Death in Tuscany (39 page)

Department, and I don't know this man Lupo
...
So tell me, Michele, how can I help you?' 'You can't,' Ferrara replied.

At that point his mobile started ringing. He looked at the screen. 'I'm sorry, I have to take this, it's Rizzo.'

'Hold on to your hat, chief!' his deputy began. 'What's up?'

'Isn't Ugo Palladiani the guy your friend Massimo is supposed to have killed, according to the Carabinieri?' 'Yes, why?'

And didn't he have a factory making jeans and things like that?'

'No
...
he was in public relations . . . but he had one before.'

'So it is him.'

'What do you mean?'

'The owner of the factory'

'What are you talking about, Francesco?'

'There's a factory half a mile or so from the place where they found Stella. A former jeans factory registered to Casual Clothing Ltd - director: Ugo Palladiani. It was abandoned after the company went into liquidation, but as far as we can tell from the maps and the land registry, it's still the property of the director, Ugo Palladiani. Curious coincidence, don't you think?'

It was a lot more than just curious, just as his idea about the P had turned out to be less absurd than it had seemed at first.

Not so curious,' Ferrara replied, in not much more than a whisper. He was no longer thinking about the Stella case, but about the implications of that discovery. If Palladiani was now part of their investigation, then Florence might have official jurisdiction over his case. If that was so, he'd be able to investigate Massimo's disappearance openly.

'We need to take a look at the factory,' Rizzo went on. 'Do you think Anna Giulietti will give us a search warrant?'

'Yes, I think she will,' Ferrara said, throwing a glance at the deputy prosecutor, who replied with a look of curiosity.

It was time to satisfy that curiosity as thoroughly as possible.

'Well, well!' Anna Giulietti said when Ferrara had finished updating her. 'Of course I'll issue a search warrant. By itself, owning a warehouse in the vicinity of the place where the girl was found isn't much, or we'd be searching every building in the area, but taken together with the letter P on the cufflink and the fact that the owner died in mysterious circumstances, there's more than enough there to justify it.'

And don't forget the symbol on the cufflink, which may be Masonic'

'Not that again! You have a one-track mind, Michele . . . First the doctor, now Palladiani

'Well, they're both Masons, aren't they? Though not from the same lodge.'

'Yes, and God knows how many other Masons there are in Florence . . . and in the whole of Italy, and France, and England, and America. I think we should drop that for the moment. We have more than enough to be getting on with without stepping on the toes of a lot of powerful people who may just respond by getting rid of the lot of us.'

As always, she was being sensible. She might even be right. But the whole Masonic aspect hung there like a shadow and it bothered him.

'But you're still going to give the authorisation for the medical records, right?'

'I promised, didn't I?' she replied, unconvinced.

23

The week of the August bank holiday looked all set to be chaotic, and not only because of the rush to the beaches. Rizzo's discovery had given Ferrara a shot of adrenalin which had kept him awake all night - though he was getting used to that - and had got him out of bed at dawn on Monday morning. He found himself pacing nervously up and down the deserted corridors of the hotel and then along the side of the swimming pool, smoking his cigar and waiting for a decent time to make his first phone call.

When finally the hands of the clock started to approach seven, he called Fanti.

'Good morning, chief. I haven't yet finished that research you asked me to do on Sicilian companies in Tuscany, but I'm working on it. . .'

'Don't worry about that for the moment. Right now I want you to find out all you can about a company called Mining Extractions, based in Bellomonte di Mezzo.'

'Yes, I think that's one of the names I already came across.'

'What did you find?'

'Nothing. Just that it's one of the Sicilian companies working up here.'

'Find out more.' 'Leave it to me, chief.'

As soon as you know anything, call me, okay?' 'Of course.'

After the call, he had two more immediate goals he had set himself: to find out the results of the factory search, and to go further into the question of Simonetta Palladiani's quarries. For the first, he would have to wait at least until late morning. For the second, the best thing to do was to go back to Carrara.

He preferred not to wake Petra, who must have fallen asleep just as the sun was rising. He left a message on her bedside table, making sure it was conspicuous so that she would read it as soon as she woke up, and went out.

