan said. “I’d like to speak to her and explain why I’m here.”
Just then, a radio crackled into life and one of the shadowy figures reached for it. Their eyes never moved from Ryan’s face while they replied in monosyllables, at first, then he heard them explaining who it was making a disturbance outside the front gates.
The men’s eyes glinted in the light of the enormous lanterns hanging on either side of the gates, then one nodded to the other, who keyed in a security code.
“Walk slowly,” they told him.
The gates swung open with hardly a sound and Ryan stepped inside, where he was ordered to spread his legs and arms while they frisked him.
“Easy on the goods,” he muttered.
“This way,” the man replied, giving him a hard shove.
As Ryan began to walk along the manicured driveway, he heard the gates clang shut behind him.
* * *
Monica Spatuzzi was not what Ryan might have expected.
If he’d imagined her to be an ageing matriarch with priceless jewellery dripping from her ears and fingers, he was dead wrong. The woman who awaited him inside a sumptuous library within the sprawling hilltop villa was understated in every respect; she was the epitome of a stylish Italian woman and, if he’d seen her on the street, he might have thought her to be an art or antiques dealer.
She wore all black, as was traditional for one in mourning.
When he stepped into the room, she gave him a slow and thorough assessment from his head to his toes, then nodded to the goons who had accompanied him from the gates.
“Leave us,” she said quietly.
Music was being piped into the room from hidden speakers and the soft, painful strains of an Italian requiem washed around them.
“You favour your father,” she said, in the same soft, cultivated voice. “I’m correct, am I not, that you are the son of David Ryan?”
Ryan nodded, and didn’t bother to ask how she had known. It was her business to know everything about any person of interest in her city. He took a moment to be grateful that his father had never been posted in a diplomatic role in Italy; their experience of Florence might have been very different indeed.
“Yes. My name is Maxwell Finlay-Ryan. I’m a police inspector, from England.”
She nodded and, for the first time, looked him fully in the eye. Ryan felt a shiver run through him as he saw the emotions swirling in those dark, dark eyes; pain, anger and bitterness, all quickly veiled.
“And, Maxwell, are you in the habit of paying house calls to women you do not know?”
She moved across to one of the stylish easy chairs arranged around a fireplace, but did not invite him to sit.
“Nobody knows that I’m here, other than my wife.”
“And your housekeeper,” she murmured.
Ryan said nothing, but filed away the information for later.
“You know who I am?” she asked him, suddenly.
Again, he said nothing, which was the best possible response.
“You know my son?” her voice cracked, ever so slightly, on the last word and she reached across to take a long drink from the glass of iced water sitting on the table beside her.
“I never met Riccardo,” Ryan replied, in an even tone. “I had never heard of him, until just over a week ago.”
She continued to sip her water, then set it down again, very carefully.
“And yet, here you are in Florence, asking questions, visiting the Gruppo and visiting his mother. Why would you do that, signore, unless you knew my son?”
“Because I wish to find the person who…has taken him.”
Instinctively, he refrained from using the word ‘murder.’
“Enquiries have been made,” she replied, in a business-like tone. “Why should you wish to be a part of this, unless your goal is to ingratiate yourself within my family?”
“I have no designs on your family,” Ryan said, honestly. The ongoing fight against the mafia was a domestic problem that would be fought by others. “If…enquiries have been made but you are no closer to the truth, perhaps the truth lies elsewhere.”
“And what would an English policeman know about that?”
“More than one person has been reported missing,” he told her. That much was a matter of public record. “There may be a connection that will lead us to the person responsible.”
“You have someone in mind,” she said. “You will tell me who it is.”
It was not a request.
“No,” Ryan said, in the same tone of voice.
There was a terrible, tense silence in the room while she studied him, like a spider considering when best to pounce.
“You will tell me, or I will have my men extract the name from you. I have connections at the Gruppo.”
Not as many as in years gone by, she lamented, and the prices were rising each year. That was inflation, she supposed.
“It would defeat the purpose,” he said. “If the person I have in mind has taken more than just your son, it will deprive other families of rightful justice. I need time.”
She rose from her chair in one fluid motion, her anger no longer contained.
“Why should I care? What are these people to me? Nothing! Riccardo is my son. My flesh. I owe the others nothing and you, signore, even less.”
Ryan spoke gently.
“You may be many things, Monica, but you are a mother first.”
Some undefinable emotion flitted across her face.
“There are other mothers, other families who deserve to know what has happened to their children. I’m asking you for a week. Just one week, where your men stand down and you agree to a temporary ceasefire. Do this, please, for your son, and for the children of other mothers.”
She turned her back on him and put a hand on the edge of the mantelpiece, leaning heavily for support while she considered his words.
