Death in Tuscany

by Michele Giuttari

  'I see. And you don't know of anyone who hated her enough to . . .'

  We haven't come across anyone so far.'

  'Which brings us back to the whole Mafia idea ... or whoever it was who was doing something dodgy in Simonetta Palladiani's quarries, and perhaps in others, too.'

  'In the absence of any other lead . . .'

  'Which means we must go to the town hall.'

  'As soon as the land registry officer arrives.'

  Ferrara looked at his watch. 'Why don't we get there before him? He should be arriving any minute now.'

  The land registry officer arrived late and spent at least five minutes apologising. When Ferrara was at last able to ask him the question he needed to ask, he went off to consult his records. Most of these were handwritten. They only seemed to have discovered the typewriter here in the last half of the previous century: God alone knew how long it would be before they got round to computers!

  The officer returned. 'They're the Tonelli quarries.'

  'We already know who owns them,' Ferrara explained patiently. 'What we need to know is who's been working them.'

  The officer gave him a puzzled look, glanced at Lojelo as if to say, 'Doesn't this fellow know anything?' then said to Ferrara, 'I'm not talking about the owner. The municipality owns them and leases them out. The Tonellis have had the lease since the days of Maria Teresa d'Este.'

  'In other words, they're handed down from father to son? They're hereditary? But how long is the lease?'

  'Until recently, ninety-nine years, renewable by the same leaseholder. It was actually Maria Teresa who started the practice, to boost marble production. The system was basically unchanged until two years ago, when they introduced a new rule, limiting the leases to a period of twenty-nine years, but it's a difficult business applying it. Some people challenge it, say the quarry was given by the princess to their family and doesn't belong to the municipality . . . you know how these things are. But they're gradually sorting it out. If a leaseholder doesn't renew within a certain period, which varies from case to case, then he loses the right to use the quarries.'

  'I see. So in a way it is a kind of ownership . . . but does whoever has the right to use a quarry have to exploit it himself or can he lease it to others? In this particular case, who does Simonetta Tonelli lease hers to, since she doesn't seem to have anything to do with them directly?'

  'That's also a complicated matter. Broadly speaking, the quarries can't be leased to third parties, which is another reason why the new rules were introduced. They establish that the mountain belongs to the municipality, which can lease the quarries to whoever exploits them, provided that person in fact does so. But there are private agreements whereby one person gets another person to do the work, and the municipality isn't too bothered about that. As long as the quarries are kept going, no one loses his job, the rules are followed, and the taxes are paid, we're not going to stick our noses in.'

  'Too bad. So you don't know who's running quarries 206, 219 and 225?'

  'Wait a moment.'

  He went away again and soon returned with a sheet of paper on which he had noted down a name. 'It seems that the taxes are paid on behalf of Simonetta Tonelli by a certain Ugo Palladiani of Florence. That's all we know.'

  The two policemen looked at each other, discouraged, said, 'Thank you,' and left the office.

  It was after midday.

  'Don't worry, Chief Superintendent, I'll send one of my men to check it out properly'

  'You have enough on your plate,' Ferrara said. 'I'll deal with it.' He took out his mobile and dialled Headquarters in Florence.

  'Ferrara here,' he said to the switchboard operator. 'Put me through to Superintendent Rizzo.'

  'Hello, chief,' his deputy said when he came on the line.

  'Did Anna Giulietti's warrant arrive?'

  'Just got it. I'm on my way there now.'

  'Good. Let me know how you get on. Did she also send you the authorisation to see Stella's medical records?'

  'Yes, chief.'

  'Perfect. Make sure Leone and Fuschi get copies.' 'Of course, chief.'

  Outside Carrara Police Headquarters, he got back in his car and set off again for the mountains. He was starting to know the road as well as the route from the Via Zara to his apartment.

  He didn't go straight to Simonetta's quarries, to avoid putting the supposed criminals on their guard, but stopped first to question workers in other quarries. He did not discover much. Perhaps there was a code of silence here, or perhaps it was just that people minded their own business, as the group he had met the day before in the bar in Colonnata had said.

  In the third quarry he visited, he actually ran into old Franchi, the winner of the bet. He hadn't been one of the most talkative of the group, but it was worth a try.

  Ferrara introduced himself as an academic who was writing an article on Carrara marble.

  It didn't take long to get in his good books. The man wasn't hostile, just reserved. Gradually, Ferrara got him to talk about the presence of non-local operators in quarries 206, 219 and 225, where he had seen a lorry belonging to a Sicilian company.

  'Yes, Mining Extractions. They're the people who work those quarries. At least, they're the ones we sometimes sell waste to. They make a little marble, but mostly dust.' 'But who are they?'

  'I don't know. They're from Sicily, yes, but we don't know them and we don't know who their boss is. We usually just call him "the Sicilian". Some of us joke about it and call him "the saviour of the quarries".'

  Just like Claudia Pizzi.

  'Why's that?'

  'Because those are the Tonelli quarries, which had been practically abandoned for ages. If it wasn't for those people, the municipality would have taken them over by now, because you can't keep quarries completely inactive when they could give work to lots of people. Not that there's much left to extract. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about.'

