“You’d have been better off keeping it that way.” It was De Carli who had spoken, and he seemed anxious.

Superintendent Battaglia opened her eyes: they were like slits.

“I am diabetic.”

It took Massimo a moment to grasp the implication of her words, and when he did, he tried to take the box back, swearing under his breath. But she placed her hand on it, defiant.

“Are you trying to kill me?” she asked him.

He could feel his face burning.

“You must learn not to blush, Inspector. And when you feel the urge to swear, for God’s sake just do it!” she said, letting go of the package. She gestured at Parisi and De Carli to leave and take it with them. They closed the door as they walked out, as if to contain the conflagration likely to be ignited by the superintendent’s fury. Massimo could picture it already: words fired like bullets ringing in his ears, the explosion of her rage.

He felt like a piece of string stretched beyond breaking point.

“What do I have to do to get along with you?” he asked. He didn’t mean it as a provocation; he just wanted to understand.

The superintendent was no longer even looking at him, concentrating instead on the photographs from the crime scene she was scrolling through on her computer screen.

“You have to do your job—that is if you even know how to,” she answered. “I read your report last night.”

“And?”

She looked at him again. “I flushed it down the toilet. You’ll have to start again.”

In that moment, the exhaustion Massimo had accumulated over the past twenty-four hours hit him all at once, as if a solid, shapeless mass had leapt onto his back and were trying to drag him down to the floor and into the ground.

But he realized he wasn’t the only one who felt like hell. He’d thought the superintendent looked strained, but now he could see beyond the mask: stirring beneath its surface was something resembling pain, and perhaps, he was surprised to see, something akin to fear, too.

“I stayed up all night to write it,” he said. He wanted to probe her, to find out more, but at the same time he felt the urge to take the conversation down a different route. For some reason, what he’d just glimpsed in her had unsettled him.

“Then you made a mistake. You should have rested instead, and worked on it when your mind was clearer.”

But her tone was casual now, as if they were talking about the weather.

“I thought I did a good job,” he said.

Teresa Battaglia put down the pen she’d been chewing on.

“Good isn’t enough,” she replied. “I can’t go to the victim’s family and tell them we’re doing a good job. They want us sweating blood. Do you understand? That’s what they need.”