‘A real professional,’ he murmured.
‘There’s no doubt about it,’ Fuschi said by way of confirmation.
‘Gianni, I need your report as soon as possible.’
‘You’ll have it on your desk tomorrow…’ He was about to add ‘Gatto’, but stopped himself just in time. Now was not the moment to make jokes, and it was best to drop that nickname given to Ferrara by a journalist at Il Tirreno who had been struck by the catlike shape of his hazel-green eyes.
The Piazza Libertà, where the company that ran the city’s CCTV cameras was based, was just a few minutes away from Headquarters, so Rizzo decided to go there on foot.
A little earlier, Venturi had called Costanza’s driver, who had confirmed the route he had followed on Saturday evening: Piazzale di Porta al Prato – Via Roselli – Via Strozzi – Via Lavagnini – Piazza della Libertà – Viale Don Giovanni Minzoni – Cavalcavia delle Cure – Piazza delle Cure – Viale dei Mille – Viale Volta – Via San Domenico – Fiesole.
It was the first time that Rizzo had been here. He had made an appointment over the phone with the manager, who had told him that he would be able to see him that same morning. In fact he was waiting for him: a tall, thin man in his early forties. He shook Rizzo’s hand and led him into the surveillance room.
Once inside, Rizzo looked around and was taken aback by the sight of dozens of monitors and a large workforce sitting at long benches of computers.
The manager, who had introduced himself as Giuseppe Aviati, noticed the surprised expression on Rizzo’s face and smiled. He was always pleased to see the effect his ‘baby’ had on the few visitors allowed in to see it, mostly officials.
‘We started off with about ten or twenty cameras, almost all focused on key central points in the city,’ he said proudly, ‘but now we’ve got about five hundred of them and we’ll soon be installing more. We have a direct connection to the city centre police, and arrests are often made on the basis of what my staff see on these monitors.’
‘Is there always someone on duty?’ asked Rizzo.
‘Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Sometimes we’re asked to keep an eye open for suspicious individuals, and if we spot them we inform the State Police or the Carabinieri. Follow me!’
He led Rizzo over to one of the monitors.
‘This is CCTV Camera 32. It’s at the traffic lights near the Ponte Vespucci. If our technician moves the joystick in front of him, he can zoom in on the parked cars or those that are going through. And even on the people crossing the road or walking by the river.’ He proceeded to give a quick practical demonstration.
Rizzo was struck by how clear the images were. ‘Would you be able to follow the progress of a car from the Hotel Villa Medici to Fiesole by way of the Via Il Prato?’
Aviati smiled. ‘I guessed your visit was connected to the senator’s murder. On Sunday morning, the technician on duty noticed the police cars and ambulance going down the Viale Volta towards Fiesole with their lights flashing. We’ve had a look at the footage from earlier, but didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary or we would have been in touch before now.’
‘We need to confirm the presence of a black Mercedes from about eleven o’clock on Saturday night,’ Rizzo insisted, taking a small notebook from his jacket pocket and giving him the licence number of Enrico Costanza’s car.
‘We’ll do our best,’ Aviati replied. ‘It’s a good thing you came this morning.’
‘Why?’
‘The footage is automatically deleted after seventy-two hours. We keep copies of the useful stuff on video and on hard disk, always bearing in mind the privacy laws.’
‘I realise you can’t just hand over the information to anybody who asks for it.’
Aviati nodded. ‘We can give you the material, but we need a court order.’
‘Of course. In the meantime, maybe you could at least check for the Mercedes. If you find what we’re looking for, you’ll get the court order straight away.’
‘We’ll do what we can, but it’s going to take time. There are several CCTV cameras to check, because from the Via Il Prato, the car could have gone in a number of directions to get to Fiesole. I’ll let you know as soon as I can.’
‘We know the route the car took,’ Rizzo replied, and reported what they had learnt from the driver.
‘Perfect. It’s still worth checking the other routes as well.’
‘OK. But remember, this is urgent.’
‘Don’t worry.’
Rizzo was just about to leave when he remembered the A-Class Mercedes, and asked Aviati to also let them know if there were any sightings of that model.
He left the building. He had other things to do, mainly interviewing Enrico Costanza’s friends and acquaintances.
His next stop, though, was not Police Headquarters, but the Hotel Villa Medici.
He called Venturi and instructed him to start the interviews. He would be there in about an hour.
39
There were still five minutes to go.
Ferrara got out of the car and looked up at the clock on Fiesole’s bell tower. Five minutes to twelve. He looked about him, then walked across the square, filled that day with the stalls of the weekly market. The presence of certain vultures of the press had not escaped him. It was predictable.
