Marco Vichi - Inspector Bordelli 04 - Death in Florence by Marco Vichi Read Free Book Online Page A

thought I’d try …’
    ‘The cards can’t reveal a killer’s name; they can only tell what will happen to the person in front of me.’
    ‘Perhaps you could find out if I’ll succeed in capturing the culprit,’ said Bordelli, feeling sheepish with Piras looking on.
    ‘What must happen, will happen,’ the psychic murmured.
    ‘Exactly. So maybe—’
    ‘Please, Inspector,’ Amelia interrupted him in a weak voice.
    ‘As you wish, then. Sorry to disturb you.’
    ‘I can’t help you, believe me.’
    ‘Thanks just the same.’
    Bordelli put the receiver down and leaned back in his chair. He briefly told Piras what Amelia had said. He felt relieved. Though he had yielded for a moment to the temptation, he really couldn’t see himself paying heed to the tarot’s prophecies.
    ‘Let’s hope something turns up at La Panca,’ he said, without believing it for a second. At that moment somebody knocked at the door. It was Rinaldi with the first results. The paths through the woods had been carefully checked. To get to Monte Scalari by car one had no choice but to go by way of La Panca. The other trails had large stones, deep holes and impassable, tortuous bends that even a jeep in wartime would have had trouble negotiating.
    ‘Anything else?’
    ‘Nothing else, Inspector,’ Rinaldi said dejectedly, as if it were his fault.
    ‘All right, you can go, thanks,’ the inspector said, even more disappointed than him. Rinaldi vaguely gestured a military salute and left in a hurry. Evening was falling, and the sound of torrential rain rose up from the street below.
    ‘What the hell are we going to do now?’ Bordelli asked, worrying an earlobe.

The following morning he left home before eight o’clock and headed for La Panca. He felt the need to go back there, although he was convinced there was no point in it. He couldn’t bear sitting behind his desk, staring at the wall, crushed by a feeling of powerlessness that had been weighing on him for days like a sense of guilt.
    He stopped at Porta Romana to buy the Florentine daily,
La Nazione
:
    LITTLE GIACOMO FOUND DEAD
    RAPED AND STRANGLED
    He tossed the newspaper on to the front seat and drove off, reviewing in his mind the reports of the policemen who had questioned the inhabitants of La Panca, Cintoia Alta and Monte Scalari. They were all more or less the same: nobody had seen anything unusual. There were, moreover, a number of inhabited houses on the hill, as well as an abbey, and the wooded area was often frequented by hunters and people foraging for mushrooms. It was normal to hear cars driving by at all hours; nobody paid any attention.
    In short, they were getting nowhere. The only new information was from Diotivede, and for the moment it was useless.
    He arrived at La Panca with his morale in tatters. As he went up the path in the car, he realised he’d finished all his cigarettes and half-cursed between clenched teeth. Crumpling the empty packet, he hurled it out of the window. After a few bends, he parked the Beetle in the same clearing as the day before. He opened the glove compartment, to check whether there wasn’t perhaps a spare cigarette in there, but all he found was a little box of Tabù-brand liquorice drops. Tapping the box with one finger, he let a few of the bitter drops roll into his mouth.
    He put on his hiking boots and set out slowly towards the spot where the body had been found, knowing he was wasting his time. From the ground, still wet with rain, rose a sharp smell of putrefaction, as a breath of damp wind caressed his face. The silence of the woods was broken only by birdsong, the rustling of his footsteps and, now and then, a distant gunshot. The upper boughs of the trees stood out against a colourless sky, as the sun formed spots of light on the carpet of rotten leaves.
    He trudged on, breathing heavily, expecting at any moment to see a German pop out from behind a tree and start shooting at him. That had actually happened to him in