Teresa joined the team that had assembled in the meeting room of the police headquarters in Travenì. The heads of the search and rescue agencies, the mountain rescue teams, and a Rifles regiment had all gathered there, as well as her and Chief Knauss’s men. Maps and geographical surveys of the local area were spread across the table.

The fifteen-square mile area they had been searching had been divided into quadrants and combed through from dawn to dusk in shifts, eighty men at a time. The men had only stopped when night had fallen—and if it had been up to them, they would have carried on. But the public prosecutor and the district judge had agreed that putting lives at risk to save another life was out of the question. Teresa wasn’t sure whether, given the choice, she would have adhered to the same principle.

“Where’s Marini?” she asked De Carli.

“I haven’t seen him in a while, Superintendent.”

“Then call him, for Christ’s sake.”

“Right away.”

The meeting began, chaired by prosecutor Ambrosini. It was torture for Teresa to have to listen to a summary of what had been a day of fruitless searching, but worse than that was the knowledge that she couldn’t go straight back out to the forest to keep looking. A long night awaited her, twelve hours of darkness and enforced paralysis.

It was too long to wait, too long for her and the child both.

Soon, Ambrosini began running out of things to say, his words evaporating on the fire of Teresa’s impatience. She turned toward the window and looked out at the village. Travenì was not asleep; a column of flames snaked through its ancient, gloomy streets. The procession had started at dusk, when the inhabitants had assembled at the foot of the medieval clock tower in the main square, lighting hundreds of candles to carry with them.

While the people out there were busy praying for the child, those inside this room were actually looking for a way to bring him home. Seeing those lights, the bowed heads moving forward in single file, Teresa felt furious. Travenì had missed another chance to redeem itself in her eyes: no one from the village had volunteered to help with their search. They had elected instead to gather together spontaneously and look for the child far from the areas Teresa had identified as potential hideouts.

She had hoped they might be right, that one of them might come back cradling the baby, but that hadn’t been the case. Things had taken an almost farcical turn when a group of villagers had become trapped on a rock face, and a search helicopter had to be sent over to rescue them.