To my wife Paola

To my children Diego and Debora

To my granddaughters Maeve and Eileen

Tektime Editions

Stefano Vignaroli

A Quiet Provincial Town

The Mysteries of Villa Brandi

©2013 MJM Editore (The Mysteries of Villa Brandi)

©2021 Tektime (second revised and modified edition)

All reproduction, distribution and translation rights are reserved

The passages on the history of Jesi have been taken and freely adapted from the written works of Giuseppe Luconi

Translation by Barbara Maher

Website http://www.stedevigna. com

E-mail for contacts stedevigna@gmail.com

Piazza Federico II

Oil on canvas by Mario Ciccoli, artist from Jesi

Stefano Vignaroli

A QUIET PROVINCIAL TOWN

The Mysteries of Villa Brandi

The Investigations of Commissioner Caterina Ruggeri

A NOVEL

Table of Contents

LEGEND

FORWARD

PROLOGUE

CATERINA…

VERONICA…

VERONICA…

CATERINA…

THE FOUNDATION OF AESIS

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL

MARIA LUCIA BRANDI

PARTY IN THE VILLA

BACK ON THE JOB

PROFESSOR WHU AND NANOMACHINES

TRACKS AND MISDIRECTIONS

A PLEASANT SUNDAY WALK

SAN SETTIMIO FAIR

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

THE LONG LIVING VLADIMIRO BRANDI

MISTERIOUS DUNGEONS

A SHORT BUT FULL-ON VACATION

THE JAIL’S PALACE ELEVATOR

TWO STRANGE POLICEMEN

THE DETECTIVE AND HER INFORMANT

AN ANCIENT DILEMMA

GRAFFITI

TERROR UNDERGROUND

THE CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST

EPILOGUE

FUTURE

AUTHOR’S NOTES AND THANKS

LEGEND

1 – Piazza Federico II (Piazza San Floriano – Ex Acropolis or Forum)

2 – Palazzo Baldeschi-Balleani

3 – Porta Valle (Porta Pesa)

4 – Palazzo Battaglia

5 – Round Tower

6 – Porta Bersaglieri (Porta Nova or Porta Marina)

7 – Via Pergolesi (Via degli Orefici)

8 – Giardinetti delle Carceri

9 – Watchtower

10 – Construction site for the construction of the lift

11 – Costa di Montirozzo and Torrioncino

12 – Palazzo Pianetti II (former District Prison)

13 – Ancient Roman cistern

14 –San Floriano complex (Civic Museum and Experimental Theatre)

15 – Porta Garibaldi (Porta San Floriano)      

16 –Regional Wine Cellar of the Marche

17 – Ancient Roman amphitheater area

18 – Palazzo del Governo (or della Signoria)

19 – Piazza A. Colocci

20 – Palace and Museum Fondazione Colocci

21 – Palazzo Carotti-Honorati (Court headquarters)

22 – Palazzo Mestica

23 – Piazza Baccio Pontelli

24 – Costa Mezzalancia (Ladders of Death)

25 – Arco del Magistrato (Porta della Rocca)

26 – Cathedral (San Settimio)

27 – Via delle Terme

28 – Piazza Indipendenza (Piazza delle scarpe)

29 – Piazza Spontini (Piazza del Soccorso)

30 – Piazza delle Monnighette

31 – Arco del Soccorso (Arco della Morte)

32 – South Tower

33 – Piazza Sansovino

34 – Old soap factory area (former Church of San Benedetto)

A-B – Cardo Massimo (Arco del Magistrato – Via Pergolesi - Piazza Federico II – Via delle Terme – Porta Bersaglieri)

C-D – Decumano Massimo (Porta Valle - Via Lucagnolo – Costa Lombarda – Piazza Federico II - Via del Fortino – Porta Garibaldi)

FORWARD

Police Commissioner Caterina Ruggeri is a quick-witted, brilliant and courageous woman. She is the mother of a beautiful little girl named Aurora and loves to spend the evenings in the company of Stefano, her constant companion. But under this façade of an ordinary woman hides an enterprising and adventurous heroine, always ready to take on new investigations. Like the one that sees her directly involved during the inauguration of Villa Brandi - an eighteenth-century residence in the Marche region, purchased by a famous international football coach - in a bombing attack masterfully carried out by a nameless and faceless enemy. It is the beginning of a new adventure, which will drag the irrepressible commissioner into an endless enigma, which even has its roots in the ancient Masonic Lodges.

