Page 27 of Murder at the Ponte Vecchio

I left Virgilio at the villa, standing guard as Forensics sifted through the contents of the safe. When I got back to the office, I found that Zebra had called and left a message for me with Lina. It didn’t go into any detail but just indicated that she needed to see me as a matter of urgency. She had left a phone number so I sat down and called her back, but without getting a response. I decided to try her later and settled down to answer the emails received since yesterday. It looked as though the next few weeks were going to be busy as one of the emails was from a large company, asking me to investigate possible industrial espionage, and another was from a woman whose ex-husband was stalking her.

I had just finished composing detailed proposals for both potential clients and I was starting to think about lunch when my phone rang. It was Virgilio.

‘Ciao, Dan, are you free for lunch?’

‘Yes, I was just thinking about getting something to eat. Where do you fancy?’

‘Out of town. I’ll come and pick you up if you like.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I’ve had a hurried conversation with thequestoreand he’d like to take both of us out for lunch to a place he knows where we can talk freely.’

‘I wonder why he wants me to tag along. He’s never met me.’ In fact, I had a good idea of thequestore’sreasons, and Virgilio confirmed my supposition.

‘Because he trusts you. He knows how helpful you’ve been to us on a number of occasions. You’re outside the force and, the way things are at the moment, almost everybody in the force is suspect.’ He sounded understandably frustrated.

A practical consideration occurred to me. ‘I’ve got Oscar with me. I can probably ask Lina to watch him for me if necessary.’

‘That’s all right, I’ve already mentioned Oscar, and thequestoreknows you and he are a double act. The place we’re meeting has a secluded terrace where we’ll be able to talk without being overheard and Oscar can join us. Have you ever been to Colonnata? The restaurant’s a short way up the hill from there.’

I had vaguely heard of the village in the hills to the north of Florence but I hadn’t been there, or to thequestore’s chosen restaurant, before. Virgilio came and collected me and we cut through the lunchtime traffic easily with the aid of his flashing blue lights. We went out through the suburbs until we reached open countryside and started to climb. Barely five or six kilometres after Colonnata, we came upon the Montagna Nera restaurant. This had been created inside an old farmhouse on the flank of one of the first foothills of the Apennines, a thousand feet above Florence and the valley of the River Arno. It was a charming old stone building with dusty green shutters on the windows and an enormous wisteria running almost the entire length of the building. I could well imagine how impressive this would look when it bloomed in a few months’ time.

Thequestore, Massimo Livornese, was an unexpectedly small man. He was probably only in his mid-sixties but he had wisps of snow-white hair on his head that made him look older. He did not, however, look senile. He was sitting outside at an isolated table at the far end of a panoramic terrace overlooking Florence and he stood up remarkably nimbly to shake hands with us when he saw us. He patted Oscar’s head and handed him a couple of breadsticks from the table. Clearly, this was a man who knew the way to my dog’s heart.

‘Commissario Pisano, good afternoon. Signor Armstrong, thank you so much for coming. Thank you also for the help you’ve given so generously to the force over the past year or two. I appreciate it immensely. Sit down, please, and let’s order some food. Although it may seem a bit strange up here in the hills, the chef specialises in fish and seafood and I can thoroughly recommend his mixed seafood grill. Alternatively, they also do some excellent grilled meat if you prefer that.’

I had eaten more than enough grilled meat over the past few days, so I opted for the grilled fish willingly and the others followed suit. Thequestoreinsisted that we try the chef’s specialpappardelle ai frutti di marefirst and I braced myself for yet another mammoth meal. This evening’s walk with Oscar was going to have to be a long one to compensate – either that or I was going to have to consider getting myself a whole new wardrobe.

Once the order had been placed, and the waiter had brought us a bottle of cold white wine and a bottle of mineral water, thequestoreturned to the matter at hand and addressed me directly.

‘Signor Armstrong, Commissario Pisano has no doubt told you about the problem facing us, and I’m most grateful to you for sparing the time to assist us. Are you fully aware of what we’re dealing with?’

‘As I understand it, sir, somebody in the Florence police force has been tampering with the files, in particular those relating to the deaths of twoextracomunitariat Santa Maria Novella station. From what Commissario Pisano has told me, only an officer at inspector level or above would be able to make such changes to your records so it narrows down the list of suspects considerably.’

He nodded approvingly. ‘Precisely. And now we have a situation where one of our officers has been seriously injured in an apparent hit-and-run accident, and, from what Commissario Pisano tells me, the accident may well have been a deliberate attempt by a traitor within our ranks to kill Inspector Innocenti.’ There was horror and anger in his tone. ‘We must catch this swine before he can do any more damage.’

