A Cold Flame: A gripping crime thriller that will keep you hooked

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Aidan Conway 2018

Cover design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

Aidan Conway asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008281182

Version: 2018-06-20

To the Memory of

Matthew Francis Fadden

1929–2016

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Part Two

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Seventy-One

Chapter Seventy-Two

Chapter Seventy-Three

Chapter Seventy-Four

Chapter Seventy-Five

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

About the Publisher

One

The few flowers left in the chipped vase had withered to dry brown stalks in the searing August sun.

“You’re still sure this falls within our brief?” said Carrara as they stared at the cold, charred remains of the ground floor flat. All the bodies had now been removed but their presence lingered.

“It’s another fire, isn’t it?” said Rossi. “Probably arson. Why not?”

It was not the first fire in the city to bear the hallmarks of foul play, but it was the first fatal one since they had been moved off their normal duties.

They were standing in the welcome shade of the elevated section of the tangenziale flyover, on a side street off the busy, grimy Via Prenestina. It was hot, cripplingly hot. Thin rivulets of sweat were meandering down Rossi’s neck despite the shade.

“Even if there’s a file on this one already?” said Carrara. “A file that’s as good as closed.”

Rossi shook his head and continued to gaze into the blackened ruins.

“It’s August. You can get away with murder in August. Who was on it again?”

Carrara leafed through the case notes.

“No one I know. A guy called Lallana. Had a racial homicide’s brief. Seconded to us in June and then transferred out again, at his own request, now buzzing all over the place with Europol. I got hold of him by phone but he wasn’t keen on talking. Says it’s all in the reports and he’s got nothing more to add.”

“Giving you the brush-off?”

Carrara shrugged.

“He had it down as a hate crime – seems the victims were all foreigners – but not a single, solid lead. No witnesses, just the one guy who survived it.”

“A survivor?” said Rossi.

“Was. Dead now. Had 60 per cent burns. Should have been long gone but somehow hung on for nearly a week.”

“And all while I was on holiday,” said Rossi.

“You can’t be everywhere, Mick,” said Carrara glancing up from the notes. “I mean a break was merited, after Marini.”

Rossi’s thoughts turned then to the events of the previous winter but as his shoes crunched on the ash and scorched timbers he was still struggling to comprehend the present horror. Shooting, strangling, stabbing – that was one thing – but burning to death. They must have been locked inside when the fire started. Some might have woken but had been unable to get to a door or a window, the security grilles put there ostensibly to keep them safe from intruders thus consigning them to their fates.

“But why wasn’t anyone able to get out?” said Rossi. “Because they locked their room doors every night?”

“Correct,” said Carrara. “Normal practice in bedsits, but no keys for the security grilles were found, not even after a fingertip search.”

“What about the front door?” said Rossi. “Couldn’t they have got out with their own keys? They all had one, right?”

Carrara took out a blown-up scene-of-crime photo.

“The lock. Tampered with, the barrel and mechanism all mangled up. Some debris was found inside. It could have been someone forcing it – an attempted break-in – or it could have been sabotage. The occupants might have been able to open it from the inside to escape, if they had managed to reach the door, but the bolts were still in place. Nobody could get in until the fire guys arrived and then it was too late.”

“And their forensics?” said Rossi.

“Well,” said Carrara, “significant traces of ethanol – one version of the facts is that there was a moonshine vodka operation – and they did find the remains of a timer switch next to the burnt-out fridge. Lallana maintained it could have been foul play, or just as easily some home brew electrical set-up that shorted. He didn’t exactly go all out for the former theory. In the absence of a clear motive and witnesses the coroner delivered an open verdict. Have a look for yourself.”

Carrara handed Rossi the relevant report.

“Open?” said Rossi noting now with near contempt the irony. “Someone locked those poor bastards inside.”

“Like I said, no keys for the window bars were found but no one lived long enough to tell any tale.”

Among the scorched masonry and fallen timbers, one of the grilles lay across the small desert of debris, like the ribcage of a once living and breathing being strewn across a bleak savannah.

“Any names?” said Rossi.

“Just the one,” said Carrara. “The tough nut. Ivan Yovoshenko. He was found in the communal bathroom and had dog tags from his conscription days. But for them he would have been a zero like the rest. It seems he had at least tried to get out, got severely burnt in the process and maybe finally sought refuge in the bathroom. He could have struck his head and collapsed. Judging from the amount of alcohol they found in his bloodstream, he had to have been blind drunk and wouldn’t have realized just how hot the flames were. It was enough for him to survive as long as he did.”

“And nothing on the others?”

“Nothing,” said Carrara.

“Well, they can forget checking dental records,” said Rossi. “These guys could probably just about afford toothpaste.”

Carrara pulled out another sheet for Rossi.

“Presumed missing persons in Rome and Lazio for the last six months, but no matches with this address. The word on the street is that they were five single men, probably illegals, but anymore than that …”

“Sounds familiar,” said Rossi. “But no friends, no workmates?”

