Murder in Verona (An Armstrong and Oscar Cozy Mystery #9)

Chapter 13

13

THURSDAY MORNING

The main police station in Verona is a modern concrete building on the banks of the river. I managed to find a parking space on the opposite pavement and as I walked over to the entrance with the precious plastic bag of evidence in my hands, I was amazed to see crowds of people queuing outside the security fence surrounding the station. From the languages I heard as I walked past them, it seemed likely that the majority if not all of these were asylum seekers. Luckily, I found a police constable by the main gate and I was able to explain that I had potentially important evidence relating to the death of Rodolfo Argento and he allowed me to jump the queue. He made a quick call and two minutes later, a female police officer emerged from the building and beckoned to me to accompany her. She led me inside and up two flights of stairs to a scene familiar to me after my years at Scotland Yard.

I found myself in a large open-plan office with desks either side of a central corridor and glazed offices every now and then to provide an element of privacy. She led me to one of these and I read the name Ispettore Massimo Ventura on the door .

‘The inspector’s in charge of the Argento enquiry. You can show him your evidence.’

Massimo Ventura looked up as I came in and waved towards a seat on the opposite side of a desk almost concealed beneath heaps of paperwork and I felt an immediate sense of camaraderie. It had been a standing joke in my office that nobody had ever seen the surface of my desk beneath its permanent covering of files. Ventura was probably ten years younger than me and he was completely bald. In an attempt to compensate, he had grown a beard, which covered his face and ended weirdly at ear level. I sat down and passed him across one of my cards. He took it from me and studied it for a few seconds before looking up.

‘An English private investigator? That’s unusual. I assume you’re looking into the death of Rodolfo Argento. Is that correct?’ I hastened to explain how a chance meeting with Violetta had got me involved with the case and he nodded. ‘I had a feeling the old lady might want to go private. She was convinced that it was murder and she seemed to hold me personally responsible for not being able to prove it.’

I gave him a smile in return. ‘Signora Violetta is a redoubtable character. She certainly knows her own mind. Anyway, what I’ve come to show you might be of interest.’ I set the plastic bag on his desk and explained where I had found it while he listened intently before taking it from me.

‘You’re right, this could be very interesting. Can I take it that we aren’t going to find your fingerprints on it?’

‘Apart from possibly a print or two at the top when I first touched it in the bin, but I immediately used a tissue from then on and I can give you my prints for exclusion.’

He nodded approvingly. ‘Very professional, Mr Armstrong. Tell me, what’s your background? How come a Brit is working as a private investigator here in Italy? ’

I filled him in with details of how I’d been a detective chief inspector in the murder squad at Scotland Yard until I’d decided to take early retirement and had moved to Tuscany. He looked up when I mentioned my former rank. ‘Chief inspector, that’s the equivalent of commissario , isn’t it? That means you outrank me.’

I smiled back at him. ‘That means I used to outrank you, Inspector. I’ve left the force now.’

‘I’d be interested to hear your take on this case. I must confess that I’ve been suspicious from the start but I’ve been unable to get any proof of deliberate tampering. Forensics have been through the car – or what’s left of it – with a magnifying glass but they can’t find a thing. I just received a phone call this morning from the garage where the remains of the car have been taken and the guy there tells me he can’t confirm or deny any interference with the brakes either.’ He spread his hands helplessly.

‘That would be Maurizio Tamburo. I visited him yesterday and saw the remains of the car for myself. In an ideal world, you might be lucky enough to find fingerprints on this oil can but, if not, I can quite understand that you’ll just be scraping around for clues.’

‘Do I take it that you share my opinion that it can’t have been suicide?’

‘Very definitely. Everybody I talk to tells me Rodolfo was in high spirits and looking forward to a major concert he would be performing in at Christmas. As far as I can tell, he was very happily married, at the top of his game professionally, and with no money problems. Can I ask you one thing: in the pathologist’s report, was there any mention of an excess of alcohol or drugs in his system or some recurring medical problem that might have given him a temporary seizure? Or maybe some recent bad news, maybe a terminal diagnosis? Was he even on the phone at the time?’

