Page 4 of Murder at the Ponte Vecchio

I smiled and shook my head. ‘Chance would be a fine thing. No, we had a little chat.’ I deliberately try to keep Anna separate from my work where possible to avoid bringing work problems home with me. That had to a great extent been the cause of my original divorce well over two years ago, so for now, I told her a little white lie. ‘As we both now work for the same publishing house, we were just exchanging notes. The mayor seems like a pleasant chap and he’s invited me for lunch one day next week. That’s rather nice of him, isn’t it?’

Anna nodded approvingly and Amy glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better go. The girls were going out for dinner somewhere in the centre and then they said they were going clubbing. The last thing I feel like is a noisy disco, but I suppose I’d better go and keep an eye on them. They do have a tendency to get themselves into trouble. Thank you very much for inviting me to your soirée. It’s been great to meet you, Dan, and to catch up with Anna. And, Dan, the first thing I’m going to do when I get back to the UK is to buy a copy of your book in English.’

She gave us both a kiss, hugged Oscar, and left in search of her hens. I glanced across at Anna and smiled at her. ‘Amy told me you two were divorce buddies. There were times when I wished I’d had a shoulder to cry on when my marriage was falling apart.’

She smiled back, a genuine, happy smile. ‘That’s all behind us now, Dan. Amy has her new husband and that all sounds as if it’s going well. As for me, I can’t complain. I didn’t just get a wonderful man; I got a sloppy Labrador into the bargain.’

Reassured that all was well with her – and me – I reached for the remains of my beer and settled back in my seat, wondering what my two brief encounters this evening were likely to bring. Was it just coincidence that the mayor of the city and a jeweller on the Ponte Vecchio both appeared keen to have the services of a private investigator? I looked forward to seeing how that worked out.

3

SATURDAY MORNING

Although it had rained in the night, it was a pleasant, sunny morning when I took Oscar for his early walk. There was still a bit of night-time chill in the air, but it looked like being another sparkling spring day. I turned right outside Anna’s front door and headed back towards the Ponte Vecchio. My intention was to turn right again when we reached the bridge and head up the hill past the beautiful Pitti Palace away from the town centre so as to give Oscar a chance to stretch his legs without encountering crowds of tourists. However, when we got to the bridge, my attention was drawn to a couple of police cars parked across the entrance to it, with a pair of police officers in uniform effectively blocking access to this major tourist attraction. Intrigued, I wandered over and was pleased to see a familiar face. It was my old friend Inspector Marco Innocenti. I had first met him when he’d been a sergeant and I’d always rated him as a very competent police officer.

‘Ciao, Marco, what’s got you out of bed at seven-thirty on a Saturday morning?’ Oscar, spotting his old buddy, trotted over to greet him as the two of us shook hands.

‘Some guy’s decided to hang himself off the bridge.’

After thirty years in the murder squad, I was no stranger to violent death, but it came as a shock all the same. ‘Here on the Ponte Vecchio? What a place to choose. Does it look suspicious?’

Marco shook his head. ‘Doesn’t appear so. No signs of a struggle.’

‘Is Virgilio there? I didn’t get a chance to talk to either of you last night. Thanks a lot for coming, by the way.’

He shook his head. ‘Thecommissario’sprobably still in bed if he’s got any sense. I saw no need to get him out for something as straightforward as this. Sergeant Dino is not due back from sick leave for another few weeks so I came myself. All right, the Ponte Vecchio isn’t most people’s first choice as a place to end it all but, when it’s all said and done, from a police perspective, it’s still pretty routine.’ He gave me a cheeky grin and changed the subject. ‘I thought your speech last night was great. Did you get lots of your fans giving you their phone numbers and throwing their underwear at you?’

I grinned back at him. ‘No such luck, but I did get an invitation to lunch with the mayor.’ A nudge of Oscar’s nose against my leg reminded me of his priorities. ‘Anyway, I’d better take Oscar for his walk. If you see Virgilio, tell him I’ll give him a call later on.’

Florence is a frustrating city for dog owners. If you look down on it from above, there are numerous parks and open areas of green space, but so many of them are private and locked up behind high iron railings. The famous Boboli Gardens behind Palazzo Pitti are only five minutes from Anna’s house but because they are categorised as an open-air museum, dogs aren’t allowed in. As a result, over the winter months, I’d come up with a route along a series of narrow lanes leading up the hill to the south of Florence and back again where we wouldn’t meet much traffic. Today, this would give us both some exercise before we headedout to my home in the country for the weekend where Oscar could run to his heart’s content.

When we got back to the apartment, I found Anna already up and dressed, filling a basket with provisions for the next two days. Decamping to the country at the weekends had become a regular habit over the winter and as the warmer weather approached, it would soon be time to move out to Montevolpone permanently until the autumn brought us back into the city again. Not for the first time, I reflected on my good fortune. Being able to spend my life in such beautiful surroundings – whether in the city or in the hills – made me a very lucky man. Although I still loved much about England, I had to admit that Tuscany, with its historic beauty, its warm weather and, of course, its wonderful food and drink, took a lot of beating.