With "The Mysteries of Villa Brandi", Stefano Vignaroli writes a novel that, better than any other, traces the contours of a mysterious and fascinating Jesi. Colors, sounds, images and scents are condensed into a book that has the flavor of history and a tinge of the arcane.

From the third century B.C. to the present day, a breathtaking thriller that is full of emotions and memories. And when you have finished reading it, at the exact moment when you turn the last page, you cannot help but re-evaluate the charm of our country.

Filippo Munaro

PROLOGUE

August 2009

CATERINA…

The long weekend of Ferragosto¹ had passed quickly and on the morning of the 17th I found myself on the Ancona – Genoa flight again to return to my place of work, immersed in my thoughts once more. It had been lovely to spend two whole days with Stefano, making plans for the future, talking about ourselves and the child we were expecting and exchanging the affection we feel for each other. In the short time I had been in Liguria, my partner had changed his lifestyle, and I'm not talking about just his passion for music. He had left his room in the clinic to move to a farmhouse a few kilometers away. It was a wonderful place, immersed in the green hills of the Marche region. The house was cozy and tastefully decorated, in perfect rustic style. A fireplace, standing proudly in the living room, would warm the cold winter evenings. By passing through a large courtyard, ideal for spending summer days and evenings outdoors, you reached the stables where there were already two horses and a pony. A little further on were the kennels for the dogs, two of which were already occupied by a Great Dane and a Gordon Setter. The farmhouse bordered a small wood at the rear and cultivated fields on the other sides.

"It's wonderful," I said to Stefano, while we were in the courtyard enjoying the colors of a beautiful sunset. "Too bad I won't be able to enjoy this place with you for very long!"

"Oh, not necessarily. You could ask to be closer because of your pregnancy. And anyway, from the moment you start maternity leave, you’ll come here and there’s no way I’ll let you leave until our son has grown quite a bit. We’ll ride the two horses, but the pony is reserved for the little guy."

"Or little girl! Why do you only talk about a boy?"

Smiling and joking, Stefano took me by the hand, led me quickly to the stable, untied the horses, and without even saddling them, invited me to hop onto the mare, while he mounted the male. The horses were docile and it was easy to ride them even without saddle and harnesses. All this reminded me of the times when, as a young girl, I often competed with him to get the best horse in the stable we frequented, spurring the unfortunate animals along tracks and dirt roads, clinging to its mane. Great times! Of course, I would have loved to live my life there with Stefano, but how could I have been able to do that with my work? I loved my work too and I wouldn't have swapped it for anything in the world.

On Monday morning Stefano had accompanied me to the airport, staying close to me until the call for boarding. Saying goodbye was really hard, but duty called and, somewhat reluctantly, I got on the plane. Now that we were about to land, my emotions were giving way to the desire to return to work. All said and done, I liked being in Imperia and got on very well with my colleagues. I realized that the Precinct was a bit like a big family and I now felt like a good boss that everyone accepted, not because I imposed my will, but because I had the ability to coordinate that wonderful group of willing policemen, showing that I did my part when it was necessary. It was certainly true that, apart from the investigation into the killings in Triora, it was a rather quiet place. Of course, there was no lack of episodes of petty crime and considering the fact that police districts are chronically understaffed, we were all forced to do prolonged work shifts to cover the service adequately. I had been happy that Inspector Giampieri, faced with the choice of whether to stay in the precinct or return to work alongside the police commissioner, had chosen the first alternative without hesitation. I was now very fond of him, he was my deputy, I considered him my alter ego and it would have been difficult for me to have to do without him, also in consideration of the good chemistry that had been immediately established between the two of us.

This time neither he nor anyone else was waiting for me in the arrivals hall of Genoa airport, so I picked up my luggage and got a taxi to Imperia.

