So she had instructed Parisi to look more closely at the dynamics within the village, though without informing Chief Knauss. They had to find a weak link, someone who would be willing to talk, someone who—just like Teresa and her team—didn’t quite fit in, and might, out of resentment or a need for attention, be ready to disclose the sins of the village. Teresa knew what these communities were like, she had dealt with similar cases before; there was always someone who had been ostracized, who was brimming with bitterness and yearning to even the score. She had to find that person. What she wanted was a name, and a profile that matched. The killer knew the town well. Surely the town must know him, too.

Ebran’s mother was older than Teresa had expected, or perhaps she had been worn down by a difficult life. Her overweight form was squeezed into a tattered, stained armchair. Her legs, visible under the rim of her skirt, were swollen. Her uncombed hair fell over her face, and she had a dazed look about her. She seemed frightened and angry and was barely answering Knauss’s questions. She kept giving the same reply: she knew nothing, she understood nothing. She started railing at Parisi, who had been watching her.

“You come here looking for my boy, when the whole town is full of secrets! People who’ll go to church in the morning and creep into the wrong bed at night! A bunch of hypocrites! Why don’t you go and count how many bastard children there are in Travenì. Hundreds!”

Teresa looked away, partly in embarrassment, and partly to hide her morbid fascination with that struggling creature. She felt pity for her, and fear for herself, fear that she might one day turn into someone like her.

“Make her stop,” she told Marini. She sounded like she was pleading, and realizing this, she left the room.

The rest of the house was the same as the living room: neglected and stuck in a distant past. Lucas’s room was like a teenager’s: old posters with frayed corners hanging on the walls, a guitar nestling in a corner, the bed unmade, clothes scattered all over the floor.

Teresa heard Marini behind her. There was no sound coming from the living room anymore.

The inspector put on a pair of gloves and picked up a shoe.

“Size ten,” he said. “It matches the profile of the killer.”

Under the bed and in the cupboard, they found stacks of porn magazines.

“He certainly enjoys a spot of violence,” said Marini as he leafed through them.

Teresa pulled them out of his hands and threw them onto the bed.

“If it were that easy to draw up a psychological profile, even you could manage it,” she told him.