The Dark Heart of Florence: Number 6 in series (Michele Ferrara) (30 page)

Rizzo spoke to Ferrara and Teresa as soon as he got back from the Institute of Forensic Medicine.

The charred body was that of a male, about five feet three in height. There had been a ring on his right hand and his jaw had been broken.

‘The details match exactly,’ Teresa said. ‘It has to be Fabio.’

‘Why was his jaw broken?’ Ferrara asked.

‘According to the pathologist,’ Rizzo said, ‘it could have happened when part of the roof collapsed on him, but they’ll have to do more tests.’

‘Who was the pathologist on call?’

‘Franceschini.’

‘What about the cause of death?’

‘Probably smoke inhalation.’

Ferrara was increasingly convinced that this was a highly suspicious death. ‘Is there any proof of his identity?’

‘Nothing as yet, but Franceschini will do a dental X-ray.’

‘What about the ring?’

‘We can show it to a family member.’

‘Well, we can’t ask his aunt, she’s in hospital. She fainted while she was in Teresa’s office.’

‘There’s Alba Cecchi, she might recognise it,’ Teresa suggested.

‘Right. I’ll leave that to you, Teresa.’

Ferrara told Rizzo about the safe mentioned by Alba.

‘Well, we’ll just have to find this safe. But the fire brigade have already sealed the apartment.’

Ferrara ordered him to prepare a request for a search warrant and take it personally to the deputy prosecutor who had been assigned the case.

‘Go early tomorrow morning. The Prosecutor’s Department is closed today and there’s no way the deputy prosecutor on call will authorise anything.’

‘I’ll go at eight. Do I need to mention what Fabio’s friend told us as the reason for the request?’

‘Keep it vague, say a confidential source of proven reliability.’

‘Right.’

‘And don’t forget, Francesco, there mustn’t be any mention of the fact that Fabio was working for us.’

‘OK.’

This investigation, Ferrara thought as he watched his deputy leave, was becoming a minefield.

Angelica was going crazy, unable to find any peace of mind.

Her visit to Don Santo had proved futile, and now, back home, she was moving from one room to another, walking back and forth, sniffing as if seeking out the smell of her girlfriend’s skin, then constantly going out and inspecting the garden.

Nothing.

She remembered the sweet words with which she had comforted Guendalina in her saddest moments. She saw her lying asleep beside her with her head resting against her back, heard their sighs and moans during lovemaking, and thought about her doubts and jealousy, their arguments.

It was useless: she could not calm down. She sat down on the sofa and started to cry. The world around her had changed. It had lost its savour.

That evening, after dinner, Ferrara sat on the terrace. The heat had subsided a little and a pleasant breeze was coming off the river. After a while, Petra brought him a pullover and arranged it carefully over his shoulders.

‘Don’t take it off now,’ she said.

He lit a cigar and took another sip of the red wine they had been drinking with their dinner. Wine and a cigar, what a great combination, he reflected.

He thought over everything that had happened and told himself that it was no longer possible to speak about coincidences. He re-read the outline of essential information that he had drawn up at the office.

He was struck again by the sequence of events. There were too many of them in such a short space of time, too many to all be the work of the same hand at any rate. There did seem to be a connection between the crimes, but in all probability there had been more than one criminal at work. And probably with different motives.

That was the biggest mystery of all.

What did Fabio Biondi have to do with the Black Rose? Was he the Archivist? The contents of the safe might be able to provide confirmation.

Things were sure to become clearer soon.

She woke with a start.

The music, which was coming from hidden speakers, was blasting out at full volume.

She recognised Aerosmith.

She rubbed her eyes, got up and went to the iron door, her heart pounding madly. She was convinced the monster would soon be back.

And she was right.

After a few moments the door opened and she only just had time to move a few feet away.

‘Get back on the mattress!’ he cried, grabbing her roughly by the arm.

Fear and horror filled the air, along with the deafening lyrics of the song ‘Dream On’.

That morning, Ferrara found a note Fanti had placed prominently in the middle of his desk, with the word URGENT in block capitals at the top. The note said that there had been a call from a colleague in the traffic police.

‘Fanti!’ he called, but there was no reply.

He sat down and dialled the number for the North Florence traffic police.

‘Armando?’

‘Ah, Michele!’ Deputy Commissioner Armando Tucci replied.

‘What have you got for me?’

‘I have some documents in front of me that you might find interesting.’

Ferrara imagined Tucci surrounded by his colleagues and his maps of the area.

Tucci told him about the speed camera that had recorded a black A-Class Mercedes travelling at about twenty-five miles over the 55mph speed limit on the Siena–Florence slip road on the night of Friday to Saturday. A check on the number plate had identified the owner as a thirty-six-year-old woman living in the Mugello area.

‘That’s very good. Could you fax me the papers as soon as possible?’

‘Of course.’

‘Thanks, Armando.’

‘If it leads to anything, Michele, keep us in mind for an official commendation!’