  'Perhaps the main reason they took them over was the marble dust.'

  The old man shrugged, as if he didn't understand an activity that seemed blasphemous to him and he preferred not to think about it.

  'But what does this dust look like?' Ferrara asked.

  The man looked around him, then down at Ferrara's shoes. Like everything else - the rubble-strewn path leading to the quarry, the machinery, the toolsheds - they were covered with a thin whitish layer like the one on the tanker lorry he had seen the day before.

  'Can't you see?' the man said, with a smile. 'Come on, follow me.'

  He led him towards the terraced flank of the mountain where a group of workers were extracting a block.

  The operation was a fascinating one. The cutting machines sliced through the marble as if it were butter, raising clouds of white dust that looked like talcum powder.

  The old man approached a heap of the dust, picked up a handful, and held it out to him. Ferrara took a pinch of it and let it run through his fingers. It could have been heroin, or pure cocaine.

  'This is it, more or less,' Franchi said, raising his voice to make himself heard above the noise of the cutters. 'Except that this isn't the stuff they use. It's just residue, and it's dirty. The diamond used to cut the marble gets burnt in the process, which contaminates the dust. That's why the dust they use is specially ground from the residue.'

  'I see,' Ferrara said, as they moved away to a spot where they could talk more easily. 'How long have these Sicilians been here?'

  'Six or seven years.'

  'Since the mid-Nineties?'

  The man thought about it for a few seconds. '1994, to be precise.'

  'And you've never noticed anything strange?' 'How do you mean?'

  'I don't know. Unusual comings and goings, goods being moved at odd times, strangers visiting the quarries

  'No, why? All I know is that the small amount of marble they produce they send to America. But the dust goes all over Italy: to paper mills in Garda, farms in Reggio Emilia, building companies in the north and in
Rome, things like that.'

  And is that normal?'

  'Perfectly normal, why?'

  'Just trying to get an idea. I haven't quite got the commercial side of things clear. Marble I understand, it's a unique, centuries-old tradition, but dust

  'I don't understand it myself . . . Sure, it sells. But there's no need really to come here for it, you can get it from any quarry anywhere. Our marble is special - to waste it like that . . . Well, what can you do? I'm old.'

  'Which means you're wise. At least that's the way it used to be. Now things have changed and no one wants to get old. A mistake, in my opinion. You just have to look at the way the world's going.'

  'Too true, Professor.'

  He got back to the hotel in the afternoon and found Petra reading in the garden. He sat down beside her, kissed her, and told her what he had found out.

  'I wouldn't be at all surprised if this Mining Extractions company turns out to be the centre of a drug trafficking operation. They could be using the marble dust to cut the drugs. It looks practically identical. But I don't understand . . .'

  'What, Michele?'

  'Why they had to take over three whole quarries. How much do they need? With what you can extract from just one quarry, I imagine you could cut half the heroin in the world for a year!'

  'Yes,' Petra admitted. 'It doesn't make much sense.'

  They were both silent for a while, then Ferrara, still puzzling over that question, called Police Headquarters in Florence. They told him Rizzo wasn't back yet and he asked to speak to Fanti.

  'Well?' he began.

  'Hi, chief! I spent all morning trying to get some information from the people in Bellomonte, but they're worse than the three wise monkeys. No one knows anything, they can't get to the files because of an earth tremor in '98 which made the place unsafe and now they're somewhere temporary and are completely impossible to reach . . . plus, they say they've had it up to here with Rome and the mainland. I think I'll have to contact a colleague of mine down there.'

  'Do it, Fanti. You have carte blanche. I need to know who's behind that company.'

  24

  Rizzo arrived at the abandoned factory just after two in the afternoon together with Sergi, Ascalchi and three constables. It was a white, one-storey, reinforced concrete building, some sixty-five feet wide and two hundred feet long. The only windows were long narrow ones high up on the walls, close to the roof.

  Deputy Prosecutor Anna Giulietti's warrant authorised them to remove any obstacles they had to, and Sergi only took a few seconds with his wire cutters to get through the padlock on the heavy iron shutter. The shutter itself, although half rusted, was not hard to lift, as the runners were well oiled.

  Nor was it difficult to force the lock on the iron door.

  They found themselves in a large rectangular space, covered by the dust of years and cluttered with heaps of garments, piles of cardboard boxes, long trestle tables, some still standing, others thrown to the floor with all their contents, including sewing machines.

  'We've come in on the workshop side,' Rizzo said. 'Let's check the rest of the premises before we start to search.'

  'With all this mess, that could take forever,' Ascalchi complained.

  At the far end of this large room was a glass door. Beyond the door, a corridor, with two rooms on one side and three on the other. All of the rooms had walls of plasterboard and glass, apart from one which had plasterboard only. This was the toilet, which was filthy. The other four rooms had been the offices. The desks and cheap armchairs were still there. Papers, pattern books, binders and folders were strewn everywhere, telephone wires dangled, and there were masses of cables for computers which had long gone.

  At the end of the corridor was another door, identical to the first.

