Death in Tuscany

by Michele Giuttari

  ‘I’ll even bring him in myself,' Ferrara said. 'You can count on it.'

  When he got back to the hotel, Petra just had to look at the expression on her husband's face to know that now was not the time to ask questions. And he did not give her any answers. They were for him to figure out during what looked certain to be another sleepless night.

  That evening they did not have dinner.

  They walked down to the beach and then set off along the foreshore, holding hands and not saying a word.

  They walked towards the lights of the port of Viareggio beneath the stars, then turned back and went the other way as far as Forte dei Marmi. By the time they were back in Marina di Pietrasanta, they were both exhausted.

  Ferrara opened two deckchairs he found propped against the wall of the hotel's bathing establishment, and threw himself down on one of them, like an empty sack. Petra left him, went inside the hotel, and soon came back with two thin blankets. She laid one over his legs and then sat down and covered herself.

  In the darkness she searched for her husband's hand, and held it tightly as if by doing so she could unburden him of his mental anguish.

  Ferrara saw again Lupo's furrowed brow, the shrug that seemed to admit that he could do nothing for him, the look of sympathy he had given him as he walked him to the exit, the kind of look you give someone who's defeated.

  Above all, he kept hearing those brief phrases which Lupo had come out with, which had unwittingly been like knives piercing his skin: a friend of yours is a prime suspect. . . a friend of yours was so deeply involved. . . while we're sitting here talking, the evidence is piling up . . . the Carabinieri are making progress, I can assure you of that. . .

  The words went round and round in his head until, unable to fight any more, he closed his eyes.

  In the half-sleep that preceded a sleep beset with nightmares, his last thought, perhaps an unconscious balm to distract him from his obsession with his friend, was that he hadn't heard from the office all day and had no idea how another murder investigation, the Stella case, was going.

  19

  Heraldry was the last thing in the world Inspector Riccardo Venturi would ever have thought he’d have to deal with when he joined the police force. He was the son of poor peasants from the Agro Pontino who had only ever known three coats of arms, the arms of Savoy, the Fascist emblem, and the shield of the Italian republic. He had only a vague idea that once upon a time, the counties, principalities, marquisates, bishoprics and other subdivisions of Italy had produced them in abundance, and that there were still a lot of people who liked to show them off, and even more people who aspired to have one.

  To him, the servant of a country which was now and forever republican, this seemed a ridiculous, outdated aspiration, and those who had them sewn on their shirts or engraved on their cufflinks - another relic of a bygone era, in his humble opinion — were pathetic.

  And yet here he was, this Saturday morning. First, he had gone to see Rizzo to hand over the pile of lists, papers and maps he had assembled relating to properties in the area where Stella had been found, as Ferrara had asked him to do before leaving. Now he found himself going around libraries,

  archives, second-hand bookshops, searching for someone to throw light on that cufflink. Superintendent Rizzo had had the cufflink photographed, and the photograph enlarged and distributed to everyone in Headquarters, so that they could all get to work and identify the coat of arms and the symbol as quickly as possible. If in addition to identifying the symbol they could also discover the name of the man who owned the cufflink, better still. This was the best lead they had had so far in the hunt for Stella's killer.

  In the light of this new clue, the results of his researches into the buildings in the area where the girl was found had been hurriedly brushed aside.

  They all had the photo with them. Sergi had been sent to check out printers, Violante was trying the churches and monasteries, and Ascalchi was visiting jewellers, hoping to find the goldsmith who had made the cufflink and engraved the symbol. Ciuffi had distributed the photo to his men and told them to show it to their informers, and to junkies and dealers. Even Fanti had it, and had started searching for it on the internet.

  Nor had Rizzo forgotten to inform Ferrara. He had made a colour copy of the photo with the scanner and had sent it to him as an email attachment.

