The Villa Triste (13 page)

‘Is there anything else?’

Pallioti was no longer entirely sure he wanted to know, but the question had to be asked.

‘Not really.’ She shook her head. ‘There are no defensive wounds. None. Which is a little strange. For whatever reason, it looks like he ate the salt more or less willingly. Didn’t even try to fight back. From where the body was, I would have thought that was because he was taken by surprise. Except for the salt. I’ll analyse it by the way, of course,’ she added. ‘But I think your Tybalt was right.’

Despite himself, Pallioti smiled at her description of Enzo. He did look suspiciously like one of the Capulets.

‘My guess is ordinary table salt,’ she continued, shrugging. ‘He was in good condition otherwise, for a man of his age. Eyesight going, a bit. The glasses. But he didn’t wear a hearing aid, or have a plastic hip or a pig valve in his heart.’

She contemplated the body thoughtfully. As of now, the investigation was following the obvious line of enquiry, looking for a burglary or some kind of rendezvous that had gone wrong. Pallioti had heard of escorts, gigolos, and rent boys who carried guns. He had never heard of one who carried bags of table salt. As far as he knew, no more than a tiny dish of sea salt crystals had been found in the apartment’s kitchen. He reached behind him for his overcoat. A restless, itchy feeling had come over him and he wanted to be alone for a few minutes before he talked to the Mayor, or even to Enzo.

‘Oh, and I was right,’ the medical examiner added, looking up at him. ‘About the bullet. I’ll get it down to ballistics, pronto. But it was small calibre. No exit wound. It lodged. One shot, definitely. At contact, into the back of the skull.’ She smiled. ‘From above.’

Pallioti’s hands stopped in the act of buttoning his coat.

‘Say that again.’

‘From above,’ she repeated. ‘I told you, I was almost certain when I was back there in the apartment, but now I’ve measured the angle. Whoever shot this man was standing directly above and behind him, close enough for the gun barrel to make contact. You can see clearly, the burn markings—’

‘Powder burns?’

‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘that’s right. On the back of his head. And the killer was aiming down. Definitely down.’

‘So what do you think happened?’

‘Well,’ she said, shrugging, ‘it looks to me as if his killer made him kneel, eat a large quantity of table salt, then stuffed his mouth with it and shot him in the back of the head.’

Chapter Three

‘You’re saying that it was an execution?’

The term was too melodramatic for Pallioti’s taste. If this was a gang killing, some half-witted bunch of drug dealers picking each other off, he wouldn’t have hesitated to call it what it was. An execution. A hit. An assassination. All of which implied, not a random crime, but some kind of vendetta. A planned act of revenge. Which in turn suggested that the victim had done something to deserve it.

He made a faint humming noise.

‘Well,’ he said, finally, ‘I have to admit, I don’t know how else you’d describe torturing someone, making them kneel, and shooting them once in the back of the head.’

‘It doesn’t fit,’ Enzo said. ‘The shooting, maybe. But when you throw in the salt. The kneeling.’ He shook his head. Then he added, ‘Or maybe it does. There’s not a fingerprint anywhere. Not in the elevator, on the door, in the apartment – nothing. There’s not a fibre, a hair. Anything. Maybe some grit from the street.’

Pallioti shrugged.

‘That could mean whoever did it wore gloves and got lucky.’

Even as he said it, he didn’t think he believed it.

Enzo glanced at him. ‘On the other hand,’ he said, ignoring the ‘get lucky’ theory, ‘if whoever it was was that good, why drop the wallet in the alley? Why take it at all? Opportune cash theft and execution doesn’t fit. Any more than the salt. It doesn’t make any sense.’

For a moment, the image of Giovanni Trantemento’s face hung in the room between them. Pallioti flicked his hand as though he was flicking away a fly. He had just had a brief conversation with the investigating magistrate who, for now, was busy enough on what he considered more important cases to be content to stand on the sidelines. Prior to that, he had filled in the Mayor. In between, he had taken a call from one of the Questura’s press officers who bore the unwelcome news that a small piece had already appeared in one of the evening papers. So far, it was not much more than local colour.
Ageing Hero Slain in Safety of Own Home
. For now, the Questura had simply issued a confirmation of the tragic killing. But there was no guarantee that the story wouldn’t – and in fact a fair to good chance that it would – grip, if not the public’s imagination, then the imaginations of the city’s editors. Should that happen, a press conference would become inevitable. Having something concrete to say at it would be advantageous.

