‘They were in a hurry too,’ Luca Cassini said, pushing to the front, then launching a whole line of twigs and leaves out of the way with his strong arms. ‘What’s this then?’
Fratelli extended a hand to Julia.
‘Be my guest,’ he said.
She lifted up the cold wet plastic sheeting, rolled it back a little. Something was covered in tape and bubble wrap at her feet. A familiar shape. It came off easily and revealed some kind of semiautomatic weapon.
Cassini watched and whistled, then kicked his foot over a few of the identical objects piled alongside. Row after row, box after box.
‘Try your radio here, Luca,’ Fratelli said. ‘We’re higher. Who knows?’
The little green LCD screen of the handset blinked when he held it up.
‘You’re in luck…’ the young officer said.
Fratelli snatched the thing from him, got through to the control room, demanded to talk to Marrone urgently, persisted through all the refusals.
Finally he was connected.
‘How many times do I have to…’ the captain barked at him.
They listened to his angry voice disappear into the thin country air. A clear night was falling. Plenty of stars and a bright full moon.
‘There was a unit of the Red Brigades in Tuscany,’ Fratelli broke in. ‘I know you have them locked up, Walter. Most, anyway. But did you ever find their weapons store? Their guns? Their ammunition and explosives?’
‘What is this…?’
‘Did you find their armoury? How difficult a question is this?’
A pause, then, ‘No. We didn’t.’
‘Join us at the Efron woman’s farm. Near Fiesole. I’ve something you ought to see.’
One hour later. Teams of Carabinieri in dark blue winter jackets lugged floodlights up the hill. Marrone was directing proceedings from a tent erected on the rim of the indentation where the arms cache had been found. The size of the store astonished even the antiterrorist officers brought in for the event. More were on their way from Rome. From what Fratelli could glean, Chavah Efron and her late husband Ari Greco were the keepers of the last remaining significant weapons cache possessed by the disbanded and largely jailed group of criminals who called themselves the Red Brigades.
Not that anyone was handing out much praise to Fratelli and Luca Cassini for locating them. It was a clear, cold night, heading for frost. The two men stayed in the tent with Julia Wellbeloved, watching Marrone and his officers direct the slow and careful recovery of the weapons, shells and plastic explosives. Another team was searching the house. Julia had asked why. Fratelli shrugged. The birds had flown. There was, he suggested, little of interest to be found in this dilapidated farm on the hills outside Fiesole.
Shortly before six, Marrone marched into the tent and ordered all three of them to return to Florence and report to the stazione to give statements in the morning.
‘The morning?’ Fratelli asked, wide-eyed. ‘We’re here now, Walter. I have a registration number for the woman’s VW van, by the way. I noted it…’
‘We’ve got that already,’ Marrone snapped. ‘I need no more help from you. Go home. Stay out of my way.’
‘You don’t seem very grateful,’ Julia observed. ‘I mean honestly, Captain. If it wasn’t for Pino and Luca here—’
‘And you,’ Fratelli added quickly. ‘No false modesty, please.’
‘I’ve no need of amateur detectives,’ Marrone roared. ‘You’d no business being here in the first place. I expressly ordered…’
A figure entered by the tent door. They stopped, looked at him in silence.
‘Why the angry voices?’ Sandro Soderini asked with a smile. ‘This is a happy occasion, isn’t it?’
‘Mr Mayor,’ Fratelli said pleasantly, then walked forward and shook Soderini’s hand. ‘My name is Pino Fratelli. I was passing and stumbled upon our odd discovery. This is a young Carabinieri officer, Luca Cassini. A talented chap. You’ll hear more of him.’
‘Delighted,’ Cassini said with a nod of the head.
‘And my English friend—’
‘You’re a long way from the Uffizi, Julia,’ Soderini interrupted. ‘Is there meat for your thesis here?’
‘Just looking,’ she said. ‘Was it worth tearing yourself away from the Palazzo Vecchio for this?’
His aristocratic face fell. ‘These bastards have been dangling their cowardly threats over us for years. I thought we had most of them dead or in jail.’ He glared at Marrone. ‘That’s what was supposed to happen, wasn’t it?’
‘The fugitive who cached these weapons is an American,’ Marrone said. ‘Her name is Chavah Efron. Neither she nor her husband appeared on any of the suspect lists we had from intelligence. We’ve no reason to believe they were active in any way. Fellow travellers perhaps…’
‘They were sleepers,’ Fratelli said. ‘Of course they didn’t wave around their flags.’
He looked at Soderini.
‘Were there specific threats, Mr Mayor? To you? To your fellow councillors? Like Tornabuoni?’
Soderini’s smile became forced and brittle. ‘Specific? What do you mean, specific?’
‘I mean what it sounds like,’ Fratelli replied brusquely. ‘Did you receive letters? Phone calls? Warnings? Messages that said do this or we’ll… I don’t know.’ A pause. He smiled at the man in the smart suit and raincoat. ‘Or we’ll kill you.’
‘The Red Brigades are history,’ Soderini said. ‘I’m sure it’s as the captain suggests. This was a cache of weapons some timid supporter was storing for a revolution that was never going to arrive.’
‘So they didn’t kill Tornabuoni?’ Fratelli asked outright.
‘The gardener killed Tornabuoni, didn’t he?’ Soderini answered, looking at Marrone for support.
‘Yes,’ the captain replied.
‘And Tornabuoni himself didn’t kill Chavah Efron’s husband by any chance…?’
‘Dammit Fratelli!’ Marrone yelled. ‘That’s enough.’
Sandro Soderini took one step towards them. ‘Giovanni Tornabuoni was a gentleman,’ he said calmly. ‘He had his… eccentricities. But a man like that has no call to murder anyone. Why would he?’
‘So why did we think he did?’ Cassini asked with an inquisitive, friendly smile. ‘Being a cadet I’d just like to know. To learn from things. I like learning. I’ve learned a lot these last couple of days…’
‘We’ll find this woman,’ the captain declared. ‘That’s all you need to know.’
‘And her friend,’ Julia Wellbeloved intervened. ‘She wasn’t alone.’
‘A man,’ Cassini added.
‘A tall man. Quite heavy,’ Fratelli said. ‘Judging by the footprints.’
‘There’s a man with her?’ Sandro Soderini murmured.
‘This is all in hand,’ the captain insisted, then half ushered, half shoved them out into the cold night and bawled at them until they set off down the muddy track back to the farm.
Expelled from the investigation, the case itself — such as it was.
A search for the last and junior member of the Red Brigades, or so Walter Marrone would have it. And an unknown accomplice.
‘Why would Tornabuoni kill this woman’s husband?’ Julia asked when they got to the car.
Luca Cassini mumbled something and marched off towards the farm.
‘Always look for the easy answers,’ Fratelli said. ‘Soderini’s right. It’s hard to imagine the city arts commissioner as a born and willing murderer.’
‘Then…?’
‘Then he was an unwilling one. People who don’t kill out of personality or inclination tend to do so for one reason only. Self-defence. The Greco character hoped to kill him. Tornabuoni defended himself.’
She thought about this. ‘So why hide it? Self-defence isn’t a crime.’