Chapter 23
FRIDAY MORNING
At just before ten, Virgilio received a call. It was Tristan Angel’s ex-wife calling from the Four Seasons hotel, and he put it on speaker. He and I were sitting alone in the small lounge with Oscar stretched out on the Persian rug at our feet.
‘Chief Inspector Pisano? This is Jane Taylor-Mead. You told me to tell you when I intended to leave Florence. Unless you have any objections, I’m planning on travelling down to Rome this afternoon. Is that all right?’
‘Good morning, Signora. Yes, that’s fine. Thank you for letting me know.’
‘Have there been any developments in your investigation?’
‘I hope so. We’re waiting for some results from the laboratory, but the signs are good. Did you hear about Donald Hicks?’
‘Yes, Vince called me on Wednesday. How awful. Why do you think he was murdered?’
‘That’s still unclear at this stage. Tell me, Signora, does the name Shabah mean anything to you?’
‘No, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t.’ There was silence for a moment before she continued. ‘Do you think Donald was murdered because somebody has been trying to eliminate the directors of the company?’
‘It’s a possibility. I don’t know if you heard, but Vincent Archer narrowly missed being shot yesterday.’
There was an audible intake of breath from her. When she responded, there was definite fear in her voice. ‘I haven’t heard from Vince since Wednesday. I’ve tried ringing him, but his phone just goes to voicemail.’
‘All the phones have been at our technical department being analysed. I imagine that’s why you haven’t heard from him. Yesterday, he was very lucky when somebody fired two shots at him at close range but missed.’
‘This is all Tristan’s doing.’ Along with fear, there was anger in her voice now.
‘I’ve been telling him for years that no good can come out of dealing with certain customers.
It sounds like somebody’s waging a vendetta against the company.
Surely it can’t be somebody inside the company.
’ Another pause. ‘Do you think I might be in danger? With Tristan and Don gone, Vince and I are now the last remaining directors of the company.’
‘It’s our belief that the murderer of both men is one of the group here. You might be right about the motive, although I agree that it’s hard to see why somebody who’s part of the company should be actively working against it. Hopefully, when we catch the killer, the motive will become clear.’
He went on to offer a few more words of reassurance, before promising that he would let her know the result of the investigation as soon as it was concluded. When the call ended, I stated the obvious.
‘Of course, if a vendetta against TXA Supplies really is the motive behind the murders, there is one person here who isn’t an employee of the company.
’ A sudden thought occurred to me. ‘How stupid of me. I’ve just realised what I’d forgotten up till now.
You know we were trying to work out how somebody here could have managed to visit the duomo on Monday to check out the confessional before sending the email to Angel arranging to meet there on Tuesday?
Well, of course, there was one person who had that opportunity. Why didn’t I think of it before?’
He looked up with interest, but before he could reply, his phone started ringing again. He listened intently and when the call ended, there was a far more optimistic look on his face.
‘That was the ministry in Rome. They’ve just heard back from the Spanish authorities and we have a result.
Emilia Cortez Garcia has an interesting past. She was indeed born in Melilla as she said, and she studied law in Spain and the US, before returning to work in a charity in her home town.
The charity in question seeks to help the numerous asylum seekers arriving at the gates of Melilla every day from all over Africa, the Middle East and even as far afield as Afghanistan.
She was apparently very good at her job.
Apart from being a skilled lawyer, the fact that she was born and brought up in Melilla meant she is fluent not only in Spanish but also in Arabic and the local Berber language.
Interesting that she didn’t give us that information under questioning, isn’t it? ’
I nodded in agreement. ‘Very definitely. Apart from anything else, she would easily have been able to impersonate an Arabic speaker in the email exchange with Angel. Even more importantly, she told us she flew into Florence on Monday, but she only arrived at the villa at lunchtime. From what she’s just told us, she flew Air France.
We need to check which flight she was on and what time it arrived.
If it was an early flight, that would mean she had time to visit the duomo and suss out a suitable spot for the handover of the fictitious two million pounds from the equally fictitious Shabah.
It sounds as though we’ve been barking up the wrong tree about her.
We all thought that there was something suspicious in the way she sounded when she referred to Tristan Angel and, initially, we put it down to physical attraction.
Maybe the truth is that she came here with a mission: to eliminate the top echelons of a company that she saw as having fuelled, if not caused, so much suffering across Africa and the Middle East.’
Virgilio jumped to his feet, rousing Oscar in the process.
‘We need to talk to her right now.’ He went to the door and sent an officer to look for Marco or Dini.
The sergeant arrived first and Virgilio gave her a two-line summary of this latest development and told her to fetch Emilia Cortez immediately and then check with Air France to find out her flight times on Monday.
Less than five minutes later, Dini was back.
‘I’m afraid there’s no sign of her, sir.’
Virgilio looked aghast. ‘What do you mean? She can’t just have disappeared into thin air.’
‘I’ve got officers going through the villa room by room and I’ve contacted the others spread around the grounds, getting them to check for her.’
‘What about the main gate? Have you spoken to the officers on duty there?’
‘Inspector Innocenti is talking to them right now, but I imagine she can’t have got out that way.’
A few seconds later, the door burst open and Marco appeared.
His expression mirrored what we were feeling: frustration and annoyance.
