by LJ Ross
“Of course they were, he lived there,” Ryan said.
“What about the cord?” Phillips asked. “Surely that’s the most telling bit of evidence.”
“The report says they found Manetti’s fingerprints on that, too.”
“Which they would do, since he removed it from Andrew’s neck,” Ryan said, softly. “Did they confiscate his clothing and test that? It sounds a bit thin on the ground.”
“There’s no record of his clothing having been tested,” MacKenzie said, double checking the paperwork.
“That was one of the grounds Manetti used to seek leave to appeal, ten days after he was convicted in early 1999,” Phillips chimed in, thumbing through his own stack of documents. “Leave to appeal was denied, taking into account the Prosecutor’s Response to the application, which was drafted by…well, look-ee here. Our very own Edward Clarkson, Esq.”
“He was there at every turn,” MacKenzie murmured.
“There’s another application for leave to appeal on the grounds that the prosecution failed to disclose a witness statement obtained during the course of their investigation from a bartender at the gay bar,” Phillips said. “It alleges homophobic bias in the handling of the case.”
Ryan kneaded the tension working its way up the back of his neck.
“None of us in this room are under any illusions that there was widespread, systemic bias in police services throughout the nineties—and, if some recent cases are anything to go by, it can still happen with bad management. It only takes a couple of bad apples to rot the whole barrel.”
“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” Phillips said. “Back when I started out, there were one or two who were known for being racist or homophobic, and yet they were never pulled up and they’re probably still drawing down their pensions now.”
“The question is, was Manetti right? Were the police biased in their handling of his case?” Ryan asked them. “If the answer is ‘yes’, then there’s a very real possibility that Manetti was an innocent man who ended up serving nearly twenty years of his life behind bars.”
He paused to flip open the file on his lap.
“Manetti’s prison records are a mixed bag. In the early years, he kept to himself then, presumably after the appeal applications were dismissed, he tried to socialise for a while but ended up getting into fights. During the last seven or eight years, he kept to himself and completed numerous courses, including a PhD in Italian Literature.”
“He was a journalist by profession,” MacKenzie reminded them. “He probably already had a degree. Does it say anything else of interest? Any connections with Gregson, or any further dealings with Edward Clarkson?”
“None that I can see,” Ryan replied. “Manetti was a quiet, intelligent man who helped to run the prison library service. He was released on 31st October 2016 on compassionate grounds.”
“Not what I was expecting,” MacKenzie remarked, with a frown. “Does it give details?”
“It does better than that,” Ryan said. “There’s a full medical report included with the record of the final decision. He was suffering from Parkinson’s disease that had entered an advanced stage. The report is dated 1st September 2016 and predicts that Manetti will have succumbed to dementia within a twelve to eighteen-month period.”
“Compassionate grounds, my arse,” Phillips muttered. “They didn’t want to pay for the nursing care, so they kicked him out into the wide world again.”
“Well, it looks like Tony Manetti had other plans than finding himself a suitable nursing home,” Ryan said, setting the file on the coffee table. “This is all useful information, but it brings us no closer to finding out who Tony Manetti is now, especially since there’s nobody resident in Florence going by that name, according to the online records Yates has been able to access.”
“It’d take weeks to go through every Antonio Manetti across the whole of Italy, if he’s even based over here,” Phillips said.
“Well, Yates came back with some data from the Italian passport authority that might help,” MacKenzie said. “We know that Tony Manetti left the UK on the same day he was released, back in October 2016. There’s a record of him landing at the airport in Rome but, after then, it’s just sporadic travel across Europe and to the UK”
“Didn’t hang around, did he?” Phillips said.
“The most telling thing is when I cross reference the dates of his travel with the dates of Edward Charon’s murder in Warkworth,” MacKenzie said. “He flew into Edinburgh Airport from Frankfurt the day before Clarkson was killed and flew out again the day after.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Three guesses,” MacKenzie said, with a small smile.
“Rome or Florence?” Phillips tried, but MacKenzie shook her head.
“Pisa?” Ryan suggested. “It’s a forty-minute drive from here and the security is less stringent than at Florence Airport.”
“You get the prize,” she said. “He flew into Pisa.”
“Where was he when Luc Bernard went missing, or when Riccardo Spatuzzi disappeared?” Ryan asked.
“The dates roughly match,” MacKenzie said. “Same pattern as before. He flies in a couple of days before he plans to strike, then flies out again almost immediately afterwards.”
She looked up from the spreadsheet.
“It looks like we found our man,” she said.
“He’s still missing.” Ryan was serious. “We still don’t know who Manetti is, what alias he’s using, and it would take weeks to check with pharmacies for records of Parkinson’s prescriptions being ordered; it’s a common illness, unfortunately.”
“There’s one thing we do know,” Phillips said, with a valiant attempt at levity. “When in doubt, look to home. The Warkworth case was the key to finding the missing link here, after all.”
“You could be right, Frank.”
* * *
The answer came to him in the middle of the night.
Ryan sat bolt upright in bed, wrenching his neck in the process.
