A Known Evil
AIDAN CONWAY

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright

KillerReads

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Aidan Conway 2018

Cover design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

Passage from I Sette Messaggeri © Eredi Dino Buzzati

Published by arrangement with The Italian Literary Agency.

Courtesy of the heirs.

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: 9780008281168

Version: 2018-01-25

For Graziella

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PART I

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

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

PART II

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

Part III

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

Epilogue

KEEP READING…

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

PART I

One

They’d found the body in the entrance to their block of flats where, sometimes, bleary-eyed, they would avoid treading on the dog shit some neighbour couldn’t care less about cleaning up – teenagers on the way to school at eight in the morning. They’d been the first to leave the building, apparently, although it was now known the victim didn’t live in the same complex. Paola Gentili, mother of three, a cleaner, on her way to work. Multiple blows to the cranium. No sign of sexual assault. No attempt to appropriate money or valuables. No sign of a struggle.

So, it seemed she had been taken completely unawares. Better for her. Husband had been informed. Distraught. Had given them the few preliminary details they required without the need for any formal interview. That would have to wait until they got the go-ahead from the presiding magistrate. But the guy seemed clean enough going by the checks the new ‘privatized’ IT system had given them in record time. What social media access she had was regular and only moderately used. Meanwhile, they’d started looking into the other stuff. No particular leads. No affairs. No money issues. No links to known families in the organized sector. Worked in a ministry in the centre of the city. No unexplained calls. Just waiting now on the forensics guys to come up with something more concrete to work with.

Inspector Michael Rossi had only just driven through the gates in the Alfa Romeo. He had known immediately that something big was coming by the urgency of Carrara’s steps as he’d emerged from the baroque archway leading from the Questura’s offices to the car park. If Rossi had bothered to switch his phone on before it would have got him out of bed, what? Twenty minutes earlier? But that wouldn’t have saved anyone’s life. Now, the debris of takeaway espressos and sugar sachets violated the bare desk space separating them in his office. Their own cleaner had just been in, chatty as ever, oblivious as yet to the news.

“Other than that,” said Carrara, “we’re totally in the dark on this one. But it does look like there’s a possible pattern emerging.”

“You’ve been busy,” said Rossi.

The second such killing in as many weeks. The modus operandi and the victim profile bore distinct similarities but no one had dared yet to use the term. Serial? Was it possible? In Rome?

Detective Inspector Luigi Carrara. Five years Rossi’s junior, several years under his belt in anti-mafia, undercover, eco-crime, narcotics, now on the Rome Serious Crime Squad. Recently married, he had the air of one of those men who never seem to have overdone anything in their lives: hardly a wrinkle, haircut every month, bright, fluid in his movements. Just the man Rossi needed on a Monday morning like this one.

“How similar?” said Rossi, still struggling to form what he considered decent sentences, though his mind was already whirring into action. “The weapon, for instance?”

“Blunt instrument. Iron bar or hammer, probably.”

“Who’s on the scene?”

“A few boys from the local station. They got the magistrate there sharpish though. Hopefully they’ll have disturbed as little as possible. She was carrying ID, so we got to work with that straight off, once the news came in on the police channel.”

“Press know?”

“Not officially. But they will.”

“Silvestre?”

“Out of town, I think.”

“Good. Let’s go,” said Rossi grabbing his battered North Face from the coat stand, feeling more vigorous and even a little bit up for it. “I want to see this one for myself.”

Two

The press had got their picture. As usual, in the confusion between traffic police, municipal police, carabinieri, and the state police, someone had left the poor woman’s feet sticking out from under the blood-soaked tarp, like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. A final ignominy to grace some of the seedier papers’ inside spreads. They had only partially succeeded in keeping the crowds back and sealing off the street, but the citizenry was beginning to grow impatient. Close off a road in Rome and the already mad traffic goes berserk with all those narrow cobbled streets peppered with potholes, the ancient city walls’ archways forming designer bottlenecks, not to mention the one-way systems and the curse of double parking. It didn’t take much to tip the balance. So, the quicker you got everything back to normal the better for everyone.

“Remember, it all starts with good forensics guys,” said Rossi ambling onto the crime scene. The “guys” in white gave him minimal glances of assent from under their cagoule-like hoods while snapping and sampling and moving in to examine the body in greater detail. Rossi was the most senior officer on the scene and he and they knew it. He turned to Carrara, who was flicking through his mobile for news.

“Got anything more on her old man, officially or unofficially?”

“Still in shock, but according to the ‘reports’ he’s clean. No apparent motives. Family man. Besides, he was still in bed. His own bed. And alone. Shift-worker apparently. And no strange cash movements, no dodgy mates we know of. Nothing, as yet.”

“No links with the Colombo case? Anything in common? Friends, work, family, schools, anything?”

Carrara shook his head.

“Nothing. Just similar methods, married woman but different workplace.”

“And the kids?” said Rossi, finally allowing a dark sliver of the human reality to sink in.

“With their grandparents. We’ve got counselling on to that too.”

Rossi tried to put it to the back of his mind. Remain objective. He was a policeman. This was his job. Find the evidence. Find the killer. Stop the murders. Limit the murders. More than this he couldn’t do, and God knows that was what it was all about. But it didn’t get any easier. So much for an experience-hardened cop.

He glimpsed that one of the white-hooded moon-men, as if in contemplative genuflection next to the victim, had changed rhythm and was getting to his feet.

“What is it?” said Rossi, sensing its importance.

“Paper, sir. Note or list by the looks of it. Nailed to the sternum.”

“Not shopping, I trust.”

Blood-soaked but legible and left visible enough inside her blouse to be discovered quickly, it was in block capitals and written in English.

LOOK INTO THE BLACK HOLE FOR WHAT YOU WANT.

Was he growing in confidence? Already? Toying with them maybe? Now I do, now I don’t. Work it out. Want another clue? You’ll have to wait. And there’s only one way you’re going to get it. Special delivery. They might be able to find what model of printer or machine had been used, the make of paper, but more than that? It was hardly going to narrow the field. There’d be no prints.

Rossi looked at Carrara. “Any good at riddles, Gigi? Or are you still more of a sudoku man?”

“Looks like your area, Mick,” replied Carrara. “A late Christmas present.”

Rossi looked up to where the magistrate Cannavaro was skirting around the crime scene.

“And how would you say our magistrate’s doing?” said Rossi. “Ready to refer all this to the professionals now?”

Three

Yana Shulyayev slipped her long, lean body into the steaming bath. She wasn’t going to move a muscle for anyone now. It had been a busy one. The pensioners in the morning then the children. Then off to the accountant to sort out more interminable paperwork, not to mention trying to get across the city during a transport strike. And the cold was like something she had never experienced in Italy. So, she’d ended up walking, in the wrong shoes, most of the way and after a day spent on her feet, dancing and stretching and standing in queues, she was exhausted.

The phone rang. Shit! She’d left it in her coat! No. She wasn’t answering. She was out! They could call back. And if it was important? The accountant needing yet more papers before the office closed? She couldn’t afford to risk it, not with the threat of repatriation always being dangled in front of her. She hauled herself out and skipped wetly into the hall. It had stopped. Shit again. She checked the missed calls. Might have known. She thrust the mobile back into the coat pocket and swore again, and again for good measure, in Russian. It was Michael.

But she wasn’t in the mood to listen to his story. Not yet. Not today. Sometimes she liked to hear his accounts: his frustrations, his occasional victories, his funny anecdotes about the absurdities of the Italian police and legal system. The screw-ups with evidence, the Public Prosecutors in search of glory sending them, the cops, on wild-goose chases because they wanted to nail such-and-such for whatever reason, real or imagined. If only it was like in Britain, he’d say, instead of all these judges and magistrates and officials getting in the way. Over there, a crime’s reported, cops go to establish the facts, they evaluate the likelihood of an offence having been committed, they investigate, they make an arrest, interrogate, then they charge a suspect, and he goes to court. She’d heard it so many times that it had become a mantra.

He also liked to remind her how it wasn’t like in the films, but for her it seemed pretty close, at least in terms of its frequent effects on their relationship. “You should get a cat,” she’d tell him. “It won’t give a shit what time you get home, you won’t wake it up, and you won’t need to take it out anywhere.”

As she lay in the bath, the phone gave a last vain trill but this time she didn’t stir. She was somewhere else now. Somewhere where no one could reach her. She negotiated a little more hot water with her toe and heard a message coming in. That would be him. So he’d be on the case and when he was on a case she didn’t exist. So, cancelling tonight, no doubt. She tried to re-establish the pleasant world she had slipped into before the call. But try as she might, against her will, she was drawn away from where she’d been, where nothing else mattered except the warm water and dreams.

She’d heard about the murder at work. Terrible business but the police had no idea what or who was behind it. The girls in the gym were sure it was the work of an immigrant. A rapist probably. Never an Italian. Italy was going through another deeply unpleasant period and especially Rome. Politicians were playing the race card and the feeling was spreading, or being spread, that crime was on the rise and the only culprits were the foreigners. Every day on the TV news there would be a hit-and-run, a robbery, a mugging and the usual nationality tag stuck onto the suspect. She’d felt so awkward about the whole thing that she’d practically agreed with them. After all, they didn’t even think of her as an outsider anymore, and not just because she was their boss. But sometimes even she felt happier laying the blame at the door of some generalized alien monster. The Romanians, the Serbs, the Ukrainians, the North Africans. The fucking Italians! But she always kept the last one on the list to herself. Now, where was I? she thought, manoeuvring herself back into her own world, the safest one she knew. Then she began to turn over the possibilities available to her without necessarily ruling out the option of a quiet night in. Or even a night out, without Michael.

In the warm water, her hand strayed down along her body. She felt the firm abdominal muscles her students aspired to and which some envied too. Though the deep beach tan was gone, many Italian summers had left her skin an almost permanent honey colour. Her fingers then felt and found the faint line of the scar. Yes, it was still there but hidden to all but the most prying of eyes, the most forensic or curious of observers as her bikini line was old style. No drastic depilation for her. She wondered if Michael was one of those observers, if his cop’s curiosity had noted it. He had never mentioned it, had never asked and she had not divulged the secret. To what extent it might be considered a secret was debatable too. That she had had a child when still effectively only a child herself was a part of her personal life but had very little to do with Yana the person, her personality.

She didn’t feel anything like regret, even though, at times like this – perhaps because of the killings, like in wartime – some instinct in her was pricked, some part of her conscience maybe. Elena had a good life, went to a good school and had been lucky in so many ways. Her effective mother, Yana’s youngest aunt, in Kiev, had been only too willing to take on the responsibility having lost the chance of starting a family of her own after Chernobyl. She had survived cancer but been left infertile and Yana’s tragedy had become her treasure. The letters came regularly from both of them, in Russian and in Ukrainian, and she was glad that she had learned both tongues so well. She would need them in the future, she was sure. Yana’s visits, though rare, were something they all looked forward to, living as they did like a happy family, something Yana had never had.

One day, perhaps, she would tell Michael too but, in the beginning, she had not even thought of burdening him with the news. He had done enough for her and even if she had known in her heart that it would never have driven him away – the idea that she might have been seeking some insurance policy for both her and her daughter’s futures – she had chosen to conceal it. She provided for Elena, working hard, and sending all she could to give her the best start in life. Besides, at that time, even before she had met Michael, it was already a matter that had been closed. Back then, Yana’s own life, in contrast, had spiralled out of control as her stubborn-willed plans had foundered on realities nothing could have prepared her for. She shuddered despite the warm water enveloping her whole body. The memories of being imprisoned against her will and forced into virtual slavery would never leave her but that was long over now. Gone. She had moved on become successful and free. She was never going back.

Four

He had been surprised, at first, at Maroni’s eagerness to let him head up the investigation, bemused even, but, all in all, happy enough. Once the scene-of-crime magistrate, Cannavaro, had established the facts, he hadn’t delayed in assigning investigative duties to Maroni and the RSCS – when someone’s had their head smashed in there’s clearly a case to answer. Cannavaro was old school at heart and despite some memorable forays on a few cases, he tended to keep his nose out of investigative affairs. Maroni had given Rossi some spiel first about how he himself was far too tied up with any number of other investigations that seemed infinitely more intricate and sensitive. But there were other reasons. There were always other reasons.

“So, I’m giving this one to you, Rossi, and the Colombo job. I’ve had to move Silvestre off, for operational reasons.”

“‘Operational reasons’?” said Rossi.

“Yes, operational,” Maroni replied then glancing up at the unmoved Rossi and sensing his perennial need for detail added, “for ClearTech. They need secondments from all divisions. First I knew about it, and Silvestre’s name went forward.”

“Ah,” said Rossi. “So that’s all going ahead as planned.”

“It’s a miraculous system, Rossi. Saves us time, manpower, resources, you name it.”

“But it’s privatizing investigations.”

“It’s just a holding, Rossi, within the Interior Ministry. It’s not for profit. It makes perfect sense. Let the eggheads get on with it, I say. They’re just crunching the numbers anyway.”

Centralized Liaison Electronic Analysis and Reports. CLEAR. Being in English, of course, gave it a little something extra, didn’t it? That was the system, and though he’d dozed through the seminars this much at least he had remembered. But he knew what he thought it meant. Another layer of management bureaucracy and cut-price solutions to complex and important problems, making someone else a buck along the line. Not to mention the rest. The other reasons.

“Anyway, be a more straightforward job for you,” Maroni went on. “What do you think? Given your recent record, that is.”

Record, thought Rossi. Nice euphemism.

“Well, I’d better get down to work, hadn’t I?”

It was just after midnight when Rossi left the Questura, deciding to leave the car and walk. It would help him to think, he told himself. He pulled his collar up against the bitterly chill wind now blowing from the North and his footsteps beat their rhythm on the cobblestones as he turned over the day’s findings.

