Death in Tuscany (33 page)

In the light of this new clue, the results of his researches into the buildings in the area where the girl was found had been hurriedly brushed aside.

They all had the photo with them. Sergi had been sent to check out printers, Violante was trying the churches and monasteries, and Ascalchi was visiting jewellers, hoping to find the goldsmith who had made the cufflink and engraved the symbol. Ciuffi had distributed the photo to his men and told them to show it to their informers, and to junkies and dealers. Even Fanti had it, and had started searching for it on the internet.

Nor had Rizzo forgotten to inform Ferrara. He had made a colour copy of the photo with the scanner and had sent it to him as an email attachment.

In other words, the whole of the
Squadra Mobile
had been put to work, and Rizzo just had to wait for the results. For the first time, he felt confident there would be some. He himself, not wanting to leave any stone unturned, had sent specific and detailed requests to the Register of Companies and the Patent Office, since the symbol might not be a coat of arms after all, but a logo - although he doubted it, given the rather baroque, antiquated design. In fact he preferred to doubt it, since there were so many logos around these days - of companies, sports clubs, internet sites, and so on - that the search could well turn out to be virtually endless.

Now, as he waited for his men to return with their findings, he took a pen and paper and started playing with the symbol, isolating it, dividing it, decomposing it, enlarging parts of it, in search of something, anything that could unlock its secret.

The one thing that seemed constant was that there was a letter P in the middle. If you took that out, you were left with a baseless rectangle, and he had no idea what that meant at all. It might be a stylised M, or even an N, if the designer had been especially imaginative, or else it might not be a letter at all. But if not, what then?

Going back to the P, and removing it again, it occurred to him that what remained was the Greek letter Pi, and he wondered if it was worth consulting mathematicians: maybe they had a club in Florence. He made a note of it, then by a process of association it struck him that the letters might be Cyrillic, in which case the P would be an R, but then he had no idea what the other letter might be . . .

Discouraged, he let that go, and tried to concentrate instead on the remaining elements of the symbol. The sun, the moon and the stars were obvious, which might have something to do with astronomy or astrology, but he realised that going down that road he'd be widening the investigation to take in the whole cosmos, and he dropped the idea. It was only worth checking out any of these theories when he had something else definite to go on. Otherwise, the whole thing would drive him mad.

The only conclusion he managed to reach was that they would do well to look for someone whose name or surname began with P.

'Deri kur do na mbajne ketu brenda?'
Nard asked.

'Si her e tjera, pastaj bejne progesin e na hedhin jashte, pastaj rikthehemi,'
Alex replied.

'Will you shut up, or at least talk Italian?' Emilio Zancarotti protested. He didn't like the idea of the two brothers plotting behind his back, especially after the mutual threats of the previous night.

All morning the two of them had practically ignored him, and the afternoon was shaping up the same way. Zancarotti was irascible by nature, and had to hold himself back. If he exploded, he knew the consequences wouldn't be pleasant: as they had already remarked, there were two of them against one of him.

'Heret e tjera ishin dozat e vogla,'
Nard continued, purposely ignoring him.

'Cfar kerkon se di une? Kerkoja atij italianit!'
Alex said irritably, uttering the word
'italianit'
with contempt. Zancarotti not only caught the word, he grasped the derisory tone of it as well.

'I'll kill both of you,' he almost spat, managing with difficulty to avoid lifting his hand to them. 'I'll kill you as soon as we get out of here!'

The Albanians laughed.

'Did you understand any of it?'

'Only when the Italian guy speaks,' Inspector Oliva said, taking off his headphones. 'How about you?'

'Quite a bit,' Inspector Aldo Guzzi said, also putting down his headphones. 'Nard is nervous because he doesn't know what's in store for him, and his brother thinks they'll be deported like they usually are. Frankly, with the kind of record they have, I think they'll be old men before they see Albania again . . . but you never know with the law.'

He was twenty-seven, of medium height, with a cavernous, almost ascetic face framed by long, smooth black hair and an untidy beard which made him look like the Count of Monte

Cristo before he'd cleaned himself up. His right cheek was slightly disfigured by a piercing, and another two were visible whenever he nervously brushed the hair away from his left ear. His faded blue ‘I-shirt hung loosely on his bony body. The chain dangling from a tab on his jeans jingled when he stood up.

