A Florentine Death (23 page)

The apartment was small. He took it all in at a glance.

Having tidied themselves up as best they could, the two friends soon came out. Cinzia had recovered, and looked calm and almost brazen. Valentina was clearly embarrassed.

'Hi, Mike,' she said. 'What brings you here?'

'I came to pick you up, if you want me to. It's Friday, remember?'

'But I told you . . . oh, never mind. I have a headache. Would you like a coffee?'

'I'll make it,' Cinzia offered immediately, heading for the kitchenette.

'Are those
...
for me?' Valentia said, looking at the splendid bunch of roses. 'Of course.'

'Cinzia, bring a big vase, too, can you?' 'It's nice here,' he said.

'It's such a mess . . . We were up very late last night. You know, studying

Mike preferred not to delve into the nature of their studies. But what he suspected had devastated him, and his calm outward manner bore no relation to the fury he felt inside. Of course it was possible that Cinzia had woken first and had already made her bed. But ever since she had opened the door, he had been sure she had only just fallen out of bed -and not her own.

It was a side to Valentina he could never have imagined. It had caught him so completely off guard, he didn't yet know what to think of it.

Cinzia returned with a vase full of water and put the flowers in it. Then she heard the gurgling of the coffee maker and ran back to the kitchenette.

She reappeared with a tray, on which she had arranged the three cups, a sugar bowl and a small vase containing a single rose she had taken out of the bunch. She placed the tray on the coffee table between the sofa and the pouffe and handed one cup to Mike, who was sitting rather stiffly on the sofa, and another to Valentina, who was on the pouffe. As she did so she threw her a knowing glance, which did not escape Mike. Then she took her own cup and sat down on the rug.

'Have you introduced yourselves?' Valentina asked.

'There's no need,' Cinzia said.

'You must be Cinzia,' Mike said.

'Don't you ever take your glasses off?'

Mike smiled and removed them. His ice-cold eyes filled her with a sense of unease.

'I didn't want to disturb you,' he said. 'I only wanted to see how you were and, if you like, take you back to Florence.'

'I'm fine, as you see. The plaster's gone, and so has the sling. And my cheek is completely healed. But I'm still a bit weak, I don't feel up to going back today. Don't worry, though, I'll be able to do it perfectly well by myself. Cinzia has been looking after me really well - better than a nurse!'

'That's up to you. I'll be waiting for you whenever you want.' He stood up.

Are you going already?' Cinzia said, doing nothing to hide her relief. Valentina threw her a reproving look, and this did not escape Mike either.

'I don't want to keep you any longer, and besides, I have an article to finish. I prefer to go back.'

'Come back whenever you like, we'd like that,' Cinzia lied cheerfully, putting a stress on the word 'we', as she walked him to the door.

'Bye,' he said from the door.

'Bye,' Valentina replied.

She was still sitting on the pouffe.

'He may be handsome, he may be kind, but I don't like him.' That was Cinzia's verdict.

'Why doesn't that surprise me?' Valentina said.

After what had happened last night, anyone bursting in on them would have bothered Cinzia, let alone someone who'd come to take Valentina away.

'It's not for the reason you think. There's something strange about him, something cold. Those eyes - brrr

'You're wrong, it's just an impression. At first, I also . . .' She stopped, biting her lip, so that a little drop of blood appeared. She was afraid of saying too much.

Cinzia went up to her, put her arms round her, and tried to wipe off the drop of blood with her lips.

You're hurting me!' Valentina protested, feeling a sharp pain in her shoulder. Last night, she hadn't complained.

Cinzia moved away abruptly. 'Sorry'

'It's nothing, I'm sorry'

Anyway,' Cinzia went on, 'what do you care? You're not going back to Florence, are you?' Valentina said nothing.

Again, she didn't know. She hadn't liked seeing Mike go. Not like that, anyway. She didn't want to break off the relationship that way: it may not have got started properly, but it had left its mark on her.

How much easier everything would be if she could see everything through to the end, if she could love them both, with no ties, no obligations! But the world wasn't like that.

'You haven't answered me,' Cinzia said in alarm.

'I don't know, Cinzia

'Here we go again! We've already played this scene, Vale. It's time you grew up. It's time you made your own decisions.'

Cinzia was right. She had to make a decision. And she couldn't do that by sheltering in a corner, huddled in her friend's arms: that much suddenly became clear to her. She had to fly with her own wings. She had tried once and had fallen to earth.
Like that leap from the ski-jump,
she thought.
Exactly the same.
She'd recovered from that, maybe she should try again.

'Even if they aren't the same as yours?' she said.

Cinzia said nothing. She was chilled to the bone. All the love, the care, the affection, the two weeks of shared joys and anxieties, the passion - pointless. It had all been pointless.

In the afternoon they started quarrelling again, and the next day Valentina packed her few belongings in a bag and left.

Cinzia watched her from the window as she walked towards the bus stop.

For the first time in her life she felt really afraid. As sharply as if someone had put a scalpel through her heart, she had a premonition that this was really the end and she would never see Valentina again.

9

'Can't you sleep?' Ferrara asked his wife, not long after she had switched off the lamp on her bedside table.

