The Dante Conspiracy

CHAPTER 2



‘Who is he, Cesare?’

‘He was a Professor Antonio Bertorelli,’ Sergeant Lombardi replied, emphasizing the tense of the verb as he glanced at his superior. ‘At least, that’s the name on the driving licence we found in the wallet, and the picture looks right.’

Inspector Perini nodded in a somewhat distracted manner, his gaze still fixed on the naked body tied to the chair in front of him. The arc lights, powered by a petrol generator that was running just outside the open door of the barn and was making a loud throbbing sound that echoed around the walls of the old building, cast a harsh and unforgiving light over the naked and mutilated corpse of the elderly man, showing every wound and injury with pitiless clarity.

‘And you said he was found by a neighbour?’

‘More a local than a neighbour, actually. This place is pretty isolated. A man who lives a few kilometres further up the road drove past and thought he saw flames through the door of the barn. He knew nobody lived here, so he stopped to investigate. He found this and lost his dinner a few seconds later.’

Silvio Perini nodded again. He’d seen the pool of vomit near the open door.

‘Somebody’s taken his statement?’

‘Yes, but that’s about it. The only other thing he saw that might be helpful was a white van with two men in it heading down the road as he drove up. They might not have had any part of this, of course, but even if they had, he didn’t get the number, and wasn’t even sure of the make. He thought it might have been a Fiat or maybe a Citroen.’

‘The number probably wouldn’t have helped,’ Perini said. ‘If they were the people responsible, the plates would certainly have been false. And he obviously wouldn’t be able to recognize either of the men he saw?’

It was more of a statement than a question, and Lombardi just shook his head.

Perini glanced around the dilapidated barn, his grey eyes taking a mental inventory as he looked for anything out of place, any clue that might suggest why an academic had been brought to this lonely place and then tortured to death. After a few moments he returned his stare to the body, then looked at Lombardi.

‘Cause of death?’

‘Strangulation, according to the doctor. In fact, he thinks it was almost certainly a garrotte, because there are abrasions all the way round the victim’s neck.’ He pointed at the charred pile of black-brown fibres on the floor of the barn behind the chair. ‘That was probably the rope they used, though there’s some rubber or plastic in there as well, maybe latex gloves or a rubber sheet, something like that, which possibly kept the fire going, and it was the flames from that which the man saw as he drove past. He must have just missed them.’

‘Probably lucky for him that he did. No sign of whatever they used to do this?’

‘No,’ Lombardi replied shortly. ‘But they used several different tools. It looks like they started on his chest. Those cuts were obviously made with a sharp knife, but they’re not deep and certainly not life-threatening, though they’d have stung like a bitch. Probably a box cutter or hobby knife, something with a really sharp but quite short blade. They started just above his navel, cutting horizontally across his torso, then when he still didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear they moved the blade up half an inch and repeated the process. That way, they always had clean flesh to cut, because the blood obviously flowed downwards. A professional job, if you like. The doc thinks there are traces of salt in the wounds as well, to act as a bit of extra persuasion.’

The sergeant pointed at a couple of darker areas on the dead man’s chest, in one of which the white of bone could be seen.

‘And he isn’t certain, but those patches suggest they used something like a soldering iron, gas powered because there’s no working electricity supply in here, and burned all way through his flesh to his ribs. And then they started on his fingers.’

‘What this looks like to me,’ Perini said, into the silence which followed Lombardi’s cool and clinical description of the injuries inflicted on the dead man, ‘is an old-style Mafia interrogation. This is just the kind of thing they used to do, back in the day, when they suspected somebody of being an informer. Maximum pain to ensure they got every scrap of information out of their victim, and then a bullet in the head. But you said this man was a professor, an academic. A professor of what?’

‘Right now, we’ve no idea, but I’ll run him through the system as soon as I get back to the office. I did have one thought, but it doesn’t really seem to make sense.’

‘Mistaken identity?’

Lombardi nodded.

‘Exactly what I was thinking. But if they’d looked in his wallet, that would have told them exactly who he was. And they had plenty of time to do it. They probably brought him up here drugged or unconscious, stripped him and tied him to the chair, and then started work on him when he came round. I can’t believe they didn’t at least check that they’d got the right man.’

‘They would have done. I’m quite certain of that. Nobody would do this kind of thing without being positive that they were asking the right person the right questions. So we need to find out what an academic like Professor Bertorelli could possibly have done or known that could lead to something like this.’