The initial autopsy and forensics had revealed nothing particularly noteworthy other than the confirmation that the murder weapon had been heavy, probably a large hammer, and that several blows had been delivered to the victim’s head by a male of around 5’10”. The nail had punctured the victim’s left atrium, although cardiac failure due to trauma and blood loss had likely already occurred. There were no DNA traces to follow up on as yet, except to exclude those of family members and pets. There were no closed-circuit cameras in the area and no reliable witnesses, only the usual freaks who had been plaguing the understaffed switchboard with hoax calls.

Rossi had put available officers on door-to-door enquiries, to see if any of the early-bird shopkeepers might have seen passers-by acting suspiciously. But the area was largely residential and it had soon become clear that there was little hope of any useful leads emerging. Given the apparent absence of any sentimental motive, he doubted the killer was going to be the type to give himself away easily. He would have followed at a safe distance, hooded, probably, in easily disposable clothes. He would have made sure he was alone, knowing that, in winter, balconies were not frequented except for quick or furtive cigarettes. Then he would have struck and dragged the poor woman through the open gate and into the doorway, where he finished his work. She wouldn’t have even had time to scream.

There would have been blood on his hands, and he’d have had to wash, perhaps at one of the fountains that so usefully and civilly featured on Roman street corners. Check fountains for DNA? A long shot and it had rained too since then. So, until something else came in, they had only the note to go on and any similarities between this case and the last one. He’d got Bianco looking into the work side of things but, again, there was no office gossip to go on, no particular career jealousies, no career. Just a regular working lady. So, they would have to be lucky or wait and see if he would strike again.

His thoughts turned for a moment to Maroni. He annoyed Rossi, it was true, but he wasn’t a bad man, certainly not the worst, and to his credit he hadn’t given him anymore bullshit than was necessary when they’d met. As it was nothing to do with anything organized, nothing to do with narcos or vice rackets, Maroni and his superiors probably thought it would keep Rossi out of their hair. Not that they were all involved but somebody always knew somebody who got the nod from someone else and all the filth trickled down. Favours were owed and the people that had got to where they now were, often with minimal effort, were always put there at a price. Then those same favours got called in, sooner or later, by those who had granted them, and someone would be picking up the phone and giving it, “what the fuck’s your man doing down there? Do you know who he’s messing with. Does he know? Get him off our backs or there’ll be hell to pay!”

So many times he had got close to the big boys, the guys who never got their hands dirty, i mandanti. The shadowy figures behind the scenes, “those who sent” others to do their bidding but who, blood-sucking vampires that they were, never emerged into the daylight. He rolled the word around in his head as he walked. Then there was the note: LOOK INTO THE BLACK HOLE. He had been thinking in Italian but he sometimes did his best thinking in English. Now it was looking like he might have to.

Of course, the reasons for transferring him or relieving him of his duties were always dressed up as something quite innocuous or easily explained away. There was the ubiquitous issue of stress, brought up as a kind of panacea for all their concerns. “You need a break. We’re giving you a week to get yourself together.” Or they felt his cover was weak. They’d had tip-offs suggesting it would be safer to try a change of tack. Or they needed his expertise to crack a stubborn cold case. Either that or they’d feed him red herrings for as long as was necessary for their own man to cover his tracks or evaporate completely. That was an exact science in Italy, not taught at Police Academy but which was widely and well-practised. Depistaggio. Sending you off the trail, off-piste, if you like, if skiing was your thing, which, for Rossi, it wasn’t.

And then there was disciplinary action. Some character would come in spouting accusations about foul play, being roughed up. There’d be talk about his having flouted the usual procedures or taken a bribe. Hard to prove, hard to disprove. Mud sticks, doesn’t it? And he’d be “encouraged” to take the easy way out, though, of course, everyone knew he was innocent. Exemplary officer. Blah, blah, blah.

Still, despite all that, the way it was going and the way it looked so far, at least, for now, he felt he’d have a pretty free hand. Be thankful for small mercies? The public were shocked, afraid even. They hadn’t stopped talking about this one and the Colombo killing in the bars over their cappuccinos and morning cornetti. It even seemed to be supplanting the political chatter, giving them a break from all the election talk, the stunning emergence of the Movement for People’s Democracy, the MPD, which was rocking the establishment, maybe even to the foundations.

This was not one of the drugs-war killings that sometimes stunned the seedier parts of the city. Neither was it any vendetta. The feeling was growing that he – and a he it surely was – could well strike again. The press would love it, and Rossi knew he’d be shoved into the public eye, under pressure, and then it would all come to a head and that’s when he’d be expected to deliver the goods. Hah! Rossi laughed to himself. Of course, that’s why he was being gifted the case. Sure, if he got his man, great! And there’d be slaps on the back all round and everyone basking in his reflected glory. But if he didn’t, it was his fault. Tough shit, Michael. That’s what the people pay you for. You’re on your own. Bye, bye. Ciao, bello, ciao!

He crossed Via Labicana and came to Via Tasso. It would bring him to San Giovanni Square avoiding the busier roads. On his right, the shining tramlines led away towards the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. This, though, was a humble, anonymous street that saw little of the usual tourist crowds. Yet, it was somewhere he would often stop to reflect, for it was here, during the Nazi occupation, that the Gestapo had set up its headquarters and its interrogation centre. In this very building the Bosch had had its torture chambers and, within those walls, many patriots had given their lives for what they believed in: a better, free Italy, without dictatorship, without hatred and division. Could that be the black hole? he wondered, with a spurt of unexpected enthusiasm. The black-shirted fascists who’d aided the Nazis in their massacres and whose modern-day heirs were getting a new lease of life of late? Their graffiti seemed to greet him on every other whitewashed wall these days. Forza Nuova. Italia per gli Italiani. Italy for the Italians. And they’d never really let go, had they? Indeed, that was their very motto, that the flame still burned.

But it could be anything. And nothing. A distraction to tease them with while the killer got his sick kicks. Or perhaps it was a financial reference, but again he reminded himself the victim had no apparent links with the banks or big institutions. She was a cleaner, even though the ministry where she worked was the Treasury. But how many Romans worked in ministries? Thousands. He could put someone on to it in the morning, just in case, but he didn’t place much store in it as a real lead. Tomorrow they would have to get to work on the note.

He put a hand to his jacket pocket. It was nearly one o’clock and in the sudden quiet of the side street he realized his phone was buzzing. He had forgotten to turn the ringtone back on and had accumulated a message and four unanswered calls.

WHY DO YOU NEVER ANSWER YOUR F******G PHONE? GONE TO BED. GOODNIGHT.

One too many asterisks there, he noted. It wasn’t signed. No need. There were no kisses. It was Yana.

Five

“C’mon,” said Rossi, glancing at his watch as they strolled back to the car. “Talk about a wasted day but I reckon we’ve still got time to get over to the Colombo scene before dark and run some office checks before we go to the mortuary. Let’s see what Silvestre failed to pick up on there.”

The best part of a day spent trawling through past cases and suspects vaguely fitting a broad possible profile had produced nothing of note and had succeeded only in giving Rossi a thumping headache and more lower-back pain.

“Have you got the case notes?”

“There,” said Carrara as he opened the driver’s door and jerked his head to indicate a thin folder on the back seat.

Rossi got in and turned to look at the meagre offering.

“Been busy has he then, Silvestre? Lazy sod. Have to do that one from scratch, won’t we?”

“It’s actually off the Colombo,” said Rossi, leafing again through the scant inherited offering. A modest car park by a school on Via Grotta Perfetta. Road of the perfect cave. This certainly had given it a twist of the grotesque too. But in Rome, sordid murder locations were soon enough forgotten when the media coverage dried up. They were rubbed out by the eraser of the daily city grind and few victims got epitaphs. Serial or no serial. Carrara turned left off the Via Cristoforo Colombo’s zipping dual carriageway, driving slowly then until Rossi had picked out the turning.

“Tucked away, isn’t it? Easy to miss, wouldn’t you say?”

A sloping slip road led up to the smallish car park, which, in turn, gave onto grass and play areas that formed part of the long extension of the Caffarella Valley Park, a precious green lung in the midst of south-east Rome. It was empty and unremarkable. Broken glass, cigarette packets, and in the corner where the vehicle and the body had been found, the usual discarded tissues, wet wipes, and prophylactic paraphernalia could be seen.

“A lovers’ lane then,” Rossi concluded. “Not much lighting at night. Ideal for trysts.” He shuffled through the scene-of-crime photos showing the victim sprawled next to the front wheel on the passenger’s side. Blood was smeared across the bonnet.

“Do we have the car still?”

“Dunno,” said Carrara.

“Well, it’s clear enough she was outside the vehicle when he hit her, isn’t it? And no lovers? Nothing?”

Carrara checked the notes.

“Luzi’s statement says he was training for a marathon – and he does actually run marathons – while she was at a yoga class.”

“Any phone calls? Any calls to men?”

“The care worker looking after Anna Luzi’s mother – lives, lived with them – got a call from her but her phone wasn’t found at the scene. Could be important, if someone didn’t want it to be found.”

Rossi let out a sigh.

“We’ll have to get onto the telephone company to get transcripts. Can you do that? All her calls. We’ll have to check everything. Or does that have to go through ClearTech too? Was there an address book, by chance? I know no one uses them anymore but …”

Carrara shook his head. “Not as far as I know.”

“OK,” said Rossi.

“Shall I pencil in another chat with Mr Luzi?”

“Yes, you could pay him a visit,” said Rossi. “And check his movements again. See if you can find a witness for that running story. A flower seller, a petrol-pump attendant or something. And see if his wife really went to the yoga class, what time it was, and what time he went running and for how long. See if he wears one of those armband thingies, for measuring his calorific output. They all have them, don’t they?”

“You think he might have done it?”

“Why not? Husbands kill wives. How many times have we seen it?”

“He just doesn’t seem the type. Very Christian and all. You know he’s treasurer of The Speranza Foundation?”

“Perfect cover.”

“Sure you don’t want to come?”

Rossi shook his head.

“Where shall I drop you?”

“The bloody Questura,” said Rossi, “may as well keep working through the case files. See what comes up.”

Six

An array of stacked leaflets and promotional material for The Speranza Foundation – bringing hope to the hopeless and light where darkness rules – were the most striking feature of Luzi’s fourth floor executive’s office in Italian State Railways. Carrara had gone back to the beginning and, so far, could find nothing suggesting obvious foul play on the part of the slim, fit blue-suited man he now had before him. His sportsman’s physique did little to hide that he was now a shell of a man. Dark rings were scored under his eyes. In his vacant, defeated face Carrara detected some shadow of the departed – the confident manager Luzi had once been, just like the others shuttling between high-power meetings, phones glued to their ears, dispatching secretaries with alpha-male authority. That was all gone. He still went through the motions, which was enough, for the time being, at least, but bereavement by vicious unexplained murder had left him in the darkest of places.

Carrara had put his sympathies to one side and was looking for any sign of guilt in that void Luzi now occupied. Perhaps it was still the effects of shock or some ingrained sense of duty and propriety, but he answered all Carrara’s questions with remarkable steadiness. Not once did his emotions overcome him. Carrara could only conclude that it had to be a defence mechanism. He had to be postponing the reaction, only deferring collapse. Luzi couldn’t come up with any hard, fast witness for his own 20k run that evening, he was able to provide the name of the gym where his wife had been, as every week, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. for her class.

“I would normally go for my run around 8.30 p.m. and finish about 10 p.m., depending how long it was. It’s late but it’s a quieter time for traffic. She would usually meet up with a friend after her class and we’d see each other at home before going to bed. I’d have my training meal and watch TV or deal with correspondence for the foundation until she returned. Except, that night, well, she didn’t, did she?”

Carrara had seen other men break down at points like this. Luzi’s mouth twitched slightly, at the corner. Nothing more.

Carrara’s impression was that they had been as happily married as any other young middle-aged couple could have been. No affairs on her part – though he did admit to having had what he called “an infatuation” with a colleague, which was long over. “I did my time for that,” he tried to joke, “and we’d been back on track, for years. We had a good balance, with our own interests and jobs. And then. Just like that. Gone. You never expect it. You can’t plan for it.”

“Do you know why she might have been there?” Carrara asked. Luzi shook his head but glanced downwards for a fraction of a second before resetting his attention on Carrara.

“Perhaps just to make a phone call, to check on her mother – she’s got Alzheimer’s. She always pulled over to call – never at the wheel. Or maybe just to think; she did that sometimes. She said she liked the peace. Dealing with her mother was hard and she bore the brunt of most of it. She’s in a home now.”

“Might there have been some other reason?” Carrara asked, sensing in his reaction the slightest sign of a crack in his composure.

“Well, the engine had started playing up of late,” he began, too calm for Carrara’s liking.

“But given the manner of her attire?” Carrara probed, recalling from the scene-of-crime photos the short skirt, the suspenders, and high heels which, while not vulgar, at least suggested a possible erotic agenda.

“Well, I can’t believe there was any other reason, if that’s what you’re saying?” Luzi said, as if, in his innocence, only then realizing what Carrara was now driving at. “Is that what you’re saying?” his voice finally breaking into something resembling real anger. “That she was having an affair? In a car park?”

So he was human, after all, Carrara thought. He had infringed on the sacred memory of his wife and the reaction was, if not textbook in an innocent man, at least more reassuring.

“We have to stop the murders, Dottor Luzi,” he replied. “I have to ask you these questions if we are to have any chance of doing that.”

Carrara looked again at the ordinary, proper man before him. He hadn’t flinched in holding his gaze, but… But… Was there still something?

“Oh, by the way,” Carrara continued, changing pace like a bowler to see if Luzi would deal with the delivery, “do you record your running route, Dottor Luzi, on your phone, with GPS?”