When she turned back, her face was so hard it might have been cut in stone.
“You think I am so stupid?” she spat. “You think that, even now, I am not aware that it is Nathan Armstrong who attended the station this morning? I am an old woman, signore, but do not make the mistake of underestimating me.”
His stomach performed one slow flip but, outwardly, his face remained impassive.
“I assumed you would have contacts in the police,” he said. “Therefore, I also assumed you knew the suspect I have in mind.”
“And you have the audacity to come here and ask me to do nothing?”
She laughed, her knuckles turning white as they gripped
the mantle.
“If you kill him, you’ll never know what happened to Riccardo, or where to find him,” Ryan said, forthrightly. “Don’t you want to know where your boy is?”
“He will talk, believe me.”
“No,” Ryan took an involuntary step forward, compelling her to listen. “He isn’t like all the others. I’ve dealt with him before.”
She pushed away from the mantle and walked towards him. It was an odd sensation, Ryan thought, to feel intimidated by such a slight person but it had absolutely nothing to do with her physicality and everything to do with the waves of malice emanating from every pore of her skin.
“You have three days,” she whispered. “No more.”
“I need a favour,” he said.
She laughed again, unsure what to make of the tall man with the face of an angel and the eyes of a soldier.
“Another? You astonish me.”
“There’s a masked ball being held for Armstrong at the Uffizi on Saturday. I’d like to be there, to watch him—”
“Is that all?” she said, wearily. “Consider it done.”
“That was easy,” he murmured.
“It should be,” she drawled. “My family owns the majority share in his publishing house.”
On that bombshell, she pressed a concealed button to the side of the fireplace and, seconds later, two different guards appeared.
“Show Signor Ryan out,” she told them.
The walk Ryan made as he was escorted off the property would be remembered as one of the longest walks of his life. Even after the gates had closed behind him once more, he spent the remaining half-mile walk into the town centre of Fiesole wondering whether he would hear the echo of a rifle-shot sounding out into the night.
CHAPTER 19
Sunset fell over the county of Northumberland in a blaze of colour more beautiful than any painting, photograph or artsy filter that man could devise. Phillips locked his car and leaned back against the door to watch the sky for the final couple of minutes it took for the sun to sink below the horizon.
“You coming in or not? It’s freezing out there!”
MacKenzie called to him from the front door of the little house they shared, then stepped outside to see what was holding his attention.
“Look at that,” she breathed, as stars began to pop into the sky above the city like jewels. “It’s usually too cloudy to see them.”
“Aye, it’s a clear night,” he said, and wrapped an arm around her waist. “Let’s get inside, though. It’s freezing out here, you know.”
“Really?” she muttered. “I hadn’t noticed.”
He grinned to himself as he toed off his work shoes and placed them neatly beside hers.
“You hungry?” she asked. “I was thinking of throwing together something like spaghetti and meatballs.”
“I’ll help,” he said, and followed her into the small galley kitchen at the back of the house. At the mention of spaghetti, he instantly thought of his friend.
“Haven’t heard from Ryan yet, today,” he said, with a trace of worry. “Have you?”
MacKenzie rolled up her sleeves and reached for a knife to chop the garlic.
“Yes, Anna left me a voicemail around lunchtime, but I haven’t had a chance to call her back. Apparently, all is well and they’re making progress.”
She didn’t mention what Anna had told her of Ryan’s family villa, for fear that Phillips might suffer a heart attack.
“She says the inspector in charge—Alessandro Ricci—seems decent. He let Ryan observe the interview with Armstrong this morning.”
Phillips made a non-committal sound in the back of his throat and rolled a beef tomato in his hands, bruising the unsuspecting fruit as if it were a stress ball.
“It’s not the same as having your own team with you,” he said, mulishly. “Did they get anywhere with Armstrong?”
MacKenzie shook her head and dumped the chopped garlic into a shallow pan.
“It was always going to be a long shot,” she reminded him, and held out a hand for the tomato before he reduced it to pulp.
“Speaking of long shots, we had a word with Edward Clarkson’s former colleagues, today. I’ve got a list of barristers to interview over the next few days to see if they can shine a bit of light on why he suddenly turned his life upside down because, at the moment, it’s about as clear as mud.”
MacKenzie started to roll the meatballs between her hands while she thought of the case and Phillips’ mind started to wander as he watched her, mesmerised by the motion of her palms.
“—Frank?”
“Eh? What’s that?”
She tutted.
“You look tired, love. Maybe we need to get an early night, tonight.”
His ruddy face took on a hopeful expression.
“You’re probably right,” he said.
