Spider - Michael Morley [86]
Orsetta finished her espresso and drank water to take the bitterness away. She wanted to press on with the case more than anyone else, this was the biggest investigation she’d ever been involved in, and as far as she was concerned, it was just starting, not winding down. ‘I’d like to go ahead with the 3D reconstruction of the crime scene. Can you authorize payment and access?’
For some years, the Italian police had been nurturing the use of a sophisticated computer system that reproduced crime scenes with startling realism, recreating everything from the path of a bullet to the movement of a corpse.
‘Call RiTriDEC and tell them to go ahead. I will have the paperwork with them by early afternoon,’ said Massimo, referring to the special laboratory in Rome known as the Ricostruzione Tridimensionale della Dinamica dell’Evento Criminale.
Orsetta was a big fan of the system. It worked by devouring all the crime scene data available, everything from traffic-camera video footage to the measurements a pathologist might make during an autopsy. Once everything was fed in, it would recreate crime scenes in 3D pictures on giant video screens in a special theatre. Experts like Orsetta were then able to examine the pictures, almost like art critics, studying every screen pixel for a clue that might lead them to their killer.
Massimo called her to the other side of his desk. ‘Benito has patched through an FBI feed of the video footage that Jack spoke about. I have it now on the computer.’
Neither of them spoke as they watched Tariq el Daher’s report. Orsetta made notes and was the first to break the silence. ‘Just because there’s a copy of USA Today in that video it doesn’t mean the location is in America. You can pick that paper up in a hundred places in Rome.’
‘Or indeed on a plane landing in Rome,’ added Massimo. ‘Jack might be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wish we could have discussed this with him.’
Orsetta nodded. She felt exactly the same way. As far as she was concerned, Jack King and the FBI were still ignoring the elephant in the room.
55
Montepulciano, Tuscany
Montepulciano stood out against an early-evening sky as beautiful and mystical as a fortified medieval settlement drawn in a kid’s book of fairy tales. From its lofty perch on a limestone ridge, six hundred metres above sea level, it watched majestically over Italy’s magic kingdom of Tuscany.
Nancy King had briefed Paullina, her waitress-come-guide-for-the-day, to make sure the photo-happy Mr Terry McLeod got to focus his lens on every corner of the town. And Paullina had been as good as the promise she pledged to her boss.
First, she made him walk the last part of the famous Corso, which starts at Porta al Prato and winds its way for more than eleven kilometres up to the top of the town and the huge open square of the Piazza Grande. They took a late lunch in the open air at Trattoria di Cagnano, where Paullina made the mistake of insisting that he try the local vino de nobile. McLeod enthusiastically complied. He drank most of the bottle, along with a brandy to polish off a hearty plate of pasta and a slice of torte large enough to wedge open one of the town hall’s giant doors.
After lunch, she guided him along the sixteenth-century town walls designed by the Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. He stopped once to take photographs, once to make phone calls and once to relieve himself of his surfeit of strong red wine.
Paullina showed him the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie and, just before they left, the Sanctuary of the Madonna of St Blaise on the outskirts of the town.
He was far less interested in church architecture than he’d led her to believe, and seemed more intent on finding out everything and anything about the lives of her employers.
As promised, Paullina telephoned Nancy just before they got in the