She opened the fridge, and suddenly she felt as if she were floating in a sea of anonymous objects. Something else had materialized with the light that had switched itself on when she’d opened the door: a void. She couldn’t recall what anything was called anymore. She turned her head this way and that in bewilderment, but her brain seemed only to register meaningless images, figures whose purpose and processes she couldn’t identify.

She tried to speak, but her tongue felt like it had shrivelled up, and her jaw had stiffened in panic.

This was her world, but she couldn’t recognize it.

She noticed that the lullaby had ended. Her angel had gone back to sleep just when she needed him the most. She was alone again. Alone and afraid.

-13-

-13-

Massimo hadn’t slept. He’d spent the few hours of rest that Superintendent Battaglia had conceded her team drafting the report she’d requested from him. He had rewritten entire paragraphs several times before he was satisfied he’d gotten them right, and finally he had convinced himself he’d done a decent enough job. The night had just begun to fade by the time he’d emailed it to her, so he had been surprised to receive confirmation that his email had been read only moments after he’d sent it.

Like him, Teresa Battaglia was still awake, and like him, she was probably thinking about the murder that had taken place in that forest, sixty miles away. Massimo knew from his own experience how difficult it was to shake off the burden that this kind of evil placed on the psyche. He had always thought that the passage of time and the steady supply of dead bodies would eventually alleviate it, but now he knew better. He had seen men killed for spare change, women abused by those who claimed to love them, and children raised in unspeakable squalor, and yet his soul remained exposed, unshielded by the armor of indifference, and still grieved for every fallen creature.

He arrived at the police station very early, making no effort to deceive himself as to why: he had done it for her. Perhaps he was trying to make up for their disastrous first meeting—or, more likely, he wanted to impress that strong-willed woman who seemed determined to regard him as anything but a competent police officer.

He awaited her arrival in the office, armed with a gift and some news. He was sure she’d appreciate the former, but wasn’t so confident about the latter.