Death in Autumn Page 7

'Because when the three of them met up and set off towards the station they walked in Indian file a long distance apart.'

  He knew all right, in that case. But probably because he'd heard something. It was unlikely that he'd distinguished the four boys who looked for all the world like a seedy bunch of bag snatchers on the lookout for the tourist's handbag that would buy them their next fix.

  'Did you manage to get anything to eat?'

  'Not till three this afternoon! And then it was only a sandwich. You can bet he didn't have breakfast at seven like we did!'

  'Go and eat now, in that case, and then come back here. I want to brief you for tomorrow.'

  'Are we to go on following him?'

  'No. I doubt if he's recognized you, but if he suspects he's being followed he's not going to be seen with the dealer and that's the man we want. We'll leave him alone for a few days and work on the informers. I'm putting you four on another case.'

  Seeing their enthusiasm evaporate and their faces downcast as if he were punishing them, he added, 'You did a good job and if I risk his spotting you I'll have to take you off the case for good. As it is, I'm transferring you to the Vogel case for two or three days.'

  'That foreigner in a fur coat job?'

  Their disappointment remained evident. As they went out one of them turned to say, 'We heard another boy was found dead yesterday up near the fort. Do you think it's another bad dose death to do with this case?'

  It wasn't going to be easy transferring their attention.

  'No,* the Captain said. 'Judging from the doctor's preliminary findings, it happened too long ago. Hurry up and get something to eat.'

  When they had gone he picked up the telephone receiver. 'Get me Marshal Guarnaccia at Stazione Pitti.'

  The first thing the Marshal said was, 'Have you had my report?'

  'I've got it here now. It sounds as if it will turn out to be another drug death but probably from an overdose, nothing to do with the case we have on hand since it happened some time ago, according to the doctor.'

  'Yes, some time ago . . .'

  'He wouldn't have been up there giving himself a fix on his own, and since he had no documents on him it's likely that his friends got rid of them before abandoning him so as not to be picked up as witnesses.'

  'I expect so.'

  'Well, we'll see what the autopsy can tell us. I phoned you to give you the latest information on the Vogel case. The lawyer called me back. Her bank in Florence was Steinhauslin. She had a foreign account there and sent cheques once a month to a bank in Mainz in West Germany to an account in the name of H. Vogel.'

  'She sent money to herself?'

  'It certainly sounds like it. What's more, incoming cheques apart from the rent of the villa were always from a bank in Geneva and were definitely transfers from her own account there.'

  'Hmph . . .' The Marshal, who had never had any money other than his army pay, made nothing of that.

  'I've informed the Substitute Prosecutor and now we're waiting to see if the lawyer comes up with anything useful from the German end. We need more personal background on the woman. As far as finding witnesses is concerned, we've come to a dead end. Nobody saw the body being dumped in the river.'

  'It couldn't have happened further upstream where there are no houses?'

  'No. Judging by the time of death and the sluggishness of the river, which was very low, she was almost certainly dumped from one of the city centre bridges, probably the one nearest the hotel.'

  'I see.'

  'There are alternative theories but none of them can really be considered feasible. If she was killed in a car in some deserted lovers' lane it would have to have happened a few hours' drive out of Florence to account for the amount of time she was lying in one position after death. Nobody would risk driving all that way with a corpse in his car to then try and get rid of it in the city centre when he could have dumped it in the nearest ditch.'

  'No . . .'

  'It seems certain she was killed in her own bedroom and kept there until the early hours of the morning when there was little risk of anyone seeing the body being removed.

  'Yes . . . though somebody might have wanted us to think so . . .'

  'It could hardly have been worth the risk.'

  'I suppose not ... I was thinking of that villa, and the boy in the restaurant.'

  'None of that need have had anything to do with the murder.'

  'No. Did you get anything from Milan?'