He shook his head. ‘His phone wasn’t being used, there was some alcohol in his system, but not enough to affect his driving, and nothing else. Certainly no history of epilepsy or anything like that and his doctor claimed he was very fit. So if we assume he didn’t take his own life and it wasn’t a simple accident, the question is who killed him and why? Who had motive and opportunity to do so?’

‘And means. Although Maurizio at the garage told me it’s a simple enough task to drain brake fluid, it’s only simple if you’re familiar with car engines, preferably classic cars.’

He nodded slowly. ‘So we’re looking for somebody with a working knowledge of cars, a strong motive for murder and who had the opportunity of getting into the garage to carry out the sabotage. That rather limits us to the people at the villa or the members of the Argento family.’ He looked up. ‘It probably won’t come as any surprise to you to hear that when I mentioned this possibility to my commissario , he was very, very cautious. This is a very well-known and important family we’re talking about, and if the news gets out that we suspect one of them of having committed murder, I can only begin to imagine the hornets’ nest we would stir up.’

I gave him a sympathetic nod. ‘I quite understand and I share your concern. This morning, I’ve been speaking to the victim’s cousins, who currently run the Argento family business. I have to say that neither of them struck me as being potential murderers but anything’s possible. They didn’t in fact benefit from Rodolfo’s death but I think it’s reasonable to assume that they hoped they would. Whether this is sufficient for them to have considered murder is, of course, a totally different matter. So, as far as I can see, that leaves us with only a few other suspects.’

He was taking notes and ticking the names off on his file as I went through them. ‘Go on, please.’

‘There’s Rodolfo’s agent, Paolo Ruggieri, who was left a million euros in his will. I have yet to speak to him – although he’s allegedly incapable of taking the top off a pen, let alone tampering with brakes in a classic car. There’s the groundsman at the villa, who had a key to the garage and the opportunity and ability to drain the brake fluid but who, as far as I can tell, had absolutely no logical motive for wanting to kill his boss. Similarly, there’s the manager of the villa, who has copies of all the keys but, again, I fail to see any possible motive there. There’s a student at the academy who might or might not have crossed swords with the victim over some unidentified woman. I’ll sit down and talk to the manager later today about him.’

He glanced up. ‘Dolores Mendoza, I liked her. She seems very clued up and probably knows everything that goes on at the academy. Of course, she’s a good-looking woman and apparently unattached, so I’m still leaving her on my list of possibles.’

I gave that some thought. He was right. Dolores was indeed an attractive woman and although she’d told me that she had rebuffed Rodolfo’s advances, we had no proof of that. I liked her and automatically trusted her, but just because you like somebody doesn’t mean they should be excluded from suspicion. I made a mental note to keep a close eye on her and her colleague, Clarissa. I nodded in agreement and continued.

‘Yes, indeed, she certainly had access to the garage key, but nobody’s made mention of her and the victim having been close. Of course, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Then there’s the principal, who gave me the impression that she maybe had a soft spot for the victim, and the same might be said of the woman behind the bar at Rodolfo’s favourite café down by the lake. There’s also Ingrid, the wife of Alfredo Argento. I haven’t met her yet but she sounds like a very beautiful and potentially scheming sort of person who might or might not have been involved with the victim. Finally, there’s the victim’s wife, but after speaking to her last night, I got the impression the last thing she had on her mind would have been to kill him off – although she does know her way around classic car engines. She might be a very talented actor, but I tended to believe what she said.’ I spread out my arms helplessly. ‘Take your pick.’

After scribbling down or ticking off the names of the people I had identified, he pointed at the oil can in the bag in front of him. ‘Like you say, in an ideal world, we find the fingerprints of the perpetrator on here, but, if not, it isn’t going to be easy.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll get this down to Forensics now and we should know pretty quickly whether there are any prints on it. If so, I’ll come up to the villa this afternoon to take prints from everybody up there and I’ll send somebody down to the couple who run the café by the lake. Before that, I think I’ll go in person to the Agri Argento offices to get prints of Rosina and Alfredo Argento, as well as his wife if possible.’

