“There’s a pathological element to this murder,” she observed. “It suggests to me that the usual motives don’t apply.”

“Well, we can all agree there is an element of psychosis involved, but—”

“It’s not just that.”

“Then what?”

Teresa didn’t want to say anything just yet, but if psychosis played such a crucial role—as the nature of the attack suggested—it was still difficult to explain the level of methodical organization implied by all the other evidence they had found.

Either you’re completely insane, or you’re a cold, careful manipulator. “We’ll know more after we have the coroner’s report,” she said out loud. “I’ll take the new guy, the inspector.”

The chief nodded.

“Are you going to torture him?” he asked her in a low voice, the shadow of a smile quickly suppressed.

Teresa glanced at their new recruit through narrowed eyes. Marini was still standing, leaning against the wall. He’d tried to clean himself up, but he was going to need a lot more than soap and water to look anything close to presentable again.

“Not too much,” she answered, looking away. “Just enough.”

-7-

-7-

The Institute for Forensic Sciences was the kind of place that made an impression, especially if you entered it at night, when all the lights were dimmed and there was no one inside but a doctor and a couple of orderlies. During the day it looked like an ordinary hospital wing, with the usual hubbub of crowded hallways and rooms full of medical interns, but at night it showed its bleaker side. The silence revealed the true nature of the place: a final, solitary destination. It exuded a sense of melancholy, as if the families’ despair had stuck to the bodies preserved in the morgue, and their tears had been absorbed by the walls.

Death needs soil, not concrete, thought Teresa, walking past rooms immersed in darkness where everything that would have moved in the outside world seemed infected by an eerie stillness: no windows to let light or air in, and the equipment, switched off for the night, had no vital signs to monitor. These rooms were not meant for the living.

The sovereign of that deserted kingdom was Antonio Parri.

Teresa and Marini found him in one of the teaching rooms, preparing the next day’s lessons.

The superintendent knocked on the open door, surprised as she always was by the boyishness of that little man with his dishevelled mop of white hair. Gangly and awkward, he watched the world with his blue eyes wide open behind his spectacles. His curiosity was boundless, and his mind razor sharp. He was often the first person to hear Teresa’s theories about a new case.