  'Something and nothing. There was an incident, at the other hotel belonging to the same owner, as you suggested. But nothing came of it. In fact, our people had difficulty tracking it down because no official complaint was made. In the end they got the information from a retired waiter there. I'll send you the details. Strictly speaking, it doesn't bear directly on this case, it can't be called evidence.'

  'Have you decided what to do?'

  'The Substitute Prosecutor will give the order for the seals to be removed tomorrow evening. Whoever broke in was disturbed last time and probably didn't get what he wanted. I may be wrong, of course, but it's worth trying. If he turns up again we'll be waiting for him.'

  'I see.' The Marshal coughed and waited.

  'Is there something the matter?'

  The Marshal coughed again before saying slowly, 'That boy . . .'

  'The one in the restaurant?'

  'No, no . . . The one we found yesterday.'

  It was only then the Captain realized that the Marshal had been listening to him dutifully. If he had come out with it as the boys had done, 'that foreigner in a fur coat job', it couldn't have been any clearer. Orders might be orders and always obeyed, but that wasn't the way to get the best out of people on a job like this. Only yesterday morning he had felt that Guarnaccia was beginning to move in his slow, inexorable way towards whoever had killed Hilde Vogel. Now, because of a dead drug addict he had lost him. He was on his own again. Nevertheless, all he said was, 'Do you think you know who he is?'

  'No. I've no idea . . . it's not that. But the doctor said he may have been dead two months.'

  'So I understood.'

  'And that he was probably very young, adolescent.'

  'It's more than likely.'

  "Two months . . . and nobody ... He must have parents somewhere.'

  'There was an article in the paper this morning, that may produce something, though you remember that in the case of the Vogel woman it didn't do much good.'

  But the Marshal was not to be distracted.

  'This is a youngster, practically a child. Why has nobody come looking for him in two months? Where's his mother?'

  'Remember that a lot of the young addicts hanging around Florence are not from here, and they're not the sort to write to their parents every week. No doubt they've no idea where he's been for some time and wouldn't suspect that anything might have happened to him.'

  When the Marshal didn't answer he said, 'Are you still there? He could be a foreigner, you know. Remember those kids out at the villa . . .'

  But the Marshal didn't take the bait. 'I'll start checking with the consulates,' he said. 'First thing tomorrow.'

  The Captain gave it up and rang off.

  The Marshal was as good as his word and the pale sun had barely appeared over the rooftops next day when he set out in his own little Fiat. It was the busiest time of the morning when people were hurrying to work and groups of children blocked the narrow pavements, chattering and screeching until the first bell went when they would make a dash for the inner courtyard of their schools. Although it was still quite warm during the day there was a chilly mist about at this hour and most people were wearing their green lodens. There were fewer tourists in the streets at last, the cafés had taken in their tables and the movement was faster and noisier now that the Florentines had returned to take over their city.

  There was something, the Marshal thought, as crowds of youngsters on mopeds dodged and swerved around his car, that his wife had told him to do that
morning. She had rung him yet again the evening before. Whatever it was, it would have to wait. He parked as near as he could manage to the British Consulate, walked back along the swarming embankment and climbed the pale marble stairs to the first floor. He was there for about fifteen minutes and left, none the wiser, to walk round the corner to the French consulate on the Via Tornabuoni. Every visit went more or less the same way. The first thing they did was to take him to the notice-board where photographs of missing persons thought to be in Florence were posted. Each time he would have to explain that a photograph was no help to him, that the boy no longer had a face. The height, hair colour and age might help. He was shown two boys who had vanished three years before at age sixteen. One had black hair and the other red. What had they been doing on holiday without their families at that age? There was a husband who had gone missing from a coach tour. His wife had sent over a picture of him sitting in a deck chair in their small suburban garden. The morning wore on and the Marshal, plodding through the streets in the mild sunshine, began to wonder if it were the same everywhere or if it were only Italy that attracted fugitives from the rest of Europe.

