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little doubt that much of the information they have relating to Calvi has not been disclosed to us.’ International judicial cooperation on the case had evidently got off to a bad start.
    White does concede that the bricks in Calvi’s pockets are ‘unaccountable’ but adds: ‘one must not speculate as to their presence’. ‘To conclude, although the general Italian opinion is that Calvi was murdered . . . there is certainly no evidence at the present time to support this, although we are quite naturally looking at all aspects of the case.’
    Tensions and misunderstandings between the British and Italian authorities would obstruct the investigation for years. A report filed by one of the Italian police officers who visited London on 21 June gives a flavour of the prevailing atmosphere of mistrust. ‘I should say immediately that the presence of the undersigned was not very welcome to the British police which limited itself to a formal collaboration, providing very little information from time to time and often only atthe explicit request of the writer,’ complained Maresciallo [Sergeant] Francesco Rosato.
    A rush to judgement by the City Police, who are not accustomed to investigating murders anyway, a rushed postmortem by Professor Simpson, and a rushed original inquest all contributed to get the British investigation off to a bad start. The original inquest, presided over by the City of London coroner, Dr David Paul, was crammed into a single day on Friday 23 July 1982, five weeks after Calvi’s death. One of the reasons it was later quashed was the breakneck speed at which Dr Paul conducted the proceedings, pausing only 20 minutes for lunch and winding things up at 10 p.m.
    ‘Of course it would have been much better if he had chosen one of the other bridges above Chelsea; apart from any other considerations, this inquest would have been heard in somebody else’s court and you and I would not have been here at 10 past 8 at night,’ Dr Paul joked to the jurors towards the end of the day – somewhat prejudging their verdict in the process. ‘But he did choose Blackfriars.’
    The coroner was also criticized for suggesting that an open verdict, in the event that the jury could not agree on murder or suicide, ‘may seem like a super open door to scuttle through if you are in any difficulty about returning another verdict’. Such steering of the jury was irregular, an appeal court judge would later rule. In the end the jury did not take the ‘easy’ way out, returning a majority verdict of suicide after deliberating for just under an hour.
    Dr Paul concluded: ‘I therefore record that the jury find that Roberto Calvi, a male of 62 years, of Via Frua 9, Milan, Italy, was certified dead at Waterloo Pier, London on Friday 18th June 1982, the cause of death being asphyxia due to hanging, and that he killed himself.’ These were momentous words and the last three would go a long way to postponing the solution of the Calvi riddle, still not fully puzzled out after more than 20 years. Just as most Italians were convinced that Calvihad been killed, many of them were also sure that the court’s verdict of suicide was the result of a deliberate cover-up on the part of the British authorities.

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Source ‘Podgora’
    Roberto Calvi was a desperate man when he decided to flee Italy in June 1982. His bank was in financial trouble, he had serious legal problems and he had to find $300 million with which to pay the Vatican bank by the end of the month. He needed to put pressure on associates and on the beneficiaries of the Banco Ambrosiano’s ‘special’ services if he was to raise the money that would enable him to meet the debt repayment deadline of 30 June. The contents of his black leather briefcase, from which he never normally allowed himself to be parted, would be crucial in achieving that: the papers it contained held the details of the most important and sensitive of his financial operations. Skilfully used,