VINCENZO Mannella was nearly everyone’s friend — he was outgoing, generous and funny — but some time during his life of wheeling and dealing, he managed to make at least one serious enemy. And Mannella moved on the fringes of a world in which it doesn’t pay to rub the wrong people the wrong way. His last night on earth started as a pleasant summer evening. It was 9 January 1999, with the sort of balmy weather that encourages socialising, and Vince didn’t need many excuses to be out on the town. He spent the evening with three friends in a coffee shop in Lygon Street, Carlton, and, later, at a restaurant in Sydney Road. Then, though it was almost midnight, the group decided to kick on to a wine bar in Nicholson Street. Mannella, 48, and married with two children, drove his blue Ford Fairlane sedan back to his weatherboard house in Alister Street, North Fitzroy, from where he was to be picked up by one of the friends to go on to Elio’s Wine Bar. He parked the car in the front driveway next to his wife’s BMW and walked towards the front door.