“Shit,” he muttered softly, and slid out of bed to find a pair of pants and go in search of more tablets.
“Are you okay?” Anna called out, her voice heavy with sleep.
“Fine,” Ryan reassured her, and pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder before padding into the adjoining bathroom to seek out some more anti-inflammatories.
After he’d swallowed a couple, Ryan sat on the edge of the bath and let the epiphany circulate around his mind. It was a tenuous link, in some ways, but it would explain everything. He was only surprised he hadn’t thought of it earlier.
Surprise at the lengths the man would go to, to protect his new identity, swiftly gave way to anger. Ryan could now put a face to the shadow that had almost killed him, and he gripped the edge of the bath, bearing down against the memory.
He took a deep, shuddering breath and headed back into the bedroom to check the time on his smartphone, which rested atop one of the antique bedside tables.
Four-fifteen.
In another few hours, the city would come alive again. He wanted to get dressed and make an arrest, right now, but some small sense of grief for the person Manetti had once been stayed Ryan’s hand. There had been a time when Manetti had been wronged; when men in uniform had failed him, but that time had now passed.
Though he was conflicted, Ryan came to a decision.
He would allow Tony Manetti these last few hours as a free man; for morning was not far away and, with it, would come the long arm of the law.
CHAPTER 41
The morning sun had barely caressed the rooftops of Florence by the time Ryan, Phillips and MacKenzie made the short journey into the centre. They’d opted to walk, following a slightly longer route through the Boboli Gardens to enjoy a moment’s calm before re-joining the road that would lead them across the Ponte Vecchio. From there, they would cut through the narrow streets towards the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, known colloquially as the Duomo, a magnific
ent fifteenth-century cathedral, whose towering green and white marble dome was once the largest in the world.
For the most part, they walked in silence, questions of culpability swirling around their minds as their footsteps drew closer to their destination.
By mutual accord, they paused in the centre of the Ponte Vecchio to admire the view. Beside them, a group of tourists struck a variety of poses as their friends captured the moment.
“I read somewhere that Hitler once visited this bridge,” Ryan said. “Mussolini took him for a tour along the Vasari Corridor and, apparently, he admired the view so much, he ordered that the bridge should never be bombed during the war.”
“Big of him,” Phillips snorted, looking up at the second level of the bridge where the corridor ran overhead.
“A small concession, in the grand scheme of things,” Ryan agreed. “He didn’t mind so much about the rest of the city, or its people. It’s an interesting question, isn’t it; the value of long-lasting art over human life. Somebody like Armstrong would probably say his so-called ‘art’ is more important than any single human life.”
“He’s pushing it, if he thinks those thrillers constitute art,” MacKenzie said, in her no-nonsense sort of way. “But I agree, I’d never put bricks and mortar above the value of a life, however transient.”
“Aye, the Ponte Vecchio’s nice enough,” Phillips conceded, watching the sky begin to bloom in shades of rich amber light. “But it’s no Tyne Bridge.”
Ryan put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and flashed a smile.
“It sure ain’t.”
* * *
Ryan checked the address he had written on a small scrap of paper and looked up at the apartment building nestled beside the Florence Library, a stone’s throw from the Duomo.
“This is the place,” he said.
He tried the buzzer several times but there was no answer from the intercom. In the end, he tried a neighbour’s apartment instead, and the door buzzed open.
The neighbour turned out to be an American postgraduate student, and an affluent one, if her digs were anything to go by. She had long, sun-bleached hair and wore the tiniest shorts Phillips had ever seen, paired with a sweatshirt emblazoned with an embroidered logo which read, ‘UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA.’
“Mind your eyes don’t fall out of your head, Frank,” MacKenzie muttered, beneath her breath. “Think of your blood pressure.”
“Thanks for your help,” Ryan said, and let her scrutinise his warrant card. “We were hoping to have a word with your neighbour.”
“Oh, if he’s not at home, he’ll be down at Caffe Duomo, right on the square opposite the cathedral. He goes there every morning.”
MacKenzie tried the door for good measure.
When she shook her head, Ryan came to a decision.
“You two stay here, in case he’s still inside or comes back. I’ll call Ricci and tell him to try the office, in case he’s there. In the meantime, I’ll head over to the café.”
* * *
The storm that had raced through the city’s streets overnight seemed to have washed away the oppressive fog, carrying with it the mixed perfume of exhaust fumes, river water and the earthen scent of the soil of Tuscany.
The man sitting alone at the Caffe Duomo slipped on a pair of glasses and raised his face to the early-morning sun, breathing deeply of the fresh wind he would always associate with home. He had been born here, in a nearby state hospital, to loving parents who had passed away months before he was released—within days of each other.
He’d heard about that somewhere before; about couples who had loved one another for a lifetime and who could not bear to be parted, even in death. The one who was left behind simply…gave up—especially when there was nobody else to live for, certainly not their son.
The murderer.
He balanced his cup carefully in both hands and raised the lukewarm coffee to his lips. He would have preferred it hot, but it was safer this way.
