by Beate Boeker
“I'm so glad to hear that you're happy.” Carlina smiled. “What a romance. Enjoy every moment.”
“I will.” Francesca promised. “And I'll come to Temptation as soon as I can to stock up on new underwear. But how about you? Did you manage to get rid of that Olga Ottima?”
“We're trying our best.” Carlina's voice held a bitter note. “But it's more difficult than I'd imagined.”
“Well, if all else fails, kill her off. You'd do many people a service, you know.” Francesca made it sound as if killing someone were standard procedure.
“I'm quite aware that killing her sounds like the best solution.” Carlina sighed. “But it's not easy.”
Voices could be heard in the background, then Francesca said, “Listen, I gotta go. I'll be in touch. Ciao.”
“Ciao.” Carlina slipped the phone into her handbag and turned her head, only to see a startled tourist, staring at her with wide open eyes. She clutched her handbag to her chest as if it could ward off a vicious knife.
Carlina made an effort to smile. “Buongiorno,” she said. “The store will be open in just one minute, if you'd like to wait.”
The woman took a step back, turned on her heels and fled down Via Tornabuoni as if Carlina were pursuing her.
“All right.” Carlina swallowed. “I guess that's an answer, too.”
II
Piedro opened the door to Garini's office and peered around it with the expression of someone who had bad news to relay.
Garini looked up from the forms he was filling in and frowned. He knew that look on his subordinate's face. It meant they had a new case. “Come in.” He pushed the forms to the side. “And tell me about it.”
Piedro came closer with shuffling feet. “Tell you about what?”
“About the new case.”
“How do you know we have a new case?”
Garini suppressed a sigh. Piedro was not known for being quick on the uptake, but he was the son of his boss, and therefore it was impossible to complain about him. Instead of answering the question, he repeated, “Tell me all about our new case, and remember the rules about how to make an efficient report.”
Piedro nodded. “I remember.” He held up his hand and started to count off on his fingers. “What? Who? When? Why? Where?”
“Exactly.” Garini gave him an encouraging smile. At least something had stuck in Piedro's volatile brain. Maybe there was hope after all.
“What?” Piedro lifted up his thumb. “A suspicious death.”
“As we're working in the homicide department, that's a given.”
Piedro nodded, oblivious to the ironic tone in Garini's voice. “Yes, it fits.” He lifted his index finger. “Who? We don't know.” The middle finger. “When? We don't know.” The ring finger. “Why? We don't know.”
Garini held up his hand. “Hold on, please. Maybe we'd better concentrate on the things we do know.”
“But I was just getting to that!” Piedro gave him an injured glance and lifted his pinkie finger. “Where? At the San Niccolò Tower.”
Garini curbed his impatience. “Good. We're making progress. A suspicious death at the San Niccolò Tower on Piazza Poggi.”
Piedro looked surprised. “Is it on Piazza Poggi? But that's the Oltrarno area!”
He made it sound as if the other side of the Arno River was foreign territory.
“Is that a problem?” Garini's voice turned out sharper than he wanted.
“No, of course not.”
“All right. Let's continue. When did the call come in?”
Piedro checked his wrist watch. “Five minutes ago.”
“So we can safely say that the suspicious death occurred sometime before five o'clock today.”
Piedro's face lit up. “Yes. I had forgotten that.”
Patience, Garini. “Good. Next step. Who found the victim?”
Piedro frowned. “Actually, you can't say that the victim was found, not in the real sense of the word.”
Garini eyed the top of his desk and wondered if it would help if he could hit his head against it to relieve his feelings. “Go on.”
“You see, the victim landed in front of him. Right at his feet.”
“It landed?” Garini bent forward. “You mean it fell from the tower?”
Piedro nodded with satisfaction. “Exactly.”
“That should have been your first sentence, Piedro.”
“Oh.”
“Now tell me: Who's 'him'?”
“Who's what?”
“Who was at the foot of the tower and saw the victim falling down?”
“It was the Professore Arno Alossi.”
Garini nodded. He knew Arno Alossi by reputation. He'd been head of the University of Florence for decades before finally retiring some years ago. He was also well known for his gentle nature. “So the professore called in and reported the death?”
“Yes.”
Garini jumped up. “Let's go.”
He didn't wait to see if Piedro followed but grabbed his jacket and hurried from the room. When they arrived on the other side of the Arno River, he took a quick glance around to orient himself. The San Niccolò Tower had been built as a gate in the city walls in the beginning of the fourteenth century. Its roughly hewn stones formed three arches, each on top of the other, and as the city walls were long gone, the tower now stood all by itself in a paved area, with a ramp going up behind that led to its entrance on the second floor. The muggy day had not cleared up, and the rain was still drizzling down, shrouding the tower in a misty light that made the contours of the old stones blurry.
Apparently, the victim had fallen from the side that faced the river Arno because they could immediately see a wide ring of people, staring with horrified faces at something that lay huddled on the ground. One person stood closer than the others, his legs splayed out, his wrinkled face immobile. It was the professore. He stood with his back to the victim, his thin arms crossed in front of his chest, and he looked forbidding enough to keep anyone from coming closer.