It was two in the morning on Ash Wednesday.

'You're the one who can't sleep,' Petra replied. 'You've been tossing and turning for an hour. Come on, get up, I'll make you a camomile tea.'

They went to the kitchen and she put the kettle on. On the table she placed two large cups, the sugar bowl and a small plate of the German biscuits - chewy biscuits that kept the jaws busy and were hell on the teeth - which her parents had sent her for Carnival.

'You're worried,' she said.

'No. But there's something about the case I'm working on that doesn't feel right.'

He didn't add anything else. He didn't like talking about his work at home, and even though it wasn't a rule, more of a habit, his wife always respected his silence.

'Isn't there always something that doesn't feel right until a case is over?' Petra said. 'It's the same with me. For example, I planted peony bulbs in the autumn and the buds should already be out by now, but they're not. What should I do? Should I worry? What's the point? I water them regularly, I give them fertiliser, and one day I'll go and check, quite calmly - because plants can sense when you're anxious - and there they'll be. We'll have beautiful flowers and I'll give you one to put in your office.'

He smiled. His wife's pragmatic philosophy had always helped him.

They continued talking about plants and flowers, finished their camomile tea, and went back to bed.

But Ferrara still couldn't get to sleep.

It wasn't Gallo's hostility that bothered him. He knew what prosecutors were like. They came and went, superintendents remained. It was the vagueness of the case, these murders that were related and at the same time unrelated, almost as if the killer wanted to display his signature and at the same time amuse himself by leaving contradictory clues, mixing up the scientifically established types like a conjuror shuffling his cards, playing with their theories like . . . yes, like the proverbial cat with the mouse.

He had to free his mind of those theories and go back to square one, start all over again with the mysterious priest, the anonymous letters, the corpses.

Right, let's start again with the corpses,
he told himself. But there was one missing. Was the killer playing with the bodies, too? Leaving the first ones in full view but keeping this one hidden?

All day long he had been waiting for the call to come, announcing that another corpse had been found. It hadn't happened.

Commissioner Lepri, Prosecutor Gallo and the deputy prosecutors must be having a great time.

'If there's another murder, I'll have to admit you're right,' Gallo had said. As if admitting one of his subordinates, the head of the
Squadra Mobile,
was right were a calamity. And in the meantime, Ferrara thought bitterly, he had again shown how little he trusted him, and had tipped the wink to his deputies to keep a close eye on him.

The grandfather clock in the living room struck three.

At two minutes past six, the telephone rang.

They had found the fourth body.

'Near the amphitheatre in the Parco delle Cascine, there's a man lying on the ground, covered in blood. He's not moving. Come quickly'

The emergency call had come in at six in the morning.

The patrol car had got there a few minutes later, almost simultaneously with the ambulance. The man who had made the call was waiting for them. He was a pensioner, and had been walking his dog in the park, as he did every morning. A man lay face down on the ground, covered in stab wounds.

About twenty feet from the body, in full view under a tree, the police had found a bloodstained knife. The blade was about six inches long and had a mother-of-pearl handle.

Ferrara, Rizzo and Sergi soon arrived, immediately joined by Deputy Prosecutor Giulietti, who, in accordance with instructions, intended to take an active part in the scene of crime investigation and follow the operations of the forensics team in person.

The dead man was wearing a pair of old jeans and a polo-neck sweater. On his left wrist he had a watch with a metal strap: it had stopped at 3.10. On his feet were a pair of brown moccasins which showed no traces of having been dragged over the ground. Nor were there signs that there had been a struggle. The only traces of blood were where the corpse lay.

'He hasn't been moved,' Ferrara remarked. 'This is where he was killed.'

'Yes, it looks like it,' Sergi replied, crouching to have a closer look at the ground. In the meantime, Inspector Pino Fabrizi had arrived. Fabrizi was very familiar with night-time activities in the Cascine.

There were three holes in the back of the sweater, corresponding to the same number of wounds. The holes were quite close together. The sweater was soaked with blood, and blood was dripping from the sides of the body onto the ground.

Francesco Leone touched the body. The parts of it which had been exposed to the air were cold, whereas where it had been in contact with the ground, it was still slightly warm. It was also still possible to move the joints, which were not in an advanced stage of rigor mortis. Then he turned over the corpse. The blood that gushed out was still quite liquid. The front of the body showed the characteristic blue-red hypostatic marks, which are concentrated in the lower parts of a corpse. There were none on the rest of the body. As had been the case with the previous victims, the face and neck were heavily disfigured with knife wounds.

'He hasn't been dead for long,' Leone said. 'Three to four hours at the most. The hypostatic marks have only just appeared. But we'll have a more precise idea after we've done the post-mortem and determined the body temperature.'

The dead man must have been about thirty. He was of normal build and medium height.

The scene of crime officers put on their gloves and started searching the dead man's trouser pockets, under the vigilant eyes of Ferrara and Anna Giulietti. In the right pocket they found a gold key-ring with two keys, one clearly from a car, the other most likely from a house or an apartment. In the same pocket there was also a wallet containing a few banknotes, and a driving licence with the man's photo. His name was Giovanni Biagini: born in Florence, thirty-three years old. A subsequent search in the Ministry of the Interior database would show that he had no criminal record.

