Marco Vichi - Inspector Bordelli 04 - Death in Florence (36 page)

Bordelli couldn’t help but think about the day ahead. He had an idea what he needed to do to find out whether
they
were really the killers. He had to find the weak link in the chain and try to make it break – that is, make him confess. The butcher seemed like a tough customer, someone who couldn’t be shaken so easily. The lawyer was no doubt accustomed to lying and dissimulating, and must certainly know a thousand ways to defend himself from baseless accusations. Gattacci had fled who knew where, and despite appearances, he wasn’t without resources. Which left the others: the distinguished man with the Peugeot and the youngster who lived in the villa. Which was the weaker of the two?

Hearing Eleonora lock herself in the bathroom, he got out of bed and dressed in a hurry. He would have paid pure gold to take a hot shower with her. He ran to the kitchen to take the coffee pot off the burner and then rinsed two little cups as best he could with a little mineral water.

Eleonora came into the kitchen and signalled to him not to talk. They drank their coffee in silence, looking into each other’s eyes. She then set her cup down on the table, drew near to give him a light little peck on the lips, and left. Bordelli sat there for a few seconds, stunned, staring at the empty hallway. Then he roused himself and looked at his watch. Ten past eight. He went into the bathroom to try to wash. As there wasn’t much water left in the drum, he decided not to shave.

He went out and passed by a bulldozer at work as he headed for Piazza Tasso. He felt like a lion. As if he were twenty years old. Turning round to cast a glance towards Via del Campuccio, he saw Ennio in the distance, emptying a bucket of mud into the street. He didn’t have time to shout a greeting before Ennio disappeared back into the building. A patient man, poor Ennio.

He got into the Fiat 1100, then contacted headquarters as he was turning on to the Viali. The morning surveillance shift had just begun: Piras was in Viale Michelangelo at Sercambi’s villa, and the car that had been watching Gattacci’s house had moved to Via Bolognese.

He stopped in Piazza della Libertà to buy
La Nazione
.

A GLIMMER OF HOPE

IN THE CITY’S GREAT BATTLE

MACHINES BEGIN TO ARRIVE TO FREE FLORENCE OF DEBRIS

At headquarters he shut himself in his office. Grabbing a clean sheet of paper from a drawer, he lit a cigarette and wrote down the five names that were now lodged in his brain:
Livio Panerai, Moreno Beccaroni, Alfonso Gattacci, Gualtiero Sercambi, Italo Signorini
. He sketched a sort of caricature of each, even the young owner of the villa, whom he’d never seen. Were they really the monsters? He rolled the paper up into a ball and tossed it into the rubbish bin. He had to learn more about Sercambi and Signorini, find out what kind of people they were. By now he was ready to try anything to get to the bottom of this. He could always bluff if need be. He just had to find the right target.

There was a knock at the door. An officer delivered a message from Piras and quickly left. The inspector read the handwritten note:

The Peugeot 404 came out of the gate in Viale Michelangelo just before nine, with two people inside: one in the driver’s seat, the other seated in the back. It went as far as Piazza del Duomo and stopped outside the front door of the Episcopal Curia
. (‘Holy sh—’ Bordelli muttered, goosebumps on his arms.)
The passenger got out. Under his coat he was wearing a cassock. He opened the main door with a key and disappeared inside. The Peugeot drove away, and we followed it to the San Lorenzo market. The driver calmly did some shopping and then returned to Viale Michelangelo
.

‘Bloody hell …’ Bordelli raced out of his office to the radio room, where the men on duty were still coordinating rescue efforts for victims in the surrounding countryside. He called Piras and asked him to describe the driver in his report, and the man who’d gone into the Curia building.

‘I only saw them from far away,’ said the Sardinian.

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘The driver looks about forty, and he’s short, sort of fat, chestnut hair. The prelate is tall, slender, upper-class and doesn’t have a hair on his head. That’s about all I can tell you.’

‘It’s good enough for now,’ said Bordelli.

‘Any orders, sir?’

‘Never mind about the driver, but keep tailing the prelate. Over and out.’