“No,” Luzi replied, his tone still hard. “I’m kind of old-fashioned on that score.”

He raised his left arm. “Just my wristwatch and then later I sometimes measure the route on a maps app on the PC.”

Carrara nodded and made a note. Well they could track that down anyway, if they had to, or check whether he’d left the phone at home, he thought, noticing then that it was his own mobile now that was buzzing.

“Excuse me,” he said. “This could be important … yes. Carrara.”

It was Rossi and it was important. He had struck again.

Seven

With the third victim, the killer was set to acquire a nickname. The headlines in the following day’s Messenger would proclaim that ‘The Carpenter’, due to his apparent preference for a hammer and nails, had indeed killed again. They would not be publishing anything about the notes, however, for though there were now two to consider, Rossi had asked his contacts not to reveal that particular detail. Not yet. In return, he had promised to keep them informed and to give them what he could. He needed the press on his side and still had some people he hoped he could consider friends, though who was a friend in a murder investigation was anybody’s guess. There was meat on the menu and it was not going to be easy persuading hardened carnivores to pass up a meal.

“And I thought we might have finished for the day,” said Carrara who had cut short his informal chat with Luzi to pick up Rossi. He was motoring towards the scene while Rossi, a sheaf of papers in one hand, had an ear cocked to the radio as the excited officer who’d been first on the scene recounted what he had found. The victim had been ambushed in an underground car park on the Via Tuscolana. Her face had been beaten to a pulp, so they’d have to wait for a positive ID, especially as they had no personal effects to go on, no keys, no handbag, no ring. Nothing.

“OK, OK,” said Rossi. “We’ll be there in five.”

When they arrived, only the preliminaries were already underway. No forensics yet. No magistrate had arrived, so had likely already been informed and had thus delegated the investigation directly to the RSCS in line with the usual but not exclusive practice.

“Is it too much to ask that they not touch anything?” said Rossi, running an irritated hand through his hair and giving a protracted sigh.

“Parking problems, sir,” said a hassled-looking traffic cop. “We’re getting all sorts of earache from them that’ve got their wheels in the car park and those that want to get theirs in. There’s the match later, you know?”

Rossi turned his eyes heavenwards.

“There’s a murder in their backyard and they want to see the match?”

The officer looked down at his own shoes then sneaked a glimpse at his watch. Him too.

“Let’s just hope they haven’t destroyed key evidence this time. Hasn’t anybody learned from Perugia?”

It had been late afternoon or early evening as far as the young female pathologist, whom Rossi had never seen before, was prepared to venture. Like the health service, thought Rossi. Never get the same doctor twice. Was a bit of continuity out of the question too? The excited officer he had spoken to over the phone was now filling him in but in person. Once again, there had been no one else around. A suburban area without CCTV.

“Personally, I dislike the ever brasher intrusions of Big Brother into daily life,” Rossi lamented, “but in cases like this we could have used it.” No. This wasn’t London where your every move was filmed. There was still something that resembled freedom here, strange as it was to hear himself saying it. Yes. Here you could quite easily get away with murder.

By the time forensics had arrived, it was plain to see they had an identical situation. A woman, head smashed in, and now another note for them to ponder. The same enthusiastic-looking officer had handed it to Rossi in an evidence bag. He’ll be studying law in his spare time, thought Rossi. God help us if he becomes a magistrate. The note read: THE DARK MATTER.

“An answer to our riddle, then?” proffered Rossi.

“Could be,” Carrara replied, “but I wouldn’t count on it being that simple. Would you?”

Rossi stared at the note and then looked up and took Carrara by the arm.

“See those trails of blood, mixed in with the oil stains? Assuming nobody else has moved the body, what does it say?”

“She wasn’t killed there.”

“Maybe finished off, yes, but moved. Get them to work out which car she might have been in without compromising the integrity of the crime scene. If there’s a print, a footprint, or a fingerprint, I want it. Have we got the lights up and the ultraviolet? Who’s doing that? Who’s shadowing the forensics?” Rossi clapped his hands together to get the attention of a cluster of dozier-looking uniforms. “And run checks on all the cars within a twenty-five metre radius. Any warm engines, for example. Has anyone got on to the vehicles yet?” he shouted above Carrara’s head to everyone and no one in particular.

Eight

Rossi threw into the boot the remaining profiles of perverts, murderers, and violent stalkers released from prison in the last ten years, as well as those of similarly inclined suspects still walking the streets. Another day of paperwork, computer-screens, and head-scratching. And now this. The workload was doubling every 24 hours. And they were getting no nearer an answer. It was like a blank crossword staring back at him. After knocking the lads into shape on the crime scene he’d managed to carve out enough time to keep a planned appointment at the hospital of legal medicine to see what they could get on the second, more detailed autopsy on Paola Gentili. Nothing particularly useful had come out of the trip except the discovery that she’d had the beginnings of a particularly aggressive cancer in her right lung. And she didn’t even smoke.

“Bitch of a life,” said Rossi as they left the building to be greeted by a blast of the now customary wintery air. Carrara was musing in his own world. The place had that effect on you. Leaving its confines wasn’t like leaving any normal hospital where you had that feeling of relief that you weren’t in there yourself mixed with lingering concern for the person who was. Here was different. This coldly modern, austere, imposing building concealed within its walls real-life horror stories and tragedies in equal measure. And then there was the final ignominy of being carved up by experience-hardened doctors-cum-butchers to see how you had been dispatched from this mortal coil. A necessary evil, Rossi managed to convince himself, if they were going to stop this beast. Yet another necessary evil.

They decided to leave the car and take a stroll past the Verano cemetery. They ventured across the tramlines gleaming like blades that carved up the piazza and on which the number three passed then swept away into the dank concrete tube of the railway tunnel leading to San Lorenzo. ‘Red’ San Lorenzo, as it was known. Historically, solidly working-class and the cradle of Rome’s Communist and Anarchist communities, it was now becoming like another sort of Trastevere, a nascent mini Covent Garden with bistros, boutiques and wine bars sprouting on every corner.

But Rossi wanted to think, and he thought best when he had eaten, but not in the police canteen or the other cop haunts within walking distance of the Questura, and away, too, from the usual press-frequented places in the centre.

“Formula One?”

“Sounds good to me,” replied Carrara appearing to perk up. Many’s the time Rossi had put everyday concerns aside there, as a child, with both his parents, and back in his Roman high-school days. All that before the Erasmus experience. Before, for better or for worse, everything had changed in his love life and in the professional direction he would finally choose to take in life.

The pizzeria’s busy evening was almost coming to a close. Waiters dawdled with the look of men counting the minutes until they could knock off. But it was open. They took a table with a view of the street and ordered stuffed, fried pumpkin flowers as starters and half-litre tankards of Moretti.

“So here we are again,” said Rossi. “We’re talking serial, or spree?” he proffered without raising his eyes from the plate.

“Looks that way,” Carrara replied, busy with his own.

“And Rome’s never had a serial killer.”

“Not like this.”

“And he’s leaving notes. In English.”

“He could be English. Or American.”

“He could be anyone, a freak, full stop. And the psychologist’s report? Are they building a profile?”

“Too early to say.”

Rossi looked up, knife and fork gripped. “What? We need a few more dead women first and then there’ll be something to go on? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying that it’s not that helpful. It’s the usual kind of thing. Nothing that really narrows the circle. Woman-hater. Egocentric. Low self-esteem. Absence of sexual relations. Abuse victim himself, possibly. Certainly above-average intelligence, though. Won’t let himself get caught, but leaves clues and likes playing games.”

“But he’s killing ordinary women, not prostitutes or foreigners. He’s not going for marginalized targets, outsiders. It goes against type.”

“True.”

“And now he’s giving us the answers?”

The waiter passed, and Rossi added two more beers to their pizza order.

“Right,” said Rossi. “Inside a black hole there’s dark matter. But what does that tell us?”

Carrara gave a shrug.

“Of course, there’s always time,” said Rossi, appearing to drift off with his thoughts.

“Time?” Carrara replied. “Time for what?”

“The black hole, Gigi. Bends time, doesn’t it? Einstein’s theory.”

“O-kay.” His friend was trying to keep up with him.

“It takes us back. Outside of time, even.”

“Meaning?”

Two pizzas as big as cartwheels sustained by a white-shirted waiter’s arms were flying across the restaurant high above the heads of the engrossed diners.

“Capricciosa?” the waiter boomed making some nearby foreign tourists start from their chairs.

“For me, said Rossi.”

“And Margherita?”

Carrara raised a hand in distracted acknowledgement.

“Meaning, I don’t know,” said Rossi. “But it could be significant.”

“And in the meantime? Every woman in Rome needs to stay at home. We bring in Sharia law? Or they’d all better get themselves a gun, or what?” said Carrara.

Rossi was already carving into his tomato base, spread with slices of cured ham, artichoke hearts, black olives, and all topped off with halves of boiled egg. A meal for lunch- and dinner-skippers; a policeman’s meal. He reached for his beer. It was icy-sharp, clean, and lightly hoppy. Already he was feeling it and the food’s anaesthetising, calming effect on his stomach and, as a consequence, on his mind. As he lowered the glass, making more room on the cluttered table-for-two, his eyes were drawn to that portion of the menu where the names of the dishes were translated into something resembling English for the convenience of tourists. They usually got it right, to be fair, but sometimes the renderings were comical. One word, which should perhaps have been platter, had become instead plater.

“Or maybe not all women,” said Rossi.

Carrara lowered his fork.

“Do you know something I don’t?”

Rossi took another large draught.

“And if, say, it wasn’t matter but mater?”

“As in ‘mother’, in Latin? You think he’s killing mothers?”

“I don’t know. Or it could be symbolic. The Mother Church even. Sancta Mater Ecclesia. Our Holy Mother the Church. Remember your catechism? Might need to check if they were practising Catholics.”

Rossi’s phone, for once occupying prime table space, began to vibrate.

“You’d better answer that,” said Carrara.

Nine

It wasn’t the phone call they had both feared and even in some way almost willed, yet it afforded them some relief. They needed time to think. But they also needed evidence and the killer was giving little away, aside from the sick notes. Sick notes. Rossi dwelt on the irony as he ate. Maybe there was something in that. For being excused, from games, from school. A sick note for life. I don’t belong to you and your moral order and here’s my little note that says why. He remembered how such boys had often been treated with open contempt by some teachers, at least at the school he’d attended in England for those few years. Pilloried and humiliated in the gymnasium and the changing room for their perceived weakness, cowardice, their lack of male vigour. Could they grow up to wreak such terrible revenge on society? Ridiculed outsiders wielding their new-found power and enjoying it. Repeating it. Needing it.

It was someone with a very big axe to grind. Someone hard done by and conscious of it, not like those wretched creatures who strangled and knifed but could never articulate the reason why. Maybe they never even knew themselves. They didn’t have the mental apparatus, the support system, to process their feelings and frustrations or even put a name to them. But kill they did. Often without warning or without apparent motive.

He shared some of his thoughts with Carrara as they both leant back, satisfied and contemplating dessert. There were also factors that pointed towards a clean skin, someone with no record of violence, at least in Italy. The foreigner theory couldn’t be discounted, though Rossi winced at such politically populist apportioning of blame. Or even the smouldering suggestion of an Islamic plot. Was it someone who hadn’t killed before? They had as yet unearthed no particular similarities with unsolved crimes. There was no clear motive. Unless this killer had been long-incubated, a slow burner, and had chosen a propitious moment to hatch from his dark cocoon.

“Look, we’re not fucking magicians, Michael,” Carrara concluded, tipsy now and a little the worse for wear from tiredness. Rossi glanced up from his plate.

“Kid been keeping you up?” he enquired. “Or is it the enforced abstinence?”

Carrara returned a forced smile.

They both opted for crème caramel, and Rossi asked for the limoncello, telling the waiter not to bring coffee until he asked for it. He wanted time, time to savour and time to think. Carrara declined the liqueur.

“You can leave the bottle,” said Rossi. The gruff waiter shot him a look askance, his hopes of an early finish dwindling.

“We definitely won’t be getting a smile out of Mr Happy tonight,” concluded Rossi.

They split the bill, alla Romana, each paying an equal share irrespective of what they had consumed, and decided to walk a little and drop in at a bar on their way home. They stopped at a news stand with international papers for Rossi to pick up Le Monde and El País. He liked to keep abreast of European events, finding their coverage superior to that of many of the Italian papers, obsessed as they were with internecine politics and endless wrangling and the labyrinthine complexities of one financial scandal on the heels of another.

A bill-sticker smothered in a hat and scarf was slathering election posters onto the wall next to the tunnel. Here we go again, thought Rossi. It was one constant election campaign. Governments forming, falling, then getting into bed together (literally and figuratively) in bizarre, mutually convenient coalitions. The brush-wielder slapped on more of the acrid adhesive and a rancid, hypocritical ghoul now loomed over the street. He held a pen in one hand, ostensibly symbolizing bureaucratic ability, saper fare, and, perhaps for the many less well-educated voters, simply his ability to read and write. His other hand was positioned on his knee, the wedding ring to the fore. Family man, and good for his word.

It repulsed Rossi, all the public money sliding down into the abyss of corruption, interests, and rampant, unashamed nepotism. Yet, it did now seem that they were living in more interesting times. No one had really believed that the MPD would actually start to threaten the big boys, but they had. They’d harnessed the Internet, seeing its potential earlier than anyone else, and had begun raking in huge consensus among the young, the underpaid, the unemployed, and students who saw no future. Now a power block was ominously taking shape, threatening the sclerotic party system and its cynical and systematic carving up of the country’s resources.

