Death in Tuscany (52 page)

'Okay,' she lied.

'So one of your clients brought Anila?'

Elisa nodded.

'When?'

'The first time was more than a year ago.' 'Wasn't she just a child?'

'Yes, that's why I felt sorry for her.' 'And who was the client?' 'I can't tell you that.'

Ferrara let it go for the moment. He would come back to it later.

'But he wasn't the one who brought her,' Elisa continued. 'She came with her brother, an Albanian named Viktor, who came back later to pick her up.'

The name made Ferrara prick up his ears. Guzzi had said in his report to Ciuffi that the Albanians' boss was named Viktor.

'What kind of man was he?'

'He's a violent man. He's the one who killed her, I'm sure of it. But if he finds out I told you, he'll kill me, too.' 'Can you describe him?'

'Not really . . . tall, fair hair, ugly face, a squashed nose . . .'

All right. How many times did they come?'

She thought it over. 'Three in all, I think.'

'So you didn't exactly meet her. You just saw her. I assume you didn't stay there?'

'Oh, no,' she replied, almost indignantly. 'I had to leave, but twice the brother came back late to pick her up and I got back just as the client was leaving and he asked me to keep her company
...
I was waiting downstairs, you know?'

And what did she say to you?'

'That she was scared . . . She didn't speak much Italian, and she cried all the time, poor girl . . . She'd come from Albania with her brother, who'd been fucking her - pardon my language - since she was six. He also beat her, and sold her . . . He always told her he loved her, but then he made her do things . . . She told me this the last time, then I never saw her again — until I saw her picture in the paper.'

'When was this last time?'

A month ago, more or less . . .'

And what about Viktor? Did you see him again?'

'No, thank God,' she said with a shudder.

'What makes you think he killed her?'

'Because I know she wasn't a junkie . . . She was just a poor kid with a bastard for a brother, but she was clean. If only you'd seen her. He was the one who drugged her, the animal! And it killed her.'

'I see . . . But couldn't it have been your client who killed her?'

'No, no - he's a respectable guy, in public relations, a rich man, he wouldn't give her that shit.'

P for public relations, P for Palladiani,
Ferrara thought, remembering the cufflink and feeling almost dazed by this tangle of new connections.

'What did you say his name was?' he asked.

'Ugo, Ugo Palladiani, you know, the guy . . .' Elisa replied, before realising she had fallen into the trap. 'Oh, no! I don't want him to find out

'Don't worry, I already knew. And anyway, you don't need to protect his name any more. He's also dead.'

She looked puzzled. 'What do you mean?'

'It happens, unfortunately,' was all he said.

She shook her head and her eyes again filled with tears.

'Let's recap,' Ferrara said, more for his own benefit than for Rizzo's. Rizzo was sitting where Elisa had sat, now that Elisa, reassured for the umpteenth time, was with the technicians trying to put together an identikit of Viktor.

'Stella's real name is Anila,' Ferrara went on. 'She's the sister of an Albanian named Viktor, who treats her like a slave. On the morning of July twenty-ninth, she's found not far from a factory we know used to belong to Ugo Palladiani. Palladiani, who has already had contact with Anila, is killed on the night of the fourth to the fifth of August, a few days after the girl's death. Ugo is married to Simonetta Tonelli, the leaseholder of three quarries in the Carrara area. The quarries are run by a company which uses them as part of a drug trafficking racket. Among those involved in the racket are a Florentine and two Albanians whose boss, as it happens, is named Viktor. Simonetta Palladiani disappears on the day of her husband's murder together with my friend Massimo Verga . . . What does it all mean?'

Rizzo would have given half his salary to have the answer, and the other half to be able to light a cigarette, but he knew his chief wouldn't let him because, according to him, it ruined the smell of his cigar.

He had to be content with breathing in that foul stench.

'On the one hand, there's the drugs racket,' he said, 'on the other a sex crime. They're probably not related, but they've got mixed up because the people involved knew each other in one way or another.'

'That's possible,' Ferrara agreed reluctantly, turning the cufflink over in his fingers: he had asked his deputy to bring it in.

