THE QUEEN OF CRIME : 2.5 MM FROM THE MARGIN
‘I WAS ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED, I’M NO GOOD WITH HEIGHTS. BUT ANGELA IS VERY PERSUASIVE’
ARLY one morning in June 1982, a smartly dressed man was found hanging from scaffolding beneath Black-friars Bridge in central London. The dead man was carrying two Patek Philippe watches, one on his wrist and one in his top jacket pocket, both of which had stopped.
The pockets and seams of his suit pants contained 5kg of bricks and rubble. He was also carrying a forged Italian passport and about £10 000 (then about R20 000) in cash. The next day, police in Rome confirmed the man’s identity. His name was Roberto Calvi and he was the chair of an Italian bank with close ties to the Vatican.
Roberto had been missing for at least six days. He was due to appear in an Italian court the next week to appeal against a conviction for illegally transferring several billion lira out of the country. The press called him “God’s Banker”.
Roberto’s death was recorded as a suicide, but his family believed he’d been murdered, possibly by the Mafia. In 1991, almost 10 years after Roberto’s body was found, the family hired Kroll, a private detective company, to carry out a new investigation into his death.
To review the evidence, Kroll in turn hired a forensic scientist named Angela Gallop. In the previous five years, Angela had gained a reputation as an expert prepared to go beyond the methods favoured by her peers
