Page 30 of Murder at Christmas

Conscious that Valentina was standing close to me, I did my best to keep an even tone when I replied. ‘That’s interesting and potentially significant. Any idea why?’

‘I managed to track down the constituency manager, who was choosing his words very carefully, and all I could get out of him was that Rogers had behaved “unprofessionally” – and that could cover a multitude of sins. No formal charges were brought against him, but things must have got awkward for your man, and he took the hint and left.’

This was music to my ears. Might this unprofessional behaviour even have involved embezzlement of funds or some similar financial misdemeanour? Either way, it would appear that William Rogers had a skeleton in his closet. Could it be that I’d found a potential candidate for the Aquila embezzlement and maybe even Bartolomeo’s murder? I knew I would try to take him to one side and question him closely as soon as I got back to the villa. It was infuriating that I had been forbidden to pass on information of the missing million to the Carabinieri – although if it looked likely that William was our killer, I knew I would have a duty to report him to Maresciallo Croce.

So as not to excite my companion, I adopted a jolly, seasonal tone. ‘Thanks a lot, Paul, you’re a star. Have a great Christmas and don’t overdo the pigs in blankets.’ He wished me a happy Christmas in return, and I rang off, glancing towards Valentina with a little smile. ‘That was a friend who’s been doing a bit of research for me.’

‘Research into my father’s death?’ I couldn’t miss the curiosity in her voice.

‘That’s right.’

She was looking animated. ‘I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, I promise, but I heard you say that something might be “potentially significant”. Does that mean that it really was murder, and you know who killed my father?’

‘It’s too early to say, but every little helps. Now, let’s have a look inside this mine, shall we?’

I could see that she was still curious, but she must have accepted that I wasn’t going to say more for now, and she led me and Oscar into the wide cave mouth. It was a relief to find myself walking on ordinary ground rather than struggling through deep snow but, ironically, it felt colder in here than it did outside. It was absolutely bitter and, if I needed proof of the low temperature, all I had to do was to look at the rock wall to my left, which was completely covered in a lacework of ice. It looked like a contemporary sculpture – a very cold one.

Ahead of me was an arched opening with huge, rusted iron gates hanging off it. Valentina pointed towards it and gave me a few words of caution. ‘The main shaft is through there but I think you should put Oscar on a lead because it goes down a long, long way, and I would hate him to fall.’

I was in full agreement about Oscar and I didn’t want to fall down a mineshaft either so, after clipping Oscar’s lead onto his collar, I reached into my pocket, pulled out the torch that Valentina had given me back at the villa and switched it on. Slowly and cautiously, I followed her through the archway and stopped in amazement. Leading down to my right, roughly in the direction of the bottom of the main valley, was a mineshaft, but it didn’t drop vertically; it was at a very acute angle of well over forty-five degrees. Steel rails ran down the centre of it and disappeared into the darkness far, far below, and I instinctively shivered. To the right of the rails was a wooden staircase that stretched on and on into the bowels of the earth. As already established, I’m not a fan of heights, and I found even this sloping tunnel a challenge. I wrapped the end of Oscar’s lead securely around my hand and vowed to be very careful indeed. Oscar, on the other hand, didn’t appear in the least bit fazed, his tail wagging slowly as he sniffed the air.

‘The steps creak a bit, but they’re solid. I’ve been down here before.’ Valentina set off down the steps, apparently without a care in the world. I followed much more hesitantly, studiously avoiding letting my eyes stray down to the dark depths far below, and was extremely pleased to find that after exactly fifty-three steps – yes, I was counting them – she turned to the right and disappeared from sight. Oscar and I followed her and I found myself in what had obviously once been a workshop.

Although I was mightily glad to get out of the mineshaft, it was decidedly creepy in here. Directly in front of me was a stone column, presumably holding the roof up, with what at first looked like a massive silver wizard’s hat hanging from it. After closer inspection with my torch, I discovered that this was in fact a pair of old workmen’s overalls on a hook that had been completely colonised by spiders, their webs reaching all the way down to the floor. I was just wondering what kind of spiders these might be when a black monster with a body the size of a plum and long, hairy legs materialised right in front of me, and I took a hasty step backwards. I don’t normally mind spiders, but this arachnid was huge, and it looked far from happy at having been disturbed. I glanced across at Valentina, who was still looking in her element, and my admiration for her increased. Oscar appeared unbothered by the spider population and was far more concerned with an itch behind his ear.

‘This place is spooky.’ I pointed to a solid-looking workbench, above which a selection of tools, mainly hammers and chisels, were hanging as if the workmen had just deposited them there at the end of their shift. ‘How long ago did you say the mine closed?’

‘About seventy years ago.’ She caught my eye and grinned. ‘I imagine most of the men who used these tools are long since dead. Help yourself if you want a souvenir – they won’t need them.’ While I was still coming to terms with her macabresense of humour, she led me across to the workbench, and her tone became more absorbed as she indicated some lumps of rock spread about on the surface of the bench. ‘Look, these are recent.’ Anticipating my question, she explained. ‘They have sharp edges and there’s no dust on them but, look, this is magnetite.’

I remembered her demonstration with the teaspoon and saw a couple of old rusty nails clinging to the side of a fist-sized piece of rock. ‘Is that what the Americans were after? Is magnetite valuable?’

