Aidan Conway - A Cold Flame - A gripping crime thriller that will keep you hooked

***

Francesco walked on in a daze. After the initial call, there had followed a to and fro of frantic phone conversations as Paola’s father had drawn on all his available contacts to get access to the crime scene and confirmation of what had happened. They had hoped that in the initial confusion the story might prove to be the fruit of a misunderstanding, but soon the evidence relayed back to them had been crushing. The formal identification would still have to be made but it was as good as there in black and white.

Was he going in the right direction? What direction? What was the point? She was dead. There was no doubt. Her date of birth. Her height. Her hair colour. It was all there on the card she carried. The identity card they all carried like convicts in their own country. The card that said he was a citizen of the Italian Republic with its most wonderful constitution; the best in the world, so they said. The card they carried so that they could be stopped and checked and identified at any time of the day and night to ensure that they were not enemies of that same Republic, enemies of the patria . The card that could be used to trace them to their house, to their staircase, to their apartment so the knock could come in the middle of the night. So they could always be found.

He wandered on up the incline of Viale di Circo Massimo. Past the fruit sellers. Past the teenage tourists playing in the middle distance with joyful abandon in the old amphitheatre. They were climbing on each other’s backs, playing at being charioteers, like Ben Hur, the Jewish prince who took on the might of the Romans in this very place. Their cries carried to him as they surged across an imaginary finishing line acknowledging fictional crowds and falling then to the ground in mock scenes of death and slaughter. Then, like parents giving children piggyback rides, they got up again. A joyous resurrection.

He came to the crest of the hill from where he could look down to the Tiber. Behind him and towering above him was the monument to Mazzini, the father of the patria . High up in his chair, on his plinth, he seemed to be dozing in old age. Venerable, noble, yet atop his verdigris bronze head, the city’s seagulls perched one after another, as if to take their bearings, only then to foul his likeness with impunity.

He had not been able to accept it. He was sure, first, that there must have been a mistake. Any number of women could have the same name. It was a common one in Italy. Paola Mancini. But with the same date of birth? But the details they gave him were final. He and her father had discussed the formal identification briefly, but it was a father’s job to identify his own daughter no matter how close they had been. The police said she had not been caught by the full force of the blast but that she had been “unlucky”. Already, he was appropriating the lexicon of disaster as his own.

From the Municipal Rose Garden a rich, variegated perfume battled with the acrid summer smog of urban pollution. Good and evil, past and present, youth and age were tearing each other apart now in his own mind too, but beneath the surface. He wondered why he didn’t feel tired. He had instead a feeling of bizarre elation as though he had been chosen for something, been elected. Something was telling him that life now would be lived on a new level. The old life, like a bridge collapsing into a gorge, was still visible but gone for good. He moved nearer to the railings and sat down on the narrow wall. An ambulance approached from Viale Aventino, fleeing then past the Bocca della Verità in the direction of the Tiber. Maybe she was only injured. Maybe this ambulance was for her. Flowers protruded from between the railings above his head, and as a sudden light breeze lifted from over the Palatine Hill, it stirred a shower of petals, and he watched as one by one they fell to the ground before him.

“So what about Maroni?” said Carrara, stirring his coffee. They were in the university canteen situated on the side of the building furthest from the Lungotevere, where the explosion had occurred. One corner had been transformed into an incident room until the usual suspects had finished clearing up outside and hosing down and gathering the necessary minutiae for Forensics. The university was an imposing building and while the bomb had torn through the soft tissue of passersby and disfigured the facade of the eighteenth-century palazzo , its structural integrity had not been compromised.

Meanwhile, inside, all available officers had been charged with interviewing every imaginable person that had been inside or in the vicinity of the building.

“He’ll be turning his boat around now, I reckon,” said Rossi. “And wherever he is, he’ll want to be informed of the facts as they happen. You know he brings a satellite phone on holiday.”

Carrara knocked back his espresso .

“So I’ve heard. Prudent man.”

“Likes to know. Doesn’t appreciate getting ridden roughshod over when he’s out of the picture.”

“That’s a polite way of putting it. Better not to take a holiday.”

“Don’t worry,” said Rossi, “there won’t be any for the foreseeable future.”

Carrara scratched his head as he recommenced scanning papers and spreadsheets and maps of the building.

“Are you sure there’s much point trying to interview all these kids and staff today without proper interpreters?”

“I brought that up already,” Rossi replied, “but certain individuals are convinced of their language skills.”

“You mean the ones whose evidence then gets torn apart when the lawyers get stuck into them?”

“That sort of thing. Anyway, not my orders, Gigi. The call goes out and we answer. This is one major security shitstorm. You realize there’s an international summit coming up, and the word from very on high is that they want answers sooner rather than later. It’ll be the Americans. You can count on it. They’ve got a shedload of interests plugged in here.”

“But you know as well as I do that the evidence is inadmissible without a lawyer present,” Carrara insisted.

“Well, they want ‘facts’ that might help point us in the right direction. I don’t think they’re counting on the bomber still being among us. It’s intelligence gathering.”

“Intelligence? They might perhaps have made a better job of gathering before it all kicked off, especially if they had agents in there.”

Rossi nodded.

“And he managed to plant a device without anyone checking? Either the guards were sleeping or they thought it was someone who studied or worked here.”

“What did you make of the footage?”

“You mean the footage they let us see?”

“You’re saying Anti-Terror were being ‘selective’?”

“Playing it very close to their chests,” said Rossi. “Like in any good story, it’s what you choose not to reveal.”

“But the guy in the hat walking away a minute or so before the blast? Well covered up for the time of year, don’t you think?”

Rossi shrugged.

“Could be anyone. But from what I saw of it, it looked like a bike bomb. There was no other vehicle in the vicinity, no cars, only passersby and students, no visible packages. They should have found a few fragments by now, so they’ll be able to put some meat on the bones.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” said Carrara. “You can get a lot of plastic inside that tubing. At least a kilo, maybe two. And it only takes one to obliterate a vehicle.”

“It was a taster, if you ask me,” said Rossi. “Small but nasty. Nails and bearings. But we’ve got six corpses in there and maybe more to come.”