“Look!” said Italo and pointed again at the Carabinieri’s car. Even if it was a good fifty yards away, it was clear to see that the man in the passenger seat had rolled down his window and was taking pictures. “They’re definitely spying on them . . .”

“Sure enough . . .”

“But are we here for the same reason?”

“No. We have to do something much cooler than that. Trust me!”

The guests climbed into their cars and one after the other left the Turrini villa. They drove out the main gate and turned onto the road to Aosta. The owners of the house, on the other hand, had gone inside and had already turned off the ground-floor lights. Now only the lights on the second floor and the little tower were illuminating the darkness.

“Have they gone beddy-bye?” asked Italo, lighting his umpteenth cigarette.

“Yes, but let’s wait just a little longer . . .”

THE CRY OF A NIGHT BIRD ECHOED IN THE DISTANCE. THE tree branches minced up the light of the almost-full moon. The two policemen’s breath was a dense mist. At night, the temperature dropped almost to the level of the winter that had just ended. They moved forward silently, and only a branch snapping underfoot now and again gave away their presence. They reached the villa’s outer perimeter wall, directly behind the main entrance. Rocco looked up at the stone wall. It wasn’t much higher than a couple of yards, but lining the top of it were shards of glass from broken bottles. He spotted a gap between the stones, wedged the toe of his shoe into it, and hauled himself up by the strength of his arms. He gazed down carefully at the sharp blades of glass. “Pistol,” he whispered down to Italo. Italo handed him his gun. The deputy chief slid back the barrel to make sure there wasn’t a bullet in the chamber, pulled out the magazine, extracted a handkerchief from the pocket of his jacket, which he had chosen to wear on that expedition in place of his faithful loden overcoat, and wrapped the handkerchief around the first shard of glass. With four blows from the butt of the pistol and very little noise indeed, he succeeded in shattering the cemented base of the bottle. He moved on to the second broken bottle.

“How long is that going to take?”

“As long as it takes, you ballbuster!”

Six minutes to clear a decent open space so there was no danger of ripping open one’s flesh when scrambling over the top. Rocco handed the pistol back to Italo, who put the magazine back into the grip while the deputy chief leapt over and found himself on the far side of the wall. Shortly thereafter, he was joined by his partner. They were then on the grounds of the Turrini property. “Are there dogs?” asked Italo, clearly frightened.