“He won’t answer my calls. He won’t answer anybody’s calls.”

“Did you try swinging by his apartment on Rue Piave?”

“They’ve removed the seals,” said Italo. “Among other things, I left him a note from the chief of police. He says that he’s found him an apartment on Via Laurent Cerise. Only Rocco would at least have to go take a look at the place.”

“Don’t worry. Lately, it’s not as if apartments have been going like fresh bread,” Caterina replied. “Speaking of bread, Deruta is asking if he can have time off, because apparently he needs to help his wife out at her bakery.” Caterina headed off down the hallway.

“Caterina? You do remember that tomorrow night we’re going to my aunt’s house for dinner, right?”

Without turning around, Caterina replied, “Tomorrow night I have yoga!” and rolled her eyes. She thought back to the deputy chief’s list of pains in the ass. Maybe she should draw up a list of her own, and she would definitely put dinners with relatives at the ninth degree.

SPRAWLED IN HIS BED, ROCCO WAS LOOKING AT THE FACING wall. He had fixated on a stain in the uppermost corner. A gray patch. It looked like Great Britain. Or the silhouette of a bearded man laughing. Lupa’s tail swished through the air. The dog pricked up her ears and raised her muzzle. Three seconds later someone knocked at the door.

“Dottore? Dottore? Everything okay?”

It was the voice of the doorman in the residential hotel.

“Dottore, there’s a visitor to see you. Could you please open the door? Answer me!”

He had to answer now. He got up and dragged himself over to the door. He turned the key and opened it.

The doorman was accompanied by an enormous man. Rocco recognized him: the deputy chief of the Turin mobile squad, Carlo Pietra, deployed to Aosta since Rocco had shut himself up in that residential hotel room.

The deputy chief threw the door open wide. “Come on in . . .” he said. Pietra barely cracked a smile, stepped past the concierge, and walked into the room.

“Do you need anything?”

Schiavone said nothing. He limited himself to shutting the door.

“How’s it going?”

“Well, it’s going.”

Carlo Pietra was like a human sphere who seemed to fill up the 325 square feet of the room all by himself. He had cheerful, light-blue eyes; he wore a sparse beard and long hair. “May I?” he asked Rocco, pointing to the only armchair in the one-room studio.

“Why of course, make yourself comfortable.”

He sat down, making the armchair creak. He looked at the deputy chief, his growth of whiskers from the last several days, his unkempt hair. Then he opened the binder that he had been holding on his knees and stuck his face into it. “Certainly, it’s depressing in here,” he observed as he leafed through the various documents.