She shook her head. ‘Only to a collector, and these pieces are definitely at the lower end of the scale – presumably, that’s why they left them here.’

While she carried on investigating the workbench, Oscar was engaged in his own investigation at floor level, and I saw him emerge from under the old bench with something held triumphantly in his mouth. Curious, I reached down and gently removed it from his jaws. It was a clear plastic bag, like an evidence bag, and there were some pieces of silvery stone inside. I handed the bag to Valentina for her expert analysis and I immediately saw her eyes narrow. The first thing she did was to raise it to her nose and sniff.

‘This bag has definitely been used recently. It still has that brand-new plastic smell. The Americans must have dropped it.’ She leant forward and tipped the mineral samples onto the workbench so she could study them at close range. As she did so, I distinctly heard a sharp intake of breath from her. I leant closer and asked if she could identify the stone, and she nodded before glancing up at me, an expression of disbelief and excitement on her face. ‘Now I know why the Americans wanted the mineral rights. This is cobaltite.’ Seeing the vacant expression on my face, she was quick to explain, and her answer was fascinating.

‘Cobalt is very, very sought after. It’s vitally important in producing the batteries that power electric vehicles, and with the move away from petrol to electric, cobalt can only increase in desirability – and value.’

‘So if these guys really thought they’d found cobalt here, they must have been desperate to do a deal with your dad, mustn’t they?’ She nodded, and I limited any further comment to a simple, ‘That’s interesting.’

Despite my apparent indifference, my brain was churning. If there really was a rich deposit of this valuable metal here, it was clear that the stakes were high and the temptation to take radical action all the stronger. I thought back to the words that I had heard the American saying on the phone, when I had passed him with his glass of grappa outside the café. As I remembered, it had been, ‘You’ll come with me because we’ve agreed to do it. A deal’s a deal.’ The question that needed to be answered was what they had agreed to do – might it have been to commit murder?

We spent almost an hour underground. Valentina disappeared for minutes at a time, and I could hear distant hammering. I had no desire to carry on down the steep steps deeper into the mineshaft but, after giving the workshop a full survey, I plucked up my courage and led Oscar across the tracks – without once daring to look down to my right – into another tunnel, directly opposite. This one was a lot smaller than the main shaft, little more than six feet wide and about the same height. As I didn’t have a hard hat, I made sure I kept my head down, because the roof of the tunnel still exhibited the rough marks and ridges where it had been carved, or blasted, out of the solid rock. I was glad I was afraid of heights, not confined spaces. This was no place for somebody suffering from claustrophobia.

I had picked up a hammer and chisel from the workbench just in case, and I searched the walls for anything interesting – without really having a clue what I was looking for. Remarkably,I did find something. After quite some time searching, I spotted something glittering in the torchlight. On closer inspection, I saw that it was a little cluster of orange crystals sticking out of the tunnel wall just above shoulder height, the biggest not even the size of a pea, and I wondered whether these might be garnets. Determined to return from my underground expedition with something to show for it, I managed to chip around the crystals until I could loosen and remove the chunk of stone containing them. As it came away from the wall, a cloud of dust dropped to the floor, and I noticed that it didn’t fall vertically downwards. For the first time, I realised that there was the faintest hint of an icy breeze wafting down the tunnel towards us. Curious to see where it was coming from, I tucked my precious – to me, at least – crystals into my jacket pocket and let Oscar lead me further on into the tunnel.

As we walked, the breeze coming towards us grew stronger and, less than fifty steps further on, the tunnel curved to the left, and I discovered why I could feel the wind blowing. An opening the size of a small doorway had been cut out of the rock wall at the end of the tunnel, and I could see daylight beyond. It occurred to me that this had probably been made as a source of ventilation for the mine. Ever curious, I walked up to the end and stuck my head out of the opening. I immediately realised that this was a big mistake, and I jumped back in horror, almost treading on Oscar as I did so. The doorway opened halfway up a sheer cliff face, high above the next valley, and I had found myself staring straight down for a long, long way to a distant jumble of rocks hundreds of metres below, with snowflakes floating about in the air.

Deciding that I had had enough of sheer, blind terror for now, I turned around and headed back towards the main shaft, determined to climb back up the steps to the outside world. As I did so, I heard Valentina calling my name and I shoutedback to tell her where I was. Once again, I traversed the main shaft without daring to look down and found Valentina in the workshop in a state of high excitement. On the workbench in front of her was a collection of dark-reddish-black mineral samples. To a novice like me, they looked pretty uninspiring but, clearly, the effect they had on Valentina was very different. She looked up at me, and I could see her eyes gleaming in the torchlight.

‘Our American friends left a fairly recent trail of places where they’d been hammering and, to make things even easier for me, there were even a couple of empty beer cans lying on the ground where they had spent most of their time and, yes, it’s cobalt all right. Without drilling, it’s hard to know how sizable the deposit might be, but I might come back and take a closer look some time.’ She returned her gaze to the rock samples and spoke almost under her breath. ‘Father would have been horrified, but I certainly think it’s worth checking out.’

I couldn’t help thinking how convenient it was that her father was no longer around.

20

WEDNESDAY EVENING