She must have been a witness. Perhaps she’d been the one to find the body.

A few more steps forward and Massimo finally reached them. Someone offered him a hand to help him out of the swamp; he accepted it with an awkward word of thanks that came out like a mumble.

For the first time since he’d graduated from the academy, he felt like he was being tested. He was out of breath and his palms were clammy despite the freezing cold. He could not have made a worse start if he’d tried.

“Inspector Massimo Marini,” he said, holding out his hand to Battaglia. “I’ve been assigned to your squad. Nobody told me about the body, otherwise I would have come earlier.”

He had no idea why he’d said that. He could tell how petty he sounded, like a sulking child.

His outstretched hand was ignored. He lowered it in surrender. This day was not going to get any better.

The man looked at him without saying a word. There was a moment when he appeared to shake his head a fraction, as if in secret warning. It was the older woman who finally spoke.

“The victim didn’t bother warning us either, Inspector.”

Her voice was hoarse and her manner suggested she deemed him utterly inconsequential.

Massimo studied her. Her roguish fringe, sticking out from beneath the rim of a sequined woolly hat, seemed out of place on a face that bore the signs of age and was marked by a hardness that presaged an equally difficult personality. Her bright eyes pierced through him like a pair of thrusting hands, scouring his face as if in search of some kind of proof. She was chewing on the temples of a pair of glasses. Massimo saw she had thin lips; she would purse them every now and then as if weighing up a thought—or forming a judgment.

The heavy coat she wore was tight across her thighs and revealed a stocky build.

A police officer approached them, holding a mobile phone. He handed it to the woman.

“It’s the district attorney calling for you, Superintendent.”

She nodded and stepped away to take the call, scowling at Massimo.

Massimo froze. He barely registered that the man he’d assumed was Battaglia was now shaking his hand and introducing himself as Officer Parisi. His mouth had gone dry and he could feel the first signs of hypothermia. He tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t make him sound like a complete idiot, but when he saw her hang up the phone, the words he finally managed to utter turned out to be far from appropriate.

“Nobody told me to look for a woman, Superintendent.”

She regarded him as if he were a piece of excrement stuck to the sole of someone else’s shoe.

“The thought never even crossed your mind, did it, Inspector?”