Page 30 of Murder at the Ponte Vecchio

I dialled Amy’s number and was pleased to hear her voice. After a quick exchange of greetings, I asked her if it might be possible for me to speak to her husband about a geology matter. She laughed.

‘Sandy’s always happy to talk about geology. He’s here with me now. I’ll put him on.’

A few moments later, I heard a Scottish voice. ‘Hello, Alexander Mackintosh here. How can I help?’

‘Hello, Mr… Dr Mackintosh.’ For all I knew, he might even be Professor Mackintosh. He was quick to reassure me.

‘Just call me Sandy. Everybody else does. If I remember right, you’re the Englishman married to an Italian who’s lucky enough to live in Florence. Amy told me about your book launch last week. She’s been reading it and is very enthusiastic about it. Apparently, I absolutely must read it after her. Congratulations.’ He sounded very friendly.

‘Hi, Sandy. Thanks for speaking to me and say thanks to Amy for investing in a copy of my book.’ I decided not to specify that Anna and I weren’t married as I moved on to the matter in hand. ‘I gather from Amy that you’re the man to speak to about diamonds. I know very little about them apart from them allegedly being a girl’s best friend. Can you spare me a few minutes?’

‘Of course, fire away.’

I gave him a quick summary of what Amélie had told me and asked him what she might have meant when she’d said, ‘Not these diamonds’. He answered with a question.

‘Did she say her brother-in-law had been working in the DRC?’

‘Yes, and he and his wife are originally from the Central African Republic.’

‘Then these are almost certainly conflict diamonds, sometimes called blood diamonds. Do those names ring a bell?’

‘Yes, vaguely.’

He could tell from my uncertain tone that I needed help, so he launched into an explanation. ‘There are certain parts of Africa where terrorists, criminals or armed militias have hijacked the diamond trade, and hundreds of thousands,probably millions, of people have had to flee their homes to escape the brutality of the unscrupulous people exploiting the mines. Places like Sierra Leone and the DRC have seen the worst of it. Although some of the proceeds go to criminals, lots of the money goes to rebel forces fighting supposedly legitimate governments, and that causes even more upheaval for the people over there. The diamonds mined under these circumstances have been given the name “conflict diamonds”, for obvious reasons.’

This was fascinating. ‘So what’s the difference between conflict diamonds and ordinary diamonds?’

‘As far as the stones themselves are concerned, none at all. They’re all essentially just carbon crystals. The difference from a legal point of view is that the trade in conflict diamonds has been banned in many parts of the world, particularly Europe.’

‘I see, but if they’re the exact same stone, how can you tell the difference?’

‘Regulators have been wrestling with that for years. There was a thing called the Kimberley Process set up a few years back and, although it’s been massively abused, it sort of still operates. According to the KP, any diamond has to come with a certificate attesting to its place of origin. That way, the hope was that the warlords and the criminals wouldn’t be able to sell their looted diamonds and they would run out of money pretty quickly.’

‘From your tone, Sandy, I get the impression this maybe hasn’t worked out quite as they hoped.’

‘Exactly.’ There was a frustrated note to his voice. ‘The system has been abused from day one. Let’s face it, if a bag of diamonds is mined by what is effectively slave labour at the hands of criminal overlords in the DRC or elsewhere, but then smuggled from there to, say, South Africa and declared as having been found in that country, the certificates are issued and no questions asked.Or, at least, the questions are probably asked, but there’s no way of proving that the diamonds aren’t from South Africa.’

‘So if this guy brought three conflict diamonds with him from the DRC, theoretically, he shouldn’t have been able to sell them in Europe without certificates of origin?’

‘And you’re quite right – theoretically. That’s where you need a trader who’s prepared to bend the rules. After all, these diamonds are sold on the black market at a considerably lower price than legitimately mined ones, so there’s a bigger profit to be made. What you’ve got to do now is to find that dodgy trader. Traditionally, Antwerp has always been the home of the diamond trade in Europe, but Italy has also been cashing in on the flood of diamonds smuggled over there, often by so-called asylum seekers coming over the Mediterranean from Libya.’

I felt a surge of satisfaction as the pieces of the jigsaw began to fall into place. ‘That’s fascinating, thanks a lot.’

He offered a suggestion. ‘Seeing as it’s Italy, might it be the Mafia?’

It was a sensible suggestion. ‘I must admit that it wouldn’t surprise me if they were involved, particularly when you consider that there are at least three or four different branches of organised crime still operating happily in Italy. I can well imagine that a supply of cheap diamonds would be welcomed by the Mafia, but in this case, I believe the police already know the identity of a couple of these rogue traders. Unfortunately for them, they’ve both just been murdered.’

‘That’s the other reason they’re called blood diamonds. So much value in such a tiny item tends to bring out the worst in people.’

I thanked him warmly and put down the phone, catching Oscar’s eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘And now, old buddy, I think we’ve earned ourselves a long walk.’

18

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

When I got home, the first thing I did was to change into shorts and trainers and head off up the hill with Oscar, clutching the script forUltimatumgiven to me by Zebra. It was, if anything, even warmer today than the previous days and we were soon hugging the shade. Up here in the hills to the south of Florence, there were wonderful views northwards towards the deep-green bulk of the Apennines and to the south into the rolling hills of the heart of Tuscany, but today I was concentrating my attention on the script, trying not to trip over as I walked and read at the same time.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t miss the fact that spring was definitely in the air and there were green shoots and young leaves already appearing on the vines. As we walked past, lizards basking in the sun on the dry stone walls dashed for cover and I even spotted a hare disappearing into a clump of trees ahead of me. Luckily, Oscar didn’t see it or he would have been after it like a shot. Determined to try and work off some of the food I’d been consuming over the past few days, I stuck the script back in my pocket and jogged several kilometres up the track to the top ofthe hill, where I stopped for a well-earned rest in the shade of a clump of cypress trees.

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