“Well?” Dario shouted from the court. He’d already taken his position. “Are you going to let me win by default?”

“Go play your tennis match, Vittò . . . and thanks,” the bookseller said, giving him a kiss on each cheek. Tatiana limited herself to a handshake. “I’ll keep you posted . . .” And with a series of darting leaps, Abrugiati went back to his game, gathering tennis balls as he went. It was his serve.

Barbara and Tatiana left the blazing glow of the spotlights illuminating the tennis court and plunged back into the darkness of the tennis club, following the little lane that led back to their car. “I’m sorry,” said the bookseller. “I’m so sorry.”

“We did our best.” Tatiana tugged at her jacket as if she’d just been run through by a shiver of unexpected cold. But the air was warm, springlike, and a light breeze brought the scent of the sea and the coming summer. “I hope they find the body, at least.”

This time Barbara lacked the strength to contradict her. She had no arguments left to make. Only fleeting hopes. And she knew that hope, when pitted against logic, usually loses.

“I WASN’T EXPECTING YOU AT THIS HOUR OF THE DAY,” SAID Alberto Fumagalli, shutting the door to the morgue behind him. “But tonight I can’t take you out to dinner. I have other plans.” And he shot him a wink.

“You have a woman?” Rocco asked.

“What woman! Poker, four of us, to the death. It’s me, the head physician in traumatology, an anesthesiologist, and a damned male nurse who skins us alive every time.”

“What are the stakes?”

“A thousand euros!”

“Really?”

“At ten percent,” the medical examiner modified the statement.

“Wait, a hundred euros? All this ruckus over a hundred euros? When you decide to raise the stakes, give me a call.”

Alberto put his hands on his hips. “So let me get this straight . . . are you saying that at a thousand euros you’d join the game?”

“I’d join the game and clean you out.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll organize it!” And he raised his hand in a feigned karate chop to threaten the deputy chief. “Look out!”

“Listen, Alberto, I have an important question. That pharmaceutical, the medicine you found in Cuntrera’s body.”

“Hold on! Let’s be specific. We established that it was urethane from an examination of the glands. But the substance is extremely volatile. We’re still waiting to get a trace of the actual poison.”

“Well, so what are you saying, was it or wasn’t it?”

“It was!”

“My God, it’s hard work talking to you.”

“Don’t I know it. Well, what do you want to know about it?”

“Where did you say you could find it?”