The Dante Conspiracy Read Online Free

excited about
it. But just how excited you can really get about that particular subject I don’t
know. I took a note of the name of the journal, and once I’ve finished checking
his emails I’ll go through his word processing files, because there’s almost certain
to be a copy of it in there somewhere. But I’m pretty sure it’ll turn out to be
a red herring.’
    ‘Do that,’ Perini said, ‘but don’t bother reading it yourself.
Just send it to my workstation and I’ll check it over. What about a police record,
anything like that?’
    ‘Nothing. Not even a parking ticket
or a speeding fine.’
    ‘Right. Now, we should get his bank
statements and other financial records fairly soon, so you get stuck into those
and start looking for any anomalies. I’d better go and see the Chief Inspector and
give him a briefing on our progress so far. That,’ he added, ‘shouldn’t take very
long, because as far as I can see we haven’t made any.’
    When Perini strode back into the office about twenty minutes
later, Lombardi pointed towards the inspector’s computer workstation.
    ‘I found the article,’ he said, ‘and I’ve sent it to you. I looked
at the first few paragraphs, and it’s really dull and really dry. Nothing to get excited about, at all, unless I’m missing something.’
    Perini nodded.
    ‘That’s the thing,’ he said. ‘Unless this is a completely senseless
crime, a killing without a motive, which I really can’t believe because of what
was done to him, we are most definitely missing something, but maybe that isn’t
it.’
    He sat down at his desk, switched on the screen of his workstation,
found the article Lombardi had sent him, fished a pair of rimless reading glasses
from his jacket pocket and began to study it.
    Twenty minutes later, Perini removed his glasses and leaned back
in his chair.
    ‘Anything?’ Lombardi asked.
    ‘I’m not sure,’ the inspector replied. ‘How much do you know
about Dante?’
    Lombardi shrugged.
    ‘Apart from the fact that he wrote The Divine Comedy , which I haven’t read, I know the square root of sod
all. And you’re asking because?’
    ‘Because that’s what this article by Bertorelli is all about.
I knew roughly as much as you do about Dante before I read this. Now I know a bit
more about his life and work and I’m really bored by both. I wasn’t expecting some
huge revelation in this article, because we know it’s already been published, so
anybody with a few Euros can go out and buy the magazine and read it for themselves . Anyway, to keep it fairly brief, during his researches
at the university Bertorelli believed he’d found another version of one part of The Divine Comedy , just a couple of verses.’
    Lombardi stared at him in silence for a moment or two.
    ‘That’s it?’
    ‘That’s it,’ Perini echoed. ‘Obviously the professor didn’t believe
in keeping things brief, because it took him about four or five thousand words to
explain where he found the fragment and to print the new verses and explain what
he thinks they mean. I reckon most people could have done it pretty comprehensively
in about four hundred words. Or even forty.’
    Lombardi looked even more puzzled than he had done two minutes
earlier.
    ‘I don’t see what that’s got a do with him being killed,’ he
said. ‘As you said, the information’s in the public domain, so that can’t be important.
Unless the fragment itself is particularly valuable, as a relic, an antique, I mean.’
    ‘No, that’s not it. When I said “fragment” what I meant was a
fragment of verse, not a fragment as in a piece of parchment, though actually in
this case it’s both. According to this article, what Bertorelli had found were two
verses in a book of Renaissance poetry that were previously not attributed to anyone,
and which had been found years ago on a piece of paper in a bundle of old manuscripts
in a bookshop in Ravenna. What our professor claims to have done is to have