The Dante Conspiracy (5 page)

‘No. According to the report I just had, apart from making the
hole in the floor of the cloister, they did no damage at all. In fact, if it hadn’t
been for the shooting incident, we probably wouldn’t even have been told about it.’

‘Actually, you would,’ Perini said. ‘I told them downstairs that
we needed to be informed if any other events occurred anywhere in the area that
might possibly be linked to Dante, in any way at all. Because I still think Bertorelli’s
murder has to be connected in some way with the poet. How, I’ve no idea, but that
article he wrote seems to be the only slightly unusual event in his life.
Right, on your feet.
Let’s go.’

‘Where to?’
Lombardi asked, surprised.

‘Dante’s cenotaph, of course.
I want
to see it for myself, before any possible clues are trampled into the dust by a
bunch of heavy-footed
carabinieri
.’

‘So they definitely got inside?’ Perini asked. ‘They didn’t just
smash a hole through the roof of the cenotaph and walk away?’

‘No doubt at all about that, sir,’ the uniformed officer replied.
‘There’s quite a thick layer of dust on the floor inside, and there are a number
of footprints down there. I believe there were two men involved, because I think
I can see two different size sets of prints,’ he added for clarification.

‘I understand you were the first on the scene. Could anyone not
involved with the break-in have entered the cenotaph?
Any of the
staff here, for example?’

The officer shook his head.

‘I don’t think so, sir, no, because there seem to be only the
two sets of footprints in the cenotaph itself. The alarms were triggered by the
intruders when they left the grounds of the basilica, which is when our patrol car
responded. As soon as it was light, the staff here carried out an inspection of
the area and found this hole.’ He pointed downwards at the roughly circular opening
in the floor of the cloister. ‘You’d need to be fairly fit and quite slim to climb
down that rope into the cenotaph,’ he added, with a sideways glance at Lombardi’s
comfortably-padded frame, ‘and even more fit to make the climb back up again. Most
of the people employed here are the wrong side of fifty to start doing that kind
of thing. The staff member who found the hole is here if you’d like to talk to him.’

‘I doubt if that will be necessary,’ Perini replied. ‘All he
did was
find
the hole, so I can’t see what useful information
he might have for us. You’ve looked down inside the cenotaph but you’ve not gone
down there yourself?’

‘I shone my torch around the interior to check for signs of any
other damage, and I noticed the footprints when I did so. But that’s all, sir. Oh,
the intruders also left their tools behind.’

Both detectives had seen the bulky black bag resting against
the wall of the cloister, and Lombardi had already used the end of his pen to open
up the top of it to peer inside.

‘You’ve checked it already, presumably? And wore gloves when
you did so?’

‘Yes, sir, to both your questions.
The
tools are about what you’d expect – hammers, chisels, crowbars, that kind of thing
– but there are also a couple of pads made of heavy material, quite badly bashed
about. My guess is that they used them on the chisels to muffle the sound of their
hammering.’

‘Makes sense,’ Perini agreed.

Then he looked behind him as he heard a clattering sound. A man
wearing grey overalls was walking down the cloister towards them, a slim ladder
resting on his shoulder.

‘He’s one of the ground staff here at the basilica,’ the patrol
officer explained. ‘I asked him to find a ladder in case you wanted to examine the
cenotaph yourself. Getting up and down that rope wouldn’t be all that easy.’

‘Thanks. That’s good thinking,’ Perini said, making a mental
note of the officer’s name, just because of his demonstrable competence.

The workman lowered the ladder through the hole, which left about
three feet protruding above the floor of the cloister.

‘Thanks,’ Perini said, then turned to the police officer.
‘Right.
Lend me your torch, please.’

He knelt beside the hole driven in the floor of the cloister,
switched on the torch and peered down inside. It took a few moments for his eyes
to become accustomed to the darkness below him after the early-morning glare of
the sun, but soon he was seeing precisely what the uniformed police officer had
described. The walls seemed to be completely untouched, with no signs of damage
or vandalism, and the confusion of footprints on the stone floor of the cenotaph
showed up clearly.

