The Last Supper by Philip Willan Read Free Book Online Page B

the Italian entrepreneur Carlo Cabassi, whose brother Giuseppe would lend Roberto Calvi his Sardinian villa in the summer of 1981.
    Albanese was one of the first people to be questioned by police following Vaccari’s death. Vaccari’s address book and diaries show regular contacts with him and the address and telephone number of his restaurants, as well as the home and office contact details of Pierluigi Torri. And Vaccari was certainly familiar with the San Lorenzo restaurant, the name and telephone number of which were listed in his address book.
    A further puzzling link between Jeannette May and the Christie’s robbery emerges from two telegrams sent from a false address in Rome. The first, sent to Christie’s itself three days after the robbery, read: ‘If you want your goods, go to 130 Via Tito Livio, flat 3 – Rodrigo.’ The second arrived at the Ai Pini hotel in Sarnano, where Jeannette and her friendhad stayed, nine days after the two women’s disappearance. Addressed to ‘Jeanine’ May, it read: ‘I’m waiting for you Thursday at 130 Tito Livio, flat 3 – Roland.’ Police found no firm connection between the Tito Livio address and either Vaccari, Jeannette May or the Christie’s robbery. Curiously though, another of those finally charged with Calvi’s murder had an address in Via Tito Livio. Giuseppe ‘Pippo’ Calò, the mafia treasurer accused of ordering the murder and who posed as an antiques dealer himself, was arrested in 1985 outside the flat he was living in with his wife at Via Tito Livio number 76. The distance separating number 130 from number 76 still remains to be bridged, however.
    Six months after he had first mentioned ‘Volpi’, source ‘Podgora’ added some fascinating new insights into the Calvi case and identified Vaccari by his correct name, setting him at the heart of the drama of Calvi’s last hours. A finance police report dated 5 July 1983 reads: ‘In London on the evening of Calvi’s death Vittor allegedly saw the people who collected him from his residence. These were sent by Gelli and Carboni who were in London. Calvi was allegedly invited to a dinner, one of the participants at which was Sergio Vaccari (the Volpi of our previous report), who subsequently died, who was allegedly the last person to see Calvi alive.’ The report said that Gelli left for the US the next day, while Carboni travelled to Edinburgh with the sister of Vittor’s Austrian lover (which would have meant Carboni’s mistress Manuela Kleinszig). Carboni did indeed fly to Edinburgh, although with a different woman. The contents of this report were communicated to a Trieste prosecutor, Oliviero Drigani, and to finance police headquarters. Drigani considered the information so sensitive that he instructed the finance police not to share it with any other police force or security service.
    It did not result in a bold step forward for the investigation, however. On the contrary, Paoli’s detailed knowledge of theevents surrounding Calvi’s flight from Italy raised suspicion among investigators that he had actually participated in the illegal operation. On 19 August 1983 Drigani ordered Paoli’s arrest for alleged complicity with Vittor in Calvi’s expatriation to Yugoslavia. Part of the reason for his arrest was that Paoli had been identified by Emilio Pellicani, Flavio Carboni’s personal assistant, as the
biondino
(small blond man) who had flown to Trieste with an alleged member of the Rome underworld to deliver Calvi’s false passport to him. This ‘crime boss’ was Ernesto Diotallevi, one of the five suspects who would find themselves on trial for Calvi’s murder 23 years later.
    Paoli was apparently in the United States at the time and it has now emerged that the
biondino
may in reality have been the slightly built and fair-haired Vaccari. Attempting later to recall the name for the magistrates, Pellicani said it sounded like ‘Mecalli’ or ‘Mecarri’. An entry in Carboni’s