The Last Supper Read Online Free PDF Page B

which supported a case of suicide,’ the Kroll detective wrote in a report on the meeting. ‘Professor Cameron said that when he was retained by Kingsley Napley [the Calvi family’s solicitors] it was known by them the City of London Police officers and Thames Division officers of the Metropolitan Police had from the outset dealt with the matter as a suicide. The usual procedures at the scene of a suspicious death were not adhered to and certain irregularities had occurred.’
    The Kroll report said that Dr Arthur Gordon Davies, the coroner at the second London inquest in June 1983, had told all the counsel involved that ‘he did not think his Court was the correct place to question or accuse Police of negligence in relation to the handling of the body.’ Reporting on a second meeting with Professor Cameron, the Kroll agent said:‘Professor Cameron stated the case was “cocked up” from the start with Police Officers from Thames Division dealing with the body in a most unprofessional manner. Professor Cameron said the Thames Police Officers, from the outset, dealt with the hanging of the body as one of suicide. The scene of the crime, and indeed the body, was not preserved as it should have been.’
    The Kroll report said its investigators understood that no police photographs were taken of the crime scene. This was most unusual, it observed, even in obvious suicide cases. ‘There appears little doubt in this case the investigation was badly handled in the first 12 hours which is the most crucial period in any murder or sudden death inquiry,’ the firm said. Modern viewers of the television series
Silent Witness
or
CSI
would undoubtedly be shocked at the clumsy way Calvi’s death was initially investigated. But it appears that the handling of the case may have fallen short even of the more primitive standards pertaining a quarter of a century ago. Lieutenant Colonel Francesco Delfino, an officer of the Italian military intelligence service (SISMI), who was sent to London from his base in Brussels to follow developments in the Calvi case, gained the impression that his British colleagues were treating it ‘like the suicide of a tramp’. 2
    Calvi’s real importance was underlined by the extremely swift reaction of Italian authorities to the news of his death. A Rome magistrate, Domenico Sica, flew immediately to London in the company of four senior police officers to assist in the identification of the body. The group arrived at Heathrow by private plane less than 24 hours after the body’s discovery, at 3.30 a.m. on Saturday 19 June, and went straight to Snow Hill Police Station in the City. They were provided with all documents and statements taken in the investigation up to that point and their questions were answered where possible. A month later, DI White was sceptical of Sica’s murder hypothesis. ‘Dr Sica is convinced Calvi has been murdered, but cannot give anytangible reasons to support his belief,’ he wrote in his report of 20 July. ‘He just speculates over the many unanswered questions that arise out of this particular case, bearing in mind the position Calvi held in Italy and the political intrigue which is being disclosed in the Italian press.’
    White, in contrast, opts unequivocally for suicide. His report lays out clearly the elements that lead him to this conclusion: the rope used was common on the river and could have been left on the scaffolding by the tide; the knots, in his view, were those of a layman. There were no signs of force, drugs or poison in the body; the neck was not broken. Access to the scaffold was by a fixed ladder and was not difficult.
    ‘When looking at suicide, matters fall more readily into place,’ he wrote. Calvi had attempted suicide a year earlier, was on the run from police, and in a fragile state of mind. White reiterated his view that the Italian authorities had failed to produce any credible evidence to support their murder theory, adding: ‘There is