“But getting back to Eddie Clarkson, or Charon, as he was calling himself…we need to dig deeper into the darker side of his life while he was a barrister. If he was willing to deal with Gregson to get himself off on minor charges, he obviously didn’t have a conscience that was squeaky clean. That could be the tip of the iceberg—who knows what kind of favours Gregson might have demanded in exchange?”
Phillips nodded, turning back to the task of making a salad.
“Aye, we’ll have a mammoth job on our hands. He had a thirty-year career and met thousands of people in that time, not to mention all the people connected to his cases that he never met. It could be absolutely anybody.”
MacKenzie’s heart sank.
“Let’s hope that Faulkner comes up trumps with a DNA profile we can use. Without it, we’re relying on hearsay and gossip.”
“Not quite,” Phillips sprinkled oregano over the salad he’d created with a deft sleight of hand. “We know something happened a year ago that forced his hand. Why last March? It must have been serious enough, must have frightened him enough, to make him change his name, his job and his address.”
“And we know it wasn’t above board, otherwise he would have approached the authorities,” MacKenzie added. “What could have been so bad that he couldn’t come to the police for protection?”
“That’s the mystery,” he said, then moved to slide his arms around her waist while she stirred the sauce. “You know, that could probably simmer for a while. Say, ten—no, twenty minutes?”
MacKenzie let out a husky laugh.
“You looking to be harassed, Frank?”
“By you? Always.”
CHAPTER 20
It was after ten when Ryan received the call.
“Ricci?”
“A woman has been reported missing.”
There was an infinitesimal pause.
“Who?” Ryan asked.
“Her name is Martina Calari. She works for the Uffizi Gallery as an events planner—”
“The Uffizi?” Ryan’s mind immediately went into overdrive. “Another connection with Armstrong. For God’s sake, let’s stop wasting time and go over to his apartment now.”
“She has only just been reported missing,” Ricci said. “We can’t jump to conclusions, especially if she turns up unharmed in a couple of hours. It’s possible,” he said, a bit desperately.
“What do I need to do to make you understand the man is a killer?” Ryan almost roared.
“I need more than another coincidence,” the other man threw back. “I rang you as a professional courtesy and to let you know we will be monitoring the situation.”
“If we act now, there may still be a chance,” Ryan argued, feeling sick with frustration. “She may still be alive.”
Inspector Ricci was distracted by the sound of another person entering his office.
“Just a moment,” he said.
Ryan gripped the phone for long seconds as he tried to make out the conversation in rapid, colloquial Italian.
When Ricci’s voice came back down the line, everything had changed.
“That was Banotti,
” he said quickly. “The switchboard just received an anonymous tip-off, within the last two minutes, from what sounded like a male caller.”
“Yes?”
“The caller said he could hear a woman’s screams coming from Apartment 12 of the Palazzo Russo. That’s—”
“Armstrong’s address,” Ryan finished for him. “I knew it. I’m on my way.”
* * *
Inside Apartment 12, Nathan Armstrong stood at the foot of his bed and surveyed the woman lying dead on its silk damask cover. With unhurried movements, he began to strip away his clothes, folding them in a neat pile to be destroyed at some later date, just in case. Luckily for him, the windows in the palazzo’s biggest apartment were too high to be overlooked by anyone and its walls far too thick to be overheard by any nosy neighbours. Lucky, too, that the mess could be contained and dealt with efficiently, without any need to step outdoors.
He cocked his head to one side as he assessed the body, running his sharp gaze over the thin plastic cord still wrapped around the woman’s throat, digging deeply into her skin. It had been taken from the small kettle in the kitchen.
“Probably broke her neck,” he thought. “Nice, clean method.”
Naked, he rooted around inside the bank of wardrobes and found a spare divan, not dissimilar to the one covering the bed. Easy enough to find a replacement to make up for the one he would lose, just as it was easy to replace the small kettle, so long as he was careful about it over the next couple of days.
Armstrong moved quickly around the bed, folding the ends of the silky fabric around the woman’s wasted body, swaddling her in the yards of material until he no longer had to look into her empty, staring eyes.
His head reared back when he heard the first siren in the distance and he moved like lightning.
* * *
Ryan arrived at the Palazzo Russo less than five minutes after ending his call with Ricci. He’d driven the short distance across town with the kind of speed that put taxi drivers to shame, opting to take one of his father’s cars rather than the scooter. As he slammed out of the vehicle, he heard long, wailing sirens approaching from two directions and swore viciously, knowing their sound would alert Armstrong. Precious seconds ticked away as he waited for Ricci to arrive and he watched the front entrance like a hawk, ready to intercept anybody trying to flee the building. After a full minute passed, he decided there was no more time to waste.
