“LISTEN, TELL ME SOMETHING, DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH your thumb that keeps you from turning on your cell phone? I’ve been trying to reach you for hours! I called police headquarters and I spoke to one of your officers, and it took an hour before he’d agree to give me the phone number of this fucking prison!” Fumagalli was shouting into the receiver that Rocco was holding a good five inches from his ear as he sat in the warden’s office. He was looking at a framed photograph. Three little kids. All three were blond and all three wore red-and-white-striped overalls. “Didn’t you see the texts I sent you?”

“Yes, I saw them.”

“Then why didn’t you call me?”

“Because I didn’t feel like it.”

“What are you doing in prison?”

“Are you done asking questions, or do you plan to go ahead for half the day?”

“I have something extremely important to tell you, you asshole. Do you want to know it or not?”

“So go ahead and tell me!”

“Open your ears good and wide . . .”

“Okay, but you stop yelling at me, Albè.”

“This is about Cuntrera . . . All right, so you remember? The corpse swelled up, then it shrank back down to normal, and so on and so forth?”

“Yes, I remember all of that. God willing, I haven’t come down with Alzheimer’s yet.”

“I sent the glands to two of my colleagues in Brescia. Two luminaries. They’re the only ones capable of it.”

“Capable of what?”

“Capable of identifying the substance that killed Cuntrera. You probably ought to be sitting down for this: ethyl carbamate!”

Rocco furrowed his brow but said nothing.

“Oh, did you hear me or not?”

“What the fuck is ethyl carbamate?”

“May God incinerate the ignorant!”

“I have a computer in front of me. Do you want me to go on the Internet, or are you going to tell me yourself?” And he touched the mouse with one hand. The screen lit up.

“Structurally speaking, it’s an ester of carbamic acid . . . You can even find it in wine, it develops independently . . . It’s also known as urethane. You ought to know that certain carbamates like neostigmine were also utilized in pharmacology.”

Rocco smiled. On the monitor of the warden’s computer he saw the last search the functionary had done: “Escort Aosta.”

What a sterling husband and head of household, Rocco thought.

“Oh! Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, sorry . . .”

“You know what it does, Rocco, if it’s injected in massive doses?”

“You tell me.”

“It kills you on the spot! But it’s just that it has another characteristic: it’s volatile. And if we hadn’t performed that autopsy, we’d never have known.”