Page 36 of Murder at the Ponte Vecchio

I called Oscar and ran back down the track to my house. The sky was getting ever darker so, without stopping to change out of my shorts, I jumped into the van with him and set off downhill as fast as I could.

It was just after three when I skidded to a halt at the turn-off to the wildfowl lake and took a left fork down a dusty track signposted4 x 4 Centre. This track curled sharply downwards into what had clearly once been a fairly sizeable old quarry. There was a muddy pond in the middle with vehicle tracks leading in and out of it, and those same tracks climbed and descended a series of obstacles ranging from heaps of earth and rocks to a near-vertical slope leading up and out of the quarry again. Over to the right was the wooden construction I had spotted before. This was obviously the clubhouse, but it was on a far smaller scale than the one for the hunters at the wildfowl lake. I parked alongside it and went over to the door but found it locked. A notice on the wall alongside the door indicated the opening hours and I saw that on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the centre was closed. This actually suited me perfectly as it meant there would be nobody here to wonder why I was snooping around their vehicles. I walked around the wooden hut but saw nobody. What I did see, however, were half a dozen off-road vehicles parked behind the building.

While Oscar wandered around, investigating the quarry, I set about the task of investigating the collection of fairly battered vehicles. Four of them were Land Rovers – clearly the vehicle of choice for the dedicated off-roader – and the other two were different makes. All of them, apart from having various dents and scratches and a liberal coating of dust, were shod with chunkytyres to help them over uneven terrain. I started with the Land Rovers. These all had a hefty steel front bumper running right across from side to side, and I could see that the front of this type of vehicle was effectively upright. I remembered reading an article years ago describing Land Rovers as having ‘brick-like aerodynamics’ and what this also meant, of course, was that in the event of an accident, particularly involving a pedestrian, the victim’s body would take the full force of the vehicle rather than sliding up a sloping bonnet and avoiding the worst of the impact. From the severity of Marco’s injuries, it could well be that he had been hit by one of these.

A cursory glance at the first one told me nothing. Yes, there were clumps of dry grass stuck in corners and multiple scratches, dents and bumps, but nothing immediately to indicate that this had been involved in a collision with a pedestrian. I knelt down and subjected the front of it to a close study but without seeing anything sinister. I did the same with the next Land Rover but, again, without success. When I transferred my attention to the third – by the look of it, at least twenty years old – my eye was drawn to the front of the vehicle on the driver’s side. It was dented and there were two small, old-fashioned round lights, one orange – presumably, the indicator – and one a clear sidelight set into the aluminium bodywork. Both were cracked and the clear one was missing a piece. What was particularly interesting was the fact that on the remaining piece of plastic, I could see brown staining, which, on closer inspection, looked suspiciously like dried blood.

I pulled out my phone and took several photos of the vehicle with close-ups of the broken lights. I then used one of Oscar’s useful poo bags to gradually work a piece of the stained plastic away from the broken light and drop it into the bag. I rolled this up and tucked it into my pocket before carrying on my inspection of the vehicle, finding other traces of blood and, in particular, atiny piece of torn, grey material. From memory, the last few times I had seen Marco, he had been wearing grey trousers. This, too, went into a bag and into my pocket. As I completed my inspection, I felt a first heavy drop of rain on my head, immediately followed by more and more until, in a matter of seconds, it was absolutely bucketing down, and I was in imminent danger of getting soaked through.

Even Oscar, who loves water, was beginning to look bedraggled, so I straightened up and headed around to the front of the building and the shelter of my van. The once dusty ground had already turned to viscous mud, and I slipped and slid about as I walked, wondering who the driver of the Land Rover had been: Faldo or Grande. I was approaching my vehicle when I heard the sound of an engine and saw a dark-blue car coming gingerly down the bumpy track towards me, snaking from side to side in the slippery mud.

This was no 4 x 4. This was a very smart, shiny BMW saloon, and in the driving seat was none other than Inspector Roberto Faldo.

21

THURSDAY AFTERNOON

Inspector Faldo drove across the quarry floor until he reached me. He switched off the engine before climbing out into the torrential downpour. Apparently oblivious to the fact that his smart, light-grey suit jacket was rapidly turning dark grey, and the rain was flattening his hair and running down his face, he took two steps towards me and stopped. I noticed that Oscar made no move to go forward and greet him, preferring to hug the side of my van, where he got a little shelter from the torrential rain that was hammering down on the vehicles with a noise like thunder.

‘Signor Armstrong, fancy meeting you here.’ There was no warm welcome in his voice – very much the opposite. He looked and sounded decidedly menacing. As the rain soaked through his clothes and plastered his jacket against his body, I could clearly see the outline of a pistol in a holster under his left arm, and I instinctively took a step closer to my van.

He held up a hand and wagged his finger at me. ‘You aren’t going to go off and leave me, are you?’ His voice hardened and I saw his right hand tense, ready to reach for the weapon. ‘First, I need you to tell me what brings you here. Curiosity, maybe?’

