Death in Tuscany

Death in Tuscany

MICHELE GIUTTARI

Translated by Howard Curtis

ABACUS

First published in Italy in 2005 by Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Abacus This edition published in 2009 by Abacus Reprinted 2009 (three times)

Copyright © Michele Giuttari 2005 Translation copyright © Howard Curtis 2008

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-349-12008-9

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Abacus An imprint of Little, Brown Book Group 100 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DY

An Hachette UK Company
www.hachette.co.uk

www. littlebrown .
co.uk

To Christa

Friendship is preferable to honours. It is better to be loved than honoured.

Aristotle

Florence, 2001

The girl, little more than a child, was found on the edge of a wood on the road above Scandicci, scantily dressed, without papers, and dying of an overdose, at dawn on Sunday 29 July, and was taken to the Ospedale Nuovo. But it wasn't until almost a week later that Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara, head of the Florence
Squadra Mobile,
really became involved with the case. Friday 3 August.

He was already in a bad mood when he set foot in the office. The weather was hot and muggy, even though it was only eight in the morning. Chief Inspector Violante's report on the girl's death was in his in-tray: one of the many documents that awaited his routine examination at the beginning of every day, arranged with almost maniacal care by his secretary, Sergeant Fanti, who always got in at least half an hour before he did.

It wasn't somewhere in the middle of the pile, though. It had been placed right on the top.

And Fanti wasn't the kind of person to be impressed by the death of yet another junkie.

Ferrara had picked up his pen as soon as he sat down: an automatic gesture after so many years of deskwork. Now he replaced it and took out a cigar. His morning cigar and coffee both helped to revive brain cells undermined by time and stress.

He lit his cigar without even looking at it as he read Violante's report.

He didn't like what he read.

When, the previous Sunday, he had seen the first report from the officer on duty at the hospital, he had automatically pigeonholed the case as yet another tragedy after a night at the disco, almost a commonplace event on Saturdays in the global village. The city and the surrounding hills were awash with drugs and alcohol, like the River Arno in full spate, and like the River Arno they threatened to overflow, but with even more tragic consequences than those of the flood of 1966.

Ferrara had been feeling his age for some time. The world, it seemed to him, was getting worse rather than better, and he often found himself thinking that 'things weren't the way they used to be', just like his father and presumably his grandfather before him. He had delegated the investigation — a perfectly routine one - to Chief Inspector Violante and dismissed the case from his mind. Now it came back to hit him like a slap in the face, and he didn't really know why.

Because she was dead?

That happens to junkies.

Because her age was estimated as being between thirteen and sixteen and yet, despite being so young, she had managed to shoot a lethal dose of heroin into her body?

Perhaps.

Or because, after nearly a week, they still didn't know who she was? A small detail, a mere speck, which might turn out troublesome, like a mote in the eye of justice.

But when it came down to it, if there was anything wrong with the investigation, the fault was his.

'Fanti!' he called.

Between his office and his secretary's, the door was always open.

Sergeant Fanti had just turned forty. He was more than six feet tall and terrifyingly thin, with hollow cheeks, blue eyes and short, wiry blond hair. He had lived in his home town of Trento until the day - almost twenty years ago - when he had joined the police. Florence had been his very first posting, and here he had stayed. He had immediately become noted for his meticulousness, his discretion, and his skill at research, whether in the records or on the internet.

Such was his passion for computers, he had even updated the office's facilities at his own expense. When Ferrara had taken up his post, he had found the new equipment already assigned by his predecessors to the secretary's office and he had okayed that, although he himself occasionally made use of it when he had some particularly sensitive information to track down.

'Yes, chief?' Fanti replied, materialising in front of Ferrara's desk almost instantaneously, as usual.

Ferrara often wondered if the man spent his time with his ear against the wall, ready to burst in as soon as he had any inkling that his chief was about to summon him. Of course if he'd been doing that, he wouldn't have had time to perform the thousand tasks around the office with the efficiency, the meticulous precision, of which he was so proud. It was by far the tidiest, best functioning office in the whole of Florence Police Headquarters. In the end, Ferrara had come to the conclusion that Fanti had a sixth sense.