Perini stood up and pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his
pocket, just in case what he was looking at was a crime scene and there was a body
in the cenotaph somewhere, out of sight, unlikely though that was.

‘You stay up here, Cesare, while I have a quick look round inside.
I don’t think this is anything more than a case of determined vandalism, but you
never know.’

Then Perini grabbed the top of the ladder, made sure the base
wouldn’t slip under his weight,
then
carefully made his
way down it and into the cool darkness of the cenotaph. The hole was big enough
that getting through it wasn’t much of a problem, and then he stood up, one foot
resting on the pile of rubble and the other on the bottom tread of the ladder. For
a few moments he didn’t move. He’d always been taught that at any crime scene –
and he supposed that where he was almost qualified for that description simply because
of the damage – the most important tool any detective possessed was his eyes. Look
first, then move, had always been his mantra.

He shone the beam of the torch all around the interior. Apart
from the confusion of footprints on the stone floor, and the hole above his head,
there were no obvious signs that anyone had been inside. No graffiti, no other damage
that he could see.
And certainly no corpses.
The air smelt
stale and unpleasant, but it didn’t smell of decay.

He squatted down and shone the beam of the torch on the floor.
The uniformed officer had been right: two men had been inside, because he could
clearly see two different sole patterns, and the shoes were slightly different sizes.
Both were obviously male, by their size. They seemed to have walked all around inside
the cenotaph, but he had no idea why, or what they had hoped to achieve in there.
Or to find.
But the sheer labour involved in breaking through
the floor of the cloister meant that they must have had a very good reason. He shone
the torch up towards the hole. It must have taken
them
most of the night to get through, which obviously begged the question: why bother?

Lombardi was peering down through the hole, and Perini gestured
to him.

‘Nothing much here,’ he said. ‘So you can come down as well.’

‘Do I have to?’

Perini looked up at the slightly rotund figure of his sergeant
and what appeared to be the new suit he had on.

‘Yes,’ he replied, resisting the urge to smile. ‘Unless that’s
an Armani you’re wearing, in which case I’d want to talk to you anyway, get yourself
down here. I’d value your opinion.’

Grunting and muttering, Lombardi slowly and carefully negotiated
the opening in the ceiling and climbed down the ladder.

‘What do you think?’ Perini asked, once his sergeant was standing
beside him at the base of the ladder.

Lombardi looked all round, following the beam of the torch as
Perini slowly moved it across the walls and the floor.

‘Looks as if they didn’t do anything, apart from walk about the
place,’ Lombardi said. ‘Bit pointless, really.’

‘I agree. And they didn’t leave any convenient clues to tell
us what they were doing,’ Perini pointed out. ‘But I suppose there’s really only
one possible explanation.’

‘They were looking for something,’ Lombardi supplied.

 
‘Exactly.
That’s the only explanation that makes sense. But searching for what, and did they
find it?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘But why did they come in this way? Wouldn’t it have been easier
to break in from inside the basilica, just cut their way through the wall?’

Perini nodded.

‘Easier, yes, from the point of view of the
labour involved in getting through the wall.
But you’ve obviously not been
inside the basilica. All the doors and windows are alarmed, so getting inside would
be difficult unless they could disable the system somehow. But more importantly,
there’s a hefty stone monument, a kind of celebration of Dante’s life, right in
front of the entrance to the cenotaph, which would make cutting through the wall
behind it really difficult, maybe even impossible. On balance, taking this route
from the outside and going down through the ceiling was probably the only viable
option.’

The two detectives made a thorough search of the entire interior
but found nothing of significance.

‘There’s dust everywhere,’ Perini said, ‘and I can see print
marks – or rather glove marks – on the walls. It looks to me as if they were searching
for a hidden compartment or something like that, maybe tapping the walls to see
if they could find a hollow section. But there’s no sign of damage, no chisel marks
or anything like that, so presumably they left empty-handed.’

‘But what did they expect to find inside an empty cenotaph dedicated
to a poet who died nearly a thousand years ago?’