Carrara gestured to the desiccated blooms and a brown, dog-eared farewell note or two.

“Paid their respects then made themselves scarce, I suppose,” said Carrara. “If it’s a racial hate killing they were probably thinking ‘who’s next’?”

“But a landlord?” said Rossi, sensing an opening. “Tell me we have an owner’s name.” But Carrara was already quashing that hope with another printout from the case folder.

“Flat sold to a consortium two months ago as part of a portfolio of properties, a sort of going concern with cash-in-hand rents through an established ‘agent’ who hasn’t been seen since the fire.”

“That’s convenient,” quipped Rossi.

“Says here they always sent an office bod to pick up the cash in a nearby bar and the go-between got his room cheap as well as his cut. No contracts. No paper trail. No nothing.”

“And no name for the agent?”

“Mohammed. Maybe.”

“That narrows it down. And the bar? Anyone there remember him’?”

“Nada.”

“A description?”

“North African. About fifty.”

“Great,” said Rossi. “Well, it looks like the late Ivan’s our only man, doesn’t it? Let’s see what the hospital can give us.”

“And then a trip to the morgue?”

“You know, Gigi, I was almost beginning to miss going there.”

Two

“Yesterday was yesterday,” the checkout girl declared as Rossi, making one of his regular top-up shops, tried to pay the ten cents lacking from the previous evening.

Time to forget.

Time to move on.

After lunch and a short siesta he’d spent an hour in a bar, leafing through the papers thinking things over and watching the more popular TV channels to see their take on the Prenestina fire. The mayor had shown up, looked contrite, made a bit of a speech. A local priest was more outspoken, calling it ethnic cleansing. But it wasn’t as if there was any great rallying cry to get to the bottom of it, to trace and compensate the victims’ families, whether it was racially motivated or down to some underworld grudge. While the space being dedicated to the story was rationed after the initial reports, it was almost as if some sections of the media were giving the tacit impression that it had been, if not a necessary culling, then almost an occupational hazard for “illegals”.

As he left the supermarket a figure flashed past in the crowd. Was it? It couldn’t be. She was dead. He stood and watched as the dark-haired, athletic silhouette melted into the crowd, and then shaking himself back into something like rationality he proceeded homewards.

But the doppleganger had set him thinking – thinking about her again and the fallout from the Marini affair. It was almost unimaginable now to think that this same baked, arid city had been wreathed in snow and thrown into chaos while he and Carrara pursued a serial killer dubbed ‘The Carpenter’, trying to halt his murderous crusade against the city’s women.

It had been dubbed ‘The Carpenter’ case, but Marini had been at the centre of everything, playing an ambiguous role on the fringes of a coterie of obscure, occult power brokers in the Church, the state, and big business. For her own ends, she had played them both like violins almost all the way, before coming on board with him and Carrara as they made a pact to use her secret service skills to nail the killer. Her contorted rationale had been a part of a broader strategy, so she could control everything. They discovered that Giuseppe had had a history of working for the services and her cronies all along, and even if in a ragged way Rossi and Carrara did eventually get their man, the circumstances and the consequences still rankled.

He knew that the work of the dark, deep state, the powers-that-be, was not finished. It was an ongoing concern.

And then a decomposed body had turned up in the spring. Hers presumably, in the car she had escaped in through the snowstorm following that last encounter. The corpse had been buried in an unmarked grave, and Rossi and Carrara alone remained the custodians of the whole complex secret. But with no one having stood trial for either The Carpenter’s crimes or Giuseppe Bonaventura’s own murder and no one looking likely to, and while a file remained technically open, the case was considered as good as closed unless new evidence came to light.

All despite the misgivings and rumours that rumbled on in some quarters.

There was no shortage of paranoid speculation on the more radical fringes of the political world and within the world of crime investigation itself. No one but Rossi and Carrara knew the guilty truth. The tangled webs we weave, thought Rossi. They wouldn’t even believe it if he ever did try to come clean. Either way, he would go down for malpractice, perverting the course of justice, you name it. They would make sure of that.

But the dominant, accepted narrative was that the evil had been exorcized, the murders had ceased and The Carpenter had met a justified violent end.

One day perhaps it would all come out. One day.

The domestic political upheavals remained largely on hold now as the MPD faced up to its being so near yet so far from obtaining anything like real power. A general election was far off, unless the government were to fall, but that seemed unlikely. So little had changed in the city in terms of its politics and the penchant for corruption at every imaginable level. On the park walls, on the apartment blocks, the far-right graffiti, however, was fresh, with new variants and vile, resurrected favourites.

HONOUR TO THE FATHERLAND.

DEATH TO PERFIDIOUS JEWRY.

GYPSIES TO THE INCINERATORS.

The comments too that Rossi might hear from disgruntled older citizenry could be strikingly un-PC. “It’s an Islamic invasion, mark my words,” was one familiar refrain. No, the race issues had not gone away, as immigration, religious extremism, and the global terror threat continued to dominate the fear agenda.