We set off in my VW minivan at just after nine and we were at my place by half past. The little house I’d bought over a year ago is situated partway up a hillside and access is up a fairly rough track dressed with chalky white gravel, one of Tuscany’s famousstrade bianche– the white roads. Anna told me she had stuff to do, so I put on a pair of shorts and took Oscar out for a proper walk. As I followed him uphill past olive groves and vineyards, throwing sticks and pine cones for him to retrieve, I thought back to the previous night.

My forthcoming meeting with the mayor promised to be interesting. I still couldn’t imagine what the ‘confidential’ matter that he wanted to discuss with a random English private eye might be. I just hoped it wasn’t political. Politics in Italy can be very confusing and everybody seems to have a strong opinion about one party or another – and there are over a dozen to choose from, all with different acronyms – so I’ve always tried to steer clear of the subject. Of course, it could well be a personal matter,and when we got to the top of the hill, I pulled out my phone and checked up on him.

Ugo Gallo was fifty-two years old – so almost six years younger than I was – and he had originally been an architect before becoming a politician. He had been married for twenty-three years and had twin daughters, both studying at Florence university. As far as I could see, his private life was unblemished, so it looked likely that the confidential matter would prove to be something else. I looked forward to finding out.

As for the elderly man with the jeweller’s shop who had accosted me last night, I hoped I wasn’t going to discover that he’d been the person who had chosen to take his own life on the Ponte Vecchio. He had certainly looked and sounded worried about something, but why would he make an appointment to see a private investigator and then kill himself only a few hours after making the appointment? This would make little sense and, besides, there had been that inner strength to the man that I had sensed. This, more than anything, made me feel it highly unlikely he would ever have contemplated suicide. Mind you, I told myself, whoever the victim was, he had chosen an iconic place to end it all.

It was a beautiful morning and Oscar and I walked for two solid hours, returning home shortly before midday feeling hot, sweaty and hungry. In Oscar’s case, this was no surprise. He’s always hungry. As for me, in spite of a plate of sandwiches the previous night followed by aquattro stagionipizza, I had built up quite a hunger, and the first thing I did when I got home was to suggest to Anna that I would do a barbecue lunch. In the fridge, I had some particularly good pork sausages made by our local butcher and a massive Florentine T-bone steak the size of a King James Bible that could have fed a family of four.

With this in mind, Anna made a sensible suggestion: ‘Whydon’t I do pasta for lunch to keep you going, and we invite Virgilio and Lina for a barbecue tonight?’

I nodded in agreement and pulled out my phone. When Virgilio answered, his voice sounded a bit weary, and it took a bit of persuading to get him to agree to come out to our place for dinner that evening. Being a police officer is a full-on job and I knew from experience that Virgilio lived and breathed his work – just as I had done until my wife had left me and I’d taken early retirement in the vain hope of winning her back. As I put the phone down again, I found myself reflecting on his lacklustre tone and hoping that things were all right between him and Lina.

While Anna made pasta alla carbonara, I switched on the TV to get the forecast for the rest of the weekend and found that the mysterious death on the Ponte Vecchio had already reached the local media. The person who had been found hanging suspended from the middle of the bridge was described as being an elderly man, but the police had not yet revealed his name. This set me thinking. There were tens of thousands of elderly men in Florence and, indeed, before too long I would find myself joining their ranks, but it did strike me as a coincidence – and I’ve never liked coincidences. As I consumed my very good lunch, I couldn’t help thinking about the old man who had approached me last night and, when the meal ended, I couldn’t resist picking up my phone again and calling Inspector Marco Innocenti. As usual, he answered almost immediately.

‘Ciao, Dan.’

‘Ciao, Marco. Can I ask you something, just to satisfy my curiosity? The body found this morning hanging from the Ponte Vecchio, it wasn’t by any chance a gentleman called David Berg, was it?’

‘Yes, it was.’ He sounded surprised. ‘But how do you knowthat? We’re still trying to contact his next of kin and his identity hasn’t been released yet.’

I felt a surge of surprise go through me at the thought that the old man I’d met only a few hours earlier had chosen to take his own life. This was immediately followed by an equally strong wave of scepticism. I did my best to explain to Marco the circumstances in which I’d met him, ending with the words, ‘So why did he make an appointment to see me on Monday and then kill himself only a few hours after fixing it up? It makes no sense.’

When Marco answered, I could tell that he was as bewildered as I was. ‘I agree. I’m still waiting for the pathologist’s report, but his initial impression was that there were no signs of it being anything other than suicide. You said the guy was looking and sounding worried when he spoke to you. Do you think he might have allowed his worries to get on top of him that night and decided to end it all? Had he been drinking, do you think?’

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