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

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Rossi looked down from his balcony, his after-dinner sambuca and ice still holding its own against the enveloping evening heat. With the sun down, the city had begun to breathe a little. Traffic was almost non-existent, with only the odd revving motorino whining and yelping its horn from some unseen side street. Cut-price tourists, escaped from the throng, ambled about off the beaten track in mismatched summer clothes. Oblivious. Oblivious. Yes, thought Rossi. A state-within-the-state has its own people killed in the name of a perverse agenda and there’s nothing you can do about it. Just count yourself lucky it wasn’t you getting the bullet or the bomb. After all, these days you got it easy. The days of bombs in banks and train stations were long gone, buried under the rubble of the Seventies and Eighties. Of course they were.

Yana, his Ukrainian girlfriend of several years standing, was already in bed. He had cooked dinner and then they had chatted a little. She had seen, however, that he was distant, newly involved with a case. Tired herself after a busy day in the health centre, she had left him to ponder. Since going back to work full-time in the Wellness Centre, she had hardly had a moment’s rest. She lived, ate and slept work now, as if surviving the attempt on her life only a little more than six months earlier had left her leading a charmed life – every day and every moment was precious. She knew it and she was going to make it count and was even talking of expanding the business.

But it still chilled Rossi to the bone when he remembered it all and he still feared for Yana. Giuseppe had taunted him, letting him know in no uncertain terms that he had crossed Yana’s path in the dark days when she had arrived in Italy and fallen victim to traffickers. It had unsettled Rossi profoundly. But who else knew Yana’s secrets? Who else might crawl out from under a rock and want revenge? Perhaps the snakehead of the trafficking ring who had evaded Rossi all those years ago, thanks probably to a tip-off from a rat in his own Rome Serious Crime Squad, the RSCS.

The same rat who was still on the force now and, though he had his suspicions, remained unknown to him.

And the calls still came to his house or to Yana’s when they were together, sometimes months or even a year apart. Sometimes in the dead of night to torment him, or them. No voice. Just silence, a barely perceptible breathing. Someone he knew, he was sure, keeping tabs on him, making sure of where he lived and who he was with.

His thoughts turned to Yana again. The August-induced insomnia had left her feeling jaded, and the combination of heat-disturbed sleep and the effects of her cocktail of medication were wreaking havoc with her natural rhythms. Still she had astounded every doctor that had examined her. It had to be something to do with her inherent athleticism and her Ukrainian resilience or the will to live that he had seen all those years before when he had played his part in freeing her from the nightmare world of drugs, violence and exploitation that she had been sucked into as a naive young immigrant.

Apart from that, all in all, Rossi had to admit he was quite enjoying their, albeit temporary, cohabitation. Perhaps because it was temporary. So far, so good at least. He had even proposed the arrangement himself when Yana, having improvements made to her flat, had found herself in limbo. Their busy schedules meant that the time spent together was only ever a few hours in the evening. Yet, he felt it was a start and steady progress in uncharted waters.

He looked towards the Roma hills and the flickering yellow lights as he sipped on his drink and the rubbish collection truck made its slow, lumbering progress along Via Latina. It was the Prenestina fire that was beginning to occupy his thoughts and perhaps already to obsess him. He knew the signs. He knew too that it had come from on high when he and Carrara had been moved “temporarily” from homicide to arson. Why else, when by anyone’s standards they had got concrete results in the Marini case? It was dressed up as something else, of course – we need your expertise on this one, we think you’re the men for the job, and all that bullshit. And Maroni, his boss, in his best don’t shoot the messenger guise, had assured him that it all fell under the Serious Crime Squad remit.

He looked back into the lounge. His phone was buzzing on the coffee table. It was Carrara.

“Gigi.”

“Another fire, Mick. Initial reports indicate it could be of interest.”

“Where?”

“Parioli.”

“Parioli?”

It was one of Rome’s more well-to-do suburbs.

“Yep. They think there’s a family inside. Nigerians. You’d better get here quick.”

The fire brigade were still dousing sizeable pockets of flame in the detached two-storey villa’s badly scorched shell. The worst seemed to be under control but it had spread quickly with the hot summer air and a light breeze exacerbating matters.

A large crowd had assembled for the spectacle, but there was no hard fast news on who the occupants might be and so far chaos seemed to be reigning. Rossi and Carrara began to apprise themselves of the situation, only to find that no one could give them a simple, unified version of events.

What they knew was that flames had been spotted about about an hour earlier, and a passerby had raised the alarm. Others had then hammered at the door to rouse the presumably sleeping occupants, but all to no avail. Attempts to kick the door in had also failed.

Rossi walked over to a fountain and splashed his face, trying not to imagine the worst that could be about to greet them when they finally got news about the occupants’ fate. As he looked up again, Carrara was returning. He’d got something.

“Registered in the name of a prominent local politician, the Honourable Mimmo Carducci,” he said. “But some of the neighbours are saying there’s an African family living there, fairly recently arrived.”

Rossi pondered the information.

“But no one’s been calling for help from any of the windows, back or front,” he said finally. They both knew what that meant: that smoke inhalation could have done for them already.

The fire crews were gathered and assessing the level of danger. Nineteenth-century building. No reinforced concrete, a lot of wood in the ceilings. Parts of it could collapse at any moment.

“Family of four. Nigerian asylum seekers,” said the chief fire officer.

Behind him a squadron of four men had begun donning breathing apparatus.

“I’m sending them in,” he continued, “if there’s half a chance of finding anyone alive. But it doesn’t look promising.”

Rossi put an anxious hand to his face.

Carrara, who had dashed off again, was now concluding a rapid discussion with another local family who had pulled up in a car. There was a lot of nodding of heads, then some cries of either pain or happiness. It was hard to be sure. Then Carrara turned back towards Rossi and raised a hand in what appeared to be a sign of victory and as a signal to call off the search.

“A lucky escape,” said Carrara, the relief on his face clearly visible.

The house had been empty. When Carrara had finally spoken to the absent occupant, a Nigerian university professor in exile, it emerged that as the dramatic scenes had been playing out on the street in Parioli he, his children and their friends had been playing blind man’s buff in someone’s converted cellar in Trastevere where there was no cell phone signal. Friends of theirs had organized a surprise party. The guy hadn’t had even an inkling of the plan and they had all left the house at the last minute. The father had seen the missed calls only when he went out for a cigarette.