  In other words, the whole of the Squadra Mobile had been put to work, and Rizzo just had to wait for the results. For the first time, he felt confident there would be some. He himself, not wanting to leave any stone unturned, had sent specific and detailed requests to the Register of Companies and the Patent Office, since the symbol might not be a coat of arms after all, but a logo - although he doubted it, given the rather baroque, antiquated design. In fact he preferred to doubt it, since there were so many logos around these days - of companies, sports clubs, internet sites, and so on - that the search could well turn out to be virtually endless.

  Now, as he waited for his men to return with their findings, he took a pen and paper and started playing with the symbol, isolating it, dividing it, decomposing it, enlarging parts of it, in search of something, anything that could unlock its secret.

  The one thing that seemed constant was that there was a letter P in the middle. If you took that out, you were left with a baseless rectangle, and he had no idea what that meant at all. It might be a stylised M, or even an N, if the designer had been especially imaginative, or else it might not be a letter at all. But if not, what then?

  Going back to the P, and removing it again, it occurred to him that what remained was the Greek letter Pi, and he wondered if it was worth consulting mathematicians: maybe they had a club in Florence. He made a note of it, then by a process of association it struck him that the letters might be Cyrillic, in which case the P would be an R, but then he had no idea what the other letter might be . . .

  Discouraged, he let that go, and tried to concentrate instead on the remaining elements of the symbol. The sun, the moon and the stars were obvious, which might have something to do with astronomy or astrology, but he realised that going down that road he'd be widening the investigation to take in the whole cosmos, and he dropped the idea. It was only worth checking out any of these theories when he had something else definite to go on. Otherwise, the whole thing would drive him mad.

  The only conclusion he managed to reach was that they would do well to look for someone whose name or surname began with P.

  'Deri kur do na mbajne ketu brenda?' Nard asked.

  'Si her e tjera, pastaj bejne progesin e na hedhin jashte, pastaj rikthehemi,' Alex replied.

  'Will you shut up, or at least talk Italian?' Emilio Zancarotti protested. He didn't like the idea of the two brothers plotting behind his back, especially after the mutual threats of the previous night.

  All morning the two of them had practically ignored him, and the afternoon was shaping up the same way. Zancarotti was irascible by nature, and had to hold himself back. If he exploded, he knew the consequences wouldn't be pleasant: as they had already remarked, there were two of them against one of him.

  'Heret e tjera ishin dozat e vogla,' Nard continued, purposely ignoring him.

  'Cfar kerkon se di une? Kerkoja atij italianit!' Alex said irritably, uttering the word 'italianit' with contempt. Zancarotti not only caught the word, he grasped the derisory tone of it as well.

  'I'll kill both of you,' he almost spat, managing with difficulty to avoid lifting his hand to them. 'I'll kill you as soon as we get out of here!'

  The Albanians laughed.

  'Did you understand any of it?'

  'Only when the Italian guy speaks,' Inspector Oliva said, taking off his headphones. 'How about you?'

  'Quite a bit,' Inspector Aldo Guzzi said, also putting down his headphones. 'Nard is nervous because he doesn't know what's in store for him, and his brother thinks they'll be deported like they usually are. Frankly, with the kind of record they have, I think they'll be old m
en before they see Albania again . . . but you never know with the law.'

  He was twenty-seven, of medium height, with a cavernous, almost ascetic face framed by long, smooth black hair and an untidy beard which made him look like the Count of Monte

  Cristo before he'd cleaned himself up. His right cheek was slightly disfigured by a piercing, and another two were visible whenever he nervously brushed the hair away from his left ear. His faded blue ‘I-shirt hung loosely on his bony body. The chain dangling from a tab on his jeans jingled when he stood up.

  Oliva chuckled. 'And Emilio doesn't understand and is getting pissed off.'

  'Yes, I think things are hotting up in there . . . And that's good for us. Time for me to go.'

  'See you . . . Sorry, what did you say your name was?'

  Aldo. Aldo Guzzi, like the motorbike.'

