The Monster of Florence Page 6

“Go to him, then. All of them have a list of stolen paintings to look out for. You must look through it. You know I can’t help you, otherwise, with the best will in the world …”

  “No. Of course you can’t. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

  “Don’t worry about it, just check. I should have thought on and suggested it before. It’s just that I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment.”

  “Without my inventing work for you. I’ve no business to expect you to talk to Benozzetti—though perhaps if I checked on that list first—”

  “Oh, I’ve seen Benozzetti.”

  “You have?”

  “And for what it’s worth, I think he might well be a forger. Restorer, that’s what he says, but there’s something there that doesn’t smell right. He was defensive and, I thought, a bit crazy.”

  “I’ve heard say that all forgers are a bit crazy. But did he bite? Will he come to the studio?”

  “I don’t know, Marco. I don’t think I made much of a job of it, to be honest.” Again he could only repeat, “You need an expert.” He did his best to explain about Benozzetti showing him the painting but it was hardly possible since he didn’t altogether understand it himself.

  “Do you mean it was a copy of one of the paintings in the gallery here?”

  “No. A copy, no. It was like it, but there was something different and there was something to do with where I was standing … But in any case, the arm or the hand was different and perhaps the way he was sitting … No, it wasn’t a copy.”

  “Then it was just the sort of thing I’ve been talking about! ‘In the style of,’ the way they copied Franchi—or even the way he copied himself, because he’d make little changes like that, especially if the sitter had no say in the matter the first time round because the work was commissioned by the Princess Violante.”

  “This wasn’t your man, though. This was Titian. I’m sure of that.”

  “It was? What was the title?”

  “It’s a portrait of a man. I don’t recall any particular title. I could show it to you. Anyway, he said he was restoring it for the owner, but that if anyone from the Ministry of Arts came round, he’d say he’d painted it himself and that if they didn’t believe it, he’d paint another.”

  Marco stared at him. “He sounds crazy all right, but even so, it’s quite possible that he’s only restoring it and that the owner hasn’t declared it to the Ministry. I wish I’d seen it, though, now I’ve read a bit about these things.”

  “Go there.”

  “Me?”

  “Why not? I’ve prepared the ground.”

  “Well, I was hoping he’d come to me. I want to see him looking at the Franchi painting, if Franchi it is. What’s he like, anyway? What does he look like? Act like?”

  “Pretty impressive to look at. Well built and very well dressed. Sharp, even if he is a bit crazy … Maybe I should say fanatical. Go there and see for yourself if he doesn’t get in touch with you.”

  “You don’t think … I wouldn’t be a danger to him, would I?”

  “No, no. I shouldn’t think so.”

  “Even though this painting I’ve got … well, it’s evidence, isn’t it?”

  “It isn’t evidence of anything, but if it worries you just wait for him to get in touch and, if you like, I’ll try and be there if he comes to see you.”

  “And if he doesn’t get in touch?”

  “You just carry on with your research and see what you come up with. Something’s bound to become clearer if you insist. We’ll go out by this gate.”

  They left the gardens and came out into Via Romana.

  “I don’t know if you want to wait for me.” The Marshal indicated the plastic carrier bag. “I’ll have to stay a few minutes with the old lady, check that all her documents are here and so on.”

  “I won’t, I think. I can get a bus from Porta Romana that will take me right to the studio and I want to get on straightaway with my research. I’ll check that list first, I promise you.” He held out his hand. “Thanks for everything.”

  “I haven’t been much help, but keep in touch—don’t give up on it.”

  “I won’t. I’ll phone you.”

  The Marshal pressed the doorbell, watching him walk away. There was something about him … He always looked defenceless. A twinge of doubt assailed him for having said Benozzetti wouldn’t regard him as dangerous.

  “Who is it?”

  “Marshal Guarnaccia, signora. I’ve brought your bag.”

  “Ooh, how kind …”

  Not that he or his men had found it. As usual it was the rubbish collectors. They often found stolen bags emptied of their cash and dumped in wastebins, and people were only too glad to have their cheque books and identity cards returned. That was especially true of someone as elderly and frail as this poor soul who was in no condition to be queuing for hours to get the documents replaced. He had a reason, though, for bringing it back to her rather than sending one of his carabinieri. Teresa had slipped a fifty thousand note into it, knowing that the old lady couldn’t possibly survive until next pension day having lost her little all to a drug addict. Knowing, too, that she was too proud to ask for help.