When I set foot inside the Precinct, I realized that there was an unusual hustle and bustle. There had been a brawl at the port during the night between foreign immigrants, and my colleagues had arrested some colored people who were making a terrible noise. I asked D'Aloia for explanations.

"Almost all of them were drunk, Commissioner. They started arguing, I think it was for reasons related to their religion and when the discussion degenerated they started throwing empty bottles of beer. Someone got hit in the head and was medicated at Emergency. Now I’m about to take their statements, check their residence permits and kick them out of here as soon as possible."

"Good luck, D'Aloia! I don't see that as being easy."

At six in the afternoon, when I left my room, Walter was in fact still dealing with some of them who, despite not having a residence permit in order, claimed that they worked for some construction companies, obviously off the books.

"Commissioner, I don't know what to do. I should give them expulsion orders, but I feel sorry for them!"

"There would be a solution: they report the people who make them work illegally and we give them a temporary residence permit for up to three months." I smiled at D'Aloia, because I knew very well that not one of them would have the courage to file a complaint, perhaps putting other friends or relatives who worked for the same companies in difficulty, and I left the Precinct to head home. I was about to stop a taxi, when Mauro appeared behind me.

"I have my own car and for today I'm done. I’m going to Ventimiglia to meet Anna, I think that I can make a detour to accompany you home and I won’t be too late."

I gladly accepted the ride and within a quarter of an hour I finally arrived home. Clara was in the garden playing with Fury and I noticed that as she greeted my colleague there was a lot of complicity. At the time I didn't pay much attention to the thing, after all we had spent a lot of time all together recently. And then I had other things on my mind.

One of the priorities I had in the next few days was to contact a gynecologist to follow me during pregnancy. Laura recommended a young doctor who worked in the Obstetrics department of the Imperia Hospital.

“Dr. Valeri is always available and very easy going. The department here in Imperia is avantgarde and people prefer to be visited in the public structure rather than in external private clinics. You’re sure to be happy with that."

Laura's advice was excellent and, after a few days, I left the gynecologist's office with the first ultrasound images of the creature I was carrying in my womb and the list of an endless series of laboratory tests to be performed. The sex of the fetus was not yet certain, but the Doctor had given me a hint.

"Eighty percent female, but I wouldn't swear by it yet."

The next ultrasound, about a month later, would confirm that she was a female and in my heart I decided that she would be called Aurora.

Being pregnant did not bother me and I was able to carry out all my commitments, both work and extra. Going towards autumn I had started to attend a gym to keep fit, and the instructor had proposed a personalized plan, also appropriate to the fact that I was pregnant.

In mid-October, in record time, the restoration of the Della Rosa house had been completed, and it was ready to welcome Clara as Director of the Esoteric Studies Foundation of Triora. I had supported Clara in those months and helped her develop her ideas. The girl was really smart and had a remarkable intelligence and wisdom. I think she listened to my advice more out of courtesy than because she needed it. She already knew the texts and manuscripts inside the witch's house, for having cataloged and arranged them at the time, even if much material was then lost in the fire at the dwelling. The pentacle hall would become a study center open to all those who wished to enrich their cultural baggage in the field of magic and esotericism, under the watchful guidance of the director and librarian Clara Giauni. Mauro was increasingly present to help our friend, especially for the heavy work such as setting up shelving, arranging furnishings and so on. The most delicate part, adapting the secret passages and the underground tunnels to a guided tourist tour, was in practice directed by Mauro, who seemed almost a real expert of the Superintendence of Fine Arts or Cultural Heritage. What amazed me the most, and worried me a little, was that instead I saw Anna more and more rarely beside him. I was already beginning to suspect something, when one day I surprised Mauro and Clara exchanging tender effusions. Caught off guard by my unexpected presence, Mauro mumbled something.

"Don’t worry, Anna has known everything for a few days. We broke up as good friends."

Of course, that’s what they always say, but then you have to see how the person who has been abandoned is taking it, who usually feels an unfillable void inside, even though they try to pretend everything’s alright and not make the thing weigh on the other. So I phoned Anna and realized she was not taking it well.