‘It makes sense to someone,’ he said. ‘So, what are we doing about finding them?’

Enzo sank down into one of the black leather armchairs by the window and began ticking off points on his fingers.

‘We’re sweeping all the gay bars and clubs. We’ve got good contacts, so if there’s something there we ought to hear about it. Somebody with some weird salt fetishes, likes to play execution games – I don’t know. We’re going over CCTV footage from cameras near the building—’

Pallioti, who had been studying the edge of his blotter, looked up.

‘Are there any?’

‘Not really,’ Enzo said. ‘An indoor parking garage a couple of blocks away. But you never know, we might get lucky. Spot someone we recognize.’ He ticked off another finger. ‘I’ve got people back at the building now, going apartment to apartment while everyone’s home for dinner. Did he have enemies? Get any threats? Behave strangely? Any strangers lurking around? We’re checking the guy who distributes the fliers in case he noticed anybody. I’m getting hold of Trantemento’s bank records. We’re trying to find out everything we can about his business contacts. And with any luck, sometime tomorrow we’ll get the ballistics back on the bullet. We should get something off it. If we do, we’ll get it out on the databases. Between that and the salt, it should be distinctive. If our friend has done this before anywhere in Europe, it’ll show up. In our dreams, we get a match to the weapon. If we don’t find it first. We’ve impounded the rubbish containers within five blocks. The other thing,’ he added, ‘is the safe.’

Pallioti raised his eyebrows. The thing had looked like it came from an American gangster film from the 1930s. He’d assumed it could be opened with a bent paper clip, or at a stretch, a nail file.

‘Apparently,’ Enzo said, ‘Signor Trantemento was security minded – at least with his papers, if not his front door. The safe is fitted with some very fancy mechanism. Our guy couldn’t open it. We had to get a specialist. The closest one is in Genoa.’

Why, Pallioti thought, did that not surprise him?

Enzo glanced at his watch. ‘He should be there now.’

Pallioti looked out of the window for a moment. The piazza was dark. Lights glittered on the wet pavement.

‘What do we know about Giovanni Trantemento?’ he asked.

‘Apart from the fact that somebody, somewhere, apparently thought he was important enough to torture and kill?’ Enzo shrugged. ‘So far, not much. Never married. Lived in the apartment more than forty years. Forty-one to be exact. No criminal record. Doesn’t own a car. Doesn’t have a computer. We’re going through his desk and address book, all that. And I’ll send someone to Rome. But I thought I’d wait until we can get hold of a copy of his will.’

Pallioti frowned.

‘He has a sister,’ Enzo explained. ‘Apparently his only living relative. In Rome. Polizia down there have sent someone along to break the news. But of course I’ll send one of our own people as well. I just thought we might as well wait, though, see if there’s a will in the safe and who inherits before we ask questions.’

‘I have to be in Rome tomorrow. If you can wait that long.’

An inter-agency briefing at the Ministry had been scheduled for months. Wriggling out of it was out of the question. Paying a visit to Giovanni Trantemento’s sister might not be everyone’s idea of excitement, but it would at least provide a counterpoint to the rest of the day, which promised to be bureaucratic and possibly vicious.

Seeing his face, Enzo smiled.

‘It would be an honour, Dottore,’ he said, ‘if you think you could possibly fit it in.’

Marta Buonifaccio stood in her doorway and watched as the men came down the stairs. There were two of them. They were both wearing jeans, running shoes, and leather jackets. Not that it mattered. They moved like every other policeman she had ever seen.

There were others upstairs, two women knocking on doors. They had thrown her slightly at first, because they were women. And young. Barely girls. So she’d opened her door and stood there, confused. Then she’d looked in their eyes and understood. They didn’t need a badge. They could go where they liked, ask whatever they wanted.

Had she seen anyone? Noticed anything strange? Or out of the ordinary? Did she know Signor Trantemento? Did he have visitors?

No, no, no, not really, and not that she noticed. As answers went, they weren’t entirely untrue. But even if they had been, that’s what she would have said. Because that was how you did it. That was how you made your own luck – by keeping your eyes down and your mouth shut.

The men were on the last steps. The first one, who had been talking on his mobile phone, flipped it closed and dropped it into his pocket. The second one, behind him, adjusted the box he was carrying, holding it out in front of him in both arms as if it were valuable, which it was. All of Giovanni Battiste Trantemento’s secrets were in it. That’s what they were taking away. They’d been at it all evening.