He went back upstairs to his office and stood in front of the window, looking at the sky. Who was Gualtiero Sercambi? A villa in the hills of Florence, a personal chauffeur, a priest’s cassock … It all pointed to his being a high-ranking prelate in the Curia, but Bordelli needed to know more. Given his haste, he had no choice but to ask Batini, an old journalist who knew every corner of Florence as well as he did the insides of his pockets. He called the brand-new offices of
La Nazione
, flooded barely a month after their inauguration, and asked to speak to him.

‘Yes?’

‘Hello Federico … It’s Bordelli …’

‘Oh, hello, copper. How are you?’

‘Not too bad. How are things going at the paper?’

‘We’re printing in Bologna, but everything else is fine. Tell me everything.’

‘I need to ask you a favour.’

‘If I can be of help …’

‘Who is Gualtiero Sercambi?’

‘You mean Monsignor Sercambi?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘What would you like to know?’

‘Everything there is.’

‘Well … For the past few years he’s been a kind of personal assistant of the archbishop’s, a sort of grey eminence, not much in view but very powerful. To give you an idea, he has a direct line to the pope, the president, and all his ministers.’

‘What kind of person is he?’

‘Cold as ice. He speaks very little and weighs every word before he utters it. I’m almost certain he’s a Freemason, but I have no proof of it, I’m just going by smell. In Florence, above a certain level of power or wealth, they’re all Freemasons.’

‘Thanks … I’ll let you get back to work.’

They said goodbye, and Bordelli laid siege to a cigarette. Well, the weak link in the chain certainly wasn’t Monsignor Sercambi. That left only the youth, the owner of the villa where they played hide-and-seek. He called the radio room and asked who was on duty in Via Bolognese.

‘Tapinassi and Biagi, sir. Car thirty-five.’

Bordelli reached up and took a set of naval binoculars from a shelf. They had nine magnification settings. He’d brought them home with him from the war together with a San Marco regiment dagger and a couple of pistols. He went down to the courtyard and got in the 1100. The moment he was out in the street he called Tapinassi on the radio.

‘Any news?’

‘Nobody’s come out of the villa. At half-eight a fat lady opened the little gate with a set of keys and went in. From the look of her and the way she’s dressed she must be the cleaner. She hasn’t come back out yet. At half-nine the dustbin lorry passed. In the last half-hour two errand boys came with groceries, one after the other … And that’s all, Inspector.’

‘I’m on my way to see you now. Over and out.’

Driving up the Via Bolognese, he thought of the night he’d spent with the beautiful Eleonora, wondering when he would see her again. They hadn’t said a single word to each other, and had made no arrangement to meet again. It was she who’d wanted the silence, and he’d played along. It wasn’t easy for people of his generation to live suspended in mid-air, but he had to admit that it was thrilling. Every moment held the possibility of surprise, though it did make one suffer …

He drove past Villa Triste,
⁴⁹
with its big empty squares of cement looming over the road, where the Nazis and their Fascist collaborators had tortured resistance fighters during the occupation, and his love pangs seemed more ridiculous than ever. He remembered something his father had told him right after the war. As Mario Carità was torturing partisan fighters in the building’s cellars, a Benedictine friar banged out Neapolitan songs on a piano to cover the screams. He was known as Father Ildefonso, but his real name was Alfredo Epaminonda Troia. It was impossible to forget a name like that.

He sat alone in the 1100. That way he could smoke freely without disturbing anyone. He’d parked far from the gate, at the top of the hill. The other car was some fifty yards farther down.

At noon the cleaning lady came out on to the pavement and headed down the hill. Ten minutes later a sporty, fire-red Alfa Romeo emerged from the property and stopped on the pavement, engine running. Bordelli already had the binoculars in hand. He saw a young man of about thirty get out, rather good-looking, medium height, slender build, gloomy expression, regular features, straight black hair that half covered his ears … He fitted the description Rovario had given. The man closed the gate and got back into the two-seater convertible. He drove off, tyres screeching, towards Florence. Bordelli followed behind him and called Tapinassi on the radio.

‘I’ll follow him myself.’

‘Very well, sir.’

‘You stay here at the villa. Over and out.’