As soon as Garini and Piedro came into hearing range, the professore started to speak. “Finally.” The old voice sounded like the crack of a whip. “You took your time.”
Garini narrowed his eyes and noticed the slightly shaking frame of the old man and the cramped position of his shoulders. Underneath that stern exterior, the man was shaken. “Professor Alossi, we appreciate your call. My name is Stefano Garini, and I'm the investigating officer in this case. I'd like to hear all the details you can give to me, but this will have to be done later. Could you wait somewhere close by? Maybe at the trattoria down the street?” He pointed to his right hand side, then slanted a look at Piedro, who had turned an interesting shade of green after one glance at the huddled shape on the ground. “Piedro, please accompany the professore and then return here.”
At any moment now, the forensic team and the photographers would arrive. Yes, there they were. The police van came to a stop at the parking space close to the tower, and the whole team piled out and started their routine by cordoning off the area. Good. Now he was at liberty to take in all the details. Stefano had learned that looking closely and remembering everything often gave him the extra advantage he needed to clear a case. Steeling himself, he turned toward the victim – or rather its remains. Due to grim determination and experience, he managed to suppress his personal reaction and to concentrate on the facts. Mercifully, the victim was wearing a purple raincoat that had billowed out and covered most of the crushed body. The position of the body was in exactly the place where you would expect it to be if it had fallen from the right hand corner of the tower's north side. He could not make out much more and took care not to step too close before the photographs had been taken.
“We'll be done in fifteen minutes, Stefano,” the photographer said. “I'll give you a shout.”
“Thanks.” Garini turned away and slowly mounted the ramp. The San Niccolò Tower had not been opened for long to the public, and it was only ope
ned for a few hours every afternoon. He came to a desk underneath a dripping umbrella, where a shivering young woman stood, her eyes wide open. Garini introduced himself.
“Ah, thank God you've finally come!” The young woman pushed back the loose hair from her face with both hands. “I'm so shocked, so terribly shocked, but I know nothing, absolutely nothing at all!”
“Just tell me about your day so far,” Garini said. He saw Piedro coming back from the trattoria and waved at him, so that he would join him. “This is Piedro Cervi, my assistant,” he introduced. “And he'll record our conversation. Do you agree to that?”
They all huddled together underneath the umbrella to get out of the drizzling rain.
“Oh, gosh.” Her brown eyes got even wider as she watched Piedro, who was taking out a small recorder. “Yes, all right. My name is Sofia Lalorni. I opened as I always do, at four in the afternoon. I first thought I would have the day off, because it was raining so hard, and we don't open when it's raining, but then the rain stopped, and it was only sort of foggy, so we went ahead.” She wrung her hands. “I wish I hadn't done it. Do you think she slipped? But no, she can't have slipped because the walls are too high. You can't fall over by mistake. You have to look at the walls, Commissario, really; it can't have been a mistake.”
“Why do you say “she”? Do you know who it is?”
Sofia stared at him. “I . . . I saw the purple raincoat on the ground. At first, I had no clue what had happened. I mean, it's the other side of the tower, and there was no shout, no nothing. And then, someone screamed, and someone came running, so I ran down, too, and I looked, and I saw the raincoat, but I didn't want to get too close, because I was afraid I would get nightmares. I mean, I'm going to have nightmares anyway, because I'm so sensitive, you know, and I'm not sure how I will cope with this kind of shock.”
Piedro had stopped writing after the first two rushed sentences and shook his head helplessly.
Garini held up his hand to stop Sofia's tumbling words. “How do you know that the purple raincoat belonged to a woman?”
“I saw her going in, of course! Roughly a quarter of an hour before the fall. Or do you think she gave the raincoat to someone else?” Sofia swiveled her head as if she wanted to look around the tower and check out the person on the ground once again. “I have no idea if she did that. You mean someone else might be below that coat down there?”
“No, I wasn't trying to say that.” Garini made sure his voice sounded soothing. “Did you recognize her when she bought the ticket from you?”
“The woman with the purple coat? No, I'd never seen her before. I have no idea who she was. Really. She didn't seem particularly sad or happy. She was just . . . normal.” Sofia shrugged. “Isn't it funny how you can't look into people's minds? You'd think--”
“Yes, absolutely.” Garini interrupted her. “Who else was in the tower when the fall happened?”
“I don't know!” Sofia threw up her hands. “I've sold about fifteen tickets today, but you see, I let them go into the tower all by themselves, and I don't check when they come out.”
“Did you know any of the people who bought tickets?”
“No.” Sofia shook her head. “They're tourists.”
“Are you sure of that?”
She recoiled. “Why, of course. I don't think that Florentine people would go up the Tower on a normal business day like that, would they?”
“They might, if they were with friends who came from out of town.”
“Oh, I see.” She wrinkled her forehead. “Actually, now that you mention it, there were probably a few Italians this morning. I mean, they didn't have an accent or anything.”
“And were they going up the tower in groups or all by themselves?”
“Mixed.” Sofia spread her hands. “Some were on their own, if I remember.” She frowned. “Actually, that was a bit unusual, now that I think about it. Usually, they're in groups.”