Virgilio ran through the facts before us – which were all too few – and thequestorelistened in silence, occasionally nodding his head. He didn’t take notes and neither did we. This was highly confidential stuff and best not committed to paper. The trouble was, of course, that we didn’t have very much to go on. Even the identities of the two asylum seekers murdered at the station were unknown. For all we knew, there might even have been others whose files had been removed. Both victims had been poorly dressed, without any personal belongings, and it was hard to see what possible reason there might have been for their murders, and even less for why a senior officer in the Florence force should have risked his career to conceal what had happened. I raised the possibility that it might have been some sort of vigilante, as previously suggested by Marco, and Livornese nodded.

‘It’s no secret that there are officers in our force and other forces whose views are to the right of centre, in some cases far to the right of centre. I suppose it’s possible that there might be somebody here who has decided that the only way to deal withimmigrants is to kill them. The problem is going to be rooting this person out.’

Virgilio answered. ‘That’s what Marco Innocenti was doing yesterday afternoon, sir: checking the social media of our prime suspects to see if any of them had expressed extreme political views. I found nothing and, from what he could remember when I spoke to him this morning, he also drew a blank – but his memory is still very shaky. As I mentioned to you earlier back in your office, my gut feeling is that there are three senior officers particularly worthy of consideration, but of course it could well be somebody completely different.’ His tone conveyed the frustration he was feeling.

I added a few words of my own. ‘I also did a sweep of social media and other mentions on the Internet of these three officers but without finding anything sinister. Yes, there’s the possibility that one or more of them might be living beyond their means or might have some questionable habits when it comes to women, but I certainly didn’t find a smoking gun by any means.’

Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the pasta course. A waiter appeared bearing a large platter heaped with broad strips of pappardelle and covered in a thick, brown sauce peppered with mussels and clams, whose aroma had Oscar on his feet, nose pointed unerringly at the food above him. I handed him down another breadstick and he settled at my feet with a heavy sigh that clearly spoke of his disappointment, but I hardened my heart. I knew by now that if I were to give him all the food he wanted, I wouldn’t be the only one with an unwanted spare tyre around my waist.

The food was excellent and, inevitably, conversation stilled for a few minutes while we cleared our plates. Once the waiter had removed the empty dishes, Questore Livornese addressed the nub of our problem.

‘We now have to decide what, if anything, we can do about this. Commissario Pisano, do you have any suggestions?’

Virgilio pointed across the table at me. ‘Signor Armstrong has been kind enough to do a bit of online research, as he says, and he’s taken the trouble to check out the homes of the three main suspects. I’ve also been doing what I can online and at HQ, but, as I have to be very careful not to arouse suspicion, there’s a limit to what I’ve been able to accomplish. All we have for now are suspicions, no proof.’

I told him more about what I’d discovered about the three men and we discussed possible financial problems any of them might have, as well as the likelihood of one or more of them laying themselves open to blackmail because of a penchant for younger women. In particular, when I mentioned that Giuseppe Verdi, thevice questore, appeared to have a reputation as a womaniser, I could see that this didn’t come as news to his boss.

‘Verdi’s always been that way inclined, I’m afraid. My wife knows his wife well and it’s clear she’s reaching the end of her tether with him. But do I see him as a murderer, a multiple murderer? No, I don’t.’ He stopped and gave a helpless shrug of the shoulders. ‘But stranger things have happened.’

As thequestorefinished speaking, Virgilio’s phone beeped and he picked it up. He studied the message he’d just received very carefully and then handed it across the table to me. ‘I’ve just been sent this. This individual was caught on CCTV in the Grand Hotel last night. As you can see, there’s little doubt he’s the person who murdered Jacobs.’

I took the phone eagerly and studied the four photos, all timed at around half past ten the previous night. One had clearly been taken on a landing, one in a corridor and one actually showed the figure entering what was presumably Jacobs’s room.The fourth photo was of the man exiting via the lobby and I was immediately struck by the appearance of the killer. He looked quite tall, almost certainly a man, and he was wearing dark trousers and a dark hoodie, pulled up so as to conceal his head. I passed it across the table to thequestoreand shot a question at Virgilio.

‘I haven’t seen the CCTV footage of the man who murdered David Berg on the Ponte Vecchio, but, from the description Marco gave me, this looks like the same perpetrator. Have you seen the Berg footage?’

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