‘About time!’ chirped Sonia’s voice from his mobile phone. ‘Where are you? What have you been up to?’
‘Looking for trouble, as usual. How’s your work going?’
‘Really well. I’m assembling the spinal column and the hindquarters.’
‘As soon as I have a minute I’ll drop in.’
‘Oh, listen… that carabiniere lieutenant came by. He said he’d be getting your car back to you this morning. What, you were so busy smooching you didn’t notice the tow truck dragging you off?’
Fabrizio ignored her comment.
‘Pretty hot, your lieutenant friend.’ Sonia started on a new tack. ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing him again outside the office.’
‘To see how he handles a pistol?’ Fabrizio teased back.
‘You fool,’ concluded Sonia. ‘See you around.’
Fabrizio hung up and went straight to work, using his digital camera to photograph the images on the screen. Then he asked Francesca to drive him home.
‘You could move in here for a while,’ she suggested. We could work on it together. Cook something up when we get hungry…’
Fabrizio hesitated a moment, long enough for her to be offended.
‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘Forget I even said anything.’
‘It’s just that I have everything I need at my house,’ said Fabrizio. ‘A lot of people don’t have my mobile phone and they might leave me messages on the answering machine…’
His voice trailed off as he ran out of lies. In reality, he felt suddenly afraid of staying at Francesca’s house, wary about continuing a relationship that had been too serious from the start. He was not at all sure he could cope. He’d felt strange for quite a while now: out of step, out of place, out of his depth. And he felt indebted to her, which made him uncomfortable. What’s more, he was used to the solitary life, to working on his own. And when he thought of what had happened the night before, and might happen again, he knew it was best to keep her out of it as far as he could.
But he couldn’t help but notice the disappointment in Francesca’s face. ‘Besides, this situation has us all acting crazy. You’d end up hating me, sooner than you think!’ he continued weakly.
The girl shrugged, as if resigned, walked out front and opened the door to the Jeep. ‘Go on, get in,’ she said, then sat behind the wheel and, once he was in, started driving.
Neither spoke for a while, then Fabrizio said, as if thinking aloud, ‘The beast seems to strike all of those who have something to do with the tomb.’ Ringing in his mind were the words of the woman who had threatened him the night before. ‘Or maybe even those who have something to do with the statue in the museum, like me.’ He reflected in silence for a moment, then went on: ‘You’re not in on this threat for the moment and it’s best that you don’t get mixed up in it. I have a lead that I’m following and there’s no reason for both of us to risk our lives. Right?’
Francesca took her eyes off the road for a moment and turned to him. ‘If you love someone you take risks,’ she said. ‘But I understand. I’d feel the same way if I were in your shoes. I imagine you won’t answer if I ask you what lead you’re working on.’
‘No, I can’t. It’s a pretty remote possibility anyway. At least for now.’
‘I thought not,’ she said and asked nothing further.
They got to Fabrizio’s house as the carabinieri were pulling up to return his car. Sergeant Massaro handed him the keys and was joined by Reggiani, who stepped out of his regulation Alfa holding a hunting rifle. He said hello to Francesca, then turned to Fabrizio. ‘Do you have half an hour to talk? Massaro has a few more photos to take at the Montanari house, then hell be back to pick me up.’
‘Of course,’ replied Fabrizio, and turned to Francesca. ‘If you’d both like to come in, I’ll make some coffee.’
Reggiani set his gun in the rack, then sat down with Francesca at the table in the big kitchen as the intense aroma of freshly made coffee filled the room.
Reggiani put a spoonful of sugar into Francesca’s cup. ‘Is one good?’ he asked.
‘Yes, fine,’ replied the girl.
‘How are you feeling today?’ the officer asked her as Fabrizio sat down with them and started sipping the coffee.
‘Better, thank you, much better, but I’ve never been so scared in my whole life.’
‘I can believe it. Finding yourself face to face with such a monster. As luck would have it, we got there in time. We were trailing Fabrizio at a distance when we saw your car on that side road. It was dark and I didn’t recognize your Jeep, but when I saw you drive straight into the Montanari courtyard I thought I would have a heart attack. We rushed in and thank God we did. It could have been much worse.’
‘What are you going to do with this fourth corpse?’ asked Fabrizio.
Francesca noticed a moment of hesitation on Reggiani’s part. She downed the last drops of coffee from her cup and got up to leave. ‘I have things to do,’ she said at the door. ‘I’ll see you later, Fabrizio.’
Reggiani sighed. ‘We haven’t let the news filter out yet. Montanari lived alone in that isolated house in the middle of the countryside. People were used to him disappearing for relatively long periods of time. He would go off looking for seasonal jobs or work of a more dubious nature. He’s spent plenty of time in jail. No one will notice he’s gone. At least for a while. I guess that’s lucky for us, but we can’t go on like this. I’ve spoken to my superiors and we’re organizing a hunt with hundreds of men, dozens of dogs, helicopters and off-road vehicles, infrared equipment…’
‘You’ll draw a hell of a lot of attention to yourselves. You’ll have the press of half the world on your backs. A story like this… I can just imagine.’
‘I know. But at this point we have no choice. Especially because you’re not being of any help. For example, what were you doing at the Montanari house?’
‘You were the one who told me that those mysterious phone calls were coming from there. And are you aware that Balestra is studying an exceptionally important and very rare Etruscan inscription?’
‘Of course. The guys over at archaeological heritage protection told me about it. The slab from Volterra. They were the ones who recovered the piece from an old riverbed, but it had been moved there from somewhere else, if I remember correctly.’
‘You’re right. That was just a temporary hiding place. It was Montanari who reported it to the NAS, saying that he’d dug it up while working in the fields. Balestra immediately ordered further investigations but they turned up nothing. This tipped them off; an inscription that important cannot be devoid of any archaeological context. It was evident that Montanari was lying and that he must have known where it had really been found and where the missing portion of it was. I thought I could get him to talk and that’s what I was doing there.’
‘Without saying anything to me,’ commented Reggiani.
‘I would have told you if I’d been successful. Anyway, you were following me.’
‘That doesn’t justify your behaviour. Go on.’
‘What’s more, inside Montanari’s house I saw a fragment of the same bucchero pottery with the swastika that I found near the Phersu tomb and I realized he must be connected to that find as well. Ill bet you he’s the one who told the tomb robbers where the Rovaio tomb was.’
‘And what about your colleague Dr Dionisi? What was she doing last night at La Casaccia?’
Fabrizio hesitated a moment, looking into the bottom of his cup, then said, ‘She had something urgent to tell me.’
‘What?’ Reggiani pressed.
‘It concerns a discovery she made… a scientific discovery.’
‘That was so important it couldn’t wait for today? It must have been very urgent indeed.’
‘It was, but I can’t tell you any more. Give me a couple of days to work on it before you order a full-scale search operation.’
‘So it has something to do with this.’
‘I’m not really sure but maybe it does… Give me the chance to find out.’
‘I can’t promise you anything but I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try to put off the operation for as long as I can, but then I’ll turn this whole place inside out. I’ll find that thing and fill it full of lead, then stuff it myself so I can see it hang in some museum. I saw this film the other night, a DVD that I rented.’
‘Yeah? What film was it?’