“The ones who came by themselves. Were they men? Or women?”
Sofia shook her head. “I have no idea. I didn't pay that much attention. You see, I've got an important exam tomorrow, and I really have to study for it, so I tried to read my book whenever I could snatch a minute. I only remember the woman in the purple coat because she snapped at me when I was too slow.”
“That's a pity. What did you do after the fall?”
“Why, I returned here to my desk. I didn't know what else to do.”
“Did you close the door to the tower so that nobody else could get in?”
“No.”
“Did you check on the people who came out after the fall?”
“No.” She spread her hands wide. “But I don't think that anybody came out. When I returned here, I dropped into a chair and just stared at the door, because I was so shocked and speechless, you know. And I didn't see anybody coming out.”
“Did you sell more tickets?”
“Madonna, no! That would have been disrespectful, wouldn't it?”
“It certainly was the right decision.” Garini took out his card and gave it to her. “If you can think of anything else, let me know. Please give your full address and contact data to Piedro, so we can be in touch if we should have any further questions. And don't let anybody else into the tower yet.”
He ducked out from underneath the dripping umbrella and mounted the stone steps that led to the heavy wooden door of the tower. It swung inwards and revealed a curving row of roughly hewn stone steps. Garini mounted the staircase, trying to see every detail and notice anything that was unusual. Though the staircase was only wide enough for one person to mount at a time, it wasn't dark at all because he soon reached the open first floor. The tower had an almost square shape, with a walkway on every level that circled around the free area in the middle. To prevent tourists from falling, a simple iron fence secured the inner side of the walkway. If you wanted to push someone over here, it was possible, as long as you used enough force to heave the victim over the top of the fence that reached as high as your hips. Garini reminded himself that the victim had been found on the outside of the tower, not the inside and mounted the next set of steps to the third level. He knew that the soldiers used to stay on these walkways to defend the city, shooting either through the arches or through the windows at the sides. Today, the tower was deserted. What a shame that Sofia hadn't kept a count of the tourists. When he reached the crenelated terrace of the gate tower, he was slightly out of breath and almost slipped on the red terracotta tiles that covered the floor. The honey-colored stonewalls were glistening with rain. It was a good decision to close the tower while it was raining.
He turned north and studied the merlons. He knew that they had been added much later to the tower, but a casual look didn't reveal this. The broad stones looked sturdy enough to withstand as much time as the base below them that had already survived for centuries.
The lower areas in between the merlons were a bit higher than his hips. Impossible to fall down by mistake, unless you were foolhardy enough to climb and sit on them - but even that was prevented by an iron bar that stretched from side to side. He couldn't picture a struggle that would easily make you tip over that bar, either. So what had happened? Could the victim have jumped voluntarily?
Garini went closer to the battlement and craned his neck forward to look down. Yes. This is where the fall had taken place. He could see his team working around the purple raincoat way down below. With a shudder, he straightened again. Sixty meters was a long way to fall. In the sixteenth century, all the gate towers of Florence had been lowered because that made them less susceptible to be hit by cannon balls. There had been only one exception: The San Niccolò Tower had remained at its original height because the San Miniato hill right behind it offered enough protection from the cannons.
Garini stared at the cream colored stone without seeing it. When the San Niccolò Tower had been re-opened to the public just a few years ago, its history had been in the press so that anybody who had even
a spark of historical interest knew all the details. Had it inspired someone to murder? He shook his head. It seemed an improbable place to stage a murder. Difficult to access and difficult to get away again without being seen, not to mention that it was virtually impossible to get a moment all by yourself.
He bent forward and scrutinized the stone below the iron bar, looking for signs of a recent struggle. At first, he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, but when he looked again, careful not to touch anything, he saw a small, roundish stone, not much larger than a pea, lying close to the outer edge. A fresh scratch mark right across the horizontal stone showed that it had been dragged across by something heavy but rolled to the side at the last moment and so, had managed not to tumble down. That was all. No way to tell what exact action had caused the scratch. He shook his head and took a step back, then slowly turned on his axis.
The tower was small enough to be taken in at a glance, and it was easy to see that it was completely bare. Not even a shiny candy wrapper was lying on the terracotta tiles.
Large photo boards mounted before the battlement parapet showed the spectacular view of Florence and explained the details to the tourists – to the north, the Arno River with the Ponte Vecchio, the Duomo, and even the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio further down. To the East and the West, the Oltrarno, the area south of the Arno River. He had to believe the pictures because today, the air was so misty that it felt as if he were standing in a cloud. He could hardly see the river.
He turned South and realized that the top of the San Niccolò Tower was almost on a level with the most famous vantage point of Florence – the Piazzale Michelangelo, where dozens of buses stopped daily to offer tourists a five-minute-experience of Florence before rushing on to the next sight. Again, he shook his head. If a murder had been staged here, it was sheer lunacy. On a clear day, every action on top of the tower would be clearly visible to all the tourists on the platform above. It was like enacting a play to an appreciative audience that was fully equipped with the most powerful cameras and photo equipment on the market - with zooms he could only dream of. Today, however, he could only discover the vague outline of the Piazzale in the mist.
