Free Marco Vichi - Inspector Bordelli 04 - Death in Florence by Marco Vichi

Bordelli, starting up the car.

Giacomo’s mortal remains were returned to the family, and the funeral was scheduled for the following morning at the Badia in Fiesole. The inspector was half tempted to attend, then decided that there was no point in it. He phoned Signora Pellissari to reiterate his condolences, but above all to ask her what butcher shop she patronised. The woman gently replied that she went normally to Mazzoni’s in Piazza Edison, a bit taken aback by the strange question. Bordelli assured her that the investigation was proceeding without delay, then left her to her grief.
    The butcher was put under round-the-clock surveillance. He didn’t take a single step without being watched. The men in the radio room had the phone numbers of all the places where they could reach the inspector: home, trattoria, Rosa. In the event of big news, they had orders to ring him at any time of the night or day. No matter what happened, at the end of each surveillance shift, he was brought a detailed report of Panerai’s movements. Bordelli never missed a chance to repeat to the men in the field that they should use the utmost caution, change cars frequently, and never get too close. The butcher must never suspect anything, even if this meant losing him when he was being tailed.
    There wasn’t much information to be had on Livio Panerai. Forty-four years old, son of Oreste Panerai, an honest butcher who’d died seven years earlier, and Adelina Cianfi, still alive and living in Via del Ponte alle Riffe. An ordinary past as a Fascist Youth, then as a
repubblichino
, 9 but without any major blots. No recorded political activity since the end of the war. He’d grown rich with his butcher’s shop. Five years ago he’d bought a ground-floor apartment in a small three-storey villa in Via del Palmerino. He’d married Cesira Batacchi in 1948 and they had a seventeen-year-old daughter, Fiorenza, who attended the Liceo Dante. Clean record. Hard worker. Licence to bear arms for hunting. Owned a dark grey Lancia Flavia and a cream-coloured Fiat 850, which he used to drive to work. Didn’t do anything out of the ordinary during the day. Seemed to live only for his family and his work. One morning before going to the shop he’d gone to the post office to pay a bill. In short, unless proved otherwise, it was probably him who had lost his telephone bill in the woods. One afternoon he’d closed the shop ten minutes early to go and buy a box of shotgun cartridges at the armoury at Ponte del Pino. On Sunday he’d taken his little family to lunch at his mother’s. He almost always stayed home after dinner, though it was true that the constant rain didn’t make one want to go out. In one week, he went out only once, with his wife, to the Cinema Aurora, to see
The Incredible Army of Brancaleone
. And that was all.
    In short, a goody two-shoes. Perfectly innocent. But Bordelli didn’t want to give up on the only clue he’d sniffed out, and so he kept having him watched. As for requesting authorisation to have his phone tapped, he hadn’t even tried. He already knew that Judge Ginzillo would never grant it:
Let me get this straight, Inspector Bordelli. You want to violate the intimacy of a free citizen of the Italian Republic because of a telephone bill? Which you found over two hundred yards away from where the corpse was buried? I wonder, are you mad? You need much better clues than that, my dear inspector
… That was more or less what the rat-face would have said. Not out of procedural zeal, but for fear of getting into trouble. He’d never forgotten some small ‘trifle’ which according to him had very nearly derailed his brilliant career.
    Commissioner Inzipone was getting increasingly nervous and making no effort to hide it. He harried Bordelli with useless telephone calls, always repeating the same things …
Have you seen the newspapers? What the hell are you waiting for? Why are you sitting on your hands?
    The inspector was