  At one o'clock he got back into his car, slammed the door three times because it never would close, and set off back to his Station in the lunch-time rush hour. He was brooding and puzzled. When Lorenzini greeted him with, 'Your wife telephoned . . .' he only mumbled, 'I'll ring her back after lunch,' and went off to his own quarters to mull things over in peace.

  He emerged two hours later, announced that he was going out again and drove away, his face heavy and expressionless behind the dark glasses.

  He was gone for a long time. When he came in again he automatically opened the door of the duty room to see that everything was all right, but he didn't speak to the two boys, only looked at them in a blank sort of way and then closed the door again. In his own office he sat down slowly at his desk and waited a moment, his big hands on his knees. He was breathing heavily as though he were distressed. He looked at his watch which showed five to six. Then he looked at the telephone and reached out his hand, but instead of picking up the receiver he switched on the desk lamp because the light was already fading.

  After sitting there a little longer he mumbled to himself, 'I don't know . . .' and gave a little snort.

  For a long time he stared with his big, slightly bulging eyes at the wall opposite where a map of the city centre showed his Quarter outlined in red.

  When Lorenzini looked in on him half an hour later he was laboriously filling in the daily orders for tomorrow and he looked to be in a bad temper.

  The Captain was debating with himself whether to go to bed. He'd had little enough sleep that week and since it was only ten o'clock in the evening nothing was likely to happen for at least two or three hours, if anything happened at all. Two of his plainclothes boys, suitably cleaned up and smartly dressed, were installed in the Riverside Hotel on the third floor. Nobody knew them since they hadn't been on this case until now. All the job needed was the ability to stay awake and listen. If he turned up they would have no difficulty catching him. All the Captain had to do was wait, and there was nothing to prevent him getting some sleep in the meantime. Probably he would have done so if it hadn't been for having that impatient young Substitutue Prosecutor on his back night and day. Maestrangelo was accustomed to waiting patiently and he trusted his boys, but being constantly under outside pressure made him nervous. If he went to bed he wouldn't sleep. The Substitute had even tried to insist that this operation should take place the night before.

  'I don't see any good reason for losing another day. This case is dragging on too long as it is and I must say that your present line of inquiry hasn't produced much.'

  The Captain could hardly point out that the line of inquiry was that ordered by the Substitute himself, who was far too occupied with a more newsworthy trial in the assize courts to give much attention to this case. He did explain patiently that there hadn't been a room available on that floor until today and that, even if there had been, it would have looked pretty odd to apply and remove the seals in one day without even giving the manager time to have his lawyer ring the Procura to complain.

  'Well, I hope something comes of it,' was the Substitute's parting shot.

  And if nothing did?

  Well, they would get there in the end, it would just take longer and the Substitute would become even more of a pain in the neck than he was being already.

  The Captain decided not to go to bed. He filled in a couple of hours with paperwork which he would have no time for tomorrow if this operation turned out to be successful.

  After that he got up to stretch his legs and looked out of his window at the lighted street below. A stream of squad cars was leaving the building as the midnight shift of the Radiomobile went on duty. There was still plenty of traffic on the roads but few pedestrians. A small group of people came to a halt directly under the window and stopped to argue about something before disappearing into the main entrance, no doubt to register some complaint. Any time now something might happen at the Riverside. Whatever the intruder had been looking for the other day must have been pretty incriminating to warrant such a risk. And he must have known for sure that it hadn't already been found by the Captain's men since otherwise he would have been questioned about it, even arrested. What he didn't know, the Captain was convinced, was where it was hidden. If he had known that he wouldn't have opened both the dressing-table drawer and the wardrobe.

  As he sat down again at his desk the telephone rang.

  'Yes?'

  'Marshal Guarnaccia for you, Captain.'

  'Put him through.' What could he want at this hour?

  Surely not another drug death?

  'Captain?'

  'Speaking.'

  'They told me you were still in your office, otherwise I'd have left you a message for tomorrow.'

  'Something's happened?'

  'No, no, nothing . . . Have you got somebody with you?'

