“So where do you look?”
“This is a project with more than a hundred and fifty million dollars floating around inside it,” Costa said. “At least some of which seems to have come from criminal sources.”
“That is a distinct possibility,” Falcone concurred. “But I would be grateful if we didn’t trouble Quattrocchi and his men with this thought. They’re busy enough already. When we meet …” He glanced at his watch. “… and we must be going soon, we’re there to listen and nothing else. Catherine? Agreed?”
“I’m an officer of the SFPD,” she answered, astonished. “Not one of you.”
“Of course you’re one of us!” Falcone insisted with heat. “Think of it. You’re snubbed by those men from downtown, since they regard a homicide as above you. Your station will close at the end of the month out of … what?”
“Centralisation,” she hissed. “Rationalisation. Putting good officers behind desks downtown, in front of computers, instead of out on the street where they’re supposed to be.”
Peroni chuckled and muttered, “We are in the same business.”
Falcone pointed at Costa and told him to stay with the exhibition. From the look on his face, it was clear there was no point in objecting.
“I don’t want anything else disappearing,” the inspector insisted. “There are thirteen incunabula, a good number of rare books, and what’s supposedly the finest copy of the original manuscript of the work in existence, from Mumbai of all places. The Indians will have our hide if that goes. Make sure it doesn’t happen, Nic.”
“And me?” Teresa wondered.
“How you spend your holiday is your business. If you happen to be passing a store, could you kindly buy some decent coffee? That stuff in the house is disgusting.”
She took a deep breath and glared at him. “So what am I supposed to do with my brain? I was on holiday when we were in Venice, if you remember …”
“Venice was a different place.”
“Damned right. I saved your life there.”
“Grazie mille,” Falcone said nonchalantly. “We must get this out of the way because I don’t wish to keep repeating it. You are here of your own volition, on your own time. You’re a pathologist. We’re not investigating a murder. Nor will we ever be allowed the opportunity. It’s hard enough for me to argue a way in to eavesdrop on the investigation. I cannot do that for you. I won’t waste my breath trying.”
A chill wind engulfed them at that moment, and it wasn’t simply the lively sea breeze gusting in from the nearby shoreline.
The Palace of Fine Arts was a beautiful, quiet spot. Not what Costa had expected of the city of San Francisco, any more than was Cow Hollow, the small district neighbouring the Marina and the houses of the rich and famous, Roberto Tonti among them. They had landed in a quiet, genteel oasis of affluence tacked to the side of the larger grey urban metropolis from which the Carabinieri team and the local officers Catherine Bianchi simply referred to as “downtown” were running the investigation. And keeping their cards very close to their besuited chests.
2
To Gianni Peroni’s mildly jaundiced eye it seemed as if Maresciallo Gianluca Quattrocchi and Captain Gerald Kelly, his counterpart in the SFPD Homicide Detail, might have been made from the same mould, one customarily used to turn out military action figures for reclusive adolescent boys. Both men were of similar age — late forties — similar heavy build, and possessed the same kind of sullen, heavy, clean-shaven face, that of a boxer or field sergeant perhaps, or some burly priest with a taste for communion wine. Now both sat with their respective teams, three officers each, all male, behind facing tables in the largest room the modest Greenwich Street Police Station could offer, which wasn’t very large at all. But at least the American threw Quattrocchi the occasional doubtful look from time to time when the Carabinieri man’s language got a little too over the top. There might be hope there, Peroni thought. If only they had the chance to speak frankly …
Falcone, Peroni, and Catherine Bianchi were perched on the end like bystanders. It was chilly outside but this overcrowded chamber at the rear of the little station was stifling and beginning to fill with the musky odour of men in business clothes. Peroni wondered, briefly, how much of his life had been passed in meetings, and atmospheres, such as this, then reminded himself that for once there was a variation from the norm.
Quattrocchi had found himself an expert. Or rather the expert, if the Carabinieri were to be believed. Professor Bryan Whitcombe had flown from Toronto, where he divided his time between teaching Dante and writing about the man and his work, to join the team Quattrocchi and Kelly had assembled inside the Hall of Justice. The purpose, Quattrocchi had let it be known in a fulsome round of newspaper and television interviews, was to gain precious insight into the mentality and intent of the Dante-fixated murderers of Allan Prime, killers who might now be stalking remaining members of the Inferno cast and crew right here in San Francisco. The media, naturally, loved this story, and had come to adore the handsomely uniformed, English-speaking Carabinieri maresciallo, a man who seemed like an actor himself and was only too happy to play up for the cameras on any occasion.
Peroni and the others had watched Quattrocchi introduce Bryan Whitcombe on the TV the previous night. The man was thirty-five, according to his personal web site, though his manner spoke of someone much older. He was extremely short and slender, bird-like in appearance, with darting, expressive hands and a pinched, pale academic’s face half hidden by enormous horn-rimmed spectacles. His curly dark brown hair seemed to shoot straight out of his scalp in any direction it fancied, in the manner of a 1970s rock musician. Whitcombe clearly enjoyed the attention and the cameras as much as his Italian patron, frequently stuttering off into academic dissertations, often peppered with obscure quotes in medieval Florentine, and never tiring of dealing with the most basic and idiotic of questions.
“He wants his own show,” Teresa had observed perceptively. The professor also seemed extremely well informed about the case, given that he’d only been in San Francisco a day. The TV reported that the Dante expert had been following the story since the dreadful night of Prime’s death in Rome, and had been taken onto the team after the Carabinieri had identified him as one of the world’s leading authorities on the interpretation of The Divine Comedy.
Falcone had cleared his throat at that point and revealed something the TV station hadn’t. Thanks to Catherine Bianchi, the inspector knew Whitcombe had approached Quattrocchi personally to offer his assistance after seeing the Carabinieri officer on CNN the morning following Prime’s murder.
“Toronto is six hours behind Rome,” Falcone added. “He must watch television in the early hours.”
Seeing Whitcombe in the flesh now, Peroni didn’t doubt it. The little man had the nervous energy of a squirrel.
Gianluca Quattrocchi made the nature of the meeting clear from the outset.
“You’re here to listen,” he told Falcone and Peroni as they arrived. “Not talk. I have a duty to share with you any information I feel may enable you to carry out your guard duties professionally. Nothing more. This is an ongoing murder investigation. The less chatter, the better. Professor?”
Whitcombe nodded as if in approval and added, in an oddly nasal accent that was not quite English and not quite American, “I have examined the notes and they support the thesis that these people are intelligent, informed, and knowledgeable in their subject. They know Dante—”