"I know I shouldn't get so upset, Caterina. Mauro and I have always lived our relationship in complete freedom and I have always considered it very normal that it could end at any moment, but now I feel bad. I’m not angry with him or Clara, of course, but I miss Mauro very much."

We decided to go to dinner together and it took me a lot of effort to console her and try to take the conversation to other topics. After dinner in a trattoria² in Sanremo, we decided to devote ourselves to total leisure, and went over the border into the principality of Monaco to spend the night at the casino in Montecarlo. I returned home at dawn, but that was the last madness I allowed myself, since the increase in the circumference of my waist suggested that I begin a phase of my existence that was quieter and more regulated.

In November Clara and Mauro moved permanently to the former Della Rosa house and I was left alone to share the farmhouse in the lower Argentina Valley with Furia. The inauguration of the Study Center, in the presence of important authorities in the middle of November, was a beautiful celebration. Casa Della Rosa shone with new life. The hall of the pentacle, restored, was wonderful, the fire had not ruined the marble of the floor at all and, polished, was spectacular. The mirror had been left open, so that the library full of ancient texts and manuscripts were visible. A long solid wood table had been placed in the large living room, available to scholars who wanted to consult the texts which were dispensed through a desk set up at the passage from the living room itself to the library, once bordered by the sliding mirror. It was still working, but the complicated opening mechanism had been replaced by a convenient remote control. The long table was at that moment set up for refreshments and, after the speeches of the Mayor, an Undersecretary of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Dr. Leone and Dr. Honoris Causa Clara Giauni, a catering company covered it with every delicacy known to man.

When, one by one, all the illustrious guests had left, I was left alone with Clara and Mauro. I was really happy to have been able to help that girl, not only had I saved her life, but now she had a future ahead of her, and it was not little. And she had also found a very good partner, albeit at the expense of another woman. And there was Anna looking in from the front door.

"I came to give you my sincere congratulations, Clara, it's all wonderful and you deserved it."

She kissed both Clara and Mauro with affection, and I noticed that there was no shadow of resentment in her gestures, which were clearly sincere.

Thank goodness I said to myself, The storm may have passed. Or maybe Anna is very adept at hiding her true feelings!

"Well, guys, I wish all of you well. Unfortunately in a few days I will be leaving you. I have already prepared the request for maternity leave and I really believe that I’ll be spending the last phase of my pregnancy in the Marche with to my partner. But even if we don't see each other, we'll keep in touch!"

Mauro, Clara, and Anna all assured me that not a day would go by when we didn’t speak by phone, or perhaps with a simple SMS. I went home happy, full of that human warmth that I had rarely felt in my life. It would be hard to leave those places, wonderful in so many ways. I was convinced that in any case I would return there in a few months, not knowing then what life and destiny had in store for me.

When I entered Dr. Perugini's room to deliver the envelope containing my request for leave, I saw that the Police Commissioner in turn had a large envelope in his handwith my name written in block letters.

"I knew that your contacts with the witches of Triora had endowed you with supernatural powers, but this is pure telepathy, my dear Commissioner. I was just about to call you here!"

"Good. You first or me first?" I said, alternating my gaze from my envelope to his.

"I believe that after you have read the contents of this, there will no longer be any need for you to present anything to me, requests for vacation, leave or anything else...", he said, handing me the sealed envelope, but judging by the complicit smile he had printed on his face, he knew the contents of it very well. I opened the envelope, which came from the Ministry of the Interior, and began to run my eyes over what was written.

Given the remarkable investigative skills, as well as the contempt for danger, the self-denial and attention to the people involved in the investigations... Dr. Caterina Ruggeri, currently stationed at the Police Headquarters of Imperia with the rank of Commissioner, by decision of this Minister, is promoted to Deputy Vice Commissioner and assigned to the Police Headquarters of Ancona, where she will need to take service by December 15 p.v. The Police Commissioner will arrange her place of service, according to the needs, taking into account Dr. Ruggeri’s excellent qualities...

