The Dark Heart of Florence: Number 6 in series (Michele Ferrara) (15 page)

Ferrara finished reading the transcript.

This was the second time in twenty-four hours that Genius had put in an appearance: there was no doubt that he was the hooded man in the video. Once again, he was claiming responsibility.

It could only have been him, Ferrara thought. Was this what he had meant when he’d said they would hear from him again?

His thoughts turned to the place the call had been made from.

San Piero a Sieve was the locality where the Monster of Florence had posted a letter to the only female deputy prosecutor who had taken an interest in his crimes. Inside it, he had placed a strand of hair belonging to the female victim killed on a night of the new moon in September 1985 at Gli Scopeti near San Casciano Val di Pesa. The letter had been sent the very same night the murder had been committed.

It was a disturbing analogy.

The seven a.m. news bulletin was on, and once again images of Florence flooded the screen.

After a view of Fiesole, there was a shot of Enrico Costanza’s villa. Clearly visible on the imposing gates was a sign reading:
POLICE
HEADQUARTERS
,
FLORENCE
–
SQUADRA
MOBILE
–
HOUSE
SEALED
BY
ORDER
OF
THE
JUDICIAL
AUTHORITIES
.

‘There are still no developments in this horrific double murder case,’ the newsreader said. ‘The general impression is that the investigators are still groping in the dark…’

Ferrara, who was getting dressed, turned up the volume with the remote and stood there watching the TV. The whole item lasted just under two minutes, and ended with a brief statement by the Chief Prosecutor.

Luca Fiore had been filmed sitting at his desk in his office in a short-sleeved shirt. He calmly explained that a political motive had been ruled out, since Enrico Costanza had not been involved in active politics for a long time. He also declared that he was quite confident that the case would be solved within a reasonable time frame.

‘What do you mean by reasonable?’ the interviewer asked him.

‘The time required for such a complex case.’

Ferrara switched off the television and finished getting dressed. He was late. He kissed Petra goodbye and went out into the morning light. It was likely to be another hot day.

When he got to Headquarters and started up the steps, he heard the usual voices, the footsteps and laughter coming from the courtyard where the drivers parked the cars from the official pool and hung around arguing and joking amongst themselves. Then he walked along the corridor on the first floor and it was as if someone had suddenly turned the volume down, then off completely.

He was met by a tomb-like silence, and the last few yards before he reached his office seemed very long.

He immediately summoned the key members of his team.

The meeting started less than ten minutes later. Only Guido Polito, the inspector from the SCO team, was absent.

Luigi Ciuffi, the head of Narcotics, had also been brought in to advise on the drugs found in Costanza’s villa. Ferrara held him in high regard, both for his professional abilities and his willingness to put in the necessary hours without always having one eye on the clock.

As Ferrara’s secretary, Nestore Fanti would take the minutes. Beside him sat Superintendent Gianni Ascalchi, only just back from holiday. Short and thickset, with a crooked chin, he looked like a young Totò. He enjoyed a certain fame among his colleagues for his jokes, which he told in dialect. A Roman by birth, he had been in Florence for several years now and knew the city’s criminal underworld well. Four months earlier, a suspected tumour in one of his lungs had scared him so much that he had given up smoking cigarettes for good. He had even started to hate them and found the sight of his chief with a cigar in his mouth hard to take.

By now, they were all convinced that the double murder had been carefully planned down to the last detail. It was impossible to believe that the crimes could have been committed in a fit of rage or without premeditation.

‘Now, tell me what you’ve all found out,’ Ferrara said.

They each explained what they had done, including their attempts to reconstruct the last day of Costanza’s life.

The former senator had left his villa before eleven in the morning on Saturday 28 August to go to Milan, where he had an appointment with a specialist. The Tumour Institute had confirmed his attendance. He had got back to Florence at about seven in the evening and his driver had dropped him off at the Hotel Villa Medici in the Via Il Prato. He had dined there, although they were still not sure whether he had eaten alone or in company. Then, at about a quarter past eleven, the driver had returned to pick him up and take him home. They had not stopped anywhere along the way.

‘Well, at least we know what time he returned home,’ Rizzo said. ‘It would certainly be useful to check the CCTV cameras along the route. And we shouldn’t neglect the speed cameras on the road leading to the villa. It would also be worth checking out any speeding fines that have been issued.’

Florence had become one of the Italian cities with the highest levels of surveillance. There were CCTV cameras everywhere – not that that had helped to bring down the crime rate.

‘It’s an idea,’ Ferrara said, ‘though I think it’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Still, we have to try everything.’ He had opened a file on the desk in front of him, a file that was still quite thin at the moment. But soon this mere handful of papers would be joined by duty reports, witness statements, interviews, photographic dossiers, and so on, until it was bursting at the seams.

Having listened to his team members, Ferrara looked at them all in turn and took the floor.

He recapped the results of their investigations so far.

Then he showed them a computer-generated image of a female face. It was the face of the woman who had been driving the A-Class Mercedes. The forensics expert had worked for almost two hours to put together an electronic portrait. Not the classic identikit, but almost a photograph.