  “Another time, signora,” the Marshal suggested, “you slip your money into your pocket with your keys. Don’t carry a handbag in these narrow streets where it’s so easy for some lad on a moped to snatch it!”

  “Eeh, Marshal, at my age it’s difficult to change your habits. It wouldn’t feel right to be out without a nice handbag and gloves. I will think about it, though.” She offered him a sweet from the glass dish on the dark polished sideboard. “I still can’t understand this fifty thousand note.”

  She smoothed it out and placed it carefully next to the dish on a strip of lace-edged embroidery. The pendulum of a wall clock ticked loudly in the dark room as she sat down opposite him with a little sigh that was the only indication of the terrible pain caused by her arthritic limbs.

  “It’s not so much a question of your pension being stolen,” insisted the Marshal, “or even the time and trouble getting new documents would cause you. What I’m worried about is that you might by instinct keep hold of your bag and be dragged into the road. You’d get very badly hurt. I’ve seen it happen many a time, so think on.”

  “I will. I’ll remember. Though I don’t think there’s any chance of my keeping hold of anything with these hands.”

  She regarded the shiny twisted joints compassionately as though they were beings apart from her. “Ah, things have changed since I was young. I’m still trying to think … I could swear I only had twenty thousand and a little bit of change—and it was in my purse and that’s gone. Of course, my memory’s not what it was …”

  “You probably slipped it in there in an absent moment. Now I must be on my way. You’ll remember about not carrying a bag?”

  “Oh yes, I’ll remember …” It was clear to the Marshal that she had already forgotten. “I’m trying to think if my daughter might have put it in there when she came to see me last month. She lives in Rome now, you know.”

  “Yes.” He adjusted his hat at the door and escaped, leaving her with this pleasing if improbable train of thought.

  The Marshal walked back up Via Romana, steering carefully so as to allow a shopper to squeeze by him every so often without his having to step into the road in the path of the hurtling orange buses roaring at his back. When he reached the junction at Piazza San Felice he was more than tempted to stop at the brightly lit chemist’s where for once there was no queue and the chemist himself was holding court, seated with a couple of local people at the table on the right. The Marshal hesitated as the white-coated man raised a hand in greeting but then, with an inward sigh, he returned the greeting and went on to Piazza Pitti where the huge file on the “Monster” case awaited his attention. As it happened, quite a number of other things and people were awaiting his attention and at half past eight in the evening the file still lay closed on his desk. He would
have preferred not to take it with him but the alternative, coming into his office after supper, was too miserable a thought to contemplate and so he tucked the thing under his arm as he turned out the lights and locked up.

  “What have you got there?” Teresa asked, without really looking, as she tried to get to the fridge to open it.

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t stand there. Aren’t you going to have a shower?”

  He left the file in the bedroom where there was no chance of the boys seeing it and then got showered and changed. Teresa, with the same idea in mind, waited until the boys had gone to do their homework before asking, as she stacked the plates in the dishwasher, “How did you get on?”

  “It wasn’t as bad as I expected.”

  “Things never are.”

  He told her about young Bacci, whom she’d never met as she’d still been down at home in Sicily in those days.

  “But he must be a bit young and inexperienced, surely, for a big case like that?”

  “He’ll get some experience now, then,” he answered crossly, unwilling to admit that the same thought had crossed his own mind. “Anyway, he’ll be as pleased as punch. He always fancied himself as a detective.” He got up. “I need a coffee.”

  “But you never have coffee after supper.”

  “I’ve got to stay awake, go through some paperwork. I’ll make it.”

  “I’ll go and get the boys moving, then.”