I could hardly believe what I was reading. In a very short period of time I had advanced in my career in an unexpected, I would say incredible, way. The Minister of the Interior himself was dispensing praise to me and, moreover, after only a few months spent away from my places of origin, I could return to work close to home, and precisely in conjunction with becoming a mother. I said goodbye to Dr. Perugini, thanking him for all he had done for me in that short period and left the Police Headquarters with my head bursting from all the thoughts that were crowding it. I got in the car and didn't even notice the road I had taken to get home, I was so absorbed in my mental elucubrations. There were no decisions to be made, as had happened a few months earlier. At that moment the decisions had already been taken for me, and I certainly couldn’t oppose it. Yet I loved these places, even though I had lived there for a very short time, and I couldn't stand the idea of going away, perhaps forever, from my new friendships. In my entire life I had never had such intense human relationships, of friendship, of solidarity, as those I had experienced in that recent period. I didn't even have the courage to say goodbye to Mauro, or Clara, or Anna, but neither did I have the courage to say goodbye to Laura, D'Aloia and even Inspector Gramaglia or the last agent who worked at the Precinct.

But, on the other hand, I would return to my beloved places of origin, I would be close to my love, to the father of my child. And the little girl would be able to live in a normal family atmosphere and enjoy the presence of an affectionate father. I knew that my job would keep me out of the house a lot and that, if my daughter had to grow up alone with me, I would have to continuously entrust her to nurseries and babysitters. In this way, however, everything would be easier.

There were only a few days left to spend in Liguria. Winter was just around the corner and the cold, also due to the proximity of the mountains already covered with snow on the tips, was making itself felt. More and more frequently Furia tried to come inside to crouch in front of the flames of the fireplace. Not without a touch of melancholy, I began to gather my things together, preparing some boxes to load in the car along with the suitcases.

Who knows why! I wondered. Even in a short time a person is able to accumulate an incredible amount of objects and don’t want to separate from them for any reason.

Among other things, I found the precious book written in Hebrew with translation in Latin opposite, which had remained in my hands on the day of the fire at the Della Rosa house. I had always kept it as a souvenir of the investigation and the close escape, but at that moment I decided that it was right to return it to Clara. So I took the opportunity to visit her and say goodbye to her and Mauro.

"Thank you, Caterina. I thought this book had been lost forever in the flames, and instead... But let me give you a copy of the Key of Solomon translated into Italian. You can keep it as a souvenir and you’ll be able to understand the power, wisdom and mysteries that are hidden in the text. Only you know how that night you were able to recite by heart the invocation that allowed you to save my life. And you recited it in perfect Hebrew."

Mauro had gone out to get some wood for the fireplace, and since we were alone I confessed to her what I think she already knew.

"It was Aurora Della Rosa who instilled the words in my mind, but I never spoke about it with anyone. I think you’re the only one who can understand me. In fact, after having the relationship with the sorceress I’ve changed, I have perceptions that previously I would not even have dreamed of having. If I concentrate, I see people’s aura, and I have the impression that I can also guess what those in front of me are thinking."

"These are powers, my dear Caterina, that we all have innately. The frontiers of the human mind are still unexplored. There are those who learn to make use of certain skills and those who neglect them, they don’t train themselves to use them and therefore it is as if they didn’t possess them."

"Be that as it may, I believe that it was Aurora Della Rosa who favored the development of these perceptions in me, new and fantastic for me, and so I’ve decided that my daughter will be called Aurora in her honor and in her memory, and also because I feel partly responsible for her death, or at least for not having done enough to avoid it."

I saw that as she heard that name, Clara's eyes had become misty.

"All this does you honor, Caterina. Certainly your little girl, regardless of the name you give her, will have an exceptional personality. Don’t think that, because of the distance, I won’t get to know your daughter! It certainly won't be a few hundred kilometers that will stop me!"

Mauro had returned with an armful of wood, cut into logs, and dropped it near the fireplace.

"If the housewives chatter is over, I’d like to say goodbye to my colleague too, before she leaves for a remote region of Central Italy. The State Police over there must still be in the Stone Age!"

