spreading pool of liquid. It caught immediately, with a whoosh of flame, and the discarded objects started to burn.
The two men took a last look around the barn, making sure that they hadn’t overlooked anything, then walked away without a backward glance.
Two minutes later, they were driving down the hill in an unremarkable white Fiat van, while Marco tried to decide exactly what he should tell their employer.
Chapter 2
‘Who is he, Cesare?’
‘He was a Professor Antonio Bertorelli,’ Sergeant Lombardi replied, emphasizing the tense of the verb as he glanced at his superior. ‘At least, that’s the name on the driving licence we found in the wallet, and the picture looks right.’
Inspector Perini nodded in a somewhat distracted manner, his gaze still fixed on the naked body tied to the chair in front of him. The arc lights, powered by a petrol generator that was running just outside the open door of the barn and was making a loud throbbing sound that echoed around the walls of the old building, cast a harsh and unforgiving light over the naked and mutilated corpse of the elderly man, showing every wound and injury with pitiless clarity.
‘And you said he was found by a neighbour?’
‘More a local than a neighbour, actually. This place is pretty isolated. A man who lives a few kilometres further up the road drove past and thought he saw flames through the door of the barn. He knew nobody lived here, so he stopped to investigate. He found this and lost his dinner a few seconds later.’
Silvio Perini nodded again. He’d seen the pool of vomit near the open door.
‘Somebody’s taken his statement?’
‘Yes, but that’s about it. The only other thing he saw that might be helpful was a white van with two men in it heading down the road as he drove up. They might not have had any part of this, of course, but even if they had, he didn’t get the number, and wasn’t even sure of the make. He thought it might have been a Fiat or maybe a Citroen.’
‘The number probably wouldn’t have helped,’ Perini said. ‘If they were the people responsible, the plates would certainly have been false. And he obviously wouldn’t be able to recognize either of the men he saw?’
It was more of a statement than a question, and Lombardi just shook his head.
Perini glanced around the dilapidated barn, his grey eyes taking a mental inventory as he looked for anything out of place, any clue that might suggest why an academic had been brought to this lonely place and then tortured to death. After a few moments he returned his stare to the body, then looked at Lombardi.
‘Cause of death?’
‘Strangulation, according to the doctor. In fact, he thinks it was almost certainly a garrotte, because there are abrasions all the way round the victim’s neck.’ He pointed at the charred pile of black-brown fibres on the floor of the barn behind the chair. ‘That was probably the rope they used, though there’s some rubber or plastic in there as well, maybe latex gloves or a rubber sheet, something like that, which possibly kept the fire going, and it was the flames from that which the man saw as he drove past. He must have just missed them.’
‘Probably lucky for him that he did. No sign of whatever they used to do this?’
‘No,’ Lombardi replied shortly. ‘But they used several different tools. It looks like they started on his chest. Those cuts were obviously made with a sharp knife, but they’re not deep and certainly not life-threatening, though they’d have stung like a bitch. Probably a box cutter or hobby knife, something with a really sharp but quite short blade. They started just above his navel, cutting horizontally across his torso, then when he still didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear they moved the blade up half an inch and repeated the process. That way, they always had clean flesh to cut, because the blood obviously flowed downwards. A professional job, if you like. The doc thinks there are traces of salt in the wounds as well, to act as a bit of extra persuasion.’
The sergeant pointed at a couple of darker areas on the dead man’s chest, in one of which the white of bone could be seen.
‘And he isn’t certain, but those patches suggest they used something like a soldering iron, gas powered because there’s no working electricity supply in here, and burned all way through his flesh