‘I’ll get something. They never gave me a chance.’
‘That’s their loss more than yours.’ A pat on the arm, that seductive smile. ‘But I’m giving you one now. Go back into the detectives’ office. Find out what you can about the Tornabuoni case. Make a little small talk. Be inquisitive.’ He smiled at the young man. ‘Curiosity is the greater part of being an investigative officer, you know. Not rules and procedures, custom and practice. This!’
Fratelli tapped the side of his head. Cassini stared at the older man’s white hair and looked downcast.
‘What’s wrong?’ Fratelli asked.
‘You, Pino. A lot wrong there, I reckon.’
Julia looked at the floor.
Fratelli laughed. ‘A man who speaks his mind,’ he declared, and slapped Cassini on the shoulder. ‘If I was still running a team here you’d be on it and that’s the truth. But I’m not. So the only friends you have are Julia and me, the mad maresciallo.’
‘I didn’t say you were mad. I said you were sick.’
‘Whichever it is, I’m the only one making you an offer. Will you do it?’
Cassini shook his head. ‘I don’t deserve the sack.’
‘You don’t,’ Julia agreed.
‘How would you know?’
‘Julia has friends in the English constabulary,’ Fratelli chipped in. ‘She’s knowledgeable about these matters. Haven’t you noticed?’
Cassini glared at them.
‘And if anything’s been typed up,’ Fratelli added. ‘Get a photocopy.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Tell them it’s for Marrone or something. Improvise, Luca. Be bold…’
‘It’s stealing.’
Fratelli tilted his head to one side and fixed him with a look that said: disappointed. ‘This is why they don’t want you. No spirit. No initiative.’
Cassini prodded him in the chest with a fat forefinger. ‘My granddad told me about you. Last night. He said you were a shit-stirring troublemaker.’
‘How is he? Mellowed in retirement, I gather.’
The young officer chuckled at that. ‘He also said you were the best detective they ever had. Not that they appreciated it most of the time. Mainly because you were such a pain in the arse.’
‘Very perceptive of him. I won’t argue.’
‘Luca,’ Julia interrupted, taking the young officer’s other arm. ‘You mustn’t do anything you don’t want. If it bothers you at all… about what might happen…’
Cassini shook his head. ‘You two are a right pair, aren’t you? Him pushing me on. You making like I’m gutless if I don’t do it.’
He glanced down the corridor, back to towards the incident room where the murder case was being assembled.
Julia smiled at him and winked.
‘And then?’ Cassini asked.
‘Then you meet us at the lampredotto stall in the central market one hour from now. Where I will buy you as many panini as you wish. Oh.’ Fratelli scribbled something else on his pad and passed it over. ‘And check out one small detail too. It’s an old record. No one will argue there.’
The young officer nodded. Lampredotto. He seemed to like that idea. ‘Give me an hour,’ he said, and walked back towards the offices.
Sandro Soderini sat at his desk in the Palazzo Vecchio listening to the steady tramp of tourists work their way through the building. It was approaching midday. Outside, in the corridors of the council offices, the initial shock over Vanni Tornabuoni’s murder was giving way to a sense of grief and outrage. These things weren’t supposed to happen. Especially, thought Soderini, to someone in such an elevated and privileged position.
After putting out a statement of condolence to Tornabuoni’s mother, an elderly widow living on Capri, he’d stopped all incoming phone calls, pulled down the blinds, stayed in the dark trying to think. In truth, he hadn’t much liked the man. Tornabuoni was one more aristocrat he’d inherited, a foppish pseudo-intellectual in need of a job. He’d worn the right suits, made appropriate speeches, fawned when demanded, crawled when told. Then wisely left the real work in the culture department to the civil servants beneath him, most of whom treated their director with quiet, unamused contempt.
Lightly informed delegation from on high. That was the way things happened in Florence. Soderini possessed a detailed and informed sense of history from his former profession as a lecturer at the university. He appreciated all the many forms of government that had been tried in the city over the centuries, from the Signoria and the Twelve Good Men, the Sixteen Gonfaloniers and the Great Council of his ancestor’s day, to the soi-disant oligarchy of the Medici, which was a monarchy in all but name. Then, much later, came the brutal fascist tyranny of Mussolini. Life was simpler still in 1986. A form of benevolent dictatorship had quietly come to descend upon Florence; one founded through the certain knowledge the majority would vote a predictable way whatever the policies or name on the ballot paper. Once those crosses confirmed the status quo, power passed from broker to broker, through private meetings and conclaves, clubs and associations, mutual dependencies and the occasional exchange of hard cash.
It was a ritual, like much of life in Tuscany. A perpetual dance of money and influence, patronage and persuasion. Life and death. The seat of mayor had been handed on to him by a relative, a rich and corrupt uncle who, during the war, had quietly sided with the Fascists, secretly sitting behind Mussolini as he took tea with Hitler on the newly built lookout of the Ponte Vecchio while publicly proclaiming himself to be above politics, dedicated to the people of the city alone.
This masquerade was uncommon only in that it was opaque. Most such deceits were transparent, performed with a nod and a knowing wink. The Florentines were a proud and occasionally unruly people, too worldly wise to expect any direct, controlling voice in their own affairs. Nevertheless, it was important not to flaunt such impotence in the faces of the ordinary men and women who tramped the cobbled streets and went to work in offices and fashion houses, leather workshops and tourist restaurants. Soderini was groomed to be mayor by way of birth. So he too had found himself introduced at an early age into the clubs and secret societies, the brotherhoods and lodges through which an elite of aristocrats, industrialists, financiers, church officials and the occasional crook kept their fingers tight on the windpipe of the nation.
Most were tedious. The Brigata Spendereccia, when he found the time for it, rarely.
Now Vanni Tornabuoni, one of its most ardent supporters, was dead. Found murdered in the most extraordinary and public circumstances one day before the group was due to meet again. This was not simply wrong. It was offensive. Impudent.
Soderini stared at the paintings around him, the gilt furniture, the rich desk with its walnut veneer and the globe in the corner, commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was mayor of Florence, duke in all but name. Heir to the Medici and those who went before, all of whom had walked down the Vasari Corridor for one reason or another, whether to find solace and protection behind the rusticated fortress walls of the Pitti Palace or, in recent times, for more pleasurable reasons.
This city belonged to him and he was not to be cowed.
Caution was in order, however. He picked up the phone, called Marrone’s private number in the Carabinieri stazione in Ognissanti, and demanded the dour captain give him a report on the case.
It was brief and uninformative. No more than Soderini might have gleaned from the news.
‘When will you charge the man? The gardener?’ Soderini demanded.