'Fabrizi,' Ferrara said, 'I want the whole of the surrounding area searched, including under the trees.'

Inspector Fabrizi split his men into two teams. He gave the keys found in the dead man's pocket to a couple of the men, and told them to check the cars parked in the area. There weren't many at that hour, and one of them could well be the victim's car.

In the meantime, the forensics team had started photographing the scene. They took samples of the blood present on the knife, especially on the blade, using pads soaked in a physiological solution, which they then placed in special bags. The knife itself was sealed in a separate bag.

What bothered Ferrara was the fact that the killer had abandoned the weapon at the crime scene. Why? If this killing was the work of the same person - and he was sure it was - was this another surprise move in the bizarre game he was playing with Ferrara?

As if reading his thoughts, Anna Giulietti came up to him. 'So you were right. Your killer took his time, but he struck in the end, as you predicted.'

She was wearing a grey overcoat made less forbidding by an aquamarine silk blouse the same shade as her luminous, smiling eyes. There was a sprig of mimosa in the buttonhole of her coat: Ferrara remembered that today was International Women's Day.

'A bit early to say'

'But you'd bet on it, right?'

Td bet my shirt,' Ferrara said.

'Not your career?' she joked. 'That's cautious of you.' Ferrara brushed aside her joke. He wondered what was so special about women that they should have their own day when men didn't. Petra was an exception, of course. He mustn't forget to buy her flowers.

The search of the park proved fruitless, but the two officers sent to look for the car had better luck. They found it parked near the Viale dell'Aeronautica. A white Fiat Punto, with a Florence number plate. Inside was the registration, in the name of Giovanni Biagini, a pocket diary containing a number of names and telephone numbers, and a few pornographic magazines hidden under the seat covers in the back.

'We're sequestrating the car,' Anna Giulietti said immediately, turning to Ferrara. 'Take it to the garage at Headquarters and have forensics take a look at it.'

Ferrara gave the order.

Then he called Sergi. 'Take a team to search Biagini's apartment and interview his family, if he has any. Try to find out what he was doing in the hours before he was killed and what kind of man he was.'

The house was in Galluzzo, on the edge of the city: a small house with a garden, where Giovanni Biagini had lived with his brother and sister, both unmarried. Biagini wasn't married either.

They had to wait a few minutes before the door was opened.

When at last the Biaginis came to the door, Sergi showed his badge and said, 'Sorry to disturb you, but is Giovanni Biagini a relative of yours?'

'Our brother,' the man said. The woman looked worried.

‘I’m sorry . . . May I come in? I'm afraid we have some bad news for you

When they were sitting down inside, Sergi told them the news. Biagini's sister burst into tears. The brother looked stunned.

'But. . . are you sure it's him? Can't it be . . .?'

'I'm afraid there's no doubt about it. I'm truly sorry'

'But how did it happen? Who was it?'

'That's what we have to find out. Prosecutor Giulietti, who's coordinating the investigation, has ordered us to carry out a search. I know this may not seem like the best time, but we can't waste a minute if we want to find the culprit.'

The brother and sister did not object. A search of their house was carried out in their presence. They found a diary and various papers, which would need to be examined carefully. What they did not find, though, were any more pornographic magazines or any other indications that the victim had been gay.

Sergi asked the Biaginis to come with him to Headquarters and left a couple of men to question the neighbours. They needed to found out as much as they could about the dead man as soon as possible.

The questioning of the brother and sister yielded no significant information.

They were interviewed together. Sergi had thought it would make things easier. Their names were Antonia and Filippo, and both were older than the dead man.

'How was Giovanni yesterday? Did you notice anything unusual about him?'

'No.' Filippo Biagini glanced at his sister, who was still very upset. 'Do you mind if I answer the questions? My sister knows exactly the same as I do. Neither more nor less.'

'No problem. So there was nothing unusual?'

Absolutely nothing. Giovanni was exactly the same as always. I really don't understand . . .'

'Did he have a girlfriend? Did he stay with anyone?'

'No, he lived with us, he didn't have anyone. My sister and I don't have anyone. We're loners. We prefer it that way. Our parents, who are both dead now, were very much of the old school, very strict. We got used to living alone, and now . . .'

'As far as you know, did he have any problems? Could anyone have had a reason to kill him?'

'I doubt it. If there'd been anything he would have told us. We had a very close relationship. We trusted each other.'

'So you knew he had . . . "special friends" - male friends?'

The man seemed astounded. 'How dare you, Superintendent?' he protested, looking anxiously at his sister, who was still weeping quietly.

Serpico ignored the outburst. 'Thank you for the promotion,' he said, trying to play things down, 'but I'm only an inspector.'

'Sorry, I don't know the ranks. It's the first time I've ever found myself in a situation like this. I've never been in a police station in my life, not even to apply for a passport.'

'That's all right. It was just a joke, but I realise this is not the right time. And I'm sorry about the question, but we have reason to believe that —'