  It led to the reception area, shrouded in darkness because the windows, high up on the walls, had been blacked out.

  Sergi found the light switch and turned it on.

  The halogen lighting was very strong, almost harsh. Once their eyes had become accustomed to it, Rizzo and his men stood there, stunned.

  It was a very large, elegantly furnished room, with modern sofas and armchairs - enough for about thirty people - low glass tables, wall to wall carpeting, modern paintings on the walls, and big loudspeakers cleverly placed in the corners. What must have been the reception desk had been pushed closer to the wall and was now used as a bar, to judge by the bottles of alcohol on it.

  This room, too, was untidy, but it was a more recent untidiness: used glasses, ashtrays full of cigarette ends, cushions on the floor. It gave the impression of a place that had been abandoned in haste, which no one had bothered to come back and clear up.

  But what really drew the police officers' attention was the huge plasma screen on the wall behind the desk, the focal point towards which the eyes of the guests must have converged from whichever part of the room they were in.

  Once the first moments of astonishment were over, Rizzo walked behind the desk and found the remote control. He picked it up with his handkerchief, in order not to wipe off any fingerprints, and pressed the ON button.

  The TV screen came to life. Simultaneously the lights dimmed and from the loudspeakers came the gentle, melancholy notes of a Chopin nocturne. A series of photographs began appearing on the screen.

  At a pinch, the first ones could still have been defined as 'artistic'. They were of excellent quality and showed prepubescent children - boys and girls - of various races, completely naked but in innocent poses. It was a collection which would have gladdened any paedophile's heart. It was followed by a video. Here, the quality was less good and the poses less innocent: other children playing among themselves, exploring each other's private parts.

  The rest was a crescendo of atrocities, all to the accompaniment of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, in a repulsive contrast with the images.

  More photographs and videos followed. The videos were merely of home movie quality, and showed children being manipulated by adult hands and made to perform all kinds of sexual acts. Sometimes they seemed to consent, but at other times they were subjected to sadistic violence to force them to comply with their tormenters' wishes. The adults' faces had been obscured, while the camera lingered with undisguised pleasure on the suffering faces of the children.

  Disgusted, even though he was used to seeing all kinds of things in his job, Rizzo switched off the TV. The lights came up and the music stopped.

  Ascalchi, Sergi and the three constables were still standing in the doorway, transfixed.

  Rizzo did not say anything. He simply shook his head, then called Headquarters to send for a forensics team.

  'Careful how you move around,' he said to his men. 'This doesn't look like Signor Palladiani's private boudoir, more like the headquarters for a whole ring of perverts. So the more fingerprints and other things we can find the better. Okay, let's get to work.'

  They started to search the factory inch by inch, inspecting the armchairs and sofas, examining the papers in the offices, turning over the piles of jeans and ‘I-shirts. It was in the middle of one of these piles that Ascalchi found a pair of knickers with the label 'Steaua Rosie' and a pair of shoes with the label 'Orhei'.

  The forensics team soon arrived, and spent more than two hours collecting samples. As they were working, one of the team, equipped with a luminol lamp, called Rizzo over.

  'Superintendent, come and have a look at this.'

  He aimed the beam of purplish-blue light at one of the sofas. The hurriedly washed bloodstains on the upholstery were clearly highlighted. There were other stains on the carpet near the same sofa.

  It was nearly seven in the evening.

  Superintendent Rizzo dialled Ferrara's number.

  'Let's pack our bags, we're going home,' Ferrara, filled with renewed energy, announced to his wife as soon as he had finished on the phone. 'Ugo Palladiani could be the person responsible for Stella's death . . .' He told her everything, concluding, 'Whatever happ
ens, the investigation into his death will have to become part of the Stella inquiry, which means I'd be involved officially. I'm going back to work.'

  'That's good, Michele!' Petra said, feeling her mood lifting, but almost immediately the shadow of a doubt seemed to temper her enthusiasm. 'What's the matter?'

  She smiled. 'Nothing, Michele, nothing . . . But don't you think it's strange that the killer was then himself killed?'

  'Why? If he wasn't alone, and from what Rizzo tells me he definitely wasn't, we're probably dealing with those infamous paedophile parties involving several people. One of the others might well have been afraid he'd talk.'

  'It's possible, I suppose . . .'

  He looked at her closely. 'But you're not convinced, is that it?'

  'Well ... we know he was planning to go to Nice, and in the light of what you've just told me it probably wasn't a holiday, he was running away. Wouldn't it have been simpler to just let him go?'

  Once again, Ferrara had to admire his wife's perceptive-ness. She would have made an excellent detective if she had ever set her mind to it!

  'You may be right - I admit I hadn't thought of that. Or perhaps I didn't want to think of it. I want to get back to work right now. You've raised a perfectly reasonable objection, and if we looked closely at the evidence we have so far, which isn't much, we'd probably think of a thousand others.' He smiled. 'But we're the only ones who know he was planning to leave, aren't we? So?'

  'Lass' uns zurückkehren! Let's go!' Petra exclaimed, going to the wardrobe to get their bags.

  25