The Dante Conspiracy

CHAPTER 4



‘The more I find out about this man, the less sense it makes for him to be killed,’ Lombardi said, as Perini walked over to his desk. ‘I was wondering if the professor was working on some kind of cutting-edge technology, something that might possibly attract the attention of the Cosa Nostra or some other bunch of low-lifes. A scientific breakthrough they could steal and use for their own purposes, something like that.’

Perini slid the telephone to one side and half-sat on the edge of the sergeant’s desk, one slim leg dangling, and looked at him. Since the discovery of the man’s body the previous evening, he’d neither been home nor slept and now, mid-morning, it showed in his crumpled suit, the redness of his eyes and the five o’clock shadow which was approaching the stage where it could almost be called designer stubble. Lombardi also hadn’t slept, but somewhat irritatingly looked entirely unaffected by it – he was just his normal slightly overweight self. Of course, he was younger and more resilient, so he ought to be less affected by a sleepless night, or at least that was what Perini had told himself when he’d looked at his own haggard face in the mirror in the men’s room a few minutes earlier.

‘I take it you found nothing like that?’ Perini asked, scratching his chin.

‘You got that right. He was a professor of literature - Italian literature - specializing in mediaeval and Renaissance poetry, so there’s nothing there, as far as I can see. Whatever his killers wanted from him, it can’t have been anything to do with his job, so it had to be something in his personal life, and I’ve fired off a bunch of requests for information about him. The usual questions: bank statements, credit card transactions, that kind of thing, and as soon as I’ve had some responses I’ll go along and talk to the people that he worked with at the university. Is that okay with you?’

‘Yes. You talk to them and I’ll interview his wife or whatever close family members he had here.’

Both detectives were acutely aware that the first twenty-four hours in any murder investigation were always the most critical. Perini knew that unless they managed to identify a reasonable suspect within that time, or at the very least work out what the motive was for the brutal killing of the academic, there was a good chance that the murder might remain unsolved. There were very few inviolable rules in the art or science of detection, but in his experience that was certainly one of them.

‘From what I’ve found out so far,’ Lombardi replied, ‘he hadn’t got any. No wife or steady girlfriend, or steady boyfriend for that matter, and his parents live near Rome. Both the people I’ve spoken to so far told me he was a bachelor, a single man who was totally dedicated to his work. As far as I can gather, he hadn’t even got any outside interests, apart from watching the occasional football match. Both men I called, by the way, worked with him at the university, and they were the only two who answered their phones when I started ringing around.’

Perini nodded.

‘Right. Then we need to check his house or flat. There were keys in his jacket pocket if I remember rightly.’

‘Yes. Keys to his apartment and to his car. Here’s the address.’

The inspector took the piece of paper, glanced at what was written on it and then put it in his pocket.

‘I’ll go home, grab a shower and a shave and a change of clothes and I’ll meet you at his flat at noon. Will that give you enough time to finish up the interviews at the university?’

‘Plenty, if everybody there has got as little to say about him as I expect. As far as I can gather, he got into work early, plodded away all day researching whatever bits of poetry he had an interest in, quite often stayed late and then went home. He didn’t tend to socialise with other people at the museum, or with anyone else. Not much of a life, really.’

‘There must be more to him than that, something we’re missing. Plodding academics don’t get hauled off the street and tortured to death. He either knew something or he’d found out something, and when we know what we’ll be a lot closer to solving this crime.’



The second key Perini tried in the lock turned smoothly, and he pushed open the door and stepped inside. Then he stopped so suddenly that Lombardi almost bumped into him. The apartment was small – an estate agent would probably have described it as ‘compact’ – and it had been completely trashed. It looked as if every book had been removed from the shelves of the three matching bookcases which ran along one wall of the living area, checked and then dumped in a pile on the floor. There was a small knee-hole desk opposite the bookcases, and all the drawers had been taken out and the contents emptied onto the floor. A computer keyboard and mouse with USB connectors were positioned on top of the desk, but there was no screen or system unit to be seen.

The inspector gestured towards the desk.

‘Did he have a laptop at work?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Apparently he did occasionally take it home, and I guess he plugged those into it when he did so. The laptop was still in his office at the university, so I seized it as evidence. Right now, it’s in the boot of my car.’

‘Good. Maybe we’ll find something useful on that, because I’m quite certain there’s nothing here. If there had been anything in this flat, I think whoever did this has probably already found it. And of course, they had one big advantage over us.’

‘Because they would have known exactly what they were looking for?’ Lombardi suggested.

‘Precisely. No, there’s nothing for us here. Get the forensic people out to check it over, just in case, but I’m sure it’ll be a waste of time.’