Costa pushed away his plate. He’d hardly picked at his food. “We’ve asked ourselves that question. We’ll have hard evidence too. I don’t want to mislead you, Luca. There are other lines of attack open to us. The Arcangeli case, which is far from closed. And the charges Massiter skipped away from five years ago.” He glanced at Peroni. “Plus we may have some forensic too.”
Peroni didn’t seem too happy with that last observation. Maybe the older man understood just how perilous it could be to play games like these. It was time, Zecchini realised, to come to the point.
“Then let me put it plainly. Hugo Massiter is a man of extreme influence and importance, more so by the day, from what I read in the papers. Once he becomes the owner of that island, he becomes virtually untouchable. I live here. Everyone in the Veneto follows what happens in Venice, because that’s the place the money goes. Very large sums of money that bind the giver and the receiver in ways you people in Rome can’t imagine. When that deal’s done, Hugo Massiter becomes something different. Part of the establishment. You’d need written permission from the Quirinale Palace just to talk to him about a parking ticket after that. And now—”
“Now what?” Peroni interrupted.
“Now he’s just a very powerful crook with some friends who ought to know better. If you screw around with him, he will, surely, come looking for his revenge. This is not idle speculation. I’ve watched careers destroyed trying to take down that man. I’m not much inclined to invite the same fate.”
Costa’s eye, bright, alert, inquisitive, caught his. “You know him personally?” the young policeman asked.
“No details. I’m just giving you the big picture. Massiter’s a man who’s wriggled out of our grasp many times in the past, then turned up smiling with not an etto of blame on him. You’d need a motive—”
“Got it,” Peroni interjected. “This deal he had with the Arcangeli. He needed it closed down.”
“So why did he kill the brother and his wife?” Zecchini demanded. “What’s the point of that?”
“It’s personal,” Costa said. “He got Bella pregnant. She was putting pressure on him. He killed her, then set Uriel up for the blame.”
“You can prove some of this?”
“We’ll get there,” Costa insisted.
“You’re going to have to do better than that! Suspicions fall off that man like dead skin. We’ve tried to screw Massiter for art smuggling in the past. Many, many times. You people thought you had him for murder five years ago. Instead . . .”
This wasn’t just about guilt. It was about proof, and the ability to see through the judicial process. They all knew that—police, Carabinieri, and the armies of lawyers who had, over the years, been assembled on both sides too.
Costa was unmoved. Luca Zecchini tried hard to remember more of what Falcone had said about these two men. Of their honesty, their disregard for their own safety when it came to a case that mattered.
“Leo’s my friend as well,” he added. “I don’t think he’d want you to put your necks on the line for him. Not just on a hunch. Not like this.”
“Is that what you think this is? A hunch?” Costa seemed disappointed. “Some personal vendetta on Leo’s behalf?”
“It seems—”
“No! We’ve looked at the records, Maggiore. And those are just ours. God knows what’s there on your side. Hugo Massiter is a cancer in Venice. He’s everywhere. In the government. In the city. Alongside all the organised crime that’s coming in from across the Adriatic.”
The two of them must have seen the expression on his face.
“You’d be amazed the stuff we managed to dig up before they threw us out of the Questura. We called a friend in the DIA too,” Peroni said. “We know about the Serbians and the Croats. How he plays them off against one another. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
Zecchini groaned. No one talked to the anti-Mafia people unless they were desperate. “This isn’t your field,” he warned. “Leave it alone.”
Costa fed him a sour glance. “So you don’t want him?”
Zecchini couldn’t miss the taunting tone in his voice. “I’d give my right arm to arraign that bastard on anything. But we’ve been there before and we failed. That makes it harder to go back again, to get the lawyers nodding the case through, unless it’s more watertight than anything we’ve had before. And mark my words. What we’ve been able to throw at him in the past was good. He should have been in jail ten times over. Would have been too, if it weren’t for his friends.”
“If the case is good enough,” Costa objected, “even his friends will abandon him.”
“Really?” He couldn’t believe they could be that naive. “Well, here’s something else I discovered. Every time we lose, he gets stronger. I’d need something very special just to get the authorities to read a file on Hugo Massiter right now. Once he’s signed that contract, and all those millions of public money are behind him, all those grateful politicians in his debt . . .”
He looked at the wasted food. Zecchini had expected more of them. Maybe he’d be on the date with Gina after all that night. He wasn’t going to stick out his neck over some amateur, unauthorised probe into someone who always managed to slip out of their grasp.
“And I regret to say I don’t have a single piece of evidence to help you,” he added with a scowl. “I wish I had. It’s all spent. Useless. There’s nothing close that’s fresh. If it was there, I’d be nailing this man tomorrow. Leo or no Leo.”
They had something to say, and it made them uncomfortable. A part of Luca Zecchini was beginning to wish he’d stayed in Milan.
Costa took a sip of his mineral water.
“You asked us what Leo would be doing in these circumstances. Let me tell you. He’d be turning on the heat. He’d be making moves that put Massiter in an uncomfortable position. A place where he was likely to make mistakes from which we could profit.”
Zecchini had seen enough of the police inspector’s methods to understand this was probably an accurate interpretation. He still didn’t see where it got them.
“Two lone cops on enforced vacation aren’t going to be putting the heat on anyone,” he objected.
Peroni smiled. “No, Luca. But you could. You could pick up the phone, call the Questura in Venice and ask if they’d mind letting you talk to Commissario Randazzo for a bit. Just to see if he knew anything about art theft.”
Zecchini snorted. This was absurd.
“I’m serious,” Peroni persisted, giving him a quick, icy look that Zecchini didn’t like at all. “We’ve taken a peek inside Randazzo’s house in the Lido. It’s empty. He’s gone. The wife’s gone. It’s an expensive place for someone on his salary. And all kinds of fancy stuff in there. Paintings. Ceramics. Silverware. We sort of found the door open . . .”
“No!” Zecchini waved his hand in the big man’s face, demanding silence. “I don’t want to hear this. Breaking into houses. Jesus . . . Are you insane?”
“You could just make a call,” Costa repeated. “Ask for a simple interview. See how they respond. You could also run up a search warrant on his place. You’ll find something there. Look.”
Costa reached into his shoulder bag and took out a folder of photos. They showed antiques and paintings inside an airy, elegant house filled with potted plants and small palms, not the sort of place most police officers favoured.
“There are a couple of Serbian icons in there,” Costa observed. “Genuine, I think. Probably fifteenth century.”