“This village was completely isolated until just a few decades ago, and people were used to struggling to scrape together two meals a day,” the doctor told her. “Some of them were farmers, but most of them loggers who survived on hunting and the timber trade. It wasn’t uncommon for women to have miscarriages during the harsher winters, or to abandon newborns who looked too weak in the churchyard of the convent further down the valley. Those were different, desperate times. Fortunately, those days are a distant memory now, but I do think that hunger is encoded in the DNA of the people of this valley.”

“I didn’t know things had been so difficult.”

“They were. Modern transport links have helped eradicate poverty, and the development of tourism in recent years has improved many people’s lives. But not everyone is willing to accept change.”

“Are you referring to the activists who are boycotting the new ski station?”

He nodded. “Transitions are never easy,” he added.

Teresa turned her glass around in her hands.

“Speaking of children,” she said, “there’s something I’d like to ask you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Was the first victim, Roberto Valent, a little cold, as a father?”

Ian frowned.

“No, not at all,” he quickly replied. “Why do you ask? Is there a new lead to . . . ?”

Teresa shook her head. She didn’t even know why she had asked him.

“It was only a theory, Doctor, and it isn’t even relevant to the case. There’s no lead. I just wanted to have a more accurate sense of what kind of person Valent was.”

“Roberto was a well-respected professional and a model husband. He spent all his free time with his wife. As for his relationship with his son, I would say it was excellent. Diego is a perfect boy.”

Teresa was beginning to understand the criteria by which the doctor made his judgments. They were rather different from hers.

“A perfect boy,” she repeated after him, nodding her head. “Just like his dad wanted.”

“Roberto even did some volunteering, did you know?”

Teresa didn’t reply. She asked him whether anyone in the village had ever shown symptoms of mental instability, increasing in severity over the past few months. He dismissed the question.

“While isolation can cause a mind to falter, murder is something else altogether, Superintendent. I’ve known almost everyone in this village from the moment they were born, and I’m certain there isn’t a single one among them who would be capable of anything like this.”

Teresa studied the crucifix around his neck. She refrained from noting that murderers were no less children of his God than saints were, and they could be born anywhere—even Travenì.

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-41-

“Stay right where you are.”