‘Still no sign of Cortez, but the constable on the gate tells me the only person to leave the villa over the last half-hour was Amedeo Rospo in his old van, on his way up to the bakery in Fiesole to buy bread.’ Seeing the expression of irritation on his boss’s face, he offered some mitigation.
‘The constable said Amedeo has been going out every morning at the same time, and so he saw no reason why he should stop him today.’
Virgilio was glowering by this time. ‘And of course it didn’t cross the idiot’s mind to check inside the back of the van to see if there were any stowaways?’
Marco shook his head and I had a feeling the constable at the gate was going to get a real rocket – and a well-deserved one.
Virgilio checked his watch. ‘It’s gone ten. What time did Amedeo leave?’
‘Only about five minutes ago. I’ve already sent a squad car up the road to intercept the van.’
Virgilio looked slightly mollified. ‘Where’s the bakery?’
‘In Fiesole, just past the piazza, behind the town hall. Do you think this means Cortez is the killer?’
I could see that Virgilio was still fuming so I answered for him.
‘It certainly looks that way. The information from the Spanish authorities indicates that she had a knowledge of Arabic and she worked with asylum seekers, so it could well be that she was behind the Shabah emails that led to Angel’s murder in the duomo. ’
Virgilio roused himself from his reverie. ‘Dini, any word from Air France yet?’
‘No, but I’ve got people on it. We should hear very soon.’
‘Let me know as soon as you do. In the meantime, go and check that everybody else is still here. We can’t afford to lose any more suspects.’
She hurried out of the door, leaving Virgilio pacing impatiently up and down. Oscar was on his feet by this time, looking similarly concerned, and I wasn’t feeling much better. Could Emilia Cortez really have slipped through our hands?
The sergeant returned only a few minutes later.
‘All present and correct, sir. I’ve collected them all in the dining room and the only one that’s missing is Cortez.
I’ve been up to her room and there’s no sign of her handbag.
It looks like she’s taken it with her, so she’ll have money.
Of course, we still have her ID, so she shouldn’t be able to go far. ’
At that moment, the radio strapped to her chest crackled into life and there was a brief conversation.
When it finished, she gave us the bad news.
‘That was Fiesole. The van is there, parked right outside the baker’s.
It’s unlocked, and the back door’s hanging half-open.
Looks like that’s how she got away and now she’s running free. ’
Virgilio uttered a couple of colourful expletives.
‘Right, Dini, you stay here with a handful of officers and send all the others up to Fiesole straight away. Get a message down to Florence to stop and check all buses and taxis coming from this direction and set up roadblocks to check all vehicles leaving Fiesole. Tell them to send as many units as they can up to Fiesole to join the search. I want boots on the ground now!’ He turned to Marco.
‘You and I need to get up there straight away. Come on.’ He glanced across at me as he made his way towards the door. ‘You coming, Dan?’
He didn’t need to ask twice. Oscar and I ran out with the two of them and we jumped into Marco’s car.
I sat in the back holding onto Oscar as Marco powered the car up through the hairpin bends, siren blaring.
It took barely three minutes to get to Fiesole, but in that short time there were two interesting developments.
First, Virgilio took a call from the lab and turned back towards me, a triumphant look on his face.
‘That was Forensics – they’ve found fingerprints belonging to Cortez on a little shovel in the greenhouse.’
Seconds later, he took a call from Diana Dini confirming that Cortez had arrived on the nine o’clock Air France flight on Monday morning, and so she would have had ample time to check out the duomo and the confessional before taking a taxi up to the villa.
Virgilio beamed. ‘She’s our killer, all right.’ His expression became more serious. ‘Now all we have to do is to find her.’
Marco screeched to a halt at the top of the piazza outside the impressive old town hall.
This elegant building had a row of pillars supporting a terrace, with yet more pillars on top of that, supporting the roof.
The facade was covered in plaques and sculptures, and an Italian and a European flag hung limply from a flagpole.
But we had no time for sightseeing today as we jumped out of the vehicle and headed towards a gaggle of officers standing at the corner of the square.
A narrow road led steeply upwards to where two police cars were parked by Amedeo’s van on the left-hand side, only about fifty metres up, outside the baker’s shop.
Standing on the pavement were two officers with a bewildered-looking Amedeo between them.
Virgilio ran up and spoke briefly to the gardener before turning back towards us.
‘Marco, get back into the piazza and organise a door-to-door search of this whole area. Send some officers to the top of the hill with orders to circle round and head back in this direction. Hopefully, we can box Cortez in. She has only a five- or ten-minute start on us, so she can’t have got far.
Tell them to fan out and check everywhere – and I mean everywhere, from garden sheds to manholes. Go.’
Over the next ten minutes, more officers began to arrive and a meticulous search was initiated.
I stood with Oscar and wondered how best I could help, and it was while I was still trying to think myself into the head of a fugitive trying to hide that I heard the clock on the bell tower of the duomo strike ten-thirty, and this suddenly reminded me of my promise to Anna and Tricia.
The wedding hotel was only a five-minute walk, or a two- or three-minute run, from here so I reckoned I should be able to go there, take a look around the place and be back in less than twenty minutes.
I tapped Virgilio on the shoulder and asked him if he’d mind if I disappeared for a few minutes to check out a possible wedding venue with Tricia, and he didn’t hesitate.
‘Thanks, Dan, it’s kind of you to help, but this is just good old police legwork now. You go and do what you’ve got to do, and I’ll keep you posted.’