There were a number of wreaths and bouquets on the ground on either side of the main door of the cathedral.
He went in.
The two blocks of pews on either side of the wide central nave were already half full. He stopped for a few moments by one of the stone columns near the entrance. Some of the people sitting in the back rows turned round to look at him. He moved along the right-hand nave, turning to look to his left. There were many well-known faces, including several politicians in their requisite black suits, sitting in the front row along with the mayor. No family members. Costanza’s only grandson lived in the United States and, from what they had gathered, he had been on bad terms with his grandfather, so Ferrara was not surprised by his absence.
In other words, there was nobody here who would make any effort to stop this death from fading into insignificance, no relative ready to build up the memory of the ‘dear departed’, if possible through public statements or by taking part in television broadcasts.
Costanza’s body had arrived at the church that morning directly from the morgue at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, without being put on display. Now it lay in a coffin in front of the altar.
A forensics technician, positioned to one side of the square and well stocked with cameras, had been photographing the participants as they had arrived over the past couple of hours.
On the other side of the square, a plain-clothes officer was noting down the licence numbers of their cars, most of them big, powerful vehicles.
The priest began the service.
At the end of the mass, the coffin was carried out on the undertakers’ shoulders, and in a matter of minutes people started to drift away, apart from the few who set off in procession towards the cemetery. For a while, Ferrara followed them at a distance, then slipped a hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and took a cigar from his leather case. He lit it and took a few puffs to make sure it did not go out. It was his third of the day.
Then he walked slowly back to his car. As he walked, he caught an exchange of remarks between two old men.
‘He really is a great loss,’ one of them was saying.
The other nodded. ‘A death is always painful, especially when it’s the death of a brother.’
Obviously two Freemasons…
He got back in the car and ordered the driver to take him back to Headquarters.
The Piazza San Giovanni was packed with tourists pointing their cameras at the façade of Florence Cathedral and Brunelleschi’s dome, the largest masonry dome ever built. The queue of people waiting to get into the baptistery was so long that it stretched almost the whole way round the building. The sun beat down on them
.
Next to the entrance, a woman sat on the floor with a child in her arms, her crossed legs covered by her long, ample skirt. In front of her was an empty cup into which nobody dropped any coins. People’s indifference was palpable. They did not even spare her a fleeting glance: it was as if she were a ghost or a plague victim.
Angelica and Guendalina were walking hand in hand, exchanging long glances every now and again. You did not have to be the most observant person in the world to grasp the nature of their friendship.
They walked along the left-hand side of the building and reached the Piazza del Duomo, where they stopped for a few moments to admire the round slab of white marble in the pavement by the apsidal wall of the cathedral.
‘This,’ Angelica said, ‘marks the exact spot where, on 17 February 1600, the huge gold-plated copper ball on the roof lantern fell after being struck by lightning.’
‘Seventeen’s always an unlucky number,’ Guendalina said with a smile, looking up at the dome.
‘The ball rolled down along the buttresses, causing a lot of damage, and then stopped right here.’
‘And then what happened?’ Guendalina asked, her eyes those of a little girl eager to learn something new.
‘It was replaced two years later, by order of Duke Ferdinand I.’
‘Could it fall again?’
‘No. Thanks to the invention of lightning rods, that’s impossible now.’
‘Well, that’s a relief!’
Guendalina looked up again at the dome. She was struck by the number of visitors all the way up there. ‘Shall we go up?’ she asked. ‘I’d like to see the city from above. It must be amazing.’
‘Not now, Guendi. We’d have to wait for hours in this heat. We’ll go another time, as soon as it opens.’
Hiding her disappointment, Guendalina let Angelica lead her to the Via de’ Calzaiuoli. They reached the Piazza della Repubblica with its cafés, then the Via Strozzi and the Via della Vigna Nuova. They walked past extremely elegant but sadly empty shops. Business in Florence was changing: even the tourists were deserting these streets, preferring to travel to factory outlets a few miles out of town.
As they walked, they did not notice a young man with faded jeans, a white T-shirt and a reddish beard who had been following them for some time.
40
The imposing eighteenth-century building had just one entrance. In front of it was a pay and display car park, with a taxi rank about a hundred yards away.
The porter, wearing a grey uniform trimmed in red, was giving directions to a young tourist with a map of the city open in her hands. Meanwhile, a coach full of Japanese tourists had pulled up.
All the hotels in the historic centre were full as usual. There never seemed to be enough beds in Florence for all the visitors.
Rizzo looked around, then walked in through the elegant glass door.
