Death in Tuscany (10 page)

'I'm pleased we're going to see Massimo,' Ferrara said, casting these memories aside.

'Tell me about it. We've hardly seen him since he rented that place in Marina di Pietrasanta. He's never at home.'

'Cherchez la femme!'

'That's what I'm afraid of!'

Massimo Verga was an inveterate womaniser. Petra had two nicknames for him: Peter Pan and 'the
tombeur'
- the ladies' man. Perhaps because he had never found a woman who could replace Petra, or more simply because of his innate character, he often fell head over heels in love, but it never lasted long. His love affairs amused Michele but worried Petra, who could see him getting old without a companion. She had another worry, too. He had already squandered a great deal of his inheritance, but she was afraid that sooner or later he would get into even worse trouble.

'Do you want to bet we'll solve the mystery tomorrow?' Ferrara said with a smile.

As he spoke, the telephone rang again.

'It's me again.' Anna?'

'Sorry to disturb you, Michele, but it's urgent. It's about this business of the Commissioner and the girl who died in the Ospedale Nuovo.'

'The child?'

'Child? They told me she was a prostitute.'

Rumours travelled fast. Especially the worst ones.

'Who told you that?'

'I can't tell you. We have to meet.'

'How about Monday?'

'I can't. I'll be busy all day, I'm in court and then I have a meeting with some of my colleagues. Tuesday's pretty full, too.'

'So what shall we do?'

'Well, there's tomorrow. I know you have something to do but. . .'

'Tomorrow?' he repeated, looking anxiously at Petra, who responded with an expression of resigned disappointment -the expression of someone who had been in this situation many times before.

'I don't have any hearings, as it's Saturday, but I have to go to Perugia in the morning. I'll be back in the afternoon, though. How about three o'clock?'

Worse still: the whole weekend would be ruined. But Ferrara realised that Anna was making an exception for him, and he couldn't refuse. Especially as it had something to do with the investigation into the dead girl, which he was taking increasingly to heart.

'Okay, tomorrow at three,' he confirmed, with a guilty glance at his wife.

Petra responded with a nod. A bitter nod.

Midnight.

Petra had silently unpacked, put the linen back in the drawers, the beach sandals in the shoe rack, the toiletries in the bathroom, and put away the swimming trunks, still in their cellophane package.

She had said goodnight with a long, affectionate kiss and gone to bed. Ferrara could still feel the kiss on his lips as he paced from the terrace to the living room and back again, trying to work off the tension inside him.

It was a starry night. The noises of passers-by drifted up from the street. From the Ponte Vecchio he heard a burst of laughter: innocent laughter, probably, but to him it seemed mocking.

He took refuge in the living room.

It was a spacious room, divided in two. On one side, the sofas, the armchairs, and a large desk where he often worked at night. On the other, a long, narrow eighteenth-century table, which could be used either as an additional work surface or a dining table when it was too cold to eat outside.

On the walls, paintings of various kinds and provenance: German ones from Petra's family, others from his parents' house, and others they had collected during their long years together.

There were also a number of small tables spread through the two areas, cluttered with framed photographs: one of Petra's passions. They were photos of the two of them, of relatives and friends, and of all sorts of occasions that had taken place over the years. For every photograph, Petra tried with a stubbornness and determination that was quite 'Teutonic' -as he chided her affectionately - to find the most suitable frame, one which reflected the spirit and period of the image. There were old black and white photos, and more recent ones in colour. Ferrara also now had an impressive file of electronic images, but from time to time he liked looking over these fragments of their shared history.

As he did tonight.

And his gaze finally came to rest on one of the photos of Petra as a child. She was about eight or nine, if he remembered correctly. A slight girl, wearing a calico dress that was too big for her, her thin legs peering out incongruously from beneath the skirt, and a pair of plaits that was in none of the other photos. It was a colour photo, the colours rather faded now, and Ferrara noticed, perhaps for the first time consciously, the little ring on one of the fingers of her right hand: an imitation gold ring, with a fake amethyst.

6

'Don't you ever go on holiday, Gatto?'