He dropped his shopping onto the kitchen table and picked up one of the newspapers he hadn’t yet opened. He flicked through to the letters page, where citizens continued to rail against buses that still didn’t come, roads still full of holes, and, depending on how the breeze blew, the rubbish putrefying on the streets that continued to sour the evening aperitivo. He tossed the paper aside and set about about fixing himself a decent drink.

***

Rossi looked down from his balcony, his after-dinner sambuca and ice still holding its own against the enveloping evening heat. With the sun down, the city had begun to breathe a little. Traffic was almost non-existent, with only the odd revving motorino whining and yelping its horn from some unseen side street. Cut-price tourists, escaped from the throng, ambled about off the beaten track in mismatched summer clothes. Oblivious. Oblivious. Yes, thought Rossi. A state-within-the-state has its own people killed in the name of a perverse agenda and there’s nothing you can do about it. Just count yourself lucky it wasn’t you getting the bullet or the bomb. After all, these days you got it easy. The days of bombs in banks and train stations were long gone, buried under the rubble of the Seventies and Eighties. Of course they were.

Yana, his Ukrainian girlfriend of several years standing, was already in bed. He had cooked dinner and then they had chatted a little. She had seen, however, that he was distant, newly involved with a case. Tired herself after a busy day in the health centre, she had left him to ponder. Since going back to work full-time in the Wellness Centre, she had hardly had a moment’s rest. She lived, ate and slept work now, as if surviving the attempt on her life only a little more than six months earlier had left her leading a charmed life – every day and every moment was precious. She knew it and she was going to make it count and was even talking of expanding the business.

But it still chilled Rossi to the bone when he remembered it all and he still feared for Yana. Giuseppe had taunted him, letting him know in no uncertain terms that he had crossed Yana’s path in the dark days when she had arrived in Italy and fallen victim to traffickers. It had unsettled Rossi profoundly. But who else knew Yana’s secrets? Who else might crawl out from under a rock and want revenge? Perhaps the snakehead of the trafficking ring who had evaded Rossi all those years ago, thanks probably to a tip-off from a rat in his own Rome Serious Crime Squad, the RSCS.

The same rat who was still on the force now and, though he had his suspicions, remained unknown to him.

And the calls still came to his house or to Yana’s when they were together, sometimes months or even a year apart. Sometimes in the dead of night to torment him, or them. No voice. Just silence, a barely perceptible breathing. Someone he knew, he was sure, keeping tabs on him, making sure of where he lived and who he was with.

His thoughts turned to Yana again. The August-induced insomnia had left her feeling jaded, and the combination of heat-disturbed sleep and the effects of her cocktail of medication were wreaking havoc with her natural rhythms. Still she had astounded every doctor that had examined her. It had to be something to do with her inherent athleticism and her Ukrainian resilience or the will to live that he had seen all those years before when he had played his part in freeing her from the nightmare world of drugs, violence and exploitation that she had been sucked into as a naive young immigrant.

Apart from that, all in all, Rossi had to admit he was quite enjoying their, albeit temporary, cohabitation. Perhaps because it was temporary. So far, so good at least. He had even proposed the arrangement himself when Yana, having improvements made to her flat, had found herself in limbo. Their busy schedules meant that the time spent together was only ever a few hours in the evening. Yet, he felt it was a start and steady progress in uncharted waters.

He looked towards the Roma hills and the flickering yellow lights as he sipped on his drink and the rubbish collection truck made its slow, lumbering progress along Via Latina. It was the Prenestina fire that was beginning to occupy his thoughts and perhaps already to obsess him. He knew the signs. He knew too that it had come from on high when he and Carrara had been moved “temporarily” from homicide to arson. Why else, when by anyone’s standards they had got concrete results in the Marini case? It was dressed up as something else, of course – we need your expertise on this one, we think you’re the men for the job, and all that bullshit. And Maroni, his boss, in his best don’t shoot the messenger guise, had assured him that it all fell under the Serious Crime Squad remit.

He looked back into the lounge. His phone was buzzing on the coffee table. It was Carrara.

“Gigi.”

“Another fire, Mick. Initial reports indicate it could be of interest.”

“Where?”

“Parioli.”

“Parioli?”

It was one of Rome’s more well-to-do suburbs.

“Yep. They think there’s a family inside. Nigerians. You’d better get here quick.”

The fire brigade were still dousing sizeable pockets of flame in the detached two-storey villa’s badly scorched shell. The worst seemed to be under control but it had spread quickly with the hot summer air and a light breeze exacerbating matters.

A large crowd had assembled for the spectacle, but there was no hard fast news on who the occupants might be and so far chaos seemed to be reigning. Rossi and Carrara began to apprise themselves of the situation, only to find that no one could give them a simple, unified version of events.

What they knew was that flames had been spotted about about an hour earlier, and a passerby had raised the alarm. Others had then hammered at the door to rouse the presumably sleeping occupants, but all to no avail. Attempts to kick the door in had also failed.