Once in the foyer, he realised why this had come to be regarded as one of the city’s top hotels. A huge crystal chandelier hung from the wooden ceiling.
He headed for the bar area. On the way there, he glanced at the inner garden with its swimming pool and saw several people lounging on sunbeds beside it.
The furnishings of the hotel displayed refinement and sophistication. The walls were wood-panelled. There were few paintings. Comfortable armchairs stood around small tables. He sat on one of the stools at the bar and waited for the barman, who was busy making a cocktail, to finish. When the waitress went on her way with the cocktail on her tray, he ordered a coffee. As the man turned to make it, Rizzo studied him carefully, thinking of the questions he needed to ask him.
‘Here’s your coffee, sir,’ the barman said. ‘Would you like a glass of water too?’
‘No, thank you.’
Rizzo drank the coffee, then took advantage of the fact that it was a slack moment to say to the barman, who had moved over to the bottle rack, ‘Excuse me, would you mind coming here for a moment?’
‘Not at all.’
The man, who was short, fat and completely bald, was wearing a striped waistcoat and a pale tie. His name badge identified him as Piero. He looked at the ID Rizzo had produced.
‘I hope I haven’t done anything wrong?’ he said hesitantly, in a typical Sardinian accent.
Rizzo took a photograph of Senator Costanza from the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Have you ever seen this man?’
‘Of course. He was a customer here. The poor man! What a terrible way to end! I read what happened in La Nazione. Have you found out who did it?’
‘Had you seen him recently?’
‘Yes. Let me just think for a moment.’ He took a piece of paper out of a drawer. ‘Oh yes, I was on duty on Saturday night. I remember now: the Senator came in here after dinner and sat down at that table there.’ He pointed to a table to his left, the one furthest from the bar.
‘What time was that?’
‘Ten thirty, ten forty-five.’
‘Was he alone?’
The barman waited a couple of seconds before replying. ‘No, he was with someone.’
‘Who?’
The man shrugged. ‘Someone…’
In the meantime, the waitress had returned with a new order.
‘Excuse me a moment. Our guests around the pool are waiting for their drinks. With this heat…’
He poured two glasses of beer and two flutes of champagne, put the champagne bottle in an ice bucket, handed everything over to the waitress, and came back to Rizzo.
‘Who was this somebody? A man? A woman?’
‘A man. I’d never seen him before.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘Not really. I only saw him for a moment when I took two whiskies over to the table.’
‘Was he young or old?’
The man hesitated. ‘In the evening we turn the lights down… there were other customers and I was on my own. But I did get the impression he was middle-aged, maybe a bit older.’ He shrugged his shoulders, as if to apologise for not being more specific.
‘What exactly do you mean by that?’
‘About sixty. Younger than the Senator, anyway.’
‘Tall? Short? Thin?’
‘I couldn’t tell you anything about his height, but I think he was of average build. What struck me was how lined his face was.’
‘Beard? Moustache?’
‘No, neither.’
Rizzo had taken his notebook out of his jacket pocket.
The barman started to look worried. ‘What are you doing? Is this an interrogation?’
‘For the moment, I’m just making a few notes. After that, we’ll see.’
The barman seemed to stiffen.
‘I should explain that I’m investigating a murder, in fact two. Senator Costanza was killed the same evening he came here for dinner. This is a serious case and I urge you to tell me the truth and not hide anything from me, or I’ll have to send for a patrol car and continue this conversation at Headquarters.’ This time Rizzo had assumed a more resolute tone.
‘But I don’t know that other man, I swear,’ the barman said, looking around as if wanting to reassure himself that no one was listening. ‘Why don’t you ask the waiters and the maître d’? One of them might know who he is.’
‘Did they leave together?’ Rizzo asked.
The barman shrugged. ‘Yes, they did.’
‘Do you have CCTV?’
The barman shook his head. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘No thanks. The coffee was enough. How much was it?’
‘Nothing, it’s on me.’
‘I insist.’ Rizzo took a ten-euro note from his wallet and put it on the counter, then walked out of the bar area and over to reception.
‘I need to speak to the manager,’ he told the girl at the desk, showing his police ID.
‘I’ll call him straight away.’
The manager introduced himself as Fabrizio Gentile. He was wearing a dark grey suit with a smart white shirt and a pale grey tie.
‘To what do we owe this visit?’ he asked once he had examined Rizzo’s ID. ‘Is there some kind of problem?’
‘I’d just like to ask you a few questions.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘I’m investigating a double murder.’
‘A double murder?’ the manager echoed, his face turning red.
The Dark Heart of Florence: Number 6 in series (Michele Ferrara) Page 15
