“I don’t doubt that, Doctor, which is why I believe that the woman—assuming there was such a woman—must have borne the child and found some other way to get rid of it.”

“How?”

“By handing it over to someone who could guarantee no one would ever find out what had happened. Do you remember any foreigners passing through the village around that time? A German speaker, perhaps?”

Ian looked grave.

“Everyone here speaks two languages, Superintendent, often three. We’re half-bloods, we’re proud of our identity, and though I know we can seem brusque in our dealings with outsiders, I can assure you no one would ever have given their child away, especially not to a stranger. We don’t have that kind of monster in Travenì. As you can see, we’re all God’s children here.”

“That’s not what you said at the pub the other night,” Teresa pointed out. “You told me people would abandon their children sometimes. And sometimes they wouldn’t even give birth to them.”

“Those were starving, desperate people. They cannot be blamed. Anyway, that was all a very long time ago. A distant and harrowing past.”

“Perhaps the echoes of that past have lasted longer than you thought?”

“No, I don’t think so, Superintendent,” the doctor replied, looking grim. “You must do everything you can to find that child, to bring some kind of justice—earthly or divine—to bear on the monster who took him away from his mother. But you are wasting your time down here. You won’t find your man, or the key to bringing Markus back home, among these people and their stories.” He gestured toward the church. “Now, will you join us in prayer?”

Teresa looked up at the golden crucifix that shone from the top of the slate roof.

“I pray by doing my job, Doctor,” she replied, putting the diary back inside her shoulder bag. “I must return to the search now.”

“God be with you,” Ian said in farewell, touching his hat.

Teresa watched him walk away, his shoulders looking more stooped than she remembered.

Marini walked up to her.

“Did you get the answers you were hoping for?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“So what now?”

“Now we dig deeper.”

-69-

-69-

The darkness was like a wet void absorbing the rhythm of their heartbeats. It had been a long time since he had last heard the sound of another breath near his own.

The air down there smelled of soil. The rock walls oozed water, a constant dripping that complemented the baby’s wails. He had brought the child to a safe place, a place where the hunters who were following their trail would never be able to find them. He knew that the dark could be scary, and he held the child pressed against his chest, so that it could feel his warmth and be reassured by his presence.