  As he waited for the coffee to bubble up he opened the file on the kitchen table. He felt a bit depressed, but it wasn’t because of the case. He realized what it was as he poured his coffee out and sat down. It was that this sitting alone in the kitchen with paperwork in front of him was a strong reminder of the bad old days before Teresa and the boys had come up to Florence, released to him by the death of his mother whom Teresa had cared for after her stroke. That was the only time in his life that he’d lived alone and he’d hated every minute of it. And—that was it—talking about the days when Bacci had been with him had been an even stronger reminder. How glad he was now to think of Teresa there, having a moment’s peace while the boys were in their room playing and quarrelling instead of doing their homework. He spooned sugar into the thick scalding coffee and drank it in two sips. So stimulated and comforted, he opened the file and faced its terrible contents.

  PREMISE: SECTION 1

  FACTS RELATING TO THE SEVEN DOUBLE HOMICIDES COMMITTED IN THE AREA SURROUNDING FLORENCE BETWEEN 1974 AND 1985 BY PERSON OR PERSONS KNOWN AS THE ‘MONSTER.’

  1985 On the 9th September 1985, in the early hours of the afternoon, the carabinieri on duty in the Station of San Casciano Val di Pesa were informed that in a wooded area adjacent to Via degli Scopeti, a stretch of road linking San Casciano with the Via Cassia which runs between Siena and Florence, a body had just been found. The marshal commanding the station repaired immediately to the zone indicated with his men and established that the body was that of a young man who had received a number of gunshot wounds and knife wounds in various parts of his body. The body itself was partly hidden by shrub and a pile of empty paint tins which had been tossed on to it. In the clearing immediately above it and very close by stood a Volkswagen Golf. The car was white and had French numberplates: beside it a Canadian-style tent had been pitched. The tent showed a large rent in the cloth at the back. Inside lay the naked body of a young woman who likewise had received numerous gunshot and stab wounds. The woman’s body also showed evidence of mutilation, the pudenda and left breast having been removed.

  It was evident before the autopsy confirmed it, given the mutilation suffered by the female victim and the weapons used to perpetrate the crime, that this was the latest in a series of murders committed by the mysterious criminal which popular fancy had denominated ‘The Monster of Florence.’ It was also immediately evident that the firearm used was yet again the Beretta 22 Long Rifle, now responsible for 16 deaths.

  1968 This weapon, an automatic pistol, of the type frequently used on firing ranges, was first identified after the murder in August 1968 of Belinda Muscas née Lubino and Amadeo Lo Russo to which Belinda Muscas’s husband Sergio Muscas confessed. Since Muscas was still serving his sentence when the present series of killings began, it may be assumed that the weapon changed hands after the ’68 murder. Muscas later retracted his confession though he was nevertheless condemned to life imprisonment.

  1974 Six years after the 1968 murder, on Saturday 14th September 1974 in the Borgo San Lorenzo area to the north of Florence, Piero Galli and Sandra Palladini were murdered in their parked car. Notified by passers-by, the carabinieri arrived on the scene to find the half-naked body of the young man supine in the driver’s seat of a Fiat 127, later established as belonging to his father, whilst that of the girl, completely naked, lay outside and to the rear of the car. The contents of the girl’s handbag were scattered around. The bag was later discovered in a nearby field. The girl was supine with the upper and lower limbs spreadeagled and a vine branch inserted in the vagina. At first sight both victims appeared to have been stabbed to death with something in the nature of a screwdriver or an awl, but an autopsy later revealed that they had first been shot and then attacked with a knife. The man had received at least five bullet wounds from which he had died immediately. His stab wounds had been inflicted postmortem. The girl had received three bullet wounds in her right arm which had not killed her. She had then been killed with a knife. The autopsy revealed 96 clearly identifiable stab wounds, a few of them mortal but the rest inflicted postmortem, over the entire trunk but concentrated in the abdominal region in the pubic area.

  Ballistics reports identified the firearm as a Beretta 22 LR model 73 or 74 and the ammunition as Winchester H series with copper-coated lead bullets. The knife was estimated to be 10/12 cm long and 1.5 cm wide with a single-edged blade.

  No connection was made at this stage with the 1968 murder of so long before, particularly as the mutilation of the girl’s body indicated that the murderer or murderers in this case must clearly be maniacal and sexually deviant.