It always amused Gianni Fuschi, the head of Forensics, to use that nickname for Ferrara. It had been given him years before by a woman journalist on
Il
Tirreno,
who had become slightly infatuated with his catlike green-hazel eyes and his soft, cautious movements, like a cat ready to pounce. It had immediately been taken up by other newspapers, who never hesitated to use it to mock him, criticise him or just plain provoke him every time the opportunity presented itself. It even circulated among his men: not that they would ever have dared utter it in his presence, but they often used it among themselves, sometimes in a tone of unconditional admiration, sometimes in a teasing way, depending on how well an investigation had worked out, or on the chief's mood at the time.

The only one of his men who never used it, as far as he knew, was Fanti.

But that Saturday morning, Gianni Fuschi didn't seem at all amused when Ferrara visited his office, and greeted him warily.

'What about you?' Ferrara retorted. 'You never take a holiday either.'

'What can I do? You collect a whole lot of rubbish and dump it in my laboratory. Cans, cigarette ends, bottles of all kinds. Do you have any idea how long it takes to examine these things one by one for prints and traces of saliva? And for what? Rumour has it - and of course I always listen to rumour, it's generally reliable - rumour has it you don't even know for sure there's been a crime. Is that right?'

'In a way, yes,' Ferrara admitted.

'Tell me you're kidding or I'll never talk to you again.'

'There's something strange about this case, Gianni. Something ugly, maybe even
very
ugly. You have to help me out.'

'Something
strange? And do you think that's enough? It's August the fourth, damn it. Don't I have a right to time off like everyone else? Are you trying to appeal to my better nature?'

'You're right. So leave the rubbish, as you call it, and have a look at this for me.' He handed him the little bag.

What the hell's this?'

'The girl's personal effects. Concentrate particularly on the jeans and see if you find any traces of blood on the inside, especially near the crotch.'

Fuschi made a face. 'Inside? Why, wasn't she wearing knickers?'

'I haven't found any yet, and a nurse at the hospital told me that when she was brought in the insides of her thighs were bloodstained, so it's quite likely that the jeans absorbed some of it.'

All right, but what good will it do you?' 'It's important, believe me. It'll help us to confirm or deny a theory that arose from the autopsy' Which is . . .?'

'That she may have been raped. Especially if the histological tests show that she wasn't having her period at the time. And if we find blood on her jeans.'

'May have been . . . if . . . if . . .' Fuschi observed sceptically.

'What else can we do? You know that's the way we work: we theorise, we check things out, we change our minds on the basis of results. All that's necessary, along with a certain amount of intuition and a lot of patience, as well as the extremely valuable technical support we get from people like you. If all the
maybes
and the
ifs
are
confirmed, my dear Gianni, we still might not be able to draw the conclusion that she was murdered as well as raped, but we'd be very close.'

'In which case I'd still have to sort through the rubbish, except this time there'd be a reason for it. You see, I win!'

'No, I win, because you'll carry on talking to me after all!'

'Go on, go.'

'Bye. Let me know what you find. Call me at home, call me on my mobile, it doesn't matter. This is urgent.' 'Bye!' Fuschi waved him off. 'For now,' Ferrara said.

It was four minutes to three by the time he got to the Prosecutor's Department, and one minute to three when he knocked at the door of Anna Giulietti's office.

'Come in, Chief Superintendent, please sit down,' she said, in the solemn tone she reserved for their work meetings.

Although they had grown a lot less formal with each other since becoming friends, Anna had insisted that their personal relationship remain strictly confined to their meetings outside the office, on the grounds that they wouldn't be able to deal with each other in a professionally correct way if the friendship factor came into play. And it wasn't only a question of putting it on in front of third parties, it was a rule that had to be observed even when they were alone. Outside, they were friends. Inside, they were colleagues - or even enemies, if their respective roles required it.

To Ferrara, this compromise solution had seemed a bit schizophrenic at first, and he had been sure it wouldn't last. But it had, and he was starting to get used to it - not that he always carried it off as well as she did - and to see that it really worked!