There was traffic, and the Alfa tried to overtake the other cars without success. When it reached Piazza della Libertà, it took a right turn on to Viale Lavagnini, grinding the gears. Bordelli could count on the 1100’s souped-up engine and had no trouble keeping up with the other car. At a red light he read the number plate and wrote it down on his matchbox. The Alfa went the entire circuit of the Viali up to the Arno and then took the Lungarno Vespucci at a crawl, stuck behind an army lorry. It crossed the bridge and turned right on to the Lungarno on the opposite bank, following the flow of the traffic. It passed under the arch of Santa Rosa, and two hundred yards farther on it pulled up on the right, under some trees. Bordelli slowed down, and when he realised the young man wanted to cross the street he stopped to let him by, ignoring the furious blasts of horns behind him. As he started up again he watched the man in his rear-view mirror and saw him disappear into the blind alley of Via della Fonderia. He parked the car a hundred yards up the boulevard, hiding it behind another vehicle. Contacting headquarters, he gave them the number plate of the Alfa Romeo, just to be on the safe side. In order to get a better view of the entrance to the alley, he moved across and sat sideways in the passenger seat. He kept the windows open and blew the smoke outside. He had no idea how long he would have to wait there, and the seconds passed exasperatingly slowly. He was sick of waiting, always waiting …

Signorini reappeared just a few minutes later, got back in his car and drove off, spinning the wheels on the muddy asphalt. Cocaine, thought the inspector. He lay down on the seat to avoid being noticed by Signorini, then waited for him to pass before hopping back over to the driver’s side to follow him. It wasn’t hard to spot the bright red Alfa amid the rest of the dull-coloured traffic, and he was able to follow it from a distance of about thirty yards. The Alfa crossed the Ponte alla Vittoria, continued up the Viali, then at Piazza della Libertà turned towards Via Bolognese. Bordelli stopped along the kerb and called Tapinassi.

‘Signorini’s heading home … Any news at your end?’

‘Nothing, sir.’

‘I’m going to go and have a bite to eat.’

‘Lucky you, sir,’ said Tapinassi.

The inspector headed straight for Totò’s kitchen. He managed not to eat too much, and half an hour later he was already back at the office with a cigarette between his lips. On his desk he found the information on the owner of the Alfa Romeo, which was the same as that on the owner of the villa in Via Bolognese.

He rang the radio room and gave the order for all the surveillance vehicles to come back to headquarters, except for the one tailing Signorini. For the moment the policemen could turn their attention back to the rescue efforts.

So there was his target: the sad-faced young man. Bordelli knew he might have to use some rather unorthodox methods, but he had no alternative. He had to proceed very carefully. He couldn’t afford to make even one wrong move. He was also hoping for a little luck.

First of all he had to verify whether Signorini was indeed buying drugs in Via della Fonderia, so he could gain the upper hand. There was only one person who could help him: Botta, as usual.

He went at once to look for him in Via del Campuccio and found him with a bucket in hand and covered with mud from head to toe.

‘I need you for something, Ennio,’ said an anxious Bordelli, getting right to the point.

‘Another lock?’ asked Botta, wiping his hands with a rag.

‘We’re changing category this time … Can you pinch a wallet without getting caught?’

‘Are you trying to offend me, Inspector?’

‘You’re not that kind of thief?’

‘Are you kidding? I could do it by the time I was ten! In all modesty, I’ve even given lessons.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Do I ever lie, Inspector? I can lift a wallet and put it back any time and any way I want.’

‘Do you do it often?’

‘I’m
no longer
that kind of thief,’ said Botta, laughing.

‘Are you sure you haven’t lost your touch?’ the inspector asked with concern. Ennio made a gesture of irritation, lost his balance, and grabbed hold of Bordelli.

‘I’m sorry, Inspector … this damned mud …’

‘I was already imagining you on the ground.’

‘I’ve dirtied your coat,’ said Botta. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and tried to repair the damage.

‘Never mind …’

‘You’re better waiting for the mud to dry, it comes off easier then.’

‘So will you help me out, Ennio?’

‘First open your wallet and give me back the rolled-up thousand-lira note I just put in it,’ Botta said, smiling.

‘You’re joking, of course …’ Bordelli took out his wallet, opened it, and found a one-thousand-lira note rolled up inside it. His jaw dropped.

‘Now do you believe me?’

‘I believed you before,’ said Bordelli, giving him back the thousand lire.

‘You seemed a little sceptical.’

‘Force of habit,’ Bordelli explained.