‘Not quite that long,’ Perini replied, ‘but it’s a good question
all the same, and I’ve no idea. But I’ve found somebody who knows all about Italy’s
most famous poet. Let’s grab a drink at one of the cafes, and I’ll give him a call.
He lives near here, and he’s waiting to hear from me.’

Chapter 8

Perini made a call on his mobile as soon as they emerged from
the Santa Croce Basilica, and then the two men walked down the side of the piazza.
They found a table easily enough outside a cafe towards the end, a location which
offered them an unrivalled view of the basilica itself, its old stones gleaming
white at the far end. Once the waiter had deposited their drinks – two
cappuccinos
– on the table in front of them,
Lombardi leaned forward slightly.

‘So is this expert coming here, or what?’ he asked.

‘Yes. He’ll be here in a few minutes,’ Perini confirmed. ‘He
works at the university, just like Bertorelli did, but in a different department,
and he only lives a couple of streets away. He’s actually a specialist in the Byzantine
Empire - the Eastern Roman Empire - but he’s made a detailed study of Dante as a
kind of
sideline
. He’s written a couple of books about
him, in fact. I read some of the reviews of them on the Internet, and they looked
to me like they would be pretty heavy going.’

‘That’s great,’ Lombardi said. ‘I know nothing about history
and care less, and I can’t stand poetry. And now this guy is going to come along
and talk about both, and probably bore me into submission in the process.’

‘One day, Cesare, I must find out exactly what you do know, and
what your skills are.’

‘I’m a good shot, and a good driver,’ Lombardi answered immediately.
‘And I can normally tell what you’re thinking. As your sergeant, do I need anything
more than that?’

Perini grinned at him.

‘Maybe, or maybe not.
I really don’t
know.’

‘Inspector Perini?’

A late middle-aged man, clean shaven with prematurely greying
hair, was approaching their table from the open area of the piazza, a battered brown
leather document case clutched in one hand. He didn’t look like an academic, more
like a successful businessman. He was wearing a light grey suit of impeccable cut,
a white shirt that strained slightly against his belly, and a silk tie with a discreet
pattern. His polished brown leather shoes looked handmade, and he seemed to almost
exude an air of restrained prosperity.

‘Do I look that much like a policeman?’ Perini asked, getting
up and extending his hand to greet the new arrival.

‘Perhaps not by yourself, no, but sitting here with your colleague,
the two of you do rather scream “police”, yes. I’m Ettore Guitoni.’

‘I’ll remember that next time I’m on a stake-out. Doctor Guitoni,
this is Sergeant Cesare Lombardi.’

‘Doctor,’ Lombardi said.

‘Ettore, please.
Now, how can I help
the police?’

‘We are facing something of a mystery,’ Perini said. ‘You’re
obviously aware of the death of Professor Bertorelli?’

Guitoni nodded, but didn’t respond.

‘At the moment, we don’t know why, but his death and another
recent incident seem to be connected in some way with Dante, the poet.’

‘I do know who Dante was, inspector,’ Guitoni replied mildly,
then
ordered an
espresso
from the waiter who had just appeared beside their table.

‘I know, sorry. I just meant
that
Dante rather than anyone else. What I’d like you to do is just
talk us through his life and work, in case we can see a link between any aspect
of it and the case we’re working on. But please just give us the short version,
because my colleague here has a very low boredom threshold.’

‘I’ll do my best. Dante’s pretty much been my hobby for the last
ten years or so. Right, Dante
,
il
Sommo
Poeta
, the Supreme Poet. He was probably born in the
early summer of 1265, right here in Florence. His family was loyal to the White
Guelphs, which meant they supported the Pope, and also meant they, along with the
Black Guelphs, opposed the Ghibellines, who enjoyed the support of the Holy Roman
Emperor. In his mid-twenties, in 1289, he actually fought with the Guelph cavalry
at the Battle of Campaldino, so he was clearly quite active politically and militarily.
He was also active in other ways as well, getting married and having at least four
children. We don’t know much about his education, except that he certainly studied
both Tuscan and Provencal poetry, as well as reading the classical Latin authors.