The Black Rose Of Florence Read online

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It might be a message—’

  ‘Let me know what you find, Gianni,’ Ferrara cut in.

  ‘Of course. You’ll be the first to be informed.’

  Ferrara hung up bad-temperedly.

  He stared at the wall facing him. It was covered with commendations and photographs showing him with colleagues and with various holders of the post of Head of the State Police. He shifted his gaze to the framed photograph on the desk, showing him and his wife on the occasion of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Then he took a cigar from his black leather case and looked at it as if for the first time.

  He tried to imagine the length of the leaf before it was rolled. He suddenly remembered a visit he had made years before to the tobacco factory in Lucca, where leaves from Kentucky were turned into cigars, left to age for periods ranging from six months to more than a year in special rooms. Like a fine wine, to be savoured slowly. From his jacket pocket, he took his cigar cutter, and moved it halfway along the cigar. A sharp click echoed in the air. There were the two pieces. Exactly equal. As always.

  He recalled that he had been smoking this kind of cigar for more than twenty years now, ever since he had thrown a still-full packet of cigarettes in the rubbish bin. And his wife had soon become accustomed to the smell of tobacco on his clothes and to tolerating a bit of passive smoking, convinced that cigars probably did less harm than cigarettes. Deep down, though, she still hoped that he would quit one day. He was about to light it when he stopped. He picked up his notebook and pen and jotted down the information gathered so far, underlining some details in red ink:

  Night of Monday 21 to Tuesday 22 June

  Expert job.

  Special instruments: a scalpel, forceps and surgical scissors.

  Time: 10–15 minutes.

  Material burnt inside coffin. Perhaps tobacco leaves!

  Toscano cigar?

  Finally he updated the deputy prosecutor. A brief call, which the deputy prosecutor concluded with the words: ‘If that stuff is confirmed as tobacco, let’s keep it to ourselves. We don’t want the press finding out.’

  Should that tobacco be understood as a threat? Yet another? Was his past catching up with him?

  It was still too soon to be sure.

  5

  It looked like a large warehouse, standing there on the hills outside Florence, next to the Careggi Hospital. Surrounded on three sides by open country, it was protected by high iron railings. Those who did not know its true purpose would never have imagined that it was a place where the bodies of those who had died in hospitals and in nursing homes were displayed before being buried.

  This was the New Chapels of Rest, so called to distinguish it from the dilapidated old chapels that had been replaced at the beginning of the 1990s.

  The two officers were in an unmarked Fiat Punto. The car was more than five years old, and at the very least the tyres needed changing and the brakes inspecting. Ideally, the Motor Vehicles Office at the Ministry of the Interior should long ago have decommissioned it. But, despite repeated requests, they refused, pleading ‘lack of funds’. That was the excuse they always used, and nobody was very convinced by it, especially when there were senior civil servants and politicians in Rome driving around in expensive new cars.

  The rain was beating insistently on the roof of the car, and the windscreen wipers were working overtime. A real storm that perhaps presaged the start of summer.

  Officer Pino Ricci was driving, with Inspector Antonio Sergi in the seat next to him.

  Once they had entered the courtyard, Ricci switched off the engine, lowered the sun shield and stuck the signal paddle with the words STATE POLICE under it. They got out and ran towards the building in silence.

  It was Sergi and Ricci who had been assigned the task of investigating the desecration of the body in the New Chapels of Rest.

  Both men had athletic builds. Sergi’s distinguishing feature, though, was his thick beard. He had grown it to cover an old scar left by a shoot-out with members of the Sacra Corona Unita, the Apulian Mafia, almost ten years previously in a disreputable neighbourhood of Bari, where he had worked before Florence. Because of his strong resemblance to the character played by Al Pacino, his nickname was ‘Serpico’.

  The two men had been a team for some years. When they were after drug traffickers, they usually played good cop, bad cop with the junkies and small-time pushers they pulled in. Sergi, naturally, was the bad cop. He acted tough, like a volcano ready to explode, while his broad-shouldered, barrel-chested colleague was the ‘gentle giant’, the one who tried to calm him and cajole the prisoners into telling the truth. It was an old ploy, but an effective one, except when they were dealing with hardened gangsters, who weren’t taken in by it.

  Having finished their inspection, they were shown to the director’s office, An intense, stagnant smell of mildew and disinfectant hung in the air. A fluorescent light glared coldly from the ceiling on to the white walls and linoleum floor. The furniture was basic: a worn wooden desk and a couple of metal chairs. The director was a short, squat man named Alessandro Vannucci. It had been at seven this morning, he told them, that he had discovered the scar on the woman, who had died the previous day in the cancer ward of the hospital. The gates had been closed at six the previous evening, by which point the relatives of the dead people currently housed there had all left. During the night, the building had been watched by security guards until he arrived in the morning.

  Sergi noted down the dead woman’s details, the name of the security firm that provided the guards and the company responsible for cleaning the premises. Before leaving, he asked to check the TV camera he had noticed during the inspection, it was over the door separating the office area from the chapels. But it was a pointless request. The camera was not working: it had been out of order for months and nobody had bothered to repair it.

