The Dante Conspiracy

CHAPTER 22



The sudden shrill ringing of his mobile phone jerked Perini awake. He’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table, his head resting on the sheet of paper on which he’d written out the verses.

‘Perini,’ he said shortly.

‘It’s Cesare,’ the voice at the other end told him. ‘They’ve just called me out. There’s been another murder.’

‘Who and where?’

‘I don’t know his identity yet, but it was right here in Florence. You answered very quickly,’ he added.

‘I was already up. Whereabouts?’

Lombardi gave him the address.

‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,’ Perini said, and ended the call.



The eastern sky was already lightening with the promise of dawn and another beautiful day when Silvio Perini arrived at the latest crime scene. Most of the other specialists were in evidence, carrying out their designated tasks, as he walked over to where Lombardi was standing, looking down at the body lying on the street.

‘Coffee,’ the sergeant said, handing the inspector a cardboard cup.

‘Thanks. Who called this in?’

‘Most of the people in the street, one after the other. They were all woken up by hearing three pistol shots in the street about an hour ago.’

‘Three shots? I wonder why three? How many wounds on the body?’

‘Only one, as far as we can tell at the moment. Hit him in the back, and most likely tore his heart to pieces. Dead before he hit the ground.’

‘So who is he? And why is he covered up?’

Lombardi pointed upwards. The scene was overlooked by a number of houses and several people were staring down, their faces alive with curiosity, most holding cameras or mobile phones.

‘Fair enough.’

Lombardi bent down and lifted the corner of the tarpaulin which had been draped over the corpse to reveal the face of an elderly man, grey-blue eyes open and staring, his mouth wide in a rictus of agony. The sergeant lifted the tarpaulin further, to show a single hole on the left upper back of the overcoat the victim was wearing, and the pool of congealing blood below the body.

‘It’s not yet been confirmed, but one of the neighbours who came out of his house as soon as the first car arrived has already identified him as Paolo Bardolino. If it is him, he was the owner of that property.’

Perini looked over to where Lombardi was pointing.

‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Really old and really expensive. Has anyone been inside yet?’

‘No, because we can’t get anyone to answer either the bell or the phone. The main street door’s locked, but the side door, which you get to through that courtyard over there, looks as if it’s been forced. There are fresh marks on the wood where somebody’s used a crowbar or a similar tool on it, but the door won’t open. It’s as if something’s blocking it on the inside. I’m thinking it might have been a burglary that went wrong. Maybe the owner – assuming this is him – disturbed them and got shot for his trouble.’

Perini didn’t look convinced, and turned around in a complete circle, taking in the body, the house and all the surroundings.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘There’s more to it than that.’

‘What? Why do you say that?’

‘Several reasons. Burglars very rarely carry pistols, because the penalties are so severe if they get caught. A cosh, perhaps, maybe even a knife, but almost never a firearm. And burglars always try to take the easy way out. They break in, burgle a property and then get out as quickly as they can. In fact, the first thing many burglars do after they’ve got inside a building is to open one or two doors, so they know exactly what their escape route is going to be.’

‘Maybe they did,’ Lombardi said, ‘and the front door slammed shut in the wind and locked itself.’

Perini shook his head.

‘No. Apart from the fact that there’s virtually no wind down this street, I can see from here that there’s a deadlock on the main door. To lock that you need a key, so either somebody locked it from the outside – and if you’re a burglar fleeing from a house where you’ve just killed a man, why would you take the time to do that? – or it’s been locked or bolted from the inside. And then there’s the window.’

‘What window? Oh, you mean the one that’s open down the alley? I assumed that was open just to let a bit of air into the house.’

‘Opening a window for ventilation normally only works if you open two of them, to generate a through breeze, and most people crack them open part-way and use the latch to lock them in position. That window is wide open, pushed back against the frame. I think whoever was in the house probably left the property that way, because they didn’t want to walk out into the street. And they didn’t want to walk out here because of what had already happened to this man.’

It was Lombardi’s turn to look unconvinced.

‘You seem to be making rather a lot of assumptions there, Silvio.’

‘I don’t think so. Look at the alternative scenario. The owner finds somebody burgling his house, opens the front door and runs away to summon help. The burglar follows him outside, shoots him in the back once and misses twice, at a range of just two or three metres, then turns around and locks the door before making good his escape. Does that seem any more likely or reasonable?’

Lombardi shrugged.

‘If you put it like that, no.’

‘How many shell cases have you found?’

‘Three, all nine millimetre, and all near the main door.’

He pointed at three small inverted ‘V’ shaped pieces of cardboard fairly close together on the pavement, each bearing a number.

Perini nodded, and looked around again. The he stiffened as he stared down the street, and strode briskly away, Lombardi following a few paces behind, a puzzled expression on his face.

‘What is it?’ the sergeant asked.

Perini stopped beside a house on the opposite side of the road and pointed at a gouge in one of the stones in the wall.

‘What does that look like to you?’ he demanded.

‘Maybe somebody hit it with a hammer,’ Lombardi suggested.

‘Or perhaps it was hit by a bullet. We could be looking at the scene of a fire-fight, and that old man just got in the way. And before you tell me I’m imagining things, Cesare, just take a look behind you.’

The sergeant turned quickly, and almost immediately spotted what Perini had already seen: there was another brass nine millimetre cartridge case lying in the gutter.

‘So that’s three shots, but four cartridge cases,’ Perini said, ‘so one of these people must have been using a suppressor, unless nobody living here can count to more than three. My guess is that the man who fired the shot that killed Bardolino was standing over here, and maybe only fired once, and then somebody near the house shot back at him, and probably not the old man, because it looked to me as if he was walking or running in the opposite direction, but make sure the pathologist is told to test his hands to see if he did fire a weapon.’

‘Right, Silvio, you’ve made your point. I’ll get the scene of crime people to widen their search down the street. They’d have checked it anyway, but I’ll get them on it straight away.’

‘Let me know how you get on. I’m going to get some breakfast, and I’ll see you in the office when you’ve finished here, because I think I’ve worked out something about our Dante mystery. And at least we can be pretty sure this killing is nothing to do with that dead poet.’