At eight on the dot, he entered Superintendent Lojelo's office.

'What time does the town hall open?' 'Ten o'clock.'

'Too late. I have to find about those quarries as soon as possible. But I assume the staff start earlier than that?'

'That's no problem. As long as the land registry officer is there.'

'Can you get one of your men to go with me?'

'I'll go myself, Chief Superintendent, but I'll make sure first.' He ordered an officer to go and check and phone him as soon as the land registry officer had arrived.

'Thanks. Anything from the interviews?'

'We're still sifting through the answers, but I don't think anything important came out. Claudia Pizzi was respected because she didn't put on airs. You know, a woman in a small town who manages to get a job on a major paper, even if it's not a national one, counts for something. She was considered a bit of a "writer", an artist, even though she dealt with fairly mundane things: local news, interviews . . . Everyone agrees she was very serious and conscientious. A tough cookie who didn't give up easily. She got excited about her various "crusades", but she didn't let her imagination run away with her, she always double-checked everything.'

'If only they were all that way,' Ferrara remarked, thinking of other journalists he knew who, in their search for a scoop, were ready to spread the first piece of local gossip they came across as gospel truth.

'Right . . . We spoke to her boyfriend. His name is Fabio Rubini, same age as her. He works as a sales rep for a company making building materials. He said she'd been very tense lately, but that was nothing new. They'd been together since university, and in those days whenever she had exams she usually became impossible. They always ended up quarrelling. He thinks she always did it deliberately, so she could be alone and concentrate on her studies. The same thing happened later, too, whenever she was involved in researching or investigating something difficult, only now they didn't quarrel. He'd learnt his lesson and left her alone . . . That's what happened during the last week, in fact.'

'So he can't fill us in on what she was doing?'

'Unfortunately not.'

'And you don't think they quarrelled and he . . .'

'Well, where couples are involved, anything's possible, we both know that. But I don't think so, in this case. Her father speaks well of him, and he has an alibi which we're checking: on Thursday ninth and Friday tenth he was working in the north of his sales area: Ameglia, Sarzana, Aulla, Pontremoli. He spent the night at a hotel in Pontremoli. We should be able to eliminate him very soon.'

'I see. And you don't know of anyone who hated her enough to . . .'

We haven't come across anyone so far.'

'Which brings us back to the whole Mafia idea
...
or whoever it was who was doing something dodgy in Simonetta Palladiani's quarries, and perhaps in others, too.'

'In the absence of any other lead . . .'

'Which means we must go to the town hall.'

'As soon as the land registry officer arrives.'

Ferrara looked at his watch. 'Why don't we get there before him? He should be arriving any minute now.'

The land registry officer arrived late and spent at least five minutes apologising. When Ferrara was at last able to ask him the question he needed to ask, he went off to consult his records. Most of these were handwritten. They only seemed to have discovered the typewriter here in the last half of the previous century: God alone knew how long it would be before they got round to computers!

The officer returned. 'They're the Tonelli quarries.'

'We already know who owns them,' Ferrara explained patiently. 'What we need to know is who's been working them.'

The officer gave him a puzzled look, glanced at Lojelo as if to say, 'Doesn't this fellow know anything?' then said to Ferrara, 'I'm not talking about the owner. The municipality owns them and leases them out. The Tonellis have had the lease since the days of Maria Teresa d'Este.'

'In other words, they're handed down from father to son? They're hereditary? But how long is the lease?'

'Until recently, ninety-nine years, renewable by the same leaseholder. It was actually Maria Teresa who started the practice, to boost marble production. The system was basically unchanged until two years ago, when they introduced a new rule, limiting the leases to a period of twenty-nine years, but it's a difficult business applying it. Some people challenge it, say the quarry was given by the princess to their family and doesn't belong to the municipality . . . you know how these things are. But they're gradually sorting it out. If a leaseholder doesn't renew within a certain period, which varies from case to case, then he loses the right to use the quarries.'

'I see. So in a way it is a kind of ownership . . . but does whoever has the right to use a quarry have to exploit it himself or can he lease it to others? In this particular case, who does Simonetta Tonelli lease hers to, since she doesn't seem to have anything to do with them directly?'