  The only food and drink Inspector Venturi had had all day was a sandwich and a Coke in a bar in the Via Borgo Allegri. He was in a bad mood because of the heat and the lack of results. Not that he'd been expecting any, to tell the truth. He had never had any faith in emblems and badges, apart from the police one.

  At the Florentine Institute of Heraldry, they had given him a list of addresses of possible experts, among them the owner of an antiquarian bookshop called Belloni, in the Via delle Conce, which was one of the last he still had to visit, at least for today. This was a Saturday he wished was over.

  The shop was small, on the left-hand side of a dingy courtyard. The sign was written on the frosted glass of the door, which had been left open to let the air in.

  He was greeted by the owner, an elderly Jew who was probably also the only employee. He was short, with white hair and sharp, inquisitive blue eyes. The front room of the shop was bare apart from a wooden counter, behind which the old man was sitting on a high stool, and bookshelves full of folders along the walls. Through a door behind the man, another larger room was dimly visible, with a big table in the middle piled high with books, and wooden bookcases lined with the spines of other books, some of which might well be valuable.

  'How can I help you?' the owner asked politely.

  'I'm a police inspector,' Venturi said, immediately adding, so as not to disappoint him, 'I'm not here to buy anything, I only need some information.'

  'Go on,' the man said, as politely as before.

  Venturi placed the photocopy on the counter. 'Do you recognise this coat of arms?'

  The man put on a pair of glasses with half-moon lenses and metal arms and studied the picture.

  'It's not exactly a coat of arms, it's more a symbol, though of what I have no idea . . . No, I'm sure I've never seen it. . . but there is something . . . Do you mind waiting a moment?'

  'Of course,' the inspector replied, even though he hadn't quite been following.

  The old man went into the back room, where he bustled about among his books for what seemed to Venturi a very long time, and then came back shaking his head.

  'No, I don't have anything. But I'd bet it has something to do with the Freemasons. I wouldn't swear to it, but something tells me . . .'

  'What?'

  'You see these three uprights under the sun? If you take away the round part in the middle - and I have to admit I have no idea what that is, it could be something to do with one of their rituals, I suppose - but if you take it away, then these three uprights could be columns. The two side ones may be the columns of the Temple. The one in the north is Boaz, and the one in the south is Jachin. The Masons use this iconography a lot, and often add a third one, in the middle, like this shorter one here. The three columns symbolise Wisdom, Strength and Beauty. And then you've also got the sun, the moon and the stars, which they use a lot as well.'

  Venturi did not ask any more questions. He thanked the man and left the shop. Probably just the ravings of an old eccentric, he thought.

  The guard closed the heavy iron grating behind him, and Guzzi saw three pairs of eyes trained on him. He responded with a hostile look.

  He picked out the bunk which was meant for him, went to it and threw down the blanket he had been issued. Who needed a blanket in that heat? You could die in that cell.

  Aren't you going to say hello?' Emilio Zancarotti asked.

  'Got any dope?' the newcomer retorted, with a scowl.

  'In here?'

  'Then don't piss me around,' Guzzi said, throwing himself on the bunk and turning his back on all of them.

  'Italian muti!' Nard cried, none too happy with this intrusion.

  'Leave him alone. Why the hell should you care about this arsehole?' his brother said, in Albanian. He wasn't too happy either, having this junkie in here with them. He despised junkies as much as he profited from them.

  The cell was already small, and the enforced proximity to Emilio was creating a clash of wills which could be very dangerous. The Italian knew too much, and even though he was in it up to his neck he might be tempted to turn State's evidence and endanger the whole organisation. And he, Alex, had no way to warn Viktor. At least a couple of times in the last twenty-four hours he had toyed with the idea of killing the Italian to redeem himself in the boss's eyes.

  Only Zancarotti had not been bothered by the newcomer's arrival. If he played his cards right, he'd balance out the forces.

  It was getting late and none of the printers had recognised the symbol that Sergi, alias Serpico, was showing round.

