The Dante Conspiracy (11 page)
Ten minutes later, they’d shifted all the piled-up furniture
from behind the thick wooden main door of the old house, the one that opened directly
onto the street, but hadn’t released the internal bolts. Bruno had also placed a
chair below one of the windows in the downstairs parlour, but had left the window
locked. That would provide their last-ditch escape route, if everything went wrong.
‘I’ll go and get the old man,’ Arrigo said, pulling on his balaclava
as he turned away and headed for the stairs.
Bruno was waiting by the street door, his own balaclava in place
and the hall lights switched off, when his companion returned, the elderly man hobbling
along in front of him, probably walking awkwardly because of the length of time
he’d been tied up, still gagged and with his wrists lashed together. His glance
darted nervously from Bruno to Arrigo and back again.
‘I’ve got some good news for you, old man,’ Bruno said, snapping
open a switchblade knife, an action that made their captive shrink back in fear.
Bruno took a step forward and sliced through the plastic ties around the man’s wrists
with a single stroke. ‘You can go,’ he continued. ‘Just walk away. And I promise
we won’t hurt you.’
Arrigo released the man’s gag, and for a few seconds the three
of them stood in the moonlit gloom of the hallway in silence. Then the old man spoke.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘I don’t think you’ve taken anything,
so you’re not burglars.
‘Who we are isn’t important,’ Bruno assured him. ‘Let’s just
say we were looking for something that it turned out wasn’t here.’
He turned away and picked up a long dark-coloured overcoat he’d
found and handed it to the old man.
‘It’s a little cool out there,’ he said, ‘so put this on.’
Then he slid open the two old steel bolts that secured the heavy
door, released the catch and pulled it open about half a metre, just wide enough
for the man to step through.
Again the old man glanced uncertainly from one to the other,
then
he stepped over to the door, pulled the coat tight
around his body, took another look back at them, and eased through the gap.
As soon as he stepped outside, Bruno gave him a firm shove in
the back, so that he
stumbled
forward, taking several rapid
steps as he tried to keep his balance. Then he pushed the door almost closed, just
leaving a narrow slit through which he could see the street outside.
Moments later there was a sound from outside like something dropping
onto wet sand, a kind of heavy thud, the noise coming twice in quick succession,
then
another louder noise of something falling.
Bruno eased the door open just a fraction more. The elderly man,
who they had presumed was the owner of the property, was clearly visible in the
cold white light of the moon. He was lying face-down on the street perhaps four
metres away, a dark pool – obviously blood – spreading out from under his body.
‘Pretty much what I expected,’ Bruno said, closing the door and
sliding one of the bolts back into place. ‘These guys obviously don’t mess about.
Now let’s
liven
things up a bit.’
He took the Beretta out of the waistband of his trousers, unscrewed
the suppressor and slid it into his pocket. He clicked off the safety catch, gestured
for Arrigo to release the bolt on the door and opened it slightly, then stuck his
hand through the narrow gap and pulled the trigger of his weapon three times, aiming
the pistol in the general direction from which he thought the shots had come.
The three crashing explosions echoed back and forth from the
surrounding houses, a triple assault on the quiet of the morning.
‘That should wake everybody up,’ Bruno muttered, ‘and show them
that we’ve got teeth.’
Arrigo slammed the door shut and slid the two bolts back into
place.
The two men walked slowly through into the parlour, taking their
time. Bruno re-attached the suppressor to his Beretta as they did so. He climbed
up onto the chair, released the catch and opened the window wide, pushing it back
against the frame.
They waited there, pistols aimed at the dark opening above them
as they listened intently. They weren’t really worried about the men outside climbing
up through the window, because it was too high off the ground for that, but they
were hoping to hear the sound of them running away.
After about five minutes, they heard the sound of a siren in
the distance, getting closer. Bruno climbed up again and looked out cautiously,
risking the briefest of glances in each direction down the narrow alley which ran
beside that part of the house.
‘I don’t see anything,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s go for it, before
the cops arrive to break up the party.’
Holding the pistol by the barrel, to ensure that there wouldn’t
be an accidental
discharge,
he swung his legs over the
window sill and dropped down into the alley. The moment his feet touched the ground,
he grasped his Beretta and aimed the weapon towards the junction of the alley with
the main street, because that was where the threat most probably lay.
Then he glanced up as Arrigo started to follow him out of the
window.
Working out the mechanics of the ambush hadn’t been difficult.
The house had only two doors. One opened onto the main street
and the other gave access from the courtyard, and that was where the other man or
men – Marco guessed there were probably two of them, but obviously he couldn’t be
sure – had gained entrance to the property. One side of the house abutted the adjoining
building, and the only other means of entry or egress were the four windows which
overlooked the alley beside the house, and a further two opening onto the main street.