  'No, nobody.'

  'I see. Even so, I suppose it could wait until tomorrow. I imagine you must be busy or you wouldn't be in your office at this hour . . .'

  When the Captain explained to him what was going on, he said: 'In that case I'll come over right away if you don't mind. It's about the Vogel case . . .'• And with a cough and an incomprehensible mumble he rang off.

  Bemused, the Captain got up again and stood by the window. He'd been mistaken, then. Yet he could have sworn Guarnaccia had gone off on some scent of his own and had abandoned the Vogel case. If that were so, then something had caused him to change direction again. Perhaps the dead boy's parents had turned up after all. Well, he would soon know. The Marshal's little white Fiat came chugging along Borgo Ognissanti and turned in at the gates. The Captain sat down to wait.

  The trouble was that once Guarnaccia had lumbered in and sat himself down on the other side of the desk he evidently didn't know where to begin.

  'I don't know where to begin, to tell the truth .. .' The Marsha] stared fixedly at his knees.

  'Begin at the beginning,' the Captain suggested, wondering what on earth he was going to come out with that could be so complicated as all that.

  'It's difficult to explain exactly . . .'

  Because for the Marshal there was no beginning. There were just people, and a certain number of images fixed in his mind. A pair of gym shoes sticking up in a ditch with the water bubbling around them carrying fallen leaves away; the musty, neglected villa; all those photographs of missing youngsters pinned on the consulate notice-boards; and the nice woman in the tidy flat getting on with her cooking as she said, 'Perhaps because I've got a son that age myself.. .'

  And, if the truth were told, what was preying on his mind most of all was that an hour ago he had suddenly remembered what it was his wife had asked him to do that morning. He should have gone across to the Middle School in Piazza Pitti and registered his two boys there. Instead of which he had not only forgotten to do it
but had spent the entire day inwardly fulminating against neglectful parents. It was that which, in the end, had made him decide to ring the Captain. He was so full of remorse at his own stupidity that he needed the Captain's confirmation that what he had been doing all day was important. Otherwise he would have waited until he could arrange all his feelings and suspicions into some semblance of logical order.

  Now he was sitting there with a jumble of pictures in his head and the Captain waiting patiently in front of him. With an effort of will he raised his eyes to fix them on his superior officer and started his story in the middle.

  'This afternoon I went to the Medico-Legal Institute.'

  When the Captain made no response but only looked at him inquiringly he carried on, sometimes letting his big eyes rove over the spacious office, sometimes staring down at his knees, and every now and then watching the Captain's face and wondering what sort of impression he was making, if any.

  After all, there was nothing you could call concrete. He had set out for the Medico-Legal Institute with no clear idea in mind. He just felt the need to see the faceless boy again, get closer to him. Even so, when the idea did form itself, it seemed as if it had been there all along.

  Professor Forli was always a willing talker and, though he hadn't yet begun work on the autopsy, he accompanied the Marshal himself. They had faced each other over the body that lay in its cold storage drawer.

  'We store dismembered parts separately,' Forli had explained as he pulled the drawer out. 'But since there's practically nothing to see from the shoulders up I suppose you wouldn't be interested.'

  'No, no . . .'

  'If the smell's too much for you I can get you a mask.'

  The Professor himself was evidently immune to it.

  'It doesn't matter,' the Marshal said. He was so preoccupied as to be barely conscious of the bad cheese smell anyway. He stared down intently at what remained of the boy, seeing the tell-tale puncture marks on the greasy yellow arms.

  'He's very thin,' he murmured after a moment.

  'Most addicts are. Though this one probably hadn't been at it long. There are no scars on the thighs. I'll probably start work on this tomorrow if nothing more urgent crops up in the meantime. The trouble with your saponified corpse is that once it dries out it becomes very fragile, chalky, so the sooner I start the better. Nevertheless, I can tell you now that he'll be a mess inside and there won't be much I can tell you.'