The Dark Heart of Florence: Number 6 in series (Michele Ferrara) (3 page)

‘Well?’ Ferrara asked. ‘Did he say anything else? The victim’s name?’

They were crossing the city, the blue light rotating slowly on the car roof. The driver, Giancarlo Perrotta, had just summarised what he had learnt from the Operations Room.

A man had phoned 113 to report, his voice shaking with emotion, that he had just found his employer dead.

‘No, he didn’t say anything else. He hung up straight after giving the address and directions how to get there.’

The driver spoke with a noticeable Neapolitan accent. He had joined the force a couple of years ago and had only recently been transferred to the
Squadra Mobile
here in Florence, one of the most sought-after postings for young police officers eager to experience the glamour of detective work.

They drove along the Via San Domenico towards Fiesole and its surrounding hills. Having left the built-up area they drove in silence for a few miles. Then the radio began to crackle.

‘Car One calling Central,’ they heard.

‘Come in, Car One!’

It was the team that patrolled south of the city. They had been the first on the scene.

An officer communicated the victim’s particulars, gathered from his identity card.

As soon as Ferrara heard the name, he swore and instinctively grabbed the microphone to tell the team to make sure they didn’t specify their location in case anyone was listening in. It was now common knowledge that journalists, criminals and even curious members of the public tuned into the frequencies used by the State Police and the Carabinieri.

Then he put the microphone back and started thinking, eyes fixed on the strip of asphalt stretching ahead of him. Apart from the sound of the air-conditioning, which wasn’t working very well, it was quiet in the car.

Coming to the turning they had been told to take, the driver steered left off the main road onto a narrow but paved private road. They drove along it for about half a mile until they came to a heavy iron gate. For a moment, Ferrara’s gaze lingered on the rectangular slab of Tuscan sandstone on which the owner’s name was carved in capital letters. They drove through and found themselves on a tree-lined avenue surrounded by flowerbeds and manicured lawns. At the end of it, they could see a large, austere classical villa, like some Medici residence from the Renaissance. The driver stopped the grey Alfa Romeo 156 in the space set aside for parking. The crunch of gravel could be heard beneath the tyres.

There were already a few police cars there, some white and blue, some unmarked, together with an ambulance. Next to the ambulance, two paramedics stood talking. They both looked nauseous and were inhaling great lungfuls of smoke from their cigarettes. There was a stretcher on the ground by the back door, but it was too late for them to do anything. They were only waiting for someone to give them the green light to leave.

At least there weren’t any journalists, Ferrara thought.

‘Good morning, Chief Superintendent!’

A uniformed police officer had seen Ferrara arrive and had rushed up to greet him, pausing first to grab his regulation cap from the dashboard of one of the cars and put it on. He had a boyish face, which was perhaps why he had grown the beginnings of a beard. He must have been twenty-one or twenty-two at the most.

A short distance from him stood his female colleague. She too was quite young. She wore her long blonde hair in a plait and her face was as white as a sheet. Ferrara thought about the feelings the young policewoman must be experiencing. Fear? Anxiety? Horror? Something she had probably never thought about before, at least not seriously. When she saw Ferrara she tried to pull herself together, quickly checking her uniform to make sure it was neat and tidy, and assuming an alert stance. She didn’t want Ferrara to think she was just a woman who got scared easily: you needed strength and determination to work in the presence of death.

As he returned his greeting, Ferrara realised the young male officer was looking just as nauseous as the two paramedics and the young policewoman. Maybe they’re just tired, he thought as he walked towards the solid wooden door, his footsteps crunching on the gravel.

At that moment, Teresa Micalizi, the senior officer on duty, appeared in the doorway. She was wearing a cotton jacket over a crumpled T-shirt, a worn pair of jeans and a pair of plimsolls. Her face, too, bore unmistakable signs of disgust. After a moment’s hesitation, Teresa approached the young policewoman, who was holding a tissue pressed to her mouth, and tried to reassure her, glancing from time to time at Ferrara, then at Superintendent Rizzo, the deputy head of the
Squadra Mobile
, who had come out of the villa just after her and was now conferring with Ferrara in a corner of the parking area. Teresa wondered why Ferrara had not gone straight in to look at the crime scene.

There was, in fact, a good reason.

‘All right, Francesco, give me your first impressions.’

Ferrara knew his deputy well: down to earth, a man of few words, in many people’s opinion the perfect embodiment of what a detective should be. He was of average height and solid build, but over the past few months he seemed to have aged rapidly. His greying hair bore testimony to that. He had been working at Ferrara’s side for several years now and their understanding was so great that they each knew what the other was thinking with a mere exchange of glances.

That was why Ferrara had decided to trust in his colleague’s intuition rather than immediately ascertain the facts, which he would learn soon enough anyway. To him, intuition – the first impression – was the most reliable interpretation of what was observed at a crime scene, and he had almost always found that indulging that intuition had set him on the right path.

‘Definitely the work of a professional, I’d say, chief. It has all the characteristics. We could be looking at a revenge killing.’

Ferrara nodded.

‘He may well have got rid of anything that could connect him to the murder,’ Rizzo went on. ‘We’ll have to check every dustbin in the area.’

‘Let’s get every available man on it,’ Ferrara said. ‘And we’ll need to go over the lawns carefully with a metal detector. I think we should also interview the staff at the restaurant near here and the residents of the neighbouring villas – in fact, any potential witnesses we can track down.’

It was highly likely that, before committing his crime, the killer would have reconnoitred the area, presumably at the same time of day that he intended to strike. It must indeed have been a professional, with such careful planning, but they could not rule out the possibility that someone might have noticed him.

‘I’ll get right on it, chief. We’ll speak to the owner and staff of the restaurant as soon as it opens, and the neighbours as soon as we can.’

