“Anyway, Coca-Cola has plenty of caffeine and it’ll pep you up!” He yanked the pull tab, took a glass from the desk, and emptied the can into it.

“Disappeared? Are you sure?” asked Lisa, adjusting her hairdo, freshly tinted with reddish highlights. You’d almost expect the dye to come off on her hands, it was such a radical shade of Titian red.

“I haven’t talked to him since yesterday. I’ve been calling him continuously, but his cell phone is always switched off.”

“Maybe he had to leave town!” said the constable as he handed the glass of Coca-Cola to the Russian woman.

“He’d have told me. He’s never gone away without telling me. Last week he was out of town for two days and he called me without fail to make sure everything was okay. Corrado is . . . apprehensive, that’s the word.”

“All right, then, let’s proceed methodically.” Lisa went over to sit behind the desk. “When is the last time you saw him?”

“Yesterday evening, right before closing time.”

“That’s not very long. I mean, are you ready to declare him a missing person? Maybe he’s at home even as we speak!”

“Listen!” Barbara broke in. “Last week, Corrado was gone for two days, but since he got back he’s been very strange, and when I say strange, I mean strange.” Barbara seemed to have been possessed by the spirit of Inspector Maigret. “And he wouldn’t talk. He was on edge, and he’d snap at the drop of a hat.”

“So he was dropping his hat? Maybe he’s losing his hair!” Ciro replied.

“You idiot,” his partner upbraided him.

“I was just trying to lighten the—”

“Just keep your trap shut. Go on, Barbara.”

“Now, as long as I’ve known him, Corrado has always lived alone. But just the other day I discovered”—and here she lowered her voice to just above a whisper—“that there was someone else in his apartment. And Tatiana and I are certain of that.”

“A lady?” And Ciro winked at Barbara.

“Then why would he be keeping his shutters closed?” the bookseller continued. “Let’s say it was a lady. Did she live in the dark? Why? What was he ashamed of?”

“Maybe the lady is married, and she didn’t want to be seen in that apartment.” Ciro was still clinging to that hypothesis.

“Or else something else.”

“You know that Corrado had a criminal record, right? And who knows . . .” While Tatiana said these words, she trembled. “. . . who can say . . . maybe a fugitive from justice!”

There was a dense, compact silence.

“A fugitive from justice?” Lisa echoed her.

“Why not?”