‘I won’t forget.’

Ferrara called Fanti again. And this time his secretary came running in with some papers in his hand.

‘I was downstairs in records, chief —’

‘Don’t worry about that, Fanti. We should be getting a fax from the traffic police any moment now. I want you to bring it to me as soon as it comes.’

Fanti went back into his room, took up position by the fax machine, and stared at it insistently.

The day had got off to a good start. Feeling encouraged, Ferrara picked up the pile of newspapers, knowing the news there was unlikely to be equally encouraging.

The front page of
La Nazione
screamed:
MAN
BURNT
TO
DEATH
.
The work of the elusive lift arsonist?

In the middle was a photograph of the building, showing Fabio Biondi’s apartment with its windows blown out and part of the façade blackened by smoke.

Next to the story was a feature on all the arsonist’s previous crimes, noting the dates and locations of his attacks. The majority had taken place in the area between the Viale Talenti and the Ponte alla Vittoria, very near to the Isolotto. This latest act seemed to signal a new modus operandi, since it had caused the death of a resident and put the lives of other neighbours at risk. They could have been looking at a mass murder.

How many more times must he strike before he is captured?
was the question – clearly aimed at the police – with which the piece ended.

After this latest incident, Ferrara thought, the Florentines must be feeling especially jittery. Neighbours would start eyeing one another suspiciously, because it had grown extremely likely that the arsonist was someone living a double life, outwardly ordinary, a maniac inside.

He could imagine the lively discussions that must be going on around the city. People were always interested in the details of such sensational crimes.

He folded the newspaper, hoping it wouldn’t be the journalists who solved this case.

It couldn’t have gone better!

Rizzo had just left the administrative office of the Prosecutor’s Department, where he had been told that the case had been assigned to Deputy Prosecutor Erminia Cosenza.

Nicknamed ‘
La Rossa
’ because of her flaming red hair, she was known for her authority, her pragmatism, her stubbornness and her ability to work for up to sixteen hours a day. She was held in high regard, although there were some who accused her of being a prima donna. But this was only because Erminia had never backed down and had taken on cases that no one else would have wanted to be involved in.

He went up another floor and stopped outside Erminia’s door. The red light was on, meaning that she was not to be disturbed. He sat down on a chair in the corridor, the envelope containing the request on his lap, and waited.

When the light went out about half an hour later, he knocked.

‘Come in!’

Rizzo went in.

Erminia Cosenza was not alone.

Standing in front of her desk, saying goodbye, was Commander Eugenio Fossati, head of the fire brigade. Erminia was wearing a pale blue linen suit and high heels that served to emphasise her lovely legs.

‘Come in, Superintendent Rizzo, this is Commander Fossati.’

‘We met last night.’ He went to him and shook his hand. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m here about the fire.’

‘Go on, Superintendent.’

Rizzo handed Erminia Cosenza the request and she went back behind her desk and sat down. When she had finished reading, she said, ‘The Commander here has just told me the results of the initial investigation. We’re definitely dealing with an arson attack.’

‘That’s right,’ Fossati said. Encouraged by a nod from the Deputy Prosecutor, he went on to say that his men had found fragments of glass bottles with traces of flammable liquid. Everything in the apartment had been completely destroyed, including the apparatus, the CDs, the DVDs, and so on.

‘It’s as if whoever started the fire knew that the victim was in possession of something compromising,’ Erminia said. ‘So I think it quite proper to accede to your request, Superintendent Rizzo. I’m going to authorise a search of the apartment. If you do discover a safe or any other hiding place, that may help to clarify matters.’

Fossati nodded and said that he was willing to help in any way he could.

‘Please wait in my secretary’s office, Superintendent Rizzo,’ Erminia said. ‘I’ll have the order ready shortly.’

She stood up and shook his hand.

The DNA results had arrived.

It was quarter past nine in the morning when Marshal Gori found the molecular biology report from Rome on his desk. The expert must have been working on it over the weekend for it to arrive so punctually.

Let’s see what surprises this damn test has in store for us
, Gori said to himself, with a pang of regret for the days when investigators had little more to go on than their intuition. Now the young deputy prosecutors seemed to give priority either to information from criminals who turned State’s evidence – taking their tip-offs, their suggestions, even their hypotheses as gospel – or to the results provided by science.

But it was of vital importance to link this genetic profile to a specific person, otherwise it would just have been an end in itself. Gori was well aware that that DNA results alone could not solve a case.

As a first step, he decided to check if this profile was present on their database.

In Italy, unlike other countries such as Britain, where a database with the DNA profiles of millions of individuals had been in existence since 1995, a single register had not yet been created. However, the Carabinieri had compiled lists of the DNA profiles that had been linked to serious crimes.

The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing
, Gori said to himself grimly.

And he immediately sent in a request to the central office in Rome, where all the data from the various regional headquarters was collated.

It was worth a try, though it might turn out to be futile.