They both knew that most of the residents in the area were doctors, lawyers, engineers and well-known businessmen. In other words, the upper–middle class and nouveaux riches who had abandoned the centre of Florence, where they no longer felt safe, and taken refuge in the hills around Fiesole, protected by high walls and hedges, convinced they could live a more peaceful life there. They were bound to feel a lot more vulnerable now.

‘Have the pathologist and the deputy prosecutor arrived yet?’ Ferrara asked Rizzo.

‘Only the pathologist. He’s already checked the temperature of the corpse and how far rigor mortis has progressed. He’s just finishing the external examination now. The victim was shot in the forehead, that’s one thing we can be sure of. It looks like a genuine execution.’

‘Which deputy prosecutor is on call?’

‘Luigi Vinci, theoretically. I spoke to him on the phone and he said to go ahead with the crime scene investigations and he’ll join us later. He’s at his holiday home by the sea, at Follonica.’

So, Ferrara thought, Vinci was ‘on call’ more than a hundred miles away!

‘Any witnesses?’

‘Not at the moment.’

Ferrara took a few steps forward, then turned and gave Rizzo a long look. Rizzo nodded. ‘Francesco,’ Ferrara said, ‘we need to handle this very carefully. We don’t want to get into any trouble over this. Leave the official stuff to me. When I’m back at Headquarters, I’ll contact the Commissioner and the Prosecutor’s Department and deal with the media… the usual crap. I want you to stay here and coordinate the investigation.’

‘Of course, chief. I’ll call you if anything turns up.’

They moved back to the villa and Ferrara, glancing up and to his right, noticed a surveillance camera trained directly on the front door. He had not spotted it when he arrived. They might be in luck after all!

‘Have you checked that?’ he asked Rizzo, indicating the camera.

‘Yes, chief. It was the first thing I did. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working, so there’s no footage.’

Ferrara put on the plastic overshoes and latex gloves that the driver had brought him in the meantime. There was always at least one box of them in every car from the Headquarters pool. He ordered Teresa Micalizi to take some officers and start a search of the garden, the secondary crime scene, and at last walked up the two sandstone steps and crossed the threshold after Rizzo, who was a few steps ahead of him.

He was prepared for the worst.

There was nothing unusual just inside the front door, nor at the beginning of the corridor. The floor, covered in terracotta tiles arranged in a herringbone pattern, was spotless, as were the white walls. The pictures hung straight. The only thing out of place was the telephone handset lying on a nineteenth-century side table. All was calm. Even the pendulum of the old wall clock seemed to move in total silence.

They came to the doorway of a large room. The door was wide open and Rizzo stopped for a moment. ‘Everything’s in order in here, chief,’ he said.

Ferrara glanced in and saw an enormous sandstone fireplace and two separate living areas with various items of genuine antique furniture. The cushions were perfectly arranged, as were the rugs. The valuable paintings on the walls were untouched. Everything gave the impression of good taste and evident wealth.

‘Let’s carry on, Francesco.’

They continued down the corridor, and as they walked red marks on the floor seemed to announce the slaughter. The bottom of a section of wall was spattered with blood. Carefully avoiding it, they entered the nearest room: a spacious study with a high coffered ceiling, two of its walls lined with well-filled bookshelves. There were further bloodstains on the floor near the door.

‘Where’s the body?’ Ferrara asked.

‘In the bathroom.’

‘Let’s go, then.’

Ferrara noticed more drops of dark blood on the floor along the way. And other marks of the same colour clearly left by something being dragged. In front of the bathroom door lay several items of men’s clothing: a jacket, a pair of trousers, and a shirt that had once been white.

They had arrived.

The Carrara marble floor reflected the glow of the numerous spotlights shining down from the ceiling. In the middle of the room was a Jacuzzi. The taps were dripping and the slow patter made the atmosphere even grimmer. Two men stood by the Jacuzzi: Francesco Leone, the pathologist, and a technician from Forensics. They were both wearing overshoes and sterile gloves, and the technician had a single-use cap on his head. He was writing down everything Leone told him in a notebook.

‘Typical burn marks are visible round the entrance wound…’

On seeing Ferrara, Leone broke off. ‘Good morning, Chief Superintendent,’ he greeted him, emphasising the word ‘good’.

Ferrara returned the greeting formally. Although they had worked together on many cases and established a good understanding, he preferred to keep things businesslike when they were on the job.

Leone, who was of stocky build and completely bald, with an egg-shaped head, was wearing rumpled trousers and had his shirtsleeves rolled up. His forearms were completely hairless. He gave the impression that he had only just got out of bed and come running straight to the crime scene. He wiped the sweat from his gleaming forehead with a tissue.

At first glance, he might have seemed a man of little account. But when he was at work, he exuded power. He admired only a few detectives, Ferrara being one. He couldn’t stand the vast majority of them, with their endless requests: they wanted first one thing then another, the results of the post-mortem, the results of the toxicology report. And they wanted everything straight away, almost before he had had a chance to consider the evidence. They seemed ignorant of the fact that science had its own rhythms that had to be respected.

‘Come closer, Chief Superintendent,’ Leone said, shifting a bit. ‘He was shot at very close range, most probably with the weapon pressed to his forehead. The bullet exited through the back of the neck.’ Leaning forward, he used his hands to turn the head.

Ferrara stared at the corpse.

There was a sudden glint in his eyes, a momentary disturbance, that the others recognised. At that instant, he had realised that this was not just another crime scene.

There was something special about the body in front of him, something he had never witnessed before. He had seen so many corpses, both in person and in photographs, that he had lost count. Corpses of men, women, children… This scene, though, was the most gruesome of all.

It was like something from a horror film.

On second thoughts, it was even worse.