They took the tunnel back towards Piazza Vittorio and the Esquiline hill, one of Rome’s seven. Though dirty and ill-kempt, it was a characterful area and one that Rossi knew and liked, partly, if not only, for its preponderance of Indian restaurants and readily available supplies of oriental spices in the Bangladeshi mini-markets. Many of the other shops had become Chinese-owned, alleged fronts for money laundering, among other things. The older residents lamented the decline continually. Yet, it was a real melting pot, something of a bazaar and, despite some well-publicized concerns about racial tension, everyone seemed to get on with their own business and mingle on the busy streets quite peaceably.

At the steps leading down to the Metro, Rossi bid Carrara goodnight then set off to take a walk around the square. He knew its history, that it had been built following Italy’s unification and, as such, was typical of the northern Italian style. The echoey arcades with their rows of columns and arches afforded shelter from the inclement weather in the Piedmont, be it snow or rain, whereas here they served more as welcome shade for the searing Roman summers. It was under these same arches, too, that his courtship with Yana had begun, in another winter. They had played childish games of hide-and-seek behind the columns and then, arm-in-arm, had performed a comical three-legged walk she taught him, all the way back to her old shared apartment near Porta Maggiore.

She had worked hard after that, getting her MBA, setting up the business with Marta and, when the profits began coming in, finally making a down payment on a place of her own which she was now well on the way to paying off. A small but well-proportioned flat with a mezzanine split-level of her own design, it was where Rossi was now heading, specifically to the calm oasis of her bedroom.

The call in the restaurant had been from her. He’d gone outside to take it where it was marginally quieter, and they had talked. She had been more relaxed and interested to hear about the case. They’d both had tough days and amidst the mutual expressions of solidarity, Rossi had persuaded her to let him come over later. He had his own key but never entered without prior arrangement. Yana had her rules and had her reasons and he respected that. They were together, an item, maybe, but there were limits and lines drawn in the sand, even if he felt sometimes that the tides of their two lives changed and shifted the sands so much as to render such confines meaningless. Periodically, they disappeared completely only to then reappear, perhaps, in the cold light of day, or when he had overstepped the limits of reasonableness. That said, the bond, though unusual, was strong.

She would be asleep now. So, he would let himself in, as quietly as he could, slip off his shoes and maybe, no, definitely, help himself to another cold beer. He would watch a little TV with his feet up, perhaps glance at his papers then climb the wooden steps, placing his feet where he knew he wouldn’t cause the boards to creak before finally sliding in beside her. He’d test the water to see if she wanted to satisfy his more primal nocturnal needs, knowing she’d probably just shove him away. But tomorrow, if she was not working early, they could make up for lost time.

A shivering street-worker in black leather boots and a short fake-fur jacket peeled herself slowly off the corner where she had been trying her best to recline.

“Hello, darling. Looking for fun?” she said through gritted teeth.

Rossi stopped. Was she a mind reader? He smiled, and declined, adding a polite but sincere warning concerning the concomitant risks of being out at night, a woman, and alone. Not all the girls had pimps here, he knew. They wanted, quite rightly, to be free agents but it could be a double-edged sword, especially at times like this.

As a matter of course, he put a hand to his jacket pocket to check his phone. A missed call from Carrara. He rang back. He must have just got off the Metro, he thought. His heart was beating faster now. Not another victim. Not so soon.

“Gigi?”

“Yes, we’ve got news, Mick. ID on the third victim.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Very. She was Maria Marini. A lawyer, 35, single mother, separated and …” Carrara paused.

“And what?” said Rossi

“You’re going to like this. Her father’s a judge. Guido Marini, anti-mafia, Palermo pool, in semi-retirement but put a lot of people inside for a long time.”

“Has he been informed?”

“Informed? He identified the body. And we got a handbag with ID inside picked up by the Tiber. They ran some checks and it seems the lady had missed a regular dinner appointment with her father and wasn’t answering her phone. Out of character and all that. He called the police around 10 p.m. then came straight over.”

Rossi was thinking at full tilt. So, Maroni had kept that to himself until now.

“Are you there, Mick?”

“Yeah. What have you got on her personal life?”

“Like I said, her father told us she was separated, got a kid too.”

“And the ex?”

“Looks clean enough but not exactly in a state of shock. Took it rather philosophically, shall we say. He’s in Milan for work. Travels a lot. He’s been informed and is heading to Rome ‘as soon as he can’.”

Rossi had turned on his heel and was heading towards the square.

“Gigi, send a car to Piazza Vittorio, Fassi’s ice-cream place,” he said then shoved his phone into his pocket.

The girl was still propping up the wall like an eroticized flying buttress.

“C’mon on, hun,” she said. “You know you want to. We’ll have a ball!”

“No, thanks, love. Back on duty myself, I’m afraid.”

Ten

When Rossi awoke it took him a while to realize where he was and that he was alone. He listened for familiar sounds and, hearing none, threw back the covers. The heating was on, but the flat was still a bit on the chilly side. There was some coffee still left in the machine. It was more warm than cold. Drinkable. By the kitchen clock it was nine. So, Yana had performed all her morning duties without even waking him or perhaps without even trying to wake him. At least she hadn’t come around with the Hoover.

He had finally let himself in at, what was it? Four or five? He tried to reconstruct the night’s events. Yes, after they’d persuaded the judge to let them check out his daughter’s flat. It had been a hassle with that guy, and Rossi remembered his own exasperated words: “Anything could help, you must understand that, sir. So, if you’ll just give me the keys we’ll get it over and done with tonight.” It had been, as always, sobering, with the judge standing sentinel-like as he and Carrara and the officers had gone through bins, opened cupboards, drawers, the fridge, in the search of any indicator that might point to a motive other than sheer, random, insane violence. As he checked levels in liquor bottles, read personal notes and, ever the foodie, squeezed and sniffed groceries for freshness, Rossi could feel the judge’s disdain as though by these very actions his daughter were being violated for a second time. “Nothing much to go on here,” Rossi had concluded with the standard phrase. “We’ll come back tomorrow to tie up any loose ends, if you don’t mind.”

He had slept late. She must have given herself the early shift after all. Or changed it. He couldn’t detect any sign of emotion, neither anger nor indifference, in the otherwise empty flat and, scratching his head, he wondered whether she had let him sleep out of pity or a simple desire not to have to exchange strained pleasantries with him. Maybe she hadn’t felt she had the energy to confront him head-on. Maybe he didn’t either. Was that a bad sign? Time would tell, he concluded and splashed some milk into a saucepan then sat down to mull over more of the events of the previous night.

Of course, once the powers-that-be had learned of the possible judicial connection they had all become very interested. So, it had been a torrid night of claim and counter claim and a back and forth of theories about “reprisals” and “warnings” and “clear threats to the institutions” – the judiciary, the government, and so forth. Rossi, however, had resolutely maintained his line that it was pure coincidence. The modus operandi, the signature, were all consistent with the previous killings. Apart from the handbag having been subtracted from the crime scene – probably a self-conscious act of arrogant defiance – it bore all the key traits of the first murder.

They’d learned then that the girl’s father had been pulling all the strings at his disposition and had even wanted to take over the case and put his own men on the job. Rossi gave a dry little laugh to himself. How quickly things moved when tragedy touched the lives of the luminaries. Yes. When sometimes there wasn’t even money to put petrol in a squad car, along came one of the Establishment and they were sending up helicopters and cancelling leave right, left, and centre.

To his credit, Maroni had held his own, for the sake of the force, ostensibly. Possibly. He’d had to leave the opera midway through and was faintly comical in his evening garb. It was only the Rome opera though. Not as if he’d been to La Scala or San Carlo. He had, nonetheless, insisted on leaving the investigation in Rossi’s hands now that he had begun. “Rossi has my full confidence and the full confidence of my superiors,” he’d rather grandly announced at one point, which had tickled Rossi not a little. They had agreed to keep all and sundry informed of subsequent developments, should anything have arisen which might indicate a mafia or other organized backdrop. A press conference was to be arranged, in part, to placate an anxious business community now that the murders were becoming news, international news, and in part to keep a lid on the possible motives. The Home Secretary had even phoned from the ski-resort where he was contributing to the nation’s economic welfare by giving a significant boost to consumer spending, albeit with taxpayers’ money, and racking up a quantity of sexual misdemeanours sufficient to keep priests busy with confessions and journalists replete with favours paid for by their silence.

They had concluded matters in the very late early hours with Rossi agreeing to meet with the judge again the following day, which was, as Rossi now noted, today. Maroni wanted him to probe a little more into the woman’s private life and business affairs but also to keep her father at a manageable distance. “We don’t want a bloody judge sniffing around,” Maroni had hissed, “and following our every move, Rossi, so work on him. Soft soap him. You’re good at that, aren’t you?”

He tried to remember the time they had set for the meeting. His morning mind was fuzzier than usual and then he remembered how he had needed two or three visits to the bottom drawer, that of the filing cabinet, where the emergency supply of whiskey was located. That and extra nightcaps to wind down on the way back over to Yana’s. Not to mention the third of a bottle of Limoncello, and the beers. It was all mounting up to something approaching unjustified excess. Carrara would know. He went to look for his phone. God only knew where that was.

The front door clicked. Rossi turned to see Yana standing there.

“Well,” she said, “are you going to tell me what’s going on, or what?”

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” said Rossi.

“I felt guilty or something,” she replied, dropping her bag into the corner and pulling off her scarf. “And if we don’t talk now I don’t think we’re ever going to talk, are we? Besides what is it they say about never letting the sun go down on an argument?”

“Even if it was only in the form of a text?”

“You got the message though? I was expecting you at a respectable hour.”

“Am I forgiven?”

She threw her coat across the chair and walked over to him.

“Well, it’s winter and I didn’t fancy my chances of seeing you before dark tonight. Having a boyfriend in your line of work, one has to live for the moment, shall we say. You got drunk, didn’t you, last night?”

“We had a late one,” said Rossi. “There was all sorts of ‘shit going down’, as our American friends say.”

She went closer and sniffed around, testing him and still showing something of the disdain for him which was part and parcel of their sometimes tempestuous love affair.

“Well you brush up reasonably well, Inspector fucking Rossi. What time’s your first appointment?”

“Now, it’s funny you should mention that,” said Rossi, “but I can’t find my phone. Going to give me a hand?” But before Yana was able to do the time-honoured call-the-lost-mobile-routine, somebody had got there first. “It’s buzzing,” he said, throwing cushions hither and thither as he tried to home in on the vibrations.

“Got it,” said Yana sliding a hand down the side of the settee.

It was Carrara.

“Just reminding you not to forget that you’ve got an appointment with the judge at his place. All right?”

“What makes you think I would have forgotten?” said Rossi, knowing his gravelly tones were giving him away. But Yana, who had pulled the curtains in the lounge, had already begun to unzip her top and was shaking her head, mouthing “no, no, no.”

“Look,” said Rossi as Yana came closer now and put her arms around his waist. “Give him a call, will you?” he said. “Tell him that some lab reports have come through and that I’ll be over as soon as I can. It’s not like he’ll be going to work today, is it? The man’s got a funeral to organize.”

Eleven

“Rome is Afraid.” That would be the headline for tomorrow’s paper. That would get copies moving and, to his delight, ad-space had already been filling up fast. Giorgio Torrini, editor-in-chief of the Roman Post, was not quite rubbing his hands but had the look of someone who has just bagged a sizeable win on the horses or the lottery. Until now, the public had been taking more interest in the apparently drug-related killings spilling out of the usual run-down and deprived ghetto territories and into the “civilized” centre, sometimes in broad daylight. Yet people didn’t really feel threatened. Just like with the dodgy heroin-killing junkies, or the ex-husbands losing their jobs then losing the plot and massacring entire families; all that was still going on but it didn’t make people afraid. But now The Carpenter had made sure they were. More cautious husbands weren’t letting wives go out on their own. The city was becoming a virtual ghost town after dark. Taxis were doing a roaring trade.

Torrini had his best man on the story and he was dictating what line to take now that Marini had been identified.

“Nobody cares about Mafia,” he was saying. “Unless they start planting bombs outside the Stadio Olimpico, in St Peter’s Square, or in pizzerias, it’s water off a duck’s back. They’ve heard it all before.”

“So we stick with the serial-killer line?”

“Rome is Afraid,” he repeated, holding up hands which grasped the extremities of an imaginary banner headline.

“And tourism? Isn’t it going to hit tourism? All this negative publicity.”

“Tourism?” spluttered Torrini. “Tourism? They always bounce back. They can drop their prices. Probably boost tourism once it all dies down,” he added, “and I mean, how long is it going to last? A couple of weeks, a month or two? By Easter it’ll all be forgotten. Mark my words. It’ll be history. More history for Rome. More guided tours. ‘This is where The Carpenter killed his first victim.’ Blah, blah, blah.”

Senior reporter Dario Iannelli was taking notes. So far, he had only written “mad heartless fucker”. Dario knew a good story and had the knack of finding them but what he wanted was the scoop that went right to the top and could let him get at the real criminals. Serial killers were one offs, sad fucked-up losers, true enough. But the others, those who were selling the country down the river for thirty pieces of silver? They were the real nasty pieces of work. It was them he wanted to nail.

But he was also beginning to feel that there might be something more to this story. Rome didn’t do serial killers. It wasn’t in its nature. But he couldn’t prove anything, not yet. So, for now he would have to go along with the official line. Fear sells papers. Fear is good. Tell the Romans to be afraid. But he was searching; he was on the lookout for any and every clue, the slightest slip that might let that crucial something come his way.

“So, you get your arse down to the press conference, right, and get a good question in, on mike, and on camera, if possible, so stand up or something?” Dario nodded.

“I want everyone to hear the Roman Post is covering this story. Fuck the nationals. We’re on the ground here. This is our big one.”

Dario made another careful note: “egomaniac arsehole. Fuckwit”.