By now, the rain had soaked right through my clothes and I could feel a small river running down my back, but that was the least of my worries. I rapidly considered my options – and there weren’t many of them. If I tried to run, I knew he could shoot me down in seconds and there was something in his eyes that told me he wouldn’t hesitate to kill yet another person. That look, every bit as much as the dried blood I’d just found, convinced me that I was standing in front of a serial killer. The death of a British private investigator would just add one more to his tally, and I felt sure he wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

My brain was working overtime, desperately trying to come up with a way out of this predicament, as I did my best to stay positive, trying not to reflect on what might be going to happen to me. Flight was out of the question, so that left me with a choice of launching an attack or negotiating. Although I used to box for the Metropolitan Police in my younger days and I’ve always tried to keep myself pretty fit, I knew that I would have my work cut out against a fit, strong man many years my junior, even if I were to manage to get the gun off him in the first place. Shelving that option for now, I decided to try negotiation, and I did my best to produce a friendly smile.

‘Inspector Faldo, what a coincidence. I often come here with Oscar for a walk.’ An idea occurred to me. ‘He’s training to be a gun dog, ready to start retrieving waterfowl from the lake when the shooting season starts again. We’ve just come from there now.’

For a moment, I saw his expression relax but it didn’t last long. ‘Nice try, but we both know that’s a lie, don’t we? Whose idea was it to fill the cigar box with gravel? Was it yours or Pisano’s?’

Any doubts I might have had about his guilt were swept away in an instant.

‘Don’t worry, though. I found the spy camera and I destroyed it.’

My mind registered that he had used the singular when referring to the camera so, if he were to kill me, hopefully, there would still be evidence in the other camera to prove that he’d been looking in the cigar box. This was, however, little comfort. For now, the more pressing thing on my mind was trying to come up with something that would prevent me from being killed. I tried pleading ignorance.

‘Did you say a cigar box full of gravel? I don’t understand.’

‘Don’t insult my intelligence, Armstrong. I know you were behind that.’ His right hand moved a few inches closer to his open jacket and I tensed even more. ‘So tell me, did somebody send in dashcam footage of my Land Rover or has Marco suddenly started remembering what happened?’

I knew that there was no point continuing to deny knowledge of what he’d done, so I tried a bit of bluff. ‘Both, Faldo, since you ask. The door camera on the property directly opposite Marco’s place has produced a beautifully clear image of the moment of impact when you tried to murder him. He still doesn’t remember anything about the accident, thank God, but he remembers getting a phone call summoning him back to the office.’

I saw him shake his head in annoyance. ‘I shouldn’t have done that, but he was getting too close. I knew that sooner or later, he’d work it out. He had to be silenced, but how was I to know that being hit by a Land Rover wasn’t going to kill him? I can’t get to him now to finish the job so I have to get away. How annoying.’ He made it sound as if it were Marco’s fault. Certainly, there was no trace of pity or contrition in his voice. This guy was a psychopath. This realisation did little to slow my racing heart.

I kept my eyes trained on his right hand, fully prepared to launch myself at him if he reached for his weapon but knowing,deep down, that it would probably be a futile effort. We were about eight or ten feet apart, and by the time I reached him, the pistol would be in his hand. I remembered the message I’d left for Virgilio. I’d arrived here at the quarry at three and it was probably at least three-fifteen by now, maybe later. If he’d listened to my message as soon as he finished his tennis lesson, it was possible he could get himself here by half past three so, for now, all I could do was try to buy myself time by keeping Faldo talking. As he had freely admitted the attempted murder of Marco, I asked him about the diamonds.

‘Tell me something, Faldo: how long have you been running the conflict-diamond operation at Santa Maria Novella station?’ The rainwater was streaming down my face but I resisted the temptation to reach up and wipe my eyes, for fear that he might misinterpret the movement and pull out his gun. As long as that remained holstered, I had a fraction of a chance of survival.

His expression changed to one of considerable surprise. ‘You know about that? How do you know about that?’

‘Somebody I met told me. He’s an asylum seeker and he sold some diamonds recently. Did he sell them to you, or do you have a go-between?’ I stopped and then continued as if I’d just worked it out. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t dirty your hands, would you? It was Berg who collected the diamonds for you, wasn’t it?’

To my surprise, he laughed. ‘Berg collected the diamonds forhimself. It was his little racket. I wasn’t involved with him in the slightest. I only found out about him from anextracomunitariowho was trying to sell some diamonds. I got him to tell me who the buyer was. It took me a month, but I managed to track that man down and he told me that he passed the diamonds on to a man called Berg on the Ponte Vecchio.’

‘And so you killed all three of them.’

‘Of course.’ The matter-of-fact way he said it made my skincreep. ‘The two Africans were no loss to humanity, and the old man in the jewellery shop was a crook.’

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