He reached into a drawer and pulled out a familiar white card and a pad of ink. ‘Just press your fingers on there for exclusion purposes, will you? For now, I’ll just tell everybody the same thing: this is for exclusion only. I won’t mention the oil can but taking prints is going to put the cat among the pigeons. I imagine most of the people have already made up their minds that it must have been an unfortunate accident. Discovering that we’re treating it as murder will come as quite a shock to the system.’ He looked up and gave me a wry grin. ‘Starting with my boss. He isn’t going to like that one bit. What about the scary old lady? I understood that she’d gone back to Tuscany. Any idea if she’s going to be around?’

‘Violetta told me she would be coming up for a board meeting scheduled for tomorrow. I seem to recall that she said she’ll arrive this afternoon, but I suppose it might be tomorrow morning.’ I gave him a grin as I wiped the ink off my fingers. ‘Good luck taking her fingerprints. Give me a shout if you need backup. ’

We both stood up and shook hands again. He gave me a friendly smile, thanked me for my help, and I promised he would be the first to know if I turned up anything else. We exchanged contact details so I had a direct line to him if necessary. He accompanied me downstairs to the main entrance and left me there. I returned to my van, relieved that the inspector had been prepared to accept input from a private eye – not always a given – and I set about looking for a better parking space. It took me about twenty minutes but finally I managed to squeeze the big vehicle into a gap in a narrow street in the old part of town where it looked as though I would have free parking for an hour. I called Anna and we arranged to meet up on the Ponte di Castelvecchio.

This fortified medieval bridge – also known as the Scaliger Bridge after the name of the ruling family responsible for building it – has crenelated battlements and is one of Verona’s most famous landmarks. Built predominantly of ancient red bricks, it crosses the River Adige opposite the castle and is a Mecca for tourists. Sure enough, when I got there, the pedestrian bridge was heaving with people but I soon spotted Anna and Oscar just as he saw me and almost jerked her arm out of its socket in order to come charging over to greet me. While she massaged her shoulder, I took his lead from her. There was no point apologising. She and Oscar know each other well by now. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and enquired about the investigation. I told her it looked as though I had made a friend in the local police, which was a relief, but when I told her about my interviews with Alfredo and his sister, she shook her head sadly.

‘So if they didn’t do it, then who did? Surely not Alessia.’

‘That’s the million-dollar question. Maybe if we’re really lucky, we’ll get some prints off the oil can, but otherwise we’re pretty much stuck.’

She must have heard the frustration in my voice because she grabbed my arm with both of her hands and made a very sensible suggestion. ‘I don’t know about you, but I could really murder an ice cream. I spotted a very appealing-looking gelateria not far from here. Sound like a good idea to you?’

It did.

Ten minutes later, we were sitting at a table in a little piazza, shaded from the noonday sun by the buildings around us. Anna was obviously feeling hungrier than I was because she ordered what the menu described as a ‘Tower of Chocolate’ and I was most impressed to see her served something the size and shape of a bottle of beer, made up of milk, dark and white chocolate and smothered in whipped cream. In comparison, my black cherry, meringue and white chocolate mix looked almost pedestrian. I didn’t forget Oscar either – he wouldn’t have let me – and the waitress very kindly brought him some water and a couple of wafer biscuits. As we ate, Anna told me about her morning, walking around this beautiful city with Oscar. Obviously, because she had been with him, she hadn’t been able to go into any of the churches, but I told her I would look after him this afternoon while I dropped her back into town to investigate the interior of the city’s historic buildings to her heart’s content.

I avoided talking about the case because it was just too frustrating for words at the moment. Although I was still hoping, I had a feeling that any killer worth his – or her – salt would have worn gloves so it wouldn’t be easy to get any prints off the oil can and, without those, I wasn’t really sure where we would go next. There remained the very unpalatable possibility that no perpetrator would ever be found, and the murder of Rodolfo Argento would remain forever unsolved – if indeed it had been murder, and we couldn’t even prove that yet.