They all looked at it carefully, but none of them recognised the face. It could have been anybody.

‘Do you believe the witness’s statement, chief?’ Rizzo asked, knowing that Ferrara had a sixth sense about these things.

‘He seemed genuine to me,’ Ferrara replied with a sigh. ‘Whether it helps us at all is another matter.’

‘So now we’ve got a woman to look for?’ Rizzo asked. ‘It’d be the first time a woman has been wanted in connection with such a horrible crime here in Florence.’

‘Yes, the first time,’ Ferrara agreed. ‘I realise it’s hard to believe, but we can’t dismiss anything out of hand. I want a copy of this portrait distributed to all the patrol cars in the area, and I want it up on the noticeboard here in Headquarters, in every station, and in the offices of the railway, traffic and airport police.’

Nobody objected. After a few moments, Ferrara drew everyone’s attention to the necessity of keeping an eye open for the presence of any A-Class Mercedes cars on the road between Florence and Borgo San Lorenzo, the stretch where the witness had seen the car.

None of the people living in the area had seen or heard anything useful. They had been asked the customary questions, but to no avail. Nobody had seen anyone suspicious, or noticed anything strange. Even if they had, not everyone was prepared to cooperate with the police, either through fear, or to avoid getting involved.

Enrico Costanza’s few friends had all stated that, as far as they were concerned, no one had any motive to hate him. In accordance with the maxim that repeatedly cropped up in such investigations, nobody liked to speak ill of the dead. They all stressed the victim’s good points and omitted to mention the dark ones. Even if they were aware of them, most preferred not to reveal them. This was an attitude especially common in the circles in which Senator Costanza had moved.

Ferrara was perfectly well aware that among Freemasons, solidarity was paramount, even when one of them had died. And these friends of Costanza’s were all Masons, and all fairly well known. They would continue interviewing them, but it was unlikely they would discover anything.

Nobody in Narcotics had heard Costanza spoken of as being involved with drugs. The same was true of his butler Luis Rodriguez, an immigrant who had been working quite legally in Florence for almost five years.

Nothing had emerged from an examination of old recordings from the CCTV camera that protected Costanza’s villa.

No technical clues had come from Forensics, but they would soon get the results of the ballistics tests, which were still in progress.

What was the motive? Should they think of the double murder as the work of a killer who had acted purely out of hatred for the victim? Or could there possibly be a connection to the Leonardo Berghoff affair and the Black Rose?

At this point, Ferrara finally made up his mind to tell his men about the contents of Leonardo Berghoff’s letter, while emphasising that the information was private and confidential.

‘For now, this information does not leave this room. I’ll inform the Prosecutor’s Department at a later date. The important thing at the moment is to dig a bit deeper and, if we find out anything, that’s when we send them a report.’

To all intents and purposes, they were feeling their way in the dark. So far, they hadn’t found a damn thing. But now they had to decide on priorities. The first thing was to carry out another search of Costanza’s villa to try and find the case that had been used to withdraw his money from the Savings Bank.

‘I want you to take charge of that, Francesco,’ Ferrara said to Rizzo. ‘Use our colleagues from the SCO. Then you’ll have to reconstruct Costanza’s movements in the days before he was killed. We also need to find out whether he met anyone, perhaps a guest, at the Hotel Villa Medici on Saturday night.’

‘I’ll ask the Deputy Prosecutor to authorise a new search warrant straight away,’ Rizzo replied. ‘Then I’ll deal with the victim’s last days and go to the hotel.’

‘Perfect! We also need to reconstruct the last movements of the butler, Luis Rodriguez. That could be very useful.’ Ferrara turned to Venturi. ‘I’d like you to question Costanza’s driver again. We especially need to know about his last few visits to the bank.’

‘OK, chief.’

‘Teresa, I want you to continue examining the documents we took from the villa, and keep in touch with the external expert about the video.’

Teresa nodded.

‘I’ll contact Criminalpol in Rome to find out whether there have been any similar murders in Italy,’ Ferrara went on. ‘And I’ll ask Interpol about the foreign contacts. I’ll also ask the Prosecutor’s Department for permission to acquire the records of mobile phone traffic in Fiesole on the night of the crime and during the previous forty-eight hours. We’ve already asked for Costanza’s records and we’re expecting them shortly. Now let’s get to work. I’m going to Costanza’s funeral later. By the way, Francesco, are any of our officers already in place there?’

‘Yes. Forensics too.’

‘Good.’

The meeting was at an end. Everybody stood up and walked out.

‘Francesco, wait a minute.’

Rizzo retraced his steps. ‘Yes, chief.’

‘You know what?’

‘What?’

‘I always call you by your name, and yet, after all these years and even though we’re good friends, you still call me chief.’

Rizzo stared at him, wondering where Ferrara was going with this.

‘Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’

‘To tell the truth, I’ve never really thought about it.’

‘Why don’t you drop all this “chief” business?’

‘I’d feel uncomfortable, chief.’

‘Enough of all this “chief”. Call me Michele. That’s an order.’

Rizzo laughed. ‘All right, but in private, not in front of the others.’

‘OK. Whatever suits you.’