  The two officers left, carrying the foul smell of the air in their nostrils.

  The other thing they carried away with them was the thought that these days not even the dead could find peace in Florence.

  Meanwhile, Inspector Riccardo Venturi had been busy at the computer. Even though he was only thirty-two, he could recall every crime ever committed in the city, every case the Squadra Mobile had worked on. He was an IT expert, a real genius, nicknamed ‘the wizard’ by his colleagues. It was a name he may have laughed off, but deep down he seemed proud of it, except when he wasn’t in the mood for joking.

  When Ferrara told him about the incident in the chapels, the first thing that came to mind was the summer solstice.

  A brief search confirmed that this year it had fallen at exactly 00.57 on 21 June.

  A coincidence? He knew that it was an important moment of the year, one that age-old popular tradition invested with a magical significance.

  He printed a few pages and went back to his search.

  6

  It was 11.06 by the clock on the desk.

  Ferrara had finished reading Sergi’s latest report and countersigned it, ready for it to be sent off to the Prosecutor’s Department. He took off his glasses and put them in the breast pocket of his jacket.

  One less walking the streets, he said to himself, lifting a hand to his dark hair, which was greying slightly at the sides.

  The report concerned the arrest of an Albanian suspected of pimping and drug trafficking. After keeping him under surveillance for a month, they had finally arrested him late last night as he was getting off his bicycle outside a bar in the Piazza Santa Maria Novella. In the course of the search they had found him in possession of a semiautomatic pistol with the serial number erased and more than 200 grams of pure heroin.

  It was Sergi and his team who had brought the operation to a conclusion. The investigation had begun, as so often happened, with a tip-off. A young junkie and dealer – the report did not mention his name, or anything that might help to identify him – had ratted on him in the hope of getting a few favours f
rom the inspector in return.

  ‘Excellent work!’ Ferrara commented. Then, turning to Venturi, who had just sat down in front of him, he added with a bitter smile, ‘These Albanians are making their mark in the drug trade. Seems pimping isn’t enough for them.’

  ‘Well, Chief Superintendent,’ Venturi replied, ‘it’s only to be expected: money attracts money. Let’s just hope we don’t see this guy out on the streets again tomorrow or the day after.’

  Ferrara simply nodded.

  The rise of Albanian and similar criminal groups in Florence and other cities in Northern and Central Italy was indeed predictable, given the lack of a Mafia-style organisation in such places to stop them moving in. It was hardly surprising that regions like Sicily and Calabria were immune to their incursions.

  ‘Chief,’ the inspector went on, ‘I’ve brought you some material I collected from the web.’ With one hand he put down on the desk the pages he had printed and with the other he held out a sheaf of press cuttings. ‘These are articles I found in the Headquarters collection covering the past few years.’

  Ferrara took them and slid them to a corner of the desk. ‘I’ll read them later. Just tell me for now if you found anything interesting.’

  ‘Nothing specific on our case. There are no exact matches, at least not in the records. But I wanted you to see these things because some of them are quite unusual. And one interesting point is that quite a few of these incidents took place during the summer solstice … ’

  He went on to list some of them.

  ‘Good work, Venturi. But now let’s focus on the present. When Sergi brings you the lists of people who have some connection with the chapels, I want you to make it your top priority. We need to know everything about them, and about the dead woman’s family. We can’t yet rule anything out.’

  ‘Of course, chief,’ the inspector replied, barely concealing his impatience to get back to work.

  Left alone, Ferrara devoted himself to a pile of paperwork. The usual office routine. Some of it concerned his men: requests for leave, conduct reports, evaluations, and so on. It was a bureaucratic chore he was finding increasingly burdensome, a job that had nothing to do with any of the cases they were investigating, but which still fell to him, as head of the Squadra Mobile. Of course, his secretary, Sergeant Nestore Fanti, had prepared every document for him with his usual care, according to his instructions, especially when it came to the evaluations of the men’s conduct, but it was up to Ferrara to go through it all, state the reasons for the scores given each man, and sign.

  He settled down to his task, resolving not to move from his chair for the rest of the morning.

  7

  Thanks to heavy traffic it had taken them nearly an hour to get to the Campo di Marte area, not far from the football stadium.

  Sergi dashed in the rain towards a three-storey block, followed by Ricci. He rang the bell and the lock of the front door clicked immediately. They were clearly expected.

  In the doorway of the apartment, they were greeted by the dead woman’s daughter. She was in her early forties, short and thin, without make-up. She looked startled: she had clearly not expected to see two big, casually dressed men, one of them with a beard so dishevelled it made him look like a villain. Sergi realised he had scared the woman. To calm her, he brought out his badge: the accompanying photograph, showing him in an impeccable uniform, was much more reassuring. She led them into the living room, where her husband was sitting. He was about the same age as her, a plump-faced man with a thin moustache and a twitch that kept closing his right eye.