If the heart, when broken, simply gave out, then why had his own continued to beat for twenty years? How had he continued in spite of it all, without Andrew by his side? There had been no peaceful release from his torment, no sweet oblivion. Days had rolled into weeks, then weeks into years.
He had considered suicide for a while—he would die a ‘murderer’ in the eyes of all who knew him and, worst of all, he thought he would never know who had killed Andrew. He’d spent years trying to find the missing clue, going over the details of what happened like a record stuck forever on repeat.
It was the library that had saved him, but not in the usual way.
He remembered the day vividly: a gloomy, grey day in March of 2001. The library trolley had replenished itself with books that were only slightly out of date, which was a rare treat, and he had been one of the first to have his pick. He’d seen the new thriller by Nathan Armstrong on top of the pile and it had brought back the memories again, of Andrew and his dream. His talent. He’d taken the book and turned it over in his hands, not even attempting to read it, not able to concentrate on more than one sentence at a time without wishing for death to claim him.
And then he’d seen it.
The picture of Armstrong inside the book cover; an artsy, black and white portrait of him sitting at his desk beside the tools of his trade. Pens, paper, notepad.
And Andrew’s typewriter.
As the truth had come tumbling down, suddenly, there had been a reason for living again. No longer did he consider suicide and instead began to think of homicide; a testament to his grandfather who had taught him the motto, ‘an eye for an eye.’ All his life, he’d railed against it, thinking that it surely led to the whole world ending up blind, but those paltry reservations were nothing in comparison with his need for revenge. Soon enough, it was the only thing that occupied his mind.
What did he have to lose? What more could the world take from him that he hadn’t already lost?
The answer was nothing.
CHAPTER 42
It took Ryan less than two minutes to reach the Piazza Duomo, skirting the perimeter of its gigantic cathedral walls with long strides while his eyes scanned the names of the numerous small cafes overlooking it. He scanned the faces of the crowd, too, sure now of who he needed to find.
It didn’t take long.
Ryan slowed his stride, assessing the man’s posture and taking note of possible escape routes. He looked lost in thought, a million miles away from the little plastic-coated table where he sat, alone.
He looked up as Ryan’s shadow blocked the sun. There was a brief internal battle; part of him wanted to carry on with the persona, the clever pretence he’d created to get the job done. But the other part of him wanted to unburden himself of the dreadful truth, at least to one other living soul before it was all too late.
Before he forgot what the truth was.
“Mind if I join you, Tony?”
The man more recently known as Nico Bellucci, art dealer, cast a quick glance around the square and wondered whether he should run or put up a token protest. There were still places he could go, connections he could use.
But what was the use? It was over—he had failed.
“Prego,” he murmured.
Ryan signalled the waiter for two more espressos, then sat down opposite the man who had almost killed him. Even now, even knowing he was right, he found it hard to imagine that the mild-eyed man with the curly grey hair and sculpted beard, the tailored suit and manicured nails, could have been the same shadow who had sought to choke the life out of him.
“You’re wondering if you’ve made a mistake, aren’t you?” Tony said quietly, clasping his hands on his lap. “You’re asking yourself whether I could have been the one to commit those atrocities, to kill those people in cold blood. You’re wanting to know why I don’t look more the part, why you can’t see the hatred in my eyes. Aren’t you?”
Ryan searched the other man’s face, then shook his head.
�
��No, Tony. I was thinking about what it must have cost you, every year you spent behind bars. Then I realised the answer was simple. It cost you your conscience, your soul…the thing that made Tony Manetti the man he was.”
Manetti looked away and up at the Duomo, as if he hadn’t heard him.
“I like to sit here because it’s where Andrew and I met,” he said softly. “I saw him one day, taking pictures. I think I fell for him straight away.” He made a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. “He was such a beautiful man, inside and out.”
He lifted his sunglasses to scrub away the tears which had, somehow, started to flow again. All these years and the memories hadn’t dimmed.
“I can still see his face, from that first time. I dream about him almost every night, happy dreams where he’s still alive and we’ve grown old together,” Manetti whispered. “But each morning I wake up and find my mind has betrayed me again.”
Ryan remained silent. He wasn’t sure he knew the right words to say.
“I lost everything the night Andrew died. The night he was murdered by Nathan Armstrong,” Manetti said, very clearly. “You say I lost my conscience, my very soul? You are right about that, but it did not take years for it to happen. It took only a few short months. When I knew that the police, the lawyers, everyone who had ever had a hand in the case didn’t care about finding the truth, I think the last part of Tony Manetti slipped away.”
“What remains?” Ryan asked.
Manetti laughed but it was a sad, painful sound.
“This…this shell,” he said, gesturing to his body. “This collection of skin and bones that I feed and water. But there is nothing left of me, or soon there won’t be. That’s how you found me, isn’t it? It has to be.”
Ryan’s eyes swept down to the other man’s hands, which trembled against the table top.
“Tremors are a common symptom of Parkinson’s disease,” he said. “But your idea of feigning alcoholism was an excellent ruse. We bought it—hook, line and sinker.”