  June 1981 Seven years had gone by and the unsolved murder of 1974 was virtually forgotten when on Saturday 6th June 1981 at approximately 23.45 in Via dell’Arrigo, Scandicci, another young courting couple was murdered. The bodies of Gino Fani and Caterina Di Paola were discovered accidentally by a police sergeant taking a country walk near his home at 9 o’clock on the morning after the crime, together with his small son. The sergeant first noticed a Fiat Ritmo, dark red in colour, parked in the lane. Its doors were closed, but on the ground near the driver’s side lay a woman’s handbag with its contents scattered around it. Closer inspection revealed the driver’s window to be smashed. Sitting at the wheel of the car, the head turned inwards, was the body of a bearded young man with wounds in the throat.

  The sergeant gave the alarm and was joined by a squad car bringing his colleagues. Only after this did they discover, at the bottom of a steep bank falling away from the road, the body of a girl lying supine with legs apart. Her T-shirt and jeans were ripped and slashed revealing that the pubic area had been crudely excised. The body lay approximately 20 yards from the car but there were no signs of its having been dragged.

  The victims were transported to the Medico-Legal Institute where an autopsy revealed that both had died from gunshot wounds whilst still inside the car. Successively, the man had received three stab wounds, two of them near the neck and superficial, the third a deeper wound in the chest. The excision of the girl’s pudenda had been done with an extremely sharp knife. The clothing, particularly the belt, jeans and pants, had been slashed with great precision and decisiveness, denuding in one stroke the area to be excised without the slightest damage to the underlying skin. According to the pathologist, Professor Mario Forli, this implied some skill and experience on the part of the murderer. Further, the cleanness of the cuts excising the pudenda and the evenness indicated an ability in the use of cutting instruments and that in his opinion this constitut
ed a point of considerable, even decisive importance. A witness saw a car, a red Taurus, parked a few metres from the scene of the crime that night.

  The ballistics reports indicated that the two people were killed by a minimum of seven wounds from a firearm and that the said firearm was a Beretta 22-calibre automatic pistol used in the Galli/Palladini murder of 1974. The ammunition was also of the same type, Winchester H, but in this case the bullets were not copper coated.

  Oct 1981 Only a very few months were to pass before the next murder of a courting couple. Silvio Benci and Sara Contini went out on the evening of Thursday 22nd October because there was to be a general strike the next day so they needn’t get up for work. At the end of their evening out, they parked their car in a country lane between the vineyards near Calenzano to the north of Florence. Their bodies were discovered lying on each side of their VW Golf, the man half naked and riddled with bullet and stab wounds; the girl lying supine near the edge of a ditch with similar wounds and the pubis excised. Dr. Forli concluded in his autopsy report that both had been shot through the front window on the passenger side of the car and that they were still alive when the first stab wounds were inflicted. The knife was single edged, approximately 3 cm wide and not less than 5–7 cm long. The bodies showed signs of having been dragged.

  The excision appeared to have been done with the same knife as the stabbing, but differed from the preceding murder in that it was done with considerably less precision and took in a much larger area so that the abdominal wall had been cut through all its layers, leaving a large area of the abdominal cavity exposed and part of the intestine punctured.

  Ballistics reports identified the same Beretta 22 used in the two preceding murders. A red Alfa GT was seen leaving the scene by two couples approaching it in search of somewhere to park. An Identikit was prepared from their description of the lone male driver.

  1982 The murderer struck again on 19th June 1982 at approximately 23.45 in the countryside near Montespertoli to the south west of Florence. This time the victims of the Beretta 22 Long Rifle were Piero Merlini and Anna Montini, both residents of Montespertoli. They had parked in a little clearing off the country road where a stream ran parallel to the road on the opposite side. For the first time, the killer made a mistake. He failed to shoot the young man to death in seconds as he had always done before. Merlini, badly wounded but still capable of movement, managed to start his car and tried to drive away. In his panic-stricken attempt to back out of the clearing he overshot the road and backed his car into the stream where it stuck. The killer calmly following him, shot out the front lights with one bullet each. After emptying his pistol into the two victims he smashed the rear lights with some pointed object and removed the car keys which he tossed away. The killer was sufficiently disturbed by the episode as to leave without further damage to the bodies. In fact, Merlini was not dead. He died in hospital at 8 A.M. the following day without regaining consciousness.