“Let’s milk it. Oh, and try and get something on his methods.”

“Meaning, sir?”

“His methods!” blurted Torrini, popping out suddenly from the comfort zone of his ego-bubble. “What he does!”

“He kills them, sir,” said Iannelli, scenting a prime piss-taking opportunity.

The editor’s face contorted in a sign of near total non-comprehension before he finally put two and two together.

Never been quick on the uptake, have you? thought Dario. Romans often weren’t.

“I mean, does he cut their fingers off! Does he carve shit into their skin or something? I don’t know!” He leaned over the desk at a more intimate distance. “Does he fuck them, or what? We’ve got none of that yet. Is there something they’re not telling us?”

“Ah,” said Iannelli, “those methods. I’ll see what I can find, sir. Do my damnedest. Try and get something out of Rossi.”

But for now he knew he would still be keeping his word. Rossi was about as close as anyone could be to being his friend, but he might need to cash in a favour from him, perhaps sooner rather than later.

Twelve

The Metro brought him to a very convenient distance from the judge’s apartment on a side street just off the broad busy thoroughfare of the Via Tiburtina. He crossed the bridge over the railway junction with its spaghetti tangle of lines spewing out of the immense Brutalist concrete station. In the distance he could see the Roman hills, the Castelli, each of which had once been the sight of a castle, with its lord and servants and feudal power structure. To Rossi they served as a reminder of feudalism’s ever-present role in Italian affairs. King-like figures still dwelt in the shadows, subjects still curried favour, assassins took their king’s shillings, and heretics and rebels, if they were foolish enough to expose themselves, had to face the consequences of their treason.

The hills looked near enough to touch, their variegated mossy colours vivid and sharp. Beautiful, thought Rossi, beginning to drift, but then, like a surgeon, truncating the reverie. There was work to do and yet, as he turned his gaze back to the streets, he reflected that it might be a sign of further rain or even snow, given the cold snap, and he couldn’t help but feel its metaphorical weight. Most of the multi-storey buildings here had shot up after the war, gobbling with grey the once-green space that had skirted the old Rome. Still, despite their functional, un-classical facades they often concealed large, sprawling apartments with dark, bourgeois, chestnut and mahogany-rich interiors. He flashed his ID at the pair of plain-clothes officers idling outside the building. The judge’s place was no exception. The brass fittings and elegant stairwell were graffiti-free and there was a well-maintained porter’s cabin at the entrance. The names on the intercoms were neatly printed or in dark, fluid italics. There were doctors, engineers, architects and lawyers all with their names clearly prefixed with their respective titles. Dottore, Ingegnere, Architetto, Avvocato.

The door opened to reveal a tall, still quite athletic man somewhere in his mid-sixties. He was wearing a suede, blouson-style leather jacket, the type favoured by men of his age, not necessarily only bourgeois types, but all those conscious of, and still proud of, their own masculinity and vigour. He seemed to have either recently arrived or to be about to leave. His handshake was firm and decisive, his face haggard and grey.

He showed Rossi in with a gentle sweep of his hand but moved about the flat with the hesitant uncertainty of one not used to living in a place. In fact, there were few or any indications that he might be the habitual resident. The blinds were still closed, there was no lingering aroma of cooking or morning coffee, no radio or television on. There were no newspapers, either read or unread. There was only a single book, on the corner of the far end of the long baroque-looking table at which he invited Rossi to take a seat opposite him.

They sat for some moments in silence before the judge seemed to remember his manners.

“Can I offer you something to drink, Inspector? Coffee, a glass, perhaps, of mineral water?”

Rossi was on his third or fourth coffee already and opted for the water. The judge returned with an ornate, miniature silver tray on which were balanced two delicate glasses. He looked around in vain for coasters.

“I’m really not sure where anything is in this house,” he explained. “It was my mother’s and then, when I divorced, well. Still on good terms though,” he added with scant conviction. “And now with the boy needing to be looked after, it’s all so, so up in the air.”

He trailed off in his explanation making it all quite clear to Rossi.

Already floundering, he thought. And now all this.

The judge left the tray on the table between them and then, clearing his throat, began what appeared destined to be a speech of sorts.

“I feel,” he began, “about last night, that I owe you and your fellow officers something of an apology. I was really quite,” he began to search for the exact word, then as if contenting himself with a cliché, concluded, “not myself.”

“Think nothing of it,” said Rossi. “It is quite understandable, really, isn’t it?”

Silence reigned for a few moments as the two men reprised their different parts in the previous night’s drama.

It wasn’t exactly changing the subject but Rossi thought he had better begin to at least get the ball rolling with a more predictable question.

“Was Maria seeing someone?”

The judge gave a shrug of sorts.

“I believe there was someone,” he said. “But it was all very casual, as far as I knew.”

“Did she mention a name?”

He shook his head.

“We didn’t have that kind of relationship,” he said. “She would always go to her mother for advice about boys. But that was a long time ago.”

“Was she in trouble in any way? Did your daughter ever mention having enemies?” Rossi asked.

“Only mine,” he replied. “As far as I can possibly know. She was a very independent woman. Keeping on top of her home life and her work. I can’t imagine she had much time to make enemies. If that’s what you mean.”

“I mean,” said Rossi, “was she perhaps involved with any investigations, in her line of work. She was a lawyer, was she not?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “She always wanted to go her own way in the world. Not mine. Always did the opposite.” He almost gave a little laugh as he seemed to remember something. “I wanted her to take up ballet. I knew certain people at La Scala. But she wanted to do martial arts! Of course, I was misguided. Besides, she was always going to be much too tall to be a dancer. Still, that was her way.”

“Admirable, wouldn’t you say?”

“You could say that.”

There was a loaded pause before Rossi continued. A clock was ticking somewhere.

“She had a part-time position with a studio. I didn’t ask her very much. She spoke of regular work: family-law cases, small property affairs. Nothing remarkable. And then,” he added, with what appeared to be a melancholy emphasis, “she had her voluntary work.”

“For whom?” Rossi enquired, interested now.

“Whomsoever required it. She was good like that. Very generous. Willing to give of herself. Always off travelling to this place or that place.”

“So you don’t feel that someone could have wanted to murder your daughter because she was creating problems, getting in the way of anything?”

The judge was looking across the table at Rossi. In his lined and fissured face, Rossi could see some other preoccupation, something other than the investigation.

“I believe you are English, aren’t you?” he said suddenly.

“You could say that,” Rossi replied.

“How do I say my daughter has died, is dead? What is the word for la morte?”

It didn’t seem quite the moment for language lessons, but Rossi felt a certain duty.

“My daughter is dead. She was killed. She was murdered.”

“Oh,” said the judge. “I see.” He looked up, suddenly, in an almost sprightly manner. “Do you ski, Inspector? You know, I am a member of the Alpine Club of Italy. We had planned a week together, in the Dolomites. We go most years.”

“I am sorry,” said Rossi, a little confused, not sure what question, if any, he was answering. “I have never learned.”

“But you could learn!” he countered. “It’s never too late!”

Rossi smiled and shook his head.

“No, it’s not for me, really.”

But the judge had already drifted elsewhere with his thoughts.

“And do you think they will come for me, Inspector?”

Rossi looked across the table at the judge. He appeared, for all the world, like someone who had simply enquired as to whether or not it would be a fine day tomorrow.

“No, I don’t believe so, sir. I really don’t believe it is a question of them.”

The judge was looking straight at him now, his gaze stony, his mouth pursed tight, as though holding back an avalanche of emotions or profound knowledge.

“I want you to know,” Rossi continued, “that I feel sure your daughter was the victim of a killer who chooses his victims according only to his own deranged criteria and not because of who you are or who your daughter was. And besides, his methods,” he began again, before feeling an irresistible pressure to lower his gaze, “are not consistent with the type of murder you perhaps fear. I am sure the killer doesn’t even know who you are. Just as he didn’t care who the first two victims were, and who the next will be, if we don’t stop him first.”

“Yes,” the judge nodded. “Yes. He must be apprehended. At all costs,” he added, seeming to have re-conquered some of his old fight and voglia di vivere, the will to live. It would have made it all so much more perversely understandable. A mafia-pool judge and the worst possible revenge – that of taking a loved one. It was, instead, a senseless killing. A random folly, like being struck by lightning on a family picnic.

“You know,” he began again, “she always refused the protection she would have been entitled to. She maintained she could look after herself pretty well. She refused to live like a prisoner in her own life.”

“She was very brave,” said Rossi.

“Yes, she was. But it would have saved her.”

Rossi reached for the glass and took a sip.

Feeling that it was time to bring things to a close, he asked if he might use the bathroom. He splashed his face and, on coming back into the dining room, his incorrigible reader’s curiosity led him to turn over the book lying flat on the corner of the table.

“Ah,” he said, “Buzzati.”

The book was The Seven Messengers, one of his favourites. Its title story told of a prince who, on leaving his father’s kingdom to discover what lies beyond the confines of the realm, takes with him seven riders to relay news between the old world and the new one he is to discover. As time passes, however, the narrator realizes the growing futility of his system as the future relentlessly and inexorably eclipses the past.

“You can have it if you like,” said the judge. “It was for my daughter. I had been putting aside the whole series for her as they came out with the newspaper. She loves, loved to read.”

Although he knew he had a copy of the book on a shelf somewhere in his flat, Rossi accepted it then handed the judge his card, should he need to get in touch.

“There was just one more thing,” said Rossi. “I was wondering whether I could ask you if you have a picture of your daughter, sir, one I can use for the investigation.”

“A picture? A photograph? Yes, of course, one moment.” And he slipped out and into an adjoining room. He returned carrying a large album into which, over the years, many extra pictures had been accommodated, so much so that when he opened it some spilled onto the table. For a moment the judge seemed to be lost in some bitter-sweet melancholy of reminiscence as he searched for a recent image.

“No. She seems to be just a little young in these,” he said, “her hair’s quite different. Now, let me find something more up to date,” he said, almost jumping up and leaving Rossi alone again. There was one photo which Rossi felt could, nonetheless, be of some use to him and he slipped it into his jacket pocket.

“Here’s what I was after,” the judge exclaimed on returning, then, as if dampening his own temporary enthusiasm, he placed the image in front of Rossi.

“Thank you,” said Rossi, with due reverence.

As he left, descending the staircase, after a moment’s thought he was able to recall, almost by heart, the closing lines of the Buzzati story. He repeated the words to himself, like a seasoned priest reciting the requiem: Tomorrow, new hope will drive me on towards those unexplored mountains shrouded in the shadows of the night. Once more, I will break camp while Domenico disappears over the horizon in the opposite direction, carrying with him my now quite useless message to the far, far distant city.

Thirteen

“I did think about waking him up,” she said, “in case he was going to be late for something important, but then I just thought, sod him. And then I felt bad about it and went back.”

Yana was leaning on the reception desk of the Wellness Health and Fitness Complex. She was wearing wedge-like training shoes, ultramarine Lycra leggings and a tracksuit top. Her blonde hair was pulled into a high ponytail. Sporty and sexy. Get the clients in. Give the housewives and harassed professionals something to aspire to but without being too far out of their league. She knew what worked.

“Would have served him right,” said Marta, staring into a small mirror balanced on the counter and applying yet another layer of mascara. Her eyes had taken on the appearance of two very beautiful tropical spiders. Always experimenting, there was nothing she couldn’t tell you about beauty and treatments. Yana looked after the business and the fitness side but Marta had the X-factor, without a doubt. She closed her little box. “What do you think? Never know who might walk in that door, do you? Could be George Clooney, with his mates, couldn’t it?”

“And Fabio?” said Yana, not so very mock-scandalized.

“Always good to have a spare, darling. Never know when you might need another.”

Yana laughed and dealt her friend and partner a playful push.

“Your Michael,” said Marta, “he doesn’t, you know, when he’s ‘working late’?” and she gave a knowing wink.

“Noo!” said Yana, in fake outrage at the scandalous suggestion. “He’s too busy with his books.”

“Oh! Him and his books!”

“Uh huh,” said Yana, scanning the appointments for the day. “Novels, poetry, theology even.”

“Theology! He wanna be a priest or something? Watch him, darling. Hey, you might be left on the shelf, if you follow.”

A year in the seminary. How often she had wondered about that, at first – Michael’s lost vocation in the Church. But then it just became kind of normal, like all the things that take up their place in a relationship and perhaps to outsiders seem strange or puzzling. Like ornaments around a living room. She wouldn’t mention that to Marta, though. Not a secret, just personal.

He had often tried to explain to her his desire to do some good, his love of thought and philosophy, and the disappointments that had pushed him towards a life of reflection and sacrifice. Then he had woken up, as it were, and decided to take a more practical approach. Grab life by the scruff of the neck as he used to say. He thought he had been running away from the world, so he decided to come back and face it. But there was a part of him that was perhaps still monastic, withdrawn, thoughtful. Suppose it helped, at times, she concluded, trying again to make sense of it all and how she’d got to where she was and everything she’d had to leave behind. And she had secrets, too, mind, but they really were under lock and key. In a safe, with a combination for good measure, so to speak.

“On your feet, girl,” said Marta, rousing Yana from her temporary dreamy state as the door to the health centre opened. A tall, athletic, Mediterranean male, maybe mid-forties, ambled towards the desk. “Here he comes now, your real Mr Right, or maybe your future bit on the side.”

“Perhaps either of you young ladies could be of assistance,” he said and deposited a holdall of some considerable weight on the polished parquet floor, the heavy tools clinking inside as he did so.

Fourteen

Despite his initial certainty and strenuous defence of his own interpretation of events, something was nagging at the back of Rossi’s mind. He had called the office to let Carrara know he had sorted things out with the judge. He had then had lunch in an anonymous eatery near Tiburtina station and frequented by locals, just to see what the vibe was like. They were talking about the murders in hushed tones, studying the papers, speculating. A couple of Romanian workmen walked in and drew a few dirty looks from the barman and some of the older patrons. Potential scapegoats. It couldn’t be the work of an Italian, after all.