  Sergi wasted no time in explaining the reason for their visit. Then he took his notebook and pen from the pocket of his leather jacket and asked for the full name of the dead woman and some details about her. She had been retired for years, he was told, having previously taught Italian literature and history at a secondary school in the city. He went on to more direct questions.

  ‘Yes, we were at the chapels yesterday afternoon, until just before closing time,’ the wife said. ‘It must have been about half past five when we left.’

  ‘Did you notice the scar?’

  ‘There wasn’t one. Otherwise we would have seen it, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘Did you notice anything suspicious?’

  ‘No,’ the woman replied.

  The husband spoke now for the first time, his eyelid twitching. ‘Don’t you think we ought to tell them about those people, darling?’

  ‘Which people?’ Sergi asked.

  The man explained that, just as they were leaving, they had seen a couple wandering the corridors as if they didn’t know where to go.

  ‘A couple?’

  ‘Yes. A man and a woman.’

  ‘Can you describe them?’

  ‘We weren’t really paying much attention, but what I did notice was that the man was holding a big bag. You know, like a doctor’s bag. My brother-in-law may be able to tell you more, because he stayed a bit longer than we did.’

  His wife nodded.

  ‘What’s your brother-in-law’s name?’

  ‘Ferdinando Berti,’ the woman replied. ‘He’s my only brother.’

  ‘Perhaps you could tell him to come to see us at Headquarters, signora.’

  ‘Would it be all right if he came after the funeral?’

  ‘Of course. No problem.’

  ‘Talking of which, Inspector,’ the husband said, ‘when will the body be returned?’

  ‘That’ll have to be authorised by the Prosecutor’s Department. Deputy Prosecutor Vinci is the one dealing with the case. If they don’t need to do any more tests, I think you should be able to get it back today.’

  ‘I’ll phone the Prosecutor’s Department straight away,’ the man said, as he saw the two officers to the door.

  ‘A couple with a doctor’s bag, who didn’t know where to go … ’ Sergi said, as soon as they climbed back inside the Fiat Punto.

  8

  In the meantime, Ferrara had received confirmation of the substance found inside the coffin.

  The result had been unequivocal: burnt leaves of cigar tobacco, of the very kind he had been smoking for years. Unfortunately, no fingerprints or biological traces had been found: the fire had burnt them all away.

  The information raised a lot of questions in Ferrara’s mind.

  Was Gianni Fuschi right to interpret this as a message for him? Should he start taking precautions? And who could be behind it? What twisted mind had dreamt this up?

  He still had a vivid memory of the attempt on his life in October 2001, which he had miraculously escaped but which had been used as a pretext to get him away from Florence for his own safety and transfer him to the Anti-Mafia Investigation Department in Rome. Would his superiors force him to move again? What would he tell his wife?

  He was still ruminating on these questions when he heard a knock at the door.

  Teresa Micalizi was a new superintendent, just out of graduate training at the Police Academy.

  Ferrara explained to her the workings of the Squadra Mobile, its various sections and what each dealt with, and the hours, both the regular ones and the overtime.

  She listened attentively. It was her first real introduction to the world of day-to-day detective work, and it was all the more impressive coming from the head of the most important department in Headquarters. She was wearing a dark grey suit, white blouse and high-heeled shoes. She did not look like a policewoman. Were it not for the gun in her shoulder holster bulging beneath her jacket, she might be taken for a young female executive.

  She was of medium height, with dark hair cut in a bob and a pleasant face. But what was most striking were her deep black eyes. They were remarkably lively and intelligent, darting everywhere, anxious not to miss anything. She was clearly an interesting young woman. But she was just as clearly embarrassed and kept brushing her fringe back from her forehead with her right hand. Ferrara went to her and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I know you’re from Naples,’ he
said, ‘but you don’t have an Neapolitan accent.’

  ‘I was born in Naples,’ she replied, ‘but I lived in Milan for eighteen years.’ She was about to tell him that her father had been a police officer until he was killed in a shoot-out with robbers who had raided a bank in the centre of the city, not far from the famous Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. She was also about to tell him that her mother, who was from South America, was a painter, but she held back. Most likely the chief superintendent already knew these things, she thought.

  ‘Even though you’re the only woman superintendent in this department at the moment,’ Ferrara continued, ‘you shouldn’t feel uncomfortable. I’m certain you’re the first in a long line. The role of women in the police force is becoming increasingly important, especially when dealing with certain types of crime.’

  She smiled. Was he telling her the truth, or only what he thought he was expected to say? And what did he mean by ‘certain types of crime’? Child abuse? Rape and sexual assault? For the moment, she told herself, these questions were pointless: only time would tell. But one thing was certain: she had made the right choice, this job was going to give her a lot of satisfaction.

  At this point Ferrara took a cigar from his case, lit it and puffed at it for a while, watching the smoke as it drifted up towards the ceiling. It was his second cigar of the day. Realising that the introduction was over, Teresa stood up and said goodbye. She was anxious now to meet her colleagues.

  Ferrara plunged back into his own thoughts.

  9

  It was just before six in the evening when a thin girl with short dark hair entered Sergi’s office. She worked for the firm that handled the cleaning at the New Chapels of Rest.