He hadn’t been dead for a day yet, Marta thought, and already they were gutting his life – pulling his entrails out so they could read them the way the fortune-tellers had read the guts of cows and pigs centuries ago. Slit them open and thrown the innards down on the slick stones, then taken a gold coin to see the future in them, until Lorenzo got sick of the smell and banished the butchers from the bridge, handed it over to the gold-sellers who still sat there today in their rabbit hutches.

The men’s shoes squeaked as they crossed the flagged floor of the hall. Marta did not move. She had been so still that they had not even noticed her, standing in the shadows beside the fireplace.

As soon as they were gone, as soon as the big front door had creaked and slammed and cut off the gust of damp air that floated in, she stepped back through the open door of her apartment. Marta closed it so quietly that it didn’t make any noise at all. She was good at that.

She stood and looked around her little sitting room. The inside of her oyster shell. If they came for her, what would they find? Which pearls would they pluck?

None. Nothing. Not one thing.

She resolved it then and there. The boxes they carried away would be full of china cups, a teapot. Photographs. Frames. Worn clothes. A sweater with a darned elbow. A jacket with a muskrat collar. A hat that looked as if someone had sat on it. All the leftovers of her life.

But no secrets. She would make sure of that.

Enzo Saenz gave a low whistle.

‘No wonder he wasn’t happy with the original locks.’

Pallioti, who had been fingering a pile of papers, looked up. The safe had been opened. Now the heavily guarded contents of Giovanni Trantemento’s little Aladdin’s cave, all of which had been pirated away in a series of cardboard boxes, were being laid out for examination.

‘How much is there?’ he asked.

Enzo frowned, then thumbed the stack of notes he was holding. Even with the latex gloves on, he could count money as fast as any casino cashier.

‘I’d say at least two hundred thousand euros, and the same again in dollars.’ The bills were bound neatly with rubber bands. ‘Money laundering? Drug money run through eighteenth-century smut prints?’ Enzo shook his head. ‘That would be a new one.‘

Pallioti shrugged. ‘Or purchasing cash,’ he said. ‘Perhaps some of his sellers didn’t take Mastercard.’

‘Possibly.’ Enzo stood looking at the table. ‘He had a couple of credit cards. But he barely used them. Like I said, no computer, no BlackBerry. Nothing like that. Not even a mobile phone. I have a feeling he wasn’t a fan of the twenty-first century.’ He shook his head again. ‘Maybe he was saving up. Planning on taking a trip.’

‘Is there any sign of that?’

Enzo glanced up. ‘Do you mean did he visit a travel agent yesterday? Did we find a ticket to Rio in his desk? No. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t thinking about it. Or planning it, in case he had to do it one day. In a hurry. His passport is up to date. This is a lot of money to keep in a safe in the bedroom.’

‘Maybe he didn’t like banks.’

‘Maybe banks didn’t like him.’

Enzo’s mobile phone beeped. He flipped it open and turned away, muttering into it.

The investigation was headquartered in a room on the floor below Pallioti’s office. It did not look out on the piazza. If it had looked out on anything at all, it would have been the wall of the building across the alley. But it didn’t, because the rooms on this side of the new Questura building had no windows.

A photograph of Giovanni Trantemento stared down from a whiteboard, the presiding ghost of all that now lay before him. The photo had been enlarged until it was nearly life-sized. It had probably been taken a good ten or fifteen years earlier, but already Giovanni’s high domed forehead, his hollowed cheeks, and dark eyes looking out from behind his round glasses, made him look like a death’s head. Studying his face, Pallioti wondered if that came with age, and suspected not. He suspected instead that Giovanni Battiste had been born looking like that. Some people were. It was a kind of economy of bone structure. As if God occasionally took a short cut. Created beings who never needed to age because they’d always looked as if they were already dead.

The room was nearly empty. Enzo’s people were out asking questions, frequenting the sorts of places where they were more likely to get answers after dark. Enzo himself finished his phone call and turned his attention to a closer reading of Giovanni Trantemento’s will, which had indeed been tucked neatly between the stacks of cash. A first glance had established that it was both current – having been drawn up barely two years before – and relatively straight-forward. The bulk of his estate was divided equally between his sister and her son, his nephew. There appeared to be several small be-quests to city charities, a hospital, a shelter for the homeless. And one not-so-small bequest to something called the Alexandria Chess Club that apparently occupied an address somewhere on the Poggio Imperiale.