Rossi had then decided to take a couple of hours off before the press conference, to think things through. He would take the Metro to Flaminia from where he could then have a stroll through Villa Borghese. It was one of Rome’s most beautiful parks, bequeathed to the people in perpetuity by public-minded aristocrats from a bygone age. As he was passing under the archway at its entrance, he noted a pickpockets’ graveyard behind one of the ventilation shafts of the Metro system; it was a sorry corner where you might find the detritus of drug users’ paraphernalia and, as often as not, abandoned purses, handbags, and wallets, picked clean of all valuables by the thieves that plagued the more touristic stretches of Rome’s transport system.

Sometimes there were even coins, Polish zloty, or roubles: useless as they could neither be spent nor exchanged locally and would only risk incriminating any self-respecting pickpocket. So, most thieves were after ready cash or maybe credit cards and, almost as a matter of course, would jettison any ID, which would, sometimes, get returned to its rightful owners. He’d even witnessed bizarre scenes of freshly fleeced individuals getting their wallets thrown back through the closing doors of a tube train about to depart; a little lighter for cash but at least freeing the owner of the trauma of having to drag themselves through the Italian bureaucracy.

The judge had left him feeling slightly perplexed. He was evidently a cold individual, and likely still in a state of shock. The two factors had combined to render his replies somewhat enigmatic but as yet Rossi hadn’t been able to put his finger on what it was that was bothering him. He was also thinking about Marini’s handbag and why the killer might have taken it. It had been cleaned out but by an opportunist third party, or even the killer himself. Had he decided to make a little bonus while he was at it? Had he needed cash? For drugs, possibly. But then why hadn’t he left it at the scene? Maybe fearing prints, and they had been able to get some, but they could have been from any passer-by who had taken a hopeful peek.

There was also the possibility that he had been disturbed, had heard someone approaching, and taken it with him as he made his escape. Like a wild animal slinking off with its kill so it can be studied, savoured, enjoyed in peace, away from the nagging attention of jackals and hyenas. Or had he been looking for something? Even the calmest person, in the least stressful of situations, can sometimes feel like they are losing their mind while trying to find a house key at the bottom of a bag chock-full of items, and in poor light, too, not to mention the risk of being seen. Was it all beginning to add up to something more complex? But what could he have been looking for? And why? He stopped by the ornamental lake and took out his phone to call Carrara.

“Gigi?”

“Yes, boss.”

“Put the press conference back to six or seven. Something’s come up. I think the judge might have been on to something all along.”

“What do you mean? Mafia?” Carrara’s voice betrayed ill-concealed incredulity.

“Something,” said Rossi. “Something that doesn’t quite fit. It could just be a feeling, but we need more on the girl first. Have you found anything?”

“Nothing special. It’s just as you said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He must have studied her movements to ascertain whether or not she was a mother, if that’s still the motive, but other than that …”

“OK,” said Rossi, “check out what exactly she did in her voluntary work. See if you can find out about her clients. Try to discover a bit about them and why she was helping them.”

“Will do,” said Carrara. “Is that all?”

Rossi thought for a moment.

“Go back to her flat, too, and seal it off if it hasn’t been done already. And while you’re there see if you can find a phone, a computer, files, clients’ lists that might be sensitive. See if anything’s missing.”

“And her ex?” said Carrara.

“Is he in Rome yet?”

“On his way apparently.”

“See if he knows anything about her activities, her private life. I’ll be at the office in half an hour.”

Fifteen

One more stroke with the whetstone and the blade was gleaming, sharp as a razor’s edge. He held it up and admired its glint in the street light filtering through the window into the rented apartment. He often sat in the dark at this time of the evening, looking down, watching, while safe in the knowledge he could not be seen. It had always been a favourite game – being the voyeur, the watcher. They, meanwhile, walked along the street, oblivious, as he imagined which of them might put up a fight, who would crumple into so much dust under the blows. Sometimes all it took was a single swing. Other times they had to be pummelled. That was messy. But he liked it like that too, if there was time, and time was of the essence.

He thrust the knife deep into the chopping board at the centre of the table, spearing the official communication that lay there, the three letters that spelled out his now particular form of mortality. The knife was for show, for fear, not for killing. Not yet. He took up the gun then, removed the magazine, and jerked the slide, ejecting the compact round from the chamber. Then he wiped the hammer; not to clean it, but ritually, as if he were a mother drying a small child, dabbing and caressing it before lapping it in its sacking. What did mother say? A good workman cleans his tools. A bad workman blames his tools. So, he was doing well. The holy trinity of hammer, blade, and bullet. And yes, the plan was established, the traps were being set, and the chase was on. But there were so many clues to reveal and so many more had to die before he could have his finale. These had been but the opening lines in the first scene of the first act of the tragedy. Or was it a comedy? Tragedy. Comedy. Tragedy. Comedy. He thought it was both. He really couldn’t quite decide.

It certainly made him laugh out loud to see how the hoi polloi now were running scared. The bars, too, were suddenly so much emptier once darkness fell, the proprietors fretting over lost revenues, cursing the killer who had made their neighbourhood a no-go-zone. Then there were the furtive looks on the frightened faces when a foreign workman threw down his bag and hefted out a hammer as he set to mending the city’s roads and broken paving stones. He knew what they were thinking now. Was one of them the Luzi killer or the Marini killer? Did he pick them up in his van, violate them, smash their skulls then dump the bodies?

He had heard the talk himself, irony of ironies, as he sipped his morning coffee and pretended to pore over the latest local gossip in the Roman Post. Perhaps he would start killing some of them too – the stranieri, the foreigners clogging up the country like the saturated fat in a sick man’s veins. Perhaps he would start slaughtering the fat men themselves, the ones he watched askance as they suckled like oversized infants at the dry, consoling teat of the sports pages in these self-same bars. Or maybe the pensioners and half cripples who fed their fistfuls of small change into the fruit machines from dawn until dusk in hopes of sudden ecstasy.

The letter stared back at him, pierced by the upright blade – night’s sundial casting its dead meridian. It complicated things? Or made everything much simpler? An existential question then – which was his stock in trade. To be or not to be. Life and death. Smell the flowers? Crush them while you can. But he would lead them a merry dance and oh how he would laugh. Laugh at them all. Them all.

Sixteen

Beware of Carrara bearing gifts, thought Rossi as the door to his office was opened by a jab of his colleague’s foot. He was balancing takeaway coffees on a stack of files and had the spritely demeanour of a cop on the verge of cornering his man.

“Cat that got the cream?” quipped Rossi from a semi-horizontal position in his office chair. Carrara gave a wryish smile and set the mini plastic cups down where there was an islet of desk space. Yet more caffeine to fuel the sluggish afternoon. “Let’s have it then.”

“Well, first up, she was working for one of the top guys in the MPD. Luca Spinelli. Legal consultancy, voluntary, by the way.”

“So she was working for a political party,” said Rossi. “Not the crime of the century, is it?”

“No, but they were also having an affair. And he’s married.”

“So, what? She was a single woman, pretty, good luck to her.”

But Carrara hadn’t finished.

“And she broke it off, much to the disappointment of aforementioned high-ranking MPD lover.”

He reached into a file and pulled out a sheaf of printed papers.

“Exhibit A: e-mails from one pissed-off politician, or should I say anti-politician, citizen. What do they call themselves?”

Rossi, graduating to an upright, seated position reached out to take Carrara’s first fruits. He scanned the pages. The content was a disturbing mix of insane affection, lust, suicidal reverie, and some degree of menace.

“Enough for a motive? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Enough to merit digging deeper, wouldn’t you say? And the method’s the same as Gentili and Luzi. He could be our man.”

“Where did you get these?” Rossi asked.

“The ex. Her ex-husband. He arrived last night, and I went over for a chat. I asked if there was anything I might need to know regarding Maria and he told me straight out about the affair. Seems she’d been trying to get things back on track. That was the initial reason she ended the relationship with Spinelli. But there were some furtive phone calls and stuff and the ex starts smelling a rat, gets a bit nosy and decides to print off her private e-mails – he just happens to be an IT security consultant – in case he might need proof for divorce proceedings and so on. Not too bothered otherwise, it seems. He confronts her, thinks she’s not playing a straight bat, but she plays the whole thing down; says your man’s all bark and no bite. But hubby’s not having any of it and they break off again and, well, the rest is history.”

“Did she go back to Spinelli?”

“Seems not, but she did continue working for the party. She was helping them with libel cases. You know how the bigs have been trying to cripple them in the courts, scare them off with huge damages actions. She might have been able to use her father’s contacts to some extent, but we don’t know that for sure.”

“And the ex is going to get custody, of the kid? You do remember, don’t you, she had a son? Do you think he wants it?”

“I doubt it. He mentioned something about his work commitments ‘not being negotiable’ and the kid’s grandparents being ‘the easiest solution’ for everyone.”

“Nice guy.”

Carrara gave a shrug.

“Haven’t you noticed how many kids get brought up by their grandparents in Rome?”

“Has Maroni got any of this then?” said Rossi.

“It’s not his case,” said Carrara. Ever the idealist, thought Rossi.

“It’s always Maroni’s case, especially when he needs it. But does he know what you’ve got?”

“Came straight to you, Mick,” said Carrara, “but listen, there’s more.”

“Go on.”

“Well, the forensics, for one. They’ve got some DNA from her clothing and in the car and if they match with the other crime scenes we might be onto something. We could try Spinelli.”

Rossi let out a sigh.

“Are you telling me that this Spinelli guy has faked himself as a serial killer as a perfect cover, or actually became a serial killer, murdered one or two innocent women just so he can bump off his ex-lover? Sounds a bit off the wall, don’t you think?”

“Unless,” countered Carrara, “he heard about the note on the second victim, got a tip-off or something about it being a possible serial killer. Then he hatched himself a plan.”

Rossi was swinging in short, rapid, pensive arcs in his chair.

“Iannelli knows. I told him to keep it to himself, in return for tasty morsels, obviously. But it’s way off the mark.”

“But we’re still going to have to give this to Maroni, right?” said Carrara, “and then the public prosecutor might want to make a move. Impatient for an arrest and the like. You know they want to be informed.”

Rossi felt it was Carrara who was piling the pressure on now. Time to release the valve, he thought.

“I think we’d better make a little visit to Mr Spinelli first, don’t you? Just for a chat. As someone who knew the victim, he has valuable information to offer. No need to make it official. No lawyers. Routine enquiries. Can we hold off until tomorrow?”

“Possibly,” said a guarded Carrara realizing he’d have to put the champagne moment on hold.

“Any of the guys go with you to the ex?”

“Just Bianco, and he’s onside, I’m pretty sure.”

“Well tell him to keep it under his proverbial. And the press conference? We’ll have to put it back to eight o’clock now. They’re going to hate us but it might give us time to see what this crazed lover has got to say for himself.”

Carrara made a note.

“We can say we’re still waiting on some forensics. I’ll have a word with Loretta in the lab. She’ll cover up if we need her to.”

“Good,” said Rossi. “What’s his name and where can we find him?”

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” said Rossi.

“Call from Chief Superintendent Maroni, sir,” said a uniformed female officer whose name he couldn’t remember but whose smile always brightened his day. “Says it is of the utmost urgency.”

But Rossi had already got to his feet and was gesturing to Carrara to do likewise.

“Tell him I’m not here. I’m out. No, at the dentist. Terrible toothache. Can’t even speak. Face out here,” he said miming a mild deformity of the cheek area. “He can call me on my mobile,” he said, grinning now while grabbing his coat and giving Carrara the definitive signal to move out. “And I won’t be answering that in a hurry,” he added, sotto voce, as they headed for the car.

Seventeen

Early forties, exuding a twitchy, impatient enthusiasm and an earnest if weary expression, Luca Spinelli was the new face of Italian politics. They had agreed to meet at his office where it was clear that he’d been both working and living since the break-up with Maria and the subsequent collapse of his own marriage.

“I’ve made a pretty good job of losing it all, don’t you think?” he said as he faced Rossi and Carrara across his desk. “A marriage, the woman I loved. Still have my work though,” he said with a liberal dose of acid irony.

“And we won’t be keeping you from it for long, I’m sure,” Rossi reassured him. “Just a few questions but it would be helpful if you could tell us anything you think may have aroused your suspicion in recent weeks.”

“With pleasure, Inspector,” he replied maintaining the same satirical tone.

Rossi passed the sheaf of e-mails across the desk. “You can, I presume, confirm that you wrote these? In particular, the last one, written in the early hours of the day on which Maria was later killed.”

Spinelli’s expression went from shock and embarrassment through to apparent incredulity.

“How did you get these?”

As Rossi explained, Spinelli went back to leafing through them, reliving the strange, voyeuristic dislocation that comes from seeing your own words already become a form of history. He stopped and held out one of the sheets.

“I didn’t write this,” he said. “I couldn’t have written this. I mean it’s not possible. It’s not me. It can’t be me.” He began to read out some of the more incriminating sentences: “‘If I can’t be with you then you can’t live either, you are coming with me, then we will always be together, I won’t let you get away with this so easy, if I can’t have you no one can … I’ll do myself in or both of us …’”

“It’s your e-mail account,” said Rossi, “and we can pretty quickly ascertain if it came from your own computer, in which case, if it did, it makes things, shall we say, at best, awkward for you.”

“So you’re saying that I did it, that I’m a suspect?”

“I am saying that circumstantial evidence could implicate you as a possible suspect at this point in the investigation – for the murder of Maria Marini and those of both Paola Gentili and Anna Luzi. Unless perhaps you can explain why you wrote it.”