Anyway,' Rizzo went on, 'we'll know the truth when we get our hands on Laprua. When are you thinking of making a move on him?'

'The same thing Anna Giulietti asked me when I told her about Elisa's statement a few minutes ago. She's breathing down my neck but - I don't know. Time's running out, but I can't risk making the wrong move.
I
still don't know what's happened to Massimo, or how he fits in to this whole story'

'The old man should know that, too,' Rizzo said.

'But we don't have any real evidence, Francesco. This is the trickiest moment. If we're too hasty, we could screw it all up . . . He could easily claim he doesn't know anything about the drugs, that other people are using his company for the traffic'

'The fishing fleet, too?' Rizzo asked. He knew the enormous tension his boss was experiencing at that moment. On the one hand there was the pressure to act quickly, on the other he was afraid of making a mistake, because a mistake could prove fatal for his friend.

'We still have to catch them red-handed,' Ferrara said. 'Have you alerted the Port Authority?'

'Yes, and they've agreed to keep a discreet eye on them.'

'That's good — or is it? We're not there yet, something's missing, I don't have all the pieces . . . Maybe after I've spoken to Zancarotti and the two Albanians

'You're thinking of interviewing them?'

At this point I have to. Anna Giulietti has given the authorisation and I've arranged it with the warden of the prison, who I already know. I'm going there tomorrow afternoon.'

'Do you want me to come, too?'

'No, thanks, better not.'

Fanti interrupted them. 'Chief, Piero d'Incisa is here, he's brought in something for Superintendent Rizzo.'

Ferrara gave his deputy a questioning look.

'D'Incisa's son,' Rizzo explained. Anna Giulietti asked him to bring in his father's papers.'

'Send him in,' Ferrara said.

'I did what I could but there's not much, I'm afraid,' Piero d'Incisa said after the introductions, handing Rizzo a not very bulky envelope. 'His diary, a notebook - but I think all the notes are medical - an invitation to a conference in Cagliari last month with the list of delegates, it may be useful to you to question some of them
...
I also put in his mobile phone. There are lots of numbers in the memory'

'Thank you, Signor d'Incisa, you've been very thorough,' Rizzo said, while Ferrara started to leaf through the diary.

'I
did it myself to avoid upsetting
maman,
if I could. She's still in shock, I don't want to alarm her any further, and unfortunately I have to leave tomorrow. They're expecting me back at work on Monday. I have a flight this evening, but from Fiumicino, so I have to go to Rome

'Leave us your contact details, in case we need to get hold of you,' Ferrara said, distractedly, his mind still on Massimo, Simonetta, Laprua . . .

'Of course,' d'Incisa replied. He took out a business card, placed it on Ferrara's desk, and wrote down his private numbers. As he did so, he moved a few of the papers on the desk, causing the cufflink to roll over onto its broken pin.

Ah, you found it?' Piero d'Incisa asked in surprise.

'What?'

'Dad's cufflink. But where did you get it? He wasn't wearing them when he was found, was he?'

Ferrara made no attempt to answer his question, but quickly asked, Are you sure it's your father's?'

'Mais oui,
those are his initials!' he exclaimed, picking up the cufflink and showing it to the two men in turn.

They had both been conditioned by the photograph Rizzo had taken originally, in which the sun was at the top so that there appeared to be a P in the middle, and the way Piero d'Incisa was holding the cufflink they would have considered upside-down only a few moments earlier.

'You see? L d I, Ludovico d'Incisa
...
I know these cufflinks well, he had them made many years ago by a jeweller in Geneva when he came to see me there once. He was very fond of them.'

Ferrara and Rizzo exchanged knowing glances.

'Listen, Signor d'Incisa . . .' Ferrara began.

Piero d'Incisa had turned whiter and whiter as Ferrara told him about the death of Anila and the development of the investigation up until the discovery of the cufflink in the place where the dying girl had been dumped. He did not mention the factory or the paedophile activities that had apparently taken place there, because he did not want to overwhelm the man too much all at once, but even so Piero d'Incisa seemed totally devastated when Ferrara stopped speaking.