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

Rossi tried to rub the stress out of his face as Carrara dialled a number.

“I’m calling the professor now.”

The fire crew were removing their apparatus as they awaited further orders. This one at least had turned out for the better and their cold beers would go down a lot easier when this shift ended.

The Parioli fire had now pushed the Prenestina case off their agenda. Rossi and Carrara had driven back to the office in the Alfa Romeo to weigh it all up.

“Initial findings say that the house was torched,” said Carrara. “Accelerants and a relatively sophisticated timed incendiary device were used. The occupant has been confirmed as being the exiled Nigerian writer and professor – Chini Okoli – and his family, living there as guests of the Honourable Mimmo Carducci, who had given them the run of one of the houses he had in his portfolio.”

“Portfolio?” said Rossi sitting up. “What do we know about him?”

“Ex PCI, Italian Communist Party. Now part of the wobbly left-of-centre alliance. Well-to-do Roman family, connections with the university, family law firm. Active overseas in human rights work. The usual story. Seems there was a network of friends of friends in academic circles. They helped out with solidarity missions for Palestine and Brazil.”

This was certainly different to the Prenestina fire but whether or not it was connected he didn’t know. Racial, maybe, but if they had targeted an intellectual, given the context – Nigeria, asylum seekers – it had political written all over it.

“So, technically, it was a bomb. An incendiary. When can we speak to Okoli?”

“I think he might need a night off first, don’t you?” said Carrara.

Rossi nodded but knew he would need to see him as soon as was practicable, to get a handle on any motives, but there were other elements which were already interesting him.

He got up and opened the door of the office’s mini fridge. No beers left. He went then to the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Jameson’s twelve-year-old reserve.

“What have you got?” said Carrara. He could see Rossi might already be onto something.

“First up,” said Rossi, pouring a large and a disgracefully small measure for himself and Carrara respectively, “the surprise party. It was so well concealed that any intelligence the firebombers might have had didn’t reveal it either.”

“Go on,” said Carrara, warming to it now. Rossi took a bottle of water from the fridge for his whiskey, a few ice cubes for Carrara and pulled up a chair for himself.

“So, either they hadn’t been tapping the phones or they hadn’t employed the sophistication necessary to monitor, record, and translate from their private conversations in Okoli’s native language.”

“Which suggests a lack of sophistication on the part of the assailants.”

“Or plain sloppiness,” said Rossi. He took a meditative sip on his whiskey and water. It was too hot for it but he needed the kick.

“Improvised far-right aggression?” said Carrara. “A warning by way of a relatively high-profile figure?”

“Or an attempted assassination under the cover of a spontaneous race attack.”

“Riding on the back of the Prenestina business,” said Carrara.

They both considered the significance of their theorizing as they sipped on their drinks. Some unifying strategy could have been behind it. Attacking minorities, blacks, immigrants. That was Nazi-style. It also grabbed the headlines.

“Or what if we’re talking some kind of Unabomber?” said Carrara. “A lone wolf carrying out random strikes, varying his technique, leading us all a merry dance as we try to come up with some ideological motive behind it all?”

They both knew the story well. The Italian Unabomber had never been caught. He, and a he it almost certainly was, as far as the psychological profiling went, had terrorized the north of the country for over ten years with random attacks, planting pipe bombs and incendiary devices in public spaces – park benches, beaches, bus shelters and the like. He had caused only one direct fatality but had maimed and traumatized numerous members of the public. He had once booby-trapped a child’s chocolate egg.

The theory went that since the last attack some six or seven years before, he had either died, or was on an extended cooling-off period, serial-killer style. That there might be more than one, other emulators, could not be ruled out either. That he might have moved south or spawned an imitator in Rome was also a possibility.

“Perhaps someone with military experience,” said Rossi. “Someone with a generalized grudge. PTSD from Iraq or Afghanistan. The race-hate agenda might be right up his street.”

“Maybe” said Carrara. “Have you seen this?” he said then, holding up a printout.

Rossi reached across the desk. Another “potentially relevant” incident had come up on the radar from earlier in the evening. A lot of motorbikes had gone up in flames in a car park in the affluent Prati area and their none-too-pleased and, in some cases, influential owners had already been harassing the local cops.

“No casualties, no homicide,” said Rossi.

“But they want answers,” said Carrara. He was scrolling through the latest headlines and news on social media. “And those with a bit of weight to throw around are calling for ‘deployment of resources, protection of Italian interests. Get the police out of the ghettos and back in the heartlands’.”

Rossi was now beginning to toy with the idea of there being some link there too, but knew it was early days. What if someone was trying to sow chaos, stretch their resources? Crazy environmentalists maybe. There were nuts everywhere in Rome, especially when the mercury was rising. He got up and went to the window to get some air. There wasn’t much.

“Priority goes to the house fires for now,” he said turning back to face Carrara. “Send out some uniforms. Get statements, check for witnesses and CCTV. Then we’ll see.”

The others would get their precious insurance eventually. He was going to nail the real cowardly scum who got their kicks out of burning working men, women, and children in their beds.

Yana was going in late to the Wellness Health and Fitness Centre, so Rossi had let her sleep. She was her own boss and could do as she pleased, but she had a business head and a work ethic that put others to shame. Plans were afoot for expansion and her hunger was plain to see. He steered clear, not understanding a thing of that world. He hoped they would find a balance, however, as his own obsessive approach to cases was not always ideal for those around him.

He laid the table for them both and then allowed himself a quiet, meditative breakfast before the sun began to emerge from behind the apartment blocks, extinguishing with all its gathering fury the night’s last vague hints of coolness. It was relentless, sapping. He lowered the shutter a few notches to keep the heat minimally at bay and then finished his coffee, leaving enough in the pot for Yana. He did a couple of yoga stretches that Yana had taught him, just so as to render the exercise not wholly perfunctory. He was sweating already and headed for the shower.

She was waking as he slipped on his lightest summer jacket.

“Don’t make yourself too beautiful,” she said through her sleep-infused languor. A strap had slipped off one shoulder of her ivory silk camisole and her smooth body was again calling, siren-like, to Rossi. He knotted his tie as loosely as decency would allow and leaned over to kiss her, his lips straying then along her neck and shoulder and into the warmth of her breasts. As Yana flopped back onto the bed the sunlight fell across her body evoking the promise of long carefree hours. But he stopped and tore himself away.