'Well?' he asked without preamble.

The sergeant shrugged. It wasn't his job to draw conclusions or make judgements. But it was clear from the look on his face that he'd been expecting exactly this reaction from his boss, and that it didn't surprise him that Ferrara hadn't even opened the other files. Or that the cigar had been left in the ashtray to go out by itself.

'A young girl, maybe no more than a child,' Ferrara said, lowering his voice as if he were thinking aloud rather than addressing his subordinate - although it was also useful to have him to think aloud to - 'maybe no more than a child, right? It's hard to say these days, they grow up so quickly . . . They already have breasts when they're eleven or twelve, and go around with their navels showing. Are they trying to look like whores, or are the whores trying to look like schoolgirls? A paedophile culture, that's what we're living in, Fanti. And then everyone complains when . . . But what can you do? Children today want to look like adults, and adults want to stay children forever, no one wants to grow up, no one wants to grow old, they all think they can stay in an eternal kindergarten without rules or restrictions, and not worry about time passing. Maybe I'm angry because I feel the weight of my years, every single one of them and maybe a few more. But in my day, damn it, this girl would have been a child! She would have been playing with her dolls, not with syringes! What kind of world is this? What kind of shitty world? And isn't there anyone looking for her? In the whole of Florence, isn't there a mother with a missing daughter, an uncle who's lost his niece, a tourist desperate to find his child?'

'Right, chief,' Fanti said, not knowing how to respond to this outburst.

And what about us? What have we done to identify her? What has Violante done? Has he been twiddling his thumbs? Taking his children to Rimini?'

'Chief Inspector Violante's children are grown up and can look after themselves. With all due respect, I don't think they need their father to take them to the seaside any more. And I'm sure the chief inspector hasn't been deliberately wasting time. We used to think he was a shirker, but he isn't. I think you yourself discovered that during the Ricciardi case, didn't you?'

Good old Sergeant Fanti - the voice of conscience.

Ferrara took a deep breath, then lowered his head and stared down at his desk. 'Send for him. But first bring me the complete file. Then, after Violante, I want Rizzo in here. I don't like this case at all. What are we supposed to do? Bury this girl without even finding out her name?'

'Superintendent Rizzo is on holiday, chief.'

Of course. He remembered now that at the beginning of the week Superintendent Rizzo, to all intents and purposes his deputy, had come to say goodbye before leaving for two weeks to visit his relatives in Sicily. Lucky him.

'Who's on duty?'

'Superintendent Ascalchi.'

A Roman, who knew Florence as well as Ferrara knew Asia Minor!

'Oh, great! Well, what can we do? Send for him. Then find out from the Prosecutor's Department what time the autopsy is scheduled for and who it's been assigned to. Whoever that person is, I want to speak to him as soon as possible.'

'Of course, chief,' Fanti replied, and went back to his office.

Like Rizzo, Ferrara was a Sicilian. He had been planning a journey to Sicily for months, but each time he'd had to postpone it.

While he was waiting, he phoned his wife Petra, to tell her he wouldn't be home for lunch. He didn't tell her why, there was no need. It was always like this. Even in summer. Or rather, especially in summer, when Ferrara, short-staffed because of his men's holidays, was invariably forced to give up his own.

Not that he minded: he was used to it. But he felt sorry for his wife, who insisted on staying with him all through these stifling months when the sun beat down mercilessly on Florence, the city of excess. But whenever he told her they wouldn't be going away, she would greet the announcement with a smile as predictable as the infernal heat and say that she wouldn't have been able to leave home for long anyway, because there'd be no one to water her beloved plants. He would always agree with her. They both knew this was a convenient fiction, because the terrace was equipped with a state-of-the-art irrigation system to ensure that their beautiful roof garden was always properly tended. But that was all right. It made them equal.