The Last Supper Read Online Free PDF

rammed in front of Calvi’s genitals is one of the most telling items of evidence to point away from suicide. However distressed he may have been, it is unlikely that Calvi would have shown such disrespect for his own body, and later reconstructions showed it would have been very difficult for him to walk, let alone clamber athletically over the scaffolding, without the brick dislodging and rolling down one of his trouser-legs. Experiments also showed that any such movement was likely to leave chafe marks on Calvi’s inside thigh. Such physical disrespect would be entirely consistent with murder, however; a mark of scorn in the mafia’s coded language of physical gestures.
    PC Bartliff’s evidence is clearly geared towards suicide, though. ‘There is a metal ladder secured to the river wall immediately upstream of the scaffold which would have provided easy access to the structure,’ he said. Calvi’s delivery to the scaffolding by boat, an essential element of the most plausible murder theory, would not have been so easy. ‘I have served on Thames Division at Waterloo Pier since 1964 and in my opinion it would need a boat’s crew with considerable experience and knowledge of the river Thames to place a boat in position alongside this scaffolding so that the body could have been secured in this way,’ he said. Later experiments would show that the procedure could indeed be carried out, much depending on the strength and direction of the tide at the time.
    PC Bartliff’s evidence reveals he participated in one of the first operational errors in the police’s handling of the case, for all his long professional experience: ‘A police salvage line was placed loosely around the chest and under the armpits so that PC Johnston could support the body while I untied the rope from the scaffold.’ The knot was not preserved, as it could have been if the body had been cut down, thus destroying a vital clue to the technical competence of the person who attached Calvi to his place of death. Calvi was not an expert sailor and would not have been capable of creating a complex knot. It would not be the last mistake.
    Further details of the crime scene were provided in John White’s report of 20 July. ‘The rope which was of a nylon substance, orange in colour and commonly found on the Thames, was secured to the north east corner of the scaffold by two half hitches and round the neck of the body by a loop which had been formed by doubling the rope and making one half hitch.’ The five bricks and stones weighing down Calvi’s pockets amounted to a total of 11lb 15oz (5.4kg). They were compatible with builder’s rubble found on waste ground 300 yards east of the bridge and adjacent to the river, the report said.
    Photographs of Calvi’s body were not taken until it had been removed to Waterloo Pier and searched for clues to identity. ‘Calvi’s jacket was unbuttoned to be searched and incorrectly buttoned again by police before the photographs were taken,’ White wrote. The wrongly buttoned jacket, fastened by police officers rather than by Calvi’s killers, would give a spurious boost to the murder theory when the photo of the corpse lying on Waterloo Pier was acquired by
L’Espresso
magazine in Italy and published on its front cover.
    Police were responsible for a catalogue of further errors, according to James Cameron, a professor of forensic medicine at the University of London who was retained as an expert witness by the Calvi family, who were understandably keen to prove Roberto had not committed suicide, for insurance as well as moral purposes. Professor Cameron outlined his misgivings about the police investigation when interviewed in 1992 by representatives of Kroll Associates, an American firm of detectives also hired by the Calvi family. ‘We questioned Professor Cameron about the manner in which the autopsy was conducted and he is of the strong opinion the police presented to Professor Simpson only the facts