Oliva chuckled. 'And Emilio doesn't understand and is getting pissed off.'

'Yes, I think things are hotting up in there . . . And that's good for us. Time for me to go.'

'See you . . . Sorry, what did you say your name was?'

Aldo. Aldo Guzzi, like the motorbike.'

The only food and drink Inspector Venturi had had all day was a sandwich and a Coke in a bar in the Via Borgo Allegri. He was in a bad mood because of the heat and the lack of results. Not that he'd been expecting any, to tell the truth. He had never had any faith in emblems and badges, apart from the police one.

At the Florentine Institute of Heraldry, they had given him a list of addresses of possible experts, among them the owner of an antiquarian bookshop called Belloni, in the Via delle Conce, which was one of the last he still had to visit, at least for today. This was a Saturday he wished was over.

The shop was small, on the left-hand side of a dingy courtyard. The sign was written on the frosted glass of the door, which had been left open to let the air in.

He was greeted by the owner, an elderly Jew who was probably also the only employee. He was short, with white hair and sharp, inquisitive blue eyes. The front room of the shop was bare apart from a wooden counter, behind which the old man was sitting on a high stool, and bookshelves full of folders along the walls. Through a door behind the man, another larger room was dimly visible, with a big table in the middle piled high with books, and wooden bookcases lined with the spines of other books, some of which might well be valuable.

'How can I help you?' the owner asked politely.

'I'm a police inspector,' Venturi said, immediately adding, so as not to disappoint him, 'I'm not here to buy anything, I only need some information.'

'Go on,' the man said, as politely as before.

Venturi placed the photocopy on the counter. 'Do you recognise this coat of arms?'

The man put on a pair of glasses with half-moon lenses and metal arms and studied the picture.

'It's not exactly a coat of arms, it's more a symbol, though of what I have no idea . . . No, I'm sure I've never seen it. . . but there is something . . . Do you mind waiting a moment?'

'Of course,' the inspector replied, even though he hadn't quite been following.

The old man went into the back room, where he bustled about among his books for what seemed to Venturi a very long time, and then came back shaking his head.

'No, I don't have anything. But I'd bet it has something to do with the Freemasons. I wouldn't swear to it, but something tells me . . .'

'What?'

'You see these three uprights under the sun? If you take away the round part in the middle - and I have to admit I have no idea what that is, it could be something to do with one of their rituals, I suppose - but if you take it away, then these three uprights could be columns. The two side ones may be the columns of the Temple. The one in the north is Boaz, and the one in the south is Jachin. The Masons use this iconography a lot, and often add a third one, in the middle, like this shorter one here. The three columns symbolise Wisdom, Strength and Beauty. And then you've also got the sun, the moon and the stars, which they use a lot as well.'

Venturi did not ask any more questions. He thanked the man and left the shop. Probably just the ravings of an old eccentric, he thought.

The guard closed the heavy iron grating behind him, and Guzzi saw three pairs of eyes trained on him. He responded with a hostile look.

He picked out the bunk which was meant for him, went to it and threw down the blanket he had been issued. Who needed a blanket in that heat? You could die in that cell.

Aren't you going to say hello?' Emilio Zancarotti asked.

'Got any dope?' the newcomer retorted, with a scowl.

'In here?'

'Then don't piss me around,' Guzzi said, throwing himself on the bunk and turning his back on all of them.

'Italian muti!'
Nard cried, none too happy with this intrusion.

'Leave him alone. Why the hell should you care about this arsehole?' his brother said, in Albanian. He wasn't too happy either, having this junkie in here with them. He despised junkies as much as he profited from them.

The cell was already small, and the enforced proximity to Emilio was creating a clash of wills which could be very dangerous. The Italian knew too much, and even though he was in it up to his neck he might be tempted to turn State's evidence and endanger the whole organisation. And he, Alex, had no way to warn Viktor. At least a couple of times in the last twenty-four hours he had toyed with the idea of killing the Italian to redeem himself in the boss's eyes.

Only Zancarotti had not been bothered by the newcomer's arrival. If he played his cards right, he'd balance out the forces.

It was getting late and none of the printers had recognised the symbol that Sergi, alias Serpico, was showing round.

A bell rang as he entered the Solari Brothers shop in the Via dei Serragli. For the umpteenth time that day, he was hit by the smell of lead, which many still used to print invitations and business cards.