“Look at me, Dottor Baldi. And look at yourself. It’s a holiday, but the two of us are spending it in an office. Your wife’s photograph has vanished from the desk once again, I lost my wife more than five years ago, we’re two trains on dead tracks, and if they took this away from us”—he waved at the room around them—“we’d wind up in some old folk’s home, sitting in rocking chairs staring at a blank wall. You and I are just dragging ourselves along out of inertia, Dottore. You cling to your work and your rules out of desperation, I hold on to those three sons of bitches I have for friends down in Rome. But I couldn’t tell you if you’re right, or I am.”

“I keep my word when I give it.”

“So do I.” Rocco stood up. “And in any case, when I find out who did it, my intention is to put him behind bars.”

“In Velletri prison?” Baldi asked with a smile.

“You see? You know more about it than I do.”

“Why does Enzo Baiocchi have it in for you?”

“It’s an old gripe.”

“How old?”

“Let’s say . . . dating back to 2007. A few years back.”

Baldi picked up a sheet of paper that had been lying before him on his desk. “Two thousand seven? And yet here I read that you arrested Enzo Baiocchi only once, in 2003.” He laid down the sheet of paper and leveled his eyes right at Schiavone’s. “Did you just mix up the dates in a moment of distraction? Why should he want to make you pay for an arrest back in 2003? He was out on the streets for two more years before being remanded to prison once again in Velletri. Help me understand . . . Is this a personal vendetta, or is Enzo Baiocchi making you pay for something else? More or less like our Pietro Berguet?”

“Find out for yourself!” said Rocco, and turned to leave the judge’s office.

HE WAS SITTING AT THE USUAL REFRESHMENT STAND, NOW closed, in front of the Arch of Augustus, watching the few cars driving around it, as if it were a sort of merry-go-round. He was thinking back to Enzo Baiocchi and his brother, Luigi. Back to an August evening, hot as a pizza oven in a restaurant full of people, with sweat pasting his shirt to his skin. He had the taste of iron in his mouth, and his heart felt as if it had stopped beating, in an abandoned auto repair shop not far from the Rome beltway. Light poured in through windows filthy with dust and cobwebs. The car door wouldn’t open; there were guns, shaking hands, the stench of piss and fear.

Fear.