A Cold Death. Antonio Manzini

your ass from here to Chieti. Is that quite clear?”

      D’Intino and Deruta nodded their heads in unison. “When do we start?”

      “Tonight. Now get out of here. I need to have a talk with Rispoli.” The inspector had said nothing, standing off to one side. As the two male officers filed out of the room, they’d glared angrily at her.

      “Dottore, now you’re putting me in an awkward position with those two.”

      “Don’t worry, Rispoli, this way we’ve got them out from underfoot. What I need now is some advice. Sit down.”

      Caterina did as she was told.

      “I have to get a gift.”

      “Birthday?”

      “Exactly. I’ll give you the information. It’s a woman, age forty-three, in good shape, sells wedding dresses for a living; she’s from Aosta, she has good taste, and she’s quite well-off.”

      The inspector took a moment to think it over. “Personal friend?”

      “That’s my fucking business.”

      “Understood.”

      “Rule out flowers, scarves, plants, jewelry, books, perfume, and CDs.”

      “I need to know more about her. Is this Nora Tardioli? The one with the shop in the center of town?”

      Rocco nodded, without a word.

      “Congratulations, Dottore, nice get.”

      “Thanks, but as per aforementioned comment, my own fucking business.”

      “How far out on a limb are you interested in going?”

      “Not far. Just consider it a tactical move, keeping the status quo. Why?”

      “Because, otherwise, you could give her a diamond ring.”

      “That’s not going far. That’s handing yourself over to the enemy bound hand and foot.”

      Caterina smiled. “Let me think it over. Does she have any hobbies?”

      “As far as I know? She likes to go to the movies, but I’d avoid DVDs. She goes swimming twice a week, and works out three times a week. She’s a cross-country skier. And I think she bikes too.”

      “Who are we talking about here? Lindsey Vonn?”

      “Right now it’s …” Rocco glanced at his watch. “Ten fifteen. Do you think you can come up with an idea by noon?”

      “I’ll do my best!”

      Just then, Officer Italo Pierron threw open the door and strode into the room. Along with Rispoli, Pierron was the only other officer Rocco considered worthy of being on the force. He was allowed to walk into the deputy police chief’s office without knocking and address him by his first name outside the four walls of police headquarters. He glanced briefly at Caterina and nodded hello.

      “Dottore?”

      The young officer’s face was pale and alarmed. Rocco asked: “Italo, what’s wrong?”

      “Something urgent.”

      “Go on.”

      “A call came in. Apparently a gang of burglars have barricaded themselves in the apartment of Patrizio and Esther Baudo on Via Brocherel.”

      “Barricaded themselves?”

      “That’s the term used by Paolo Rastelli, a retired warrant officer who’s also half-deaf. That’s what I managed to piece out, but in the background I could hear a woman screaming: ‘They’re inside! They’re inside! They’ve turned the place upside down!’”

      Rocco nodded. “Let’s go …”

      “Can I come too?” asked Caterina.

      “Better not. I need you here. Stay close to the telephone.”

      “Roger.”

      As they zipped through city intersections with their siren off, Rocco pulled a cigarette out of Italo’s pack and looked out at the perfectly plowed streets. “The city government does its job up here, eh? In Rome you get a couple of flakes of snow and there are more deaths than from the start of the August vacations.” Then he lit the cigarette. “Why don’t you buy Camels? I think Chesterfields are disgusting.”

      Italo nodded silently. “I know that, Rocco, but I like Chesterfields.”

      “Make sure you don’t drive into a wall or run over any old ladies.”

      Italo turned into Corso Battaglione Aosta, downshifted, passed a truck, and accelerated sharply.

      “If you weren’t a cop, you’d be a perfect getaway driver for an armored car robbery.”

      “Why do you say that, Rocco? Are you planning something along those lines?”

      They both laughed.

      “You know something, Italo? If you ask me, you ought to grow a goatee or a beard.”

      “You think? You know, I’d thought about that myself. I don’t have any lips.”

      “Exactly. You’d look less like a weasel.”

      “I look like a weasel?”

      “I never told you that? I’ve met lots of people who look like weasels. But never on the police force.”

      After a six-month acquaintance, the two men understood each other clearly. Rocco liked Italo. He trusted him after what the two of them had done some time ago, intercepting that load of marijuana on a Dutch semi and splitting a nice big haul of several thousand euros. Italo was young, and in him Rocco glimpsed the same motivation that had led the deputy police chief to undertake his police career: pure chance. At the fateful moment when the deputy police chief’s classmates were starting life on the streets, working with blades and bullets, he just happened to put on the lawman’s uniform. Nothing more than that. For people who were born in Trastevere at the start of the sixties into blue-collar families, with neighbors who were on a first-name basis with prison, there were only two paths available. Like the game they used to play at the parish after-school when they were kids, a little game of tag known as police and thieves. Except now it was real. Rocco had become a cop, and Furio, Brizio, Sebastiano, Stampella, and all the others had become thieves. But they’d remained the best of friends.

      “How on earth is a gang of burglars going to barricade themselves in an apartment, Italo? It’s not as if it’s a bank, with hostages and everything.”

      “I don’t get it either.”

      “I mean, if the people reporting them are a half-deaf old man and a woman, then what’s to stop them from coming out of the apartment, clubbing them senseless, and taking off in less than a minute?”

      “Maybe the old man’s armed. He is a retired army warrant officer, after all.”

      “Absolutely crazy,” said Rocco, looking out the window at the cars screeching to a halt and honking furiously as the BMW with Italo at the wheel zoomed past.

      “Listen, Rocco, don’t you think we should use the siren? At least that way people would know it was the police and we’d be less likely to crash into someone!”

      “I hate sirens.”

      So, racing at 75 miles per hour through the city streets, they pulled up in front of no. 22, Via Brocherel.

      Rocco buttoned up his loden overcoat and, followed by Italo, walked over to the two people waving their arms outside the front door.

      An elderly man and a woman in her early forties, with straw-blond hair, a large run in her stocking, and blood on her kneecap.

      “Police, police!” the woman was screaming, and her Slavic accent was echoing down the deserted street. The street might