Death in the Olive Grove (eBook)

Chapter 2

As James Martin put down the phone he looked across sceptically to his visitor on the sofa, who’d been following the conversation with David und Thomas.

“James, this is going to be more difficult for us than you said it would be,” came the response from Steven Miller, a project management expert with the property development company Masters Developers Ltd. in London. “We’ll have to work that much harder on stimulating a decision in our favour from the two gentlemen,”

James Martin frowned darkly and emphasised that violence was not something he could go along with, if that was what Stephen Miller was thinking of. “I still haven’t got over poor old Efisio biting the dust.“

“That had nothing to do with us,“ replied Miller. “I’m not talking here about physical violence. There are more subtle ways of getting adversaries to come on side. We have people at Masters who know exactly how to deal with such problems through gentle persuasion.

For James Martin, the words „gentle persuasion“ from the mouth of Miller had a particularly sinister ring about them.

Steven Miller had arrived in Italy from London three days earlier but declined James Martin’s invitation to stay in one of the guest houses on his estate. He preferred to reside in the country hotel Stella on the outskirts of the hillside town Panicale. That way, he could keep a certain distance between himself and James Martin and act independently. Panicale, a few miles south of Lake Trasimeno, seemed the ideal location under the circumstances.

Shortly before leaving London Miller had received a mail from an unknown American by very Italian name of Rocco della Rosa, who was the chief backer of the golf project. In his mail he complained about the project’s lack of progress and urged Miller to speed things up.   “The money is there and needs to be moved as soon as possible to avoid unwelcome attention. However, the transfer can’t go ahead until all the contracts have been signed and sealed and the subsidies from Brussels released. Some of the investors are desperate to shift their money and put it in a serious undertaking that won’t arouse suspicion. For them, EU participation in measures to promote rural areas is the ideal seal of approval,“ della Rosa had written. And he should know.

On reading this, Steven Miller lost no time in contacting Marcello Rosselini, State Secretary in the Finance Ministry in Rome. From him he learnt that the Guardia di Finanza was showing increasing interest in the project in Umbria and would soon be launching a thorough investigation. Members of the ‘honoured society’ keen to take a stake in a country club were also getting nervous. If the obstacles to investment couldn’t be removed very soon then, in their view, it was time to resort to other means...

Steven Miller recognised instantly the time had indeed for resorting to „other means.“

* * *

Luca Marinescu stirred the sugar into his coffee as he looked out rather absent-mindedly on to the little piazza of Lama Niccone. He’d come to the area for the first time the previous summer when the village was holding its Sagra dei Bringoli, a festa it celebrated every year. He soon got to know the locals - through frequent glasses of wine at Enzo’s bar, playing rounds of cards with the village elders and dancing away the evenings at the festa.  

And so it didn’t take long for Luca to work out who had the say in the village and who was more than happy to indulge in gossip. His plentiful supplies of black afghan hash and snow proved to be a great asset in this respect, as he could use them to establish dependencies.  You never knew when someone might need an alibi or important information…

Nor did it take long for his expressive dancing at the Sagra dei Bringoli  to lead him into the arms of fiery Angelica. This femme fatale, now of a certain age, enjoyed an extremely active love life. Until recently, Angelica’s favourite lover had been the 21-year-old Pietro. But as soon as she encountered the tall, dark handsome Luca gyrating on the dance-floor, Pietro was no longer in.

Angelica’s affection for Luca solved his accommodation problem. Nobody was surprised when the dashing Sardinian moved in with her. And, for the very special assignment that had brought Luca to the area, the location of Angelica’s house had the strategic advantage of being high up in the hills above the vast expanse of land, which James Martin was intending to convert into his country club estate.

While Luca was drinking his coffee and a couple of tourists were wandering around the piazza, his thoughts turned to the job he’d been given. On behalf of the padrone of the clan to which Luca belonged, he was expected to ensure that the Sardinian sheep farmers in the area – all of them members of the same clan – surrender their grazing rights in return for adequate compensation. However, what Luca didn’t know was that a State Secretary in the Ministry had commissioned the padrone himself for the Economy in Rome, Marcello Rosselini. He, in turn, was acting on behalf of his friends in the ‘honourable family’ Cosa Nostra, which had extended its operations from Sicily up to Central and Northern Italy. The grand-scale project of James Martin’s country club in Umbria, the ‘green heart of Italy’ was of great interest to the capo in Sicily. Rosselini’s network, which reached deep into Sardinian circles and beyond, provided an excellent set-up for him to secure his influence and business interests further afield. The capo calculated that the expected influx of rich property seekers from the USA, Russia, Britain and probably the Middle East would open up new opportunities to do clean deals with dirty money. In this context the creation of a luxury golf complex promised to be a real money-spinner.

But what arguments could he use to convince the families to part with their precious pastureland? Luca’s first attempts at ‘persuasion’ had been with money and some fine words. But when neither had worked he asked the padrone in Sardinia to provide a kind of ‘testimonial’. In it, the clan boss called on his members to follow Luca’s ‘advice’ and negotiate with James Martin with the objective of not only supporting the project but also even going as far as to take an active part in it.

And that was how eventually Luca had managed to win over the head of the Sardinian family in Valle del Vento. The next step was intended to see Efisio take the initiative of making the deal palatable to all his relatives. But now he was dead.

While Luca was sipping his lukewarm coffee in the bar it occurred to him that Efisio might have been murdered to torpedo the agreement with James Martin. But who would want that? Luca decided he needed to talk to Efisio’s family as soon as possible. He had to keep them on side at all costs. They mustn’t cave in and go back on the agreement. Luca took a deep sigh and mumbled into his cup that, “there’s nothing worse than an invisible enemy.“

Or did those two harmless looking Englishmen have something to do with Efisio’s death? After all, they didn’t live far from the scene of the crime. And what’s more, it wasn’t at all clear where they stood in their negotiations with James Martin. He surmised that particular ‘powers of persuasion’ might be needed here to get the couple to agree to sell their house.

* * *

After breakfast David sat under the pergola on the terrace overlooking the valley and tried to imagine what it might look like in a couple of years time if the country club project took off. Eventually his gaze fell upon that part of the wood where Efisio had been killed. Apparently there were still no clues as to who had committed the murder. David found this extremely worrying. He hadn’t dismissed the idea that James Martin or his business partners could have something to do with the crime. And if that were indeed the case, then he and Thomas needed to be very much on their guard.

And even if he thought James was too far too wily to risk endangering his pet project through a criminal act, David couldn’t preclude the possibility that certain backers of James Martin’s plans might be getting so nervous about the tight deadline for releasing the EU subsidies that they’d want to ‘move things on’ in a particular way?

No matter which direction David speculated in, he couldn’t make sense of things. What disturbed him most was the secrecy surrounding the project. Until the murder of Efisio and the information gleaned from Elizabeth’s ‘research’ he hadn’t heard a thing about plans for a golf course complex complete with country club. Probably the intention had been to keep everything under wraps until James Martin had bought up all the land and houses he needed for the project to go ahead. The financial crisis had certainly provided favourable conditions for this.

But if the murder really was to do with the project then several people must have known about James Martin’s golf course plans. The rumours floating around the village had to come from somewhere.

„>I can’t work this out,“ said David turning to Thomas. “Either somebody wanted prevent Efisio from surrendering his grazing rights or he had demanded far too much.“

“I doubt money alone would have been the reason. Perhaps there was someone who had an entirely different score to settle with Efisio,“ suggested Thomas.

David got up from...