The Dark Heart of Florence: Number 6 in series (Michele Ferrara) (20 page)

It was first thing in the morning and they were already pestering him.

Ferrara recognised the Commissioner’s number on the screen of his mobile. He pressed the green button and answered.

The call was a brief one, but Adinolfi was clearly agitated.

‘Headquarters, straight away,’ Ferrara ordered his driver as soon as he had hung up. ‘And fill her up with petrol as soon as we get there, there’s no time to lose.’

There had been another death.

And they would have to go out of Florence this time.

Barely twenty minutes later, the Alfa Romeo 156 set off along the A1 autostrada in the direction of Rome.

In addition to Rizzo, Commissioner Adinolfi was on board. He had insisted on coming in person. With the light flashing on the roof and bursts from the siren when they hit traffic jams, they reached the Magliano Sabina junction. From there, they travelled along a series of A-roads until they got to Lake Bracciano.

The lake, which had volcanic origins, had once also been known as Lake Sabatino. It was here that, whenever he could, at weekends or on periods of leave, Inspector Antonio Sergi, Florence’s Serpico, would get away from the accumulated fatigue of his work and forget his problems. At least that was what he had always told his colleagues. ‘I’m going fishing,’ he would say. ‘There are plenty of fish in those waters. And don’t even think of calling me. I’m not picking up my phone for anyone.’

He would actually switch off the phone, making himself completely unreachable. At Ferrara’s request, Rizzo had discovered that Sergi had been spending the last few days there, making up for all the overtime he had worked and not been paid due to lack of funds.

During the journey no one had said a word. They found it hard to believe that anything could possibly have happened to Sergi.

Of them all, Adinolfi seemed the most pensive. From the moment he had got in the car he had been completely silent, his eyes fixed straight ahead. He had turned them to look out of the window at the countryside once or twice, but only for a few moments.

Ferrara and Rizzo on the other hand, sitting in the back seat, had exchanged a number of troubled glances. They would have liked to talk, but Ferrara had decided that it was best to say nothing.

Maybe because he had stopped trusting Adinolfi.

The body was lying on the beach, surrounded by police officers, some uniformed, some in plain clothes.

Some thirty feet away stood a group of men dressed in suits and ties, looking alternately towards the corpse, then towards the waters of the lake.

Somewhat further off was a crowd of onlookers. They had been attracted by the flashing lights of the police cars and Carabinieri, which had been left randomly on the road, some double-parked.

The car carrying the Commissioner, Ferrara and Rizzo pulled up at a spot where the road widened slightly. As soon as he got out, Adinolfi gave his clothes the once-over and hurried towards the group of men in suits and ties.

Ferrara glanced around. In the distance, he could make out the Castle of Odescalchi, one of the most beautiful aristocratic residences in Europe. His eye fell on a poster advertising an event to be held locally: a three-day Buffalo Bill-style contest between cowboys and the
butteri
, herdsmen from the Maremma, involving two hundred horses.

He was just about to go over to the body when he looked at the group and froze. What were the National Security Coordinator and the Head of the State Police doing here in person?

He exchanged a quick look with Rizzo, then said, ‘Come on, let’s go and find out what happened.’

Rizzo nodded. He had also recognised Guaschelli, Head of the State Police, but said nothing. He did not know the other official.

They introduced themselves to the officers from the Rome
Squadra Mobile
and the Carabinieri from the local barracks.

‘Two fishermen found him in the water this morning,’ one of the Roman officers said. ‘He went out yesterday afternoon and didn’t return. That’s according to the man who looked after his motorboat. He’s being questioned at the barracks right now.’

Ferrara took a closer look at the body. It was Sergi. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and was quite bloated. The T-shirt had rolled up almost to his neck.

‘Did he drown?’ Ferrara asked.

‘We think so,’ the marshal in command of the barracks replied. ‘It must have been an accident.’ He had been the first on the scene and, in line with standard procedure, he would be in charge of the investigation, which would be coordinated by whichever deputy prosecutor was on call.

Ferrara looked at the lake. Its waters were dead calm. At Headquarters, Sergi was known to have been an excellent swimmer. Ferrara found it hard to believe that he had drowned, unless he had suddenly been taken ill. It was puzzling to say the least, but he said nothing for the moment.

‘Which deputy prosecutor is handling this?’

‘Someone from the Prosecutor’s Department in Civitavecchia,’ the marshal replied. ‘This is their patch. He was here with the pathologist who carried out the external examination of the body. Right now, we’re waiting for the body to be taken to the morgue for the post-mortem. There are a few marks on the body, but they could be the result of an accident or the length of time he spent in the water.’

‘When will the post-mortem be carried out?’

‘I heard the deputy prosecutor ask the pathologist to do it in the morning.’

‘What about the boat?’

‘It’s been recovered, but there was nothing on board apart from his sunglasses and a wallet with his boat licence.’