“Or who wrote it,” he added. “Who, Inspector.”

Spinelli’s tone had turned combative, and he now had something of the cornered look in his eyes, a look Rossi had seen many times before.

“Does anyone else have access to your account?”

“No.”

“So you are the sole user.”

“That would appear to be the case.”

“And you aren’t in the habit of letting other people write e-mails for you. A secretary, an aid. Maria herself, maybe? She was helping you, I believe.”

“Oh, yes,” said Spinelli, “and I often give people the keys to my flat too and say ‘walk right in, go on, help yourself’.”

Rossi gave a partially muted sigh.

“So, when you say ‘who’ wrote it, what do you mean exactly?”

“Well,” began Spinelli, “call me an MPD conspiracy theorist, by all means, but has the thought not occurred to you that they might have hacked it, Inspector?”

Rossi never liked the way the final inspector was tagged on like a sardonic Post-it note, but he’d grown used to it. Comes with the job, he mused internally, nobody likes a cop, unless they need one, and then they’re never there, are they? Ha, ha. Come to think of it, he didn’t even like being called inspector when it wasn’t used ironically and would happily have deployed his first name but then it just wasn’t done, was it? Hi, I’m Michael and I’m here to help you. Like fuck you are. You’re here to bang me up as quick as you can and get yourself another stripe. Back to work.

“And you think there might be a reason for that.”

“To frame me, of course!” Spinelli exploded.

“But do you have reason to suspect that someone is trying to frame you, Dr Spinelli?”

Spinelli fumbled in his jacket pockets then wrenched open a desk drawer before locating his cigarettes. He lit up and smoke-whooshed a reply.

“Her ex, for starters. Or maybe just the whole political establishment,” he added with a mock-ironic flourish, standing up and beginning to pace the small office, making it look, at least to Rossi’s eyes, as if it were turning into a cell. He stopped at the window and turned around. Rossi could see he was shaping up for a confession of sorts. But which? There were those that revealed all, those that left out the awkward or shameful particulars, and those made up to take the rap for someone else.

“Look, Inspector,” he began with greater, if rather more, mannered sincerity, “I wrote a few things, in the heat of the moment, which I shouldn’t have. You see, I’d already been drinking, rather a lot as it happens, and since the break-up, well it had just got worse and worse.” He made a hand gesture towards the street. “I’ve been spending most of my evenings in the piano bar round the corner from here. I get something to eat and try to switch off a bit, and then I come back, sleep on the sofa and then I dust myself down and start work again in the morning. The glamorous world of politics.” He stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and sat back down again. He paused to collect his thoughts, joining his hands and holding the fingertips just under his nose, as though gently drawing up through his nostrils some delicate perfume they exuded.

“That day, the day Maria was killed,” he went on, “I woke up and my mind was almost a complete blank. I was still wearing my clothes and my head was pounding. At first, I thought I must have been hitting it harder than usual and perhaps, perhaps, when I had come back the night before I logged on and just started writing that stuff, but it wasn’t me. It was someone else; I was out of my mind; I didn’t feel that way. I didn’t want to kill anyone.”

Rossi looked him in the eye.

“Did you kill her? Perhaps while, as you say, you were out of your mind? Had you gone drinking again that afternoon?”

“No.”

“Did you follow her, stalk her?”

“Stalk? No. Look, I went to her place once or twice when I was drunk, on other occasions, to talk, but that’s as far as it went. Just me leaning on the bell until the madness passed.”

“Did you want to kill her?”

“No, of course not!”

“Did you ever fantasize about killing her, for revenge, for going back to Volpini, for screwing up your marriage?”

“Do you really want me to answer that question?”

“Yes, Dr Spinelli, I do.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “the thought might have occurred, in my mind, in my wildest moments, in my worst moments, but I would never, ever have done it. Haven’t you ever thought about revenge, Inspector?”

Oh, yes, thought Rossi. How he had thought about revenge, planned it even, down to the last detail. The hit, the getaway. The cleanest, most perfect of crimes only a cop could commit.

“Yes,” said Rossi, snapping back from the reverie, “probably, but as far as I know, I have never as yet put it in writing.”

“And neither have I.”

A good firm answer. Rossi liked that. It meant he was on the right lines. It might mean less work, too, and he wanted Maroni off his back about this guy. He was clean. Screwed-up but clean. And besides, there was no material link. No weapon. No witness. No DNA.

But Rossi sensed Carrara was uneasy. He would be concerned that his squeezing of Spinelli was going too far emotively. Carrara was Mr Logic. It was what he did and he did it well, and Rossi knew he was itching to put his oar in. He gestured to his colleague, ceding the floor to him.

“I was just wondering,” began Carrara, “do you think I could take a quick look at the computer, Dr Spinelli?” he asked, glancing askance at Rossi and, like seasoned team players, getting his immediate tacit assent. “I think we might be better off just checking a few things here and now.”

“Feel free,” he said and machine-gunned his password into the keyboard.

“That’s not written anywhere, is it?”

“No. Memorized and difficult to crack. Numbers, letters and symbols and case-sensitive.”

Rossi was more than glad of Carrara’s serious nerd tendencies when it came to computers; it meant he could save precious time and dispense with tedium. He was clicking around now on Spinelli’s e-mail, opening strange windows he’d never seen before and seemed to have already located something of interest.

“I note,” he said, sounding very much the doctor rather than the policeman, “that you’ve been checking your sent items a lot.”

“I honestly don’t remember,” Spinelli replied.

“On the night before the murder you checked some recent e-mails you sent to Maria. Why would you do that?”

“And why would I do that?” asked Spinelli his tone a blend of puzzlement and returning mild contempt. “I was drunk and emotional. I couldn’t give a damn what I’d written about the night before. I might have been hitting all the wrong keys. There’s any number of explanations.”

“Well,” said Carrara gauging from Spinelli’s reaction that there was no damning sign of guilt, “I don’t know for sure, and we may need a linguistics report on this, but could it be that someone, someone else, really was in your account and was trying to, shall we say, discover your style, see how you write, and then,” he looked up at a frowning Spinelli, “write as if he, or she, were you?”

Rossi, intrigued now, was eager to combine forces.

“Doctor Spinelli, are you sure you came home alone that night?”

“I told you. I was very drunk. I remember next to nothing after 9 or 10 o’clock. I blacked out and woke up with a headache from hell.”

“Do you think anyone could have seen you, as you were coming home or leaving the bar?”

“The barman, maybe. There was a girl, actually; I remember that.”

“And did you drink with anyone? Did anyone buy you drinks?”

“Maybe, yes, usually, but I couldn’t say who. Some people know who I am and we often get talking but, really, it’s all a blur. There was the concert, people coming and going.”

Rossi turned to Carrara.

“Luigi, why don’t you take this man for a quiet drink in his usual bar and see if you can find a witness who saw him leave and with whom. Then get him down to the lab, if that’s all right with you,” he said, turning his attention back to Spinelli who now had his arms crossed tightly across his crumpled, white-shirted chest, “and run a blood test and a urine test.”

“A blood test?” spurted Spinelli.

“For what?” said Carrara.

“Anything,” said Rossi, “but sedatives mainly, fast-acting ones, although I do get the sneaking feeling we could be talking Rohypnol here.”

“The date-rape drug?” said Spinelli, shifting in his chair.

“Got it in one,” said Rossi. “And if it was, we should still be able to pick up any traces. Judging by your symptoms, the blackout, the after-effects, I’d say you got a spiked drink. Maybe someone taking a shot at you, or a poor-taste wind-up. I don’t know. Whether or not they then came back here with you or slipped in while you were distracted is more difficult to prove.”

Rossi turned to Carrara.

“And see what prints you can get off the PC, the door. We can always run them through the databases and see what comes up.”

Spinelli seemed more relaxed; like he’d been through the mill, yes, but to some extent relieved. The look of an innocent man who has found someone to believe him?

“Time to cut down on the sauce, perhaps?” Rossi ventured, more than a little pleased with himself, and then remembering what Spinelli was going through, added, “I’m very sorry about Maria. We’re going to do everything in our power.”

“Thank you, Inspector,” said Spinelli.

As Rossi headed for the door, leaving Spinelli in Carrara’s capable hands, a thought occurred to him. He turned towards the now ex-suspect, as far as he was concerned.

“Do you think there could have been other reasons why they, or whoever it was, wanted to kill Maria? Did she have anything in her possession, did anything go missing that you might be aware of?”

“She had a laptop, of course, disks, memory sticks with a lot of our data on. You know, the court cases, the legal actions against us. The work we were doing on constitutional reform. The prison reform. You didn’t find anything, presumably.”

“Nothing. Her bag was ransacked and subtracted from the scene.”

“Well, our new lawyer is going to have some work to do. But not to worry. Starting from scratch is what we’re good at. Or perhaps I should say climbing the mountain. Yes, mountaineers. That’s what we are. Well-prepared, with clear objectives, and a tough lot.”

Not Kremlin mountaineers, I hope, Rossi thought but decided to save it for himself. You can’t expect everyone to be into Mandelstam, he conceded, but the comparisons being drawn between Stalinist control freakery and the power structures within the movement were maybe not so far off the mark.

“Like Sisyphus?” he said, compromising.

“Maybe,” said Spinelli, “or maybe that’s how you see things, but I like to think we’re actually getting somewhere, Inspector, that it’s not all quite so futile. And I think we’ve got a lot of people in high places more than a little scared. You see, solving Italy’s problems is not difficult, despite what they say. What’s difficult is getting the privileged to give up their cosy little arrangements. They cost us billions, the Church too, with all its privileges. But when the people begin to understand, we’ll put our plan into practice. We’ll remove the Church from every part of civic society. No more secret banking. The Lateran Treaties guaranteeing the cosy coexistence of the Vatican within the Italian state and all their fascist inheritance will be torn up.”

“But the treaties are part of the constitution,” cut in Carrara.

“Exactly,” he said, his eyes burning red now, from grief, anger, and exhaustion, “and when there’s enough support we’ll change the constitution and Italy will be a real Republic. Not this hobbled pseudo-democracy taking orders from the cardinals, multinationals, and old-money fascists. Then we’ll be free. And Maria will be a hero. She won’t have died in vain.”

“Well,” said Rossi, enjoying the speech and the little game that had sprung up between them, “just remember, that when you do get near the top of this mountain you’re climbing it’s merciless, it’s lonely, progress is painfully slow, and you’ll need to carry all your own oxygen.”

“The oxygen of the truth, Inspector, or just the plain old stuff that keeps you breathing?”

“Oh,” said Rossi, “I’d say you’d do well to have them both, and in abundance.”

Eighteen

“I tried not to,” said Bianco to Rossi, who had just slipped back into the office to be greeted by a grim, conspiratorial silence. “He was, shall we say, insistent. Very insistent.”

Maroni had been going berserk. In Rossi’s absence, the whole team had incurred his wrath and, homing in on the weakest link, Maroni had managed to squeeze at least some information out of Bianco.

“He’s got a lot of people on his back,” Rossi countered, having grasped where it was all leading and beginning to soliloquize.

“Oh, and he said he wants to see you ‘physically in person,’” Bianco added, “about Spinelli but before the press conference.”

“And they’ll be pushing for an arrest,” a newly bored Rossi continued, slumping into a vacant chair, “just to keep things quiet and to keep the hacks happy. Give the dogs a bone. Then he’ll go to trial and he’ll probably be convicted, on circumstantial evidence. Then there’ll be an appeal and after about four years they’ll all realize what idiots the judge and, of course, the police had been the first time round and he’ll be out again, and the news, the talk shows, and the afternoon trash TV will be talking of nothing else. Sound familiar?” Bianco just hung his head.

“No? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s called what often passes for Italian justice!”

“He threatened me with a transfer. Well, not exactly threatened, but you knew what he was getting at.”

Rossi nodded. He knew both Maroni’s methods and that it was always only a matter of time before he would have things moving in the direction he wanted. But while Rossi had time on his side and was still ahead, he could at least try to make hay.

“C’mon then. What did you give him?”

“I told him about the e-mails but,” he said, slipping back into his usual chatty tone, “but the funny thing is that he asked me if there were any.”

“He asked you if there were any e-mails?”

“Yes, he said there’d been an anonymous tip-off and he needed to know if it could be trusted. Said it could be life or death.”

Rossi dismissed Bianco, who seemed at least relieved to have got the whole thing off his chest. Then he sat down, took up a pencil and began to run through the possibilities. He took a deep breath.

Scenario one: Maria Marini’s killer had given the tip-off about the e-mails to throw them off the scent. So either he had known about the e-mail correspondence or he knocked them out himself, if the Rohypnol theory held up. Which meant he’d wanted to get Maria out of the way, leave the MPD with a serious PR headache, and have Spinelli and his party fighting for their political survival.

But if somebody just happens to tip-off the police, didn’t that actually presuppose that Spinelli was likely innocent and being framed? How could anyone have innocently come by the information. A casual comment from Maria’s ex? A worried friend? But it would still be way too shaky in a court of law.

Scenario two: Volpini, Marini’s ex. After all, he was the aggrieved party in primis, the cuckold. The e-mails had given him the perfect opportunity to lay the blame at his love rival’s door. But from what Carrara had told him he didn’t seem jealous enough, at least emotively. And if it emerged that Spinelli really had been drugged? Could Volpini have organized that little caper too? Again, unlikely, as Spinelli would have recognized him. And he was in Milan, unless he had hired help to get the drugs into Spinelli, gain access to his apartment and then write an incriminating final e-mail. But that was real professional stuff, way too far off the scale.