  A bell rang as he entered the Solari Brothers shop in the Via dei Serragli. For the umpteenth time that day, he was hit by the smell of lead, which many still used to print invitations and business cards.

  He asked the usual questions and received the usual answers.

  He was about to leave when he was struck by a coloured print showing two red marble columns with golden capitals, an open book full of Hebrew characters in the middle, a five-pointed star at the bottom and two stars at the top, a crescent moon on the left and a sun on the right which seemed to him identical to the one in the photograph. Around the outside were other, smaller objects, such as a skull and crossbones, an open compass crossed with a ruler, stars and other things.

  'What's this?' he asked, intrigued.

  'That's just a proof,' the printer replied. An illustration for a book about Freemasonry'

  At the end of the day, Sergi reported disconsolately to Superintendent Rizzo that he had found nothing, absolutely nothing. But then, just as he was about to leave, he laughed and said that the sun might be a Masonic symbol. Rizzo would probably not have paid much heed to that, if it wasn't for the fact that when Venturi came to make his report, he mentioned the old bookseller's theory. Even though Venturi apologised and told him that the bookseller was probably senile, Rizzo started to give it some serious thought. It was true that two small clues like that didn't constitute evidence, but you couldn't rule them out. As Ferrara always said, there was no such thing as coincidence when you were investigating a crime.

  Since he hadn't even got that much from any of the others, and since he also wanted to know how Ferrara was and if he needed any help, he decided to call him. That curious little clue was as good an excuse as any, and at least they could both have a laugh about it.

  20

  It was dark, and Ferrara was moving with difficulty along a narrow tunnel which was getting ever narrower. He felt as if he couldn't breathe, and he was sure he would die before he got to the end. He had to keep his arms out in front of him, lever himself with his elbows against the damp, viscous earth, and push himself forward. After an enormous effort, he had only moved a few inches. He should have used his legs, he thought, and it was then that he realised that his ankles were being held by icy hands which gripped like steel claws. They were what he was fighting against, what he was trying to escape.

  Laughter - horrible, deafening, humiliating, macabre laughter - echoed inside his head, as if to point up the futility of his childish efforts. Childish, like everything he did. It wasn't Massimo Verga who hadn't grown up, it was him. He was the real Peter Pan,
still playing cops and robbers at his age! And now the robbers had decided to get their own back.

  But it wasn't the mockery in the laughter that made his heart miss a beat, it was its astonishing clarity. He would recognise it even surrounded by the laughter of thousands - only Francesco Leone laughed like that. And indeed there he was, bending over the immature, naked body of Claudia Pizzi: the undeveloped

  breasts with their small, pinkish nipples, the sparse black down on the mount of Venus, the frail, delicate limbs . . .

  'Oh, it's you, Ferrara, come on, we were waiting for you,' Leone said to him, but he had the sneering face of Professor d'Incisa, and the same expensive wristwatch.

  'You were about to miss the best of it,' he continued, still in Leone's voice, picking up a small saw. 'You will stay this time, won't you?' Again, he laughed that infernal laugh.

  'Let him go, it's better if he goes. He never takes a holiday, it'll do him good!' These words came from the corpse, which raised itself on its elbows and stared at him with the angry purple face of Commissioner Lepri.

  'That's what I told him, chief, believe me,' the Deputy Prosecutor of Lucca, Armando Lupo, said obsequiously.

  'He's a fool, a thickhead, a peasant, a loner, he should join us, brothers,' the Contessa Servi asserted loftily, and Anna Giulietti nodded in silent agreement.

  The sprightly old woman was laden with jewels, and Ferrara felt guilty because she was wearing his Petra's rings. He ought to arrest her but he was powerless - even his best friend was accusing him. He could hear his voice, calling from the distance.

  'Michele, where were you?. . . Where are you?. . . Michele . . . Michele . . .' The imploring voice came ever closer.