Ferrara’s concerns were growing minute by minute. He knew perfectly well that an accident could be used to hide a murder.

He might have yet another mystery to solve. And he felt guilty, because they had not had time to investigate the possible role played by Sergi in the secret lodge.

Luck really wasn’t on his side at the moment.

‘Florence,’ Adinolfi ordered the driver.

The body had just been taken away and he had said goodbye to the others and got in the car, followed by Ferrara and Rizzo.

And that was the only word that left his mouth for the entire journey. When they got back to Headquarters, he asked Ferrara into his office, alone. There, in the strictest confidence, he told him what he had just learnt: that Inspector Sergi had been involved with the Secret Service, working undercover to infiltrate an international criminal organisation.

Ferrara was surprised to hear this, and blamed himself for not having had the slightest suspicion about his colleague’s secondary activities and for having suspected him of being a mole. Never for a moment had it occurred to him that he might actually be a double agent working for the State: a dangerous role, and one that only officers with special – and increasingly rare – qualities were able to play.

‘Why on earth was I kept in the dark about this?’ he asked.

‘Even I didn’t know about it until today. The information was restricted to the Director of the Secret Service and the Head of the State Police. As an undercover agent, his role would only have been known to those who absolutely had to know about it. I’m afraid you weren’t one of them, Chief Superintendent.’ He sighed. ‘Did he have a wife? Children?’

‘He had a wife, but they were separated.’

That was where all that money came from! Ferrara thought. It all made sense now: Serpico had been in the pay of the Secret Service and benefited from their special funds, which let him live the high life, quite unlike a normal police officer.

‘How long had he been working undercover?’ he asked.

‘About a year. According to the Director of the Secret Service, he was doing an excellent job.’

‘And now that he’s dead?’

‘It was all for nothing.’

‘But he must have gathered some evidence, surely?’

‘Yes, but everything depended on his future testimony. Things he had been told, things he had been in a position to see… He could have been a witness in a possible trial, but now that he’s dead there’s nothing left that could be used as evidence.’

A long silence fell over the room, during which Ferrara thought about the difficult situation Sergi must have found himself in recently.

‘Now get back to work,’ Adinolfi said at last, ‘and I strongly urge you to keep this information secret. Don’t tell anyone, not even your deputy. Do you understand? That’s an order.’

‘You can count on me, Commissioner.’ He stood up and left the room, grim-faced, his mind filled with foreboding.

Rizzo was waiting anxiously for Ferrara in his office, agog to know what the Commissioner had had to say.

As soon as Ferrara came in, he sat down behind his desk, lost in thought. Rizzo waited for his boss to speak.

Ferrara wasn’t sure what to do. Not telling Rizzo, whom he had come to regard as a friend, made him feel almost like a traitor.

Rizzo waited.

It was a long, almost interminable, wait.

At last, Ferrara spoke. He had made his mind up, and he would take full responsibility for his decision. He didn’t give a damn about the promise he had made the Commissioner. Commissioners came and went, but colleagues stayed. It was his colleagues who ran risks alongside him, who had to swallow the occasional failure, who spent their lives looking for clues, collecting evidence, tracking down criminals. His promise to Adinolfi didn’t matter. He needed to tell Rizzo.

And he did.

The agitation was increasing minute by minute in the corridors of the
Squadra Mobile
. Sergi’s death had shaken everyone and the meagre account of the discovery of his body had been passed from mouth to mouth without any extra details being added, as might otherwise have been expected.

All the members of the team were present. Even those who had a day off had come in to Headquarters to discuss what had happened and wait for any news from Bracciano, especially the results of the post-mortem.

Officer Pino Ricci was visibly the most shaken. He had been Sergi’s partner for quite some time, and they had become almost inseparable. Between them they must have weighed over five hundred pounds. And between them they had successfully carried out many operations, in particular against drug dealers and traffickers. They had used the classic good-cop, bad-cop technique, with Ricci as the good cop and Sergi the bad. With his impressive physique – made even more intimidating by his thick beard – Sergi had often resorted to drastic methods. On occasion, these means had even been violent, harking back to the old school of policing, learnt on the street.

The bar on the corner of the building opposite Headquarters was filled with police officers. Even the barman was unable to hide his sadness.

At last they had the telephone records.

It was late afternoon, and Inspector Venturi was sitting in front of Ferrara’s desk, holding the first records for Enrico Costanza’s landline and mobile, those for the previous month. In the next few days, Vodafone and Telecom would give them the records for the last quarter.

‘Have you already looked at them?’ Ferrara asked.

‘Yes, though there isn’t much activity.’

‘Tell me about it.’

Venturi went through the records in detail. With regard to the landline, apart from local calls, he had noticed a few calls to and from England.

‘But we still don’t know who the English account holders are. The numbers are the same ones we found in his diary and passed to Interpol.’

‘Have we heard anything?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Chase it up!’ he ordered, ignoring the Commissioner’s request.