Third scenario, thought Rossi, his pencil blunting fast. What if it was all a ruse by Spinelli, first to set himself up in order to later get himself off the hook? It would work like this, Rossi said to his junior detective alter ego: make sure the e-mails get found via an anonymous tip-off and it looks like it’s game over. There’s a strong sentimental motive, circumstantial evidence to support it, no cast-iron alibi, and no witnesses to his going to sleep early rather than to the usual bar. Sooner or later the investigators would check his e-mails, but Spinelli goes belt and braces and points the finger at himself with his own poison pen. Then the Rohypnol theory kicks in and throws enough doubt into the equation to theoretically save him.

What if we cops hadn’t come up with it? Well, that would be Spinelli’s ace in his sleeve, his alibi. He could have given himself a dose of the stuff, holding off but planning at the last minute to say “hey, look guys, I felt terrible the other night, what if I was drugged and while I was zonked out on the floor someone got into my computer and set me up?” And maybe he’d even left the bar with some MPD groupie, saluting all and sundry to make sure it looked like he hadn’t left alone, thus furnishing a nice suspect for the cops to run around after. It was a real gambler’s option but it would leave sufficient doubt for him to get away with it and leave the case wide open.

Rossi’s head was spinning. It was feeling more and more like science fiction. But he also knew that before the facts could become the facts they could be anywhere and could be anything. Reality wasn’t like a film, a book; the plot was unwritten or unwritable. People were being murdered and the chances were that it was by someone they knew. It was a question of probability. The difficulty lay in unravelling the human messes of love, hate, politics, revenge, and ambition, not necessarily in that order, and the technical and logistical framework within which they operated – put simply, space and time. That, and establishing how far someone was prepared and able to go in order to remove another human being from the face of the earth. So what was at stake?

His gut instinct was telling him Spinelli was clean, but experience now suggested that he was up against a formidable array of possibilities and a formidable confederacy of deviants, as well, probably, as some dunces, in his own camp. There was a slew of circumstantial evidence, there was political expediency and the constant, pressing need to get a quick conviction. The tip-off story stunk, too, and combined with the urgency trickling down the chain of command via Maroni, despite himself, he feared history might be repeating itself, that this might be another political case dressed up as common crime. Even if you did never step in the same river twice it was still a river, you still got your feet wet.

So much for the straightforward murder enquiry. So much for keeping Rossi on a case that had nothing to do with the powers-that-be. In substantive terms, Maroni knew no more than he did himself. But Maroni also had to jump when “they” said jump and jump bloody high.

No. The more he mulled it over, and the more he processed what had happened in the space of what, three or four days, or two weeks counting the Colombo killing, the more he began to think that something, some mechanism might have snapped into action. Apart from having a killer on the loose, he was going to be coming up against darker forces than he had expected to be facing. His mobile phone rang again. That would be him.

Nineteen

The atmosphere in the conference room where the journalists were gathered was verging on the festive. Working for state-funded newspapers and TV, if you were on a good contract, was a junket and the lifestyle was easy to get used to. Everyone knew everyone, some better than others, of course. And some – how many? – had got to where they now were by dint not only of their wordsmithery but also in varying degrees thanks to the intimacy of their acquaintances, although the gender balance was, stile Italiano, rather more skewed in the predictable direction. Others may have not slept their way to success and though bed-hopping was about par for this course, there were other variations that could be registered on your scorecard too.

The Grand Hotel, being central and within walking distance of Termini station and the underground, had been chosen both to accommodate the revellers and to cater for the expected stampede of local, national, and even foreign correspondents. It provided the necessary space for national TV crews and their entourages as well as for the usual mike-toting local hacks from the galaxy of more or less obscure cable stations.

There was a palpable sense of expectation. All murder enquiries brought out the feeding frenzy instinct and this one was no different. It guaranteed weeks of copy for the crime correspondents, what with the endless speculation, the tawdry spectacle of interviews with victims’ families and neighbours and the footage of the crime scene. Then, like some second stage in a feared and now all too real malady, there would be the morbid pilgrimages to murder locations that sometimes ensued when a killing was perpetrated within the community, or, even better, within a family. The apparent randomness and viciousness of these recent crimes had aroused a particularly grim interest and the hacks were fishing now for more juicy details.

Iannelli had arrived early and secured himself a place in the front row. He’d always taken the hard way, fully aware that his choices would condemn him to pursue the slow build, the long haul, yet he didn’t have to avoid anyone and his name rarely featured in the gossip over drinks. All the usual faces were there and he’d been careful enough to press the flesh and backslap his way around the room, devoting a few moments of special attention to Luca Iovine of The Facet, already pencilled in as his future employer.

But he’d been here since five, and he wasn’t the only one beginning to think that if they put back the scheduled start-time again, the jovial atmosphere might turn rather more sour as first aperitifs and then dinner appointments got interfered with and grumbling stomachs and editors’ demands began to have undesired effects on tired brains. There was little worse than a projected early finish transforming itself into a protracted all-nighter. One downside to the job then.

There were signs of movement, however, coming from the temporary wings set up to give the conference room its heightened air of police-like institutional drabness. TV crews had just switched on their lights before a row of suited men, some in plain clothes and others in uniform, filed out and took their positions on the podium. They moved at a pontifical pace and with what seemed to be an equally apparent disdain for what constituted urgency in the non-police world. Despite their indifference to the long wait to which the waiting media men and women had been subjected, it was clear that they would not be hanging around either. And if the press wasn’t ready, it was their problem. Iannelli scanned the faces, but there was no sign of Rossi.

“I will be brief,” said Chief Superintendent Maroni, head of the Rome Serious Crime Squad, at the centre of the seven-man line-up which included the city prefect and two of the three magistrates so far involved. “I think most of you know who I am by now and, well, there have been,” he continued, briefly looking down at his notes, “certain developments regarding the recent murders of the two women in Rome and the earlier murder near the Via Cristoforo Colombo, and it is with some cautious optimism that I can say we are pleased,” he said turning briefly to survey his colleagues before recommencing, “to be able to confirm that these developments are ‘significant’.” As he raised his head, there was a wild paroxysm of flash photography and a forest of phone and pen-clutching hands shot up hoping to spear a question-asking opportunity.

At the back of the conference room, Michael Rossi entered through a side door and took up a position where there was still a little space. He had a shaken, ruffled appearance, but despite his still simmering anger he was also quite resigned for he knew exactly what was coming next.

He knew because before leaving the Questura he had already accepted yet another slice of his fate. Nonetheless, he was glad at least to have had some time with Spinelli. It had been crucial. As such, he had taken the call from Maroni, deciding to swallow the toad sooner rather than later. Incandescent, his superior had summoned him to a private room where in no uncertain terms he’d dressed Rossi down, ordered him to steer clear of making any trouble, and told him exactly how things were going to be played out later before the press. Then, true to form, Maroni had half-excused himself for his barbarity before sending Rossi away with instructions to “be late for the conference because you’re so fucking busy chasing killers that you can’t remember your own name.”

“My officers and I would like to thank in particular Inspectors Michael Rossi and Luigi Carrara and their team of investigators, who have been working flat out on this case and have not been able to join us, as yet.”

“Well here I am,” proffered Rossi, like a madman taunting his other self and anyone else who might hear him, but all eyes were on Maroni.

“My officers and I have been able to reconstruct a significant series of events leading up to the murder of Maria Marini, the details of which will emerge in due course but suffice to say the information we have so far been able to gather has been judged sufficient by the public prosecutor for us to move in the direction of making an arrest in this case with a view to bringing charges.”

More hopeful arms were thrust into the air to the accompaniment of rabid camera flashing and clicking but all to no avail as Maroni continued what was turning out to be nothing more than a statement.

“I will not be taking any questions now as there is, as I am sure you can all imagine, much work still to do. If there are any further developments this evening, we will endeavour to inform you forthwith. Thank you and good evening.”

And with that they filed out as indifferently as they had when they arrived.

Rossi, moving towards the centre of the melee, had caught Iannelli’s eye. The two men exchanged a glance, the import of which they both understood.

“Fancy Arabic?” said Rossi to the journalist now sitting beside him in his car. “We can talk there, it’s off the beaten track, don’t worry.”

“Suits me fine.”

Twenty

They found parking easily enough on Via Merulana and walked up the slight incline of the broad flagged pavement in the direction of the Basilica. In January, with Christmas done and dusted, the area saw little human activity and, with the pall of fear over the city, tonight it felt deserted. In winter, from this spot, if you could ignore for a moment the hypnotizing fairy-tale gold mosaics and baroque facade of Santa Maria Maggiore which greeted you, it was possible to see in the distance the sister basilica of San Giovanni by looking over your shoulder down the dead-straight boulevard. When spring came the plane trees would burst into life making the same long road between the two basilicas richly forest-like and mercifully cool, dappling the fierce sun held at bay overhead. But now, in the dark, all was bare and skeletal against the ashen sky.

They slipped into the warmth of Shwarma Station and ordered liberally from the dazzling array of Syrian and North African specialities at much saner prices than some of the more di moda kebab joints where conservative Romans went to be cosmopolitan. Stuffed vine leaves, falafel, couscous, hummus, and kebabs. There was no alcohol but they could wait. They took a table under the TV at the back of the room. There were the usual diners: expatriate Arabs, students, nostalgic types relishing the simplicity of paper table cloths and ordinary people and just a little edge. This was a meeting place, too, for the Islamic community and in the coming and going of Moroccans, Egyptians, Arabs, and Libyans there were, for sure, some less than legitimate characters caught up in the mix. For a good five minutes they ate in silence until they had seen off the first wave of their hunger.

“So, what’s new, Dario?”

“Depends what you mean? You mean the local shenanigans or the murder mystery?”

“All right,” said Rossi, “if you could give me some firm leads on either score, I’d be buying you dinner next time as well as today, but I’ll take whatever’s going.”

“Well, as far as my theories on the immigration rackets are concerned, I can’t get much unless you can secure me those wire taps on a few key individuals.”

Rossi shook his head.

“You know that’s impossible. No judge will give me the time of day if it’s anyone near the top of the tree with connections to high-ranking individuals. They’ll laugh me out of town. And for me to take the law into my own hands on this one, well that would be signing my own, I won’t say death warrant, but it could be close.”

Iannelli had the air of the mad scientist on the verge of the big discovery but thwarted by factors beyond his control. Rossi could almost imagine him screaming at the unbelievers “The fools!”

“I know I’m onto something big there, Michael, big and transversal. Do you follow? Everyone could be involved. Left, right, centre, Church, the co-ops and charities, even ex-terrorists. That’s the word I’m getting. We just need those taps and we could do something. Somebody would have to listen then.”

Rossi was intrigued but he knew that in these matters the system moved at a speed and in a manner comparable to that of plate tectonics in the earth’s crust: vast strategic interests that bordered one another yet only clashed decisively in certain key moments and when perhaps you least expected it. But nothing was likely to move until someone wanted it to move. It had to be at the bidding of some deus ex machina, but not a general saviour, rather some saviour of yet higher interests. Russian dolls. Stories within stories. Yes. The Arabian Nights.

“And the murders?” Rossi enquired. “What’s out, Dario? I mean, the notes, the suspect? This prick-teasing at the press conference. What’s the word on that?”

It was Iannelli’s turn now to shake his head.

“Nothing from me, Michael, I’m holding fire, but sooner or later somebody’s always going to let something slip. You know that.”

“And tip-offs?”

“Nothing.”

“But d’you know who they’re going to arrest or not?”

“Well, I do have a sneaking suspicion it might be someone close to Ms Marini, if that’s what you mean.”

“Obviously, but who?”

“Look,” said Iannelli, wiping his fingers on a napkin, “I know about the MPD link but until there’s an arrest we won’t be going with it. ‘Police are close to an arrest in The Carpenter case’, if you like. Something like that. But you clearly know how close, don’t you? Though you don’t look exactly tickled by it.”

Rossi rolled an olive across his plate with his fork.

“What do you want out of this, Dario? The same as me? To get a killer off the street? Or to have a high-profile show trial that can run for God knows how long? Or do you think there’s more here than meets the eye? Do you want it to be more than the sum of its parts? Is that where you think this is going?”

“Michael, isn’t it always more than the sum of its parts when there’s politics in play?”

“So you think Spinelli is involved?”

“In some way, yes. He has to be.”

“But guilty?”

“That remains to be seen. You’re the policeman here, aren’t you?”

“But no smoke without fire. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Look,” said Iannelli, “if a high-profile politician’s lover is brutally murdered close to the most crucial parliamentary elections in recent Italian history, there has to be something going on. It has to be more than coincidence. And added to that, she just happens to be a judge’s daughter, a mafia-pool judge’s daughter. Well, what do you think? What does your instinct tell you?”

“I don’t think he did it.”

“Why not?”

“I have my reasons. It’s partly gut-feeling but it just doesn’t fit.”

“So why are you here talking to me?”

“Because I need your help.”

“And do you think I want to help you?”

“I think we have a common goal here, Dario.”

“Go on.”

“I think we both want to see something finally change, for the better, in this godforsaken country. In this godforsaken political establishment.”

“And this is how it’s going to change? Chit-chatting over kebabs?”

“They want Spinelli to go down, Dario! They’ve practically taken the investigation out of my hands, so something has changed here, for sure.”

“Who wants him to go down?”

“Well,” said Rossi, “I was hoping you might tell me that.”

“All right,” said Iannelli, throwing his crumpled napkin onto the empty plate and sitting back to deliver his peroration. “Nothing happens by chance. Think Pasolini. Think Pecorelli. Think Dalla Chiesa. Go right back to Enrico Mattei. All killed because they got too close to the truth, too close to nailing the corrupt politicians, too close to getting the Yanks and their petro-dollars out of our economy and off our backs.”

“So it’s a conspiracy,” said Rossi, “and the puppet masters pull the strings we can’t even see to cut, never mind get to the guys themselves?”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.