That meant the people inside the property had only three choices:
they could use the front or side door, or come out of one of the windows, and probably
one of those down the alley. Marco guessed that the windows were probably the most
likely, but luckily between them they could watch every possible exit. He and Guido
had chosen positions from which they could cover both the doors and the windows,
and had settled down for what they both guessed was going to be a very long wait.
Realistically, the cut-off point was daylight: once the sun came
up and the streets filled with residents of the city and the daily influx of tourists
began, they would almost certainly have to leave, whether or not their quarry had
appeared by then. In fact, Marco guessed that quite probably the men inside might
decide to do just that: stay in the house until well after the sun had come up and
then rely on the crowds, on the sheer number of people, thronging the streets of
Florence to protect them.
So he was actually surprised when, a little under two and a half
hours after they themselves had walked out of the house, he saw the hall lights
switch off and distinctly heard the metallic click of a bolt being withdrawn or
a lock being released.
He hissed a warning to Guido,
then
sighted
down the barrel of his pistol at the main door of the property. It was too dark
to see the sights on the top of his weapon, and in any case the bulbous suppressor
screwed onto the end of the barrel meant they were useless. But he was experienced
enough with the pistol to know that his aim was good, despite the circumstances.
He heard a faint creak as the door opened, and then a figure
wearing a dark coat emerged from the house and started to run down the street.
Marco didn’t hesitate. He altered his aim fractionally now that
he had a definite target, and squeezed the trigger twice. The running man jerked
as one of the bullets hit him, staggered another couple of paces, and then fell
flat on his face. He didn’t move again.
Immediately, Marco altered his aim so that he was covering the
door, waiting for the second man to appear.
Instead, moments later he again heard the faint noise of the
door opening, and then the crashing explosion as somebody fired an
unsilenced
pistol, the noise deafening at such close range.
And at the same moment he felt a sudden stinging pain in his left cheek as the bullet
smashed into the wall of the house close beside him and sent stone splinters flying
in all directions.
Whoever had fired the shot clearly had a pretty good idea where
he was.
Instinctively, Marco dropped flat, as the first shot was followed
by another one, the bullet hitting the wall within just feet of where he’d been
standing. He aimed at the door of the house and fired once in response, the noise
of his shot drowned out by a third round fired by the man in the house.
Then the door slammed shut, the noise followed by the metallic
thud as a bolt was pushed into place.
‘What the hell happened then?’ Guido demanded, walking quickly
over towards where Marco was climbing to his feet.
Lights were coming on in the upper floors of the buildings all
around them, the shots having clearly roused the neighbourhood.
‘That was the men in the house being clever,’ Marco replied,
‘and I think it’s worked.’ He pointed up at the illuminated windows. ‘Gunshots tend
to attract attention, and my guess is that at least one of the people who are now
awake will already have called the police, and most of the others will be dialling
the number right now. There’s a body in front of the house with one or two of my
bullets in it, so we need to get out of here.’
‘Who was he?’ Guido asking, peering over towards the unmoving
shape lying sprawled in the street.
‘One of the other group?’
‘I don’t know,’ Marco admitted. ‘When he came out of the front
door, I thought he was running away, and that’s why I fired at him, but now I think
he might have been pushed, so he might just have been unfortunate enough to be in
the house when the other people broke in, and they forced him out, used him as a
decoy.’
Guido shrugged.
‘Well, whoever he was, he’s dead so it doesn’t matter now.’
Half a minute later, the two men melted away into the night,
heading in different directions, because they hadn’t quite finished their work for
the night.
Twenty minutes after the two men had walked
away,
they stepped out of an alley near the River Arno almost
side by side and raised their weapons. Four dull thuds from the suppressed weapons
echoed from the silent buildings around them and the two men they’d followed ever
since they’d left the house fell forward onto the unyielding surface of the road
with barely a sound.
‘All too easy, this,’ Marco murmured, as he and Guido unhurriedly
stepped forward.
They covered the few feet that separated them from their victims,
stopped beside them to check they were dead and turned them over and searched them.
‘Nothing on this one,’ Guido said, ‘apart from his weapon and
a couple of spare magazines, so I guess it’s pretty certain that they didn’t find
what they were looking for.’
‘Same here, except that this man has a mobile
phone as well.
That might help us find out who they’ve been working for,
if Stefan wants to close that particular loop. We’ll get rid of them.’
The streets in that area were still dark and deserted, and they
were able to carry the two corpses to the bank of the river without interruption.
One after the other, they rolled the two bodies into the fast-flowing water and
watched as they disappeared downstream.
They weren’t the first two corpses the men had entrusted to the
welcoming dark waters of the Arno, and neither of them assumed they would be the
last.
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.