‘I already have, by priority dispatch.’

‘Well done.’

Venturi moved on to the mobile phone records. Not many calls there either. Only two during the whole of Saturday, 28 August, both outgoing: one to the Tumour Institute in Milan at 9.12 in the morning, the other to another mobile phone user in the Bologna area at 6.15 in the evening. That had been the last call made or received that day. The last call before he was killed.

‘Do we know who the owner of the other mobile is?’

‘Yes, of course. The phone used a TIM pay-as-you-go sim card registered to Cosimo Presti.’

‘The journalist?’

‘That’s right, the journalist. Should I question him, Chief Superintendent?’

‘Not yet. Get hold of a photo, maybe from his passport application or his identity card, and give it to Rizzo. He can show it to the staff at the Hotel Villa Medici.’

Maybe Lady Luck was giving them a helping hand…

The interviews with the hotel’s manager and barman the previous afternoon had not yielded positive results. Neither of them knew the Senator’s companion, and the CCTV camera outside had not been working for several days.

Ferrara’s instinct was telling him that they were on the right track.

Suddenly Fanti came in, visibly agitated. He had a piece of paper in his hand, a fax that had just arrived from Headquarters in Rome.

And it contained a piece of information destined to cause even greater agitation in the corridors and offices of the
Squadra Mobile
.

It was about Sergi.

His death had not been an accident. Antonio Sergi had been strangled. The post-mortem had uncovered irrefutable evidence.

A fracture of the cartilage to the left of the hyoid bone had been discovered, a typical sign of strangulation. In addition, no water had been found in the lungs, as would have been the case if it had been a drowning. The pathologist had been categorical about that, and had sent a brief preliminary report to the Prosecutor’s Department in Civitavecchia and the investigating officers in Rome, and it was the latter who had informed Florence.

The death had occurred the previous night.

The news left them speechless.

It seemed impossible that someone could have got the better of a solid, astute and, above all, physically strong officer like Sergi. Several of them wondered if there had been more than one killer. But who? Of course he had made enemies in his line of work, but usually such a serious act was preceded by some fairly clear signals. Had Sergi mentioned anything to anyone? Maybe to Ricci? No, nobody had been told anything like that.

Some speculated that Sergi had been leading a double life. Ricci, though, had other ideas. He would never ever believe that the colleague he’d loved so much could have been corrupt in any way. He would have sworn on his own life that Sergi had been a man of total integrity.

He remembered so many incidents. He had seen him perform great exploits, arresting groups of dealers and fugitives. He had seen him dodge bullets when a pimp opened fire on them. And how could he forget the day he had tried to save the life of a dangerous criminal, giving him first aid and driving him to hospital at top speed along a perilous road?

No. These were not the actions of a dirty cop who had failed in his duty.

But they were all united now, not only in their grief, but also in their determination to ensure that those responsible for this death that affected them so intimately were brought to justice. They would examine all the operations in which their colleague had been involved, starting with the most recent. That was where they needed to dig around, in his work, not in his private life. They were all sure of that. And if by any chance a dark side of him did emerge, they would shine light on it so that no shadows remained.

Serpico had been the best.

Ferrara called a meeting of his most trusted colleagues.

He had clarified his ideas about Costanza’s diary entry for 20 August.

Sergi had realised that he was at risk, perhaps because someone had discovered his double game. Wanting to get out of whatever he was involved in with Costanza, he had been killed for posing a threat.

The word that kept echoing in Ferrara’s brain like a pneumatic drill was the one the Senator had underlined:
Stupid
.

If only Sergi had confided in him, he thought, he might still be alive.

Everyone needed someone to talk to, damn it! Could it really be that he hadn’t told anyone his secret, or confided the dangerous situation in which he had found himself?

Even if it meant having to face Adinolfi’s wrath, he had decided that his colleagues should also know the truth about Sergi. That was the only way the investigation could proceed according to the plan he had in mind.

‘Let’s try and work on parallel lines,’ he told his team. ‘On the one hand, we’ll carry on as if there’s no connection between the murders of Costanza and Sergi. On the other, we won’t rule out the possibility that we’re dealing with the same killer.’

He assigned them their new tasks.

Ascalchi would go to Rome and help their colleagues who were investigating Sergi’s death. As a Roman himself, he knew the area, which made him the best man for the job.

‘Check the records for his mobile and his landline,’ Ferrara suggested, hoping there might be a clue in his recent calls.

Ascalchi nodded, making notes on a piece of paper. ‘What about the arson investigation?’

‘I’ll take care of it,’ Ferrara said. ‘By the way, are there any developments on that case?’

Ascalchi shook his head. ‘No. The original suspect, the mad doctor, died six months ago in a car accident. I’ve spoken to some of the tenants and neighbours, but it was useless. No one knows anything.’

‘Bring me the file.’

They got straight down to work.

All of them were teary-eyed.