The Dante Conspiracy - By Tom Kasey Page 0,3

to his ribs. And then they started on his fingers.’

‘What this looks like to me,’ Perini said, into the silence which followed Lombardi’s cool and clinical description of the injuries inflicted on the dead man, ‘is an old-style Mafia interrogation. This is just the kind of thing they used to do, back in the day, when they suspected somebody of being an informer. Maximum pain to ensure they got every scrap of information out of their victim, and then a bullet in the head. But you said this man was a professor, an academic. A professor of what?’

‘Right now, we’ve no idea, but I’ll run him through the system as soon as I get back to the office. I did have one thought, but it doesn’t really seem to make sense.’

‘Mistaken identity?’

Lombardi nodded.

‘Exactly what I was thinking. But if they’d looked in his wallet, that would have told them exactly who he was. And they had plenty of time to do it. They probably brought him up here drugged or unconscious, stripped him and tied him to the chair, and then started work on him when he came round. I can’t believe they didn’t at least check that they’d got the right man.’

‘They would have done. I’m quite certain of that. Nobody would do this kind of thing without being positive that they were asking the right person the right questions. So we need to find out what an academic like Professor Bertorelli could possibly have done or known that could lead to something like this.’

Chapter 3

A heavily-built man wearing only a pair of faded blue shorts, his shock of unruly silver hair hidden under a baseball cap, sat in a padded chair on the spacious terrace of a large and expensive villa. The property had been built into the side of a hill to take full advantage of both the sun and the views down the gentle slope towards the port city of Livorno and the Mediterranean beyond. Half a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and the remains of a plate of assorted pastries lay on the table in front of him, and he was drinking a long black coffee, an Americano. And waiting.

He wasn’t worried, but he was getting concerned. He had expected to have had some news by this time, and again his glance fell on the two mobile phones sitting side-by-side on the table beside a copy of an Italian daily newspaper. One was an expensive smartphone and the other a cheap throwaway fitted with a pay as you go Sim card. He had half a dozen such phones, some still in their boxes, tucked away in the back of his wall safe in his study. In his line of business, having a cheap and untraceable telephone was not just desirable – it was essential.

He shook his head, and reached across to pick up the paper, but as he did so the screen on the cheap mobile illuminated and a split second later it began to ring. He knew immediately who had to be calling, because he had only given the number of that telephone to one person.

‘Yes? Do you have it?’

There was a brief but distinct pause before the caller replied.

‘No, we don’t.’

‘That is not what I expected to hear. And it is not what I am paying you for. What happened?’

‘We did exactly as you instructed, Stefan.’

There was a brief pause as Marco belatedly realized he’d just used his employer’s proper name, something he was never supposed to do, though he doubted if it was really that important. Both men were using disposable mobile phones, effectively untraceable by the authorities, and Sim cards which would be dumped at the end of the job, or even earlier if necessary.

But the name reminded the Italian that he wasn’t dealing with a fellow countryman. Despite Stefan’s fluent Italian, Marco guessed he was probably from somewhere in the Balkans, and that made him somewhat unpredictable, at least in Marco’s view.

‘Get on with it,’ Stefan muttered.

‘Sorry,’ Marco said. ‘We searched the residence and we questioned the owner. We found nothing and he told us nothing. In fact, we are quite certain that he didn’t know the answers to the questions we were asking.’

The man on the terrace digested that piece of unwelcome information in silence, then replied.

‘That is impossible. He had to know.’

‘I don’t agree. Our interrogation was’ – he paused for a moment, apparently searching for the most appropriate word – ‘very forceful, as you had suggested.