Marco Vichi - Inspector Bordelli 04 - Death in Florence Read Online Free PDF

sofa, not bothering to turn the big lamp back on.
    ‘Amelia refused to tell me anything,’ she whispered in a dramatic tone.
    ‘Could you massage my back with your golden hands?’ Bordelli asked, already sitting up again.
    ‘Of course, darling. Take your shirt off, and I’ll go and get some cream,’ said Rosa, and she got up and sashayed into the bathroom. It didn’t take much to change her mood. Bordelli put out his cigarette, took off his shirt, and lay down on his stomach. Rosa returned with a jar of Nivea, took a big daub into her hands and, straddling his bottom, started massaging him.
    ‘You’ve gained weight,’ she said.
    ‘No, it just looks that way to you.’
    ‘I know about these things, you know …’ she said with a giggle. Bordelli was moaning with pleasure. Outside it started raining hard again. The wind picked up, and they heard a shutter slam. Weather for wolves. Gideon didn’t give a damn. He was lying on top of the sideboard, belly up.
    ‘Rosa, do you really believe that rubbish?’
    ‘What rubbish?’
    ‘The tarot, fortune-tellers …’
    ‘Of course I do. My friend Asmara told me Amelia has read the tarot for her many times and has never been wrong, not even once, about the past
or
the future.’
    ‘Give me an example.’
    ‘Well, she told her her father had abandoned her as a child, and that her mother had died when she was six …’
    ‘And about the future?’
    ‘Last year she told her that she would have a small accident in January of this year, and it actually happened. She broke one of her little toes.’
    ‘What else?’ He liked to hear her talk.
    ‘She told her she would be operated on for appendicitis, and that happened, too. She told her she would be receiving a small inheritance from a distant relative whom she’d never met, and that also came true. She told her one of her clients would fall in love with her and give her a beautiful ring … And it was all true, from A to Z.’
    ‘Coincidence.’
    ‘And she told you a blonde woman had just left you … What do you say about that?’
    ‘A little bird must have told her …’
    ‘I didn’t tell her anything!’ said Rosa defensively.
    ‘Has Amelia ever read the cards for you?’
    ‘Oh, no, I don’t want to know anything about what’s going to happen to me.’
    ‘But you thought it was okay for her to read them for me.’
    ‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Rosa, kneading his spine like dough. Bordelli gave in to the pleasure, listening to the sound of the rain. He was trying not to think of the fact that sooner or later he would have to drag himself back to his flat. Rosa took a deep breath.
    ‘Anyway, as I was saying … Suor Celestina’s praying in the middle of the night when, all of a sudden, there’s a knock on the convent door …’

The inspector was woken up at the crack of dawn by the ring of the telephone and threw himself out of bed. Even before answering, he knew what it was about.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Rinaldi here, sir. A hunter found a corpse buried in the wood, saw a foot sticking up from the ground. It looks like it belongs to a young boy …’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘La Panca district. We’ve already got a car on the way there,’ Rinaldi said. The inspector couldn’t help thinking of the last words uttered by Amelia:
Tomorrow morning
…
    ‘Where exactly is this La Panca?’
    ‘After the Strada in Chianti you turn left on to the Via di Cintoia and go on for another four or five miles. But to get there you have to take a trail that goes uphill towards the woods, in the direction of Monte Scalari.’
    ‘I’ll go and get Piras and then come up … Call Diotivede—’
    ‘What about the assistant prosecutor?’
    ‘Wait a couple of hours to inform him: I don’t feel like seeing him.’
    ‘All right, sir.’
    ‘Call the car and tell them nobody’s to touch anything before I get there.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    As soon as Rinaldi hung up, the inspector rang Piras.
    ‘I’ll be by in ten minutes.