"Oh, they certainly don't have a Lamborghini Gallardo as a service vehicle," I said, imitating his sarcastic tone. "But nothing will prevent me from asking for your specific collaboration, when I’m entangled in a particularly complicated investigation."

"Ah, the way you attract them, I don't think it will be long before you call me!"

I stopped for dinner with them and, what with one quip and another, a glass of red wine, a grappa and a mandarin punch, I got back in the car with a blood alcohol level higher than was allowed, but happy to have spent an evening with real friends.

I decided not to return to the Marche by plane, but face the long journey in my car, so Furia would travel with me too.

Fall/Winter 2009/2010

VERONICA…

It is well into autumn, even if the temperature is still pleasant. The days have become shorter and at 20.30 it is already night. The girl, slight although rather tall with short blond hair cut in a boyish style advances slowly, limping, helping herself with a crutch. In her free hand is a paper bag containing her frugal dinner. She reaches the canopy of the bus stop at the beginning of Viale Trieste and sits down on the bench with difficulty. She looks around to make sure there is no mugger around. The only passer-by is the veterinarian who still lives in that neighborhood, perhaps because he has a house and office there and, unlike most Italian families, has not succumbed to the temptation to move to the other side of the city. Fortunately a reassuring presence who takes his cute white dog for an evening walk at that hour. The girl eats her sandwich in a few bites, then looks for the pack of cigarettes, but realizes that the one she has in her pocket is now empty. Leonardo Albini materializes from the darkness as only he can do, as if he suddenly came out from a cloak of invisibility. His movements don’t escape another person, Dr. Zanardi, the Commissioner of the Police Precinct, who is invariably on the sidewalk on the other side of the road, leaning with her back to the wall as she pretends to fiddle with the keys of her car. Leonardo sits on the bench next to the girl and places papers and tobacco on her lap. She makes her own cigarette and lights it.

"Are you sure you want to know? Believe me, revenge doesn’t pay."

"But it leaves a good taste in your mouth, like this tobacco."

Leonardo writes a name and an address on a cigarette paper and leaves it in the girl’s hands.

"He’s a well-known person. Are you sure that was the licence plate?"

"I have it printed in my mind. He ran over me there, on that crosswalk, and took off. But before he disappeared into the dark, I read that plate well."

"And why didn't you report it to the police?"

"I did, of course, after I woke up from the coma. They checked and told me that maybe I had seen or remembered incorrectly, there was no sign related to the accident on the bodywork. And of course, in the meantime the guy would have had plenty of time to get the car cleaned up! And anyway I haven't trusted the police for a long time."

Only a slight accent betrays the Slavic origin of the girl, named Anna. She came from Serbia with her parents over sixteen years ago, when she was a little girl of just over four years old. To make ends meet, her father had immediately induced his wife into prostitution. The woman was young and attractive and the neighborhood lent itself well to that kind of "business". But one evening Anna's father, dead drunk, started accusing his wife of not putting down all her earnings for the family but was keeping something for her vanities, for clothes, shoes, for stockings. The quarrel ended with a knife wound. Anna saw her father run away, never to return, while her mother lay on the floor bleeding abundantly. The little girl knew how to type emergency numbers on the cell phone. She managed to compose 118 and get help in time. But the police never tracked down her father, who had probably returned to his home country somehow. Her mom did her best with makeshift jobs as a cleaning lady or caregiver for the elderly, no longer selling her body, but earning much less. Anna was 14 years old when her mother, tired of life, made the insane gesture. She went down into the street in front of the house, poured gasoline on herself and set herself on fire. A horrible end, of which fortunately Anna was not a direct witness. Returning from school, she saw a kind of blackened puppet on the sidewalk, as if someone had burned a large doll, and she struggled to understand that this was the body of her poor mother. There was a crowd of curious people around that still smoking ember, but no one who had found the courage to try to help her. And the whole thing had happened in broad daylight.

Anna was entrusted to a family home, but she ran away immediately, went to live on the street and starting doing the same job that as a child she had seen her mother do, with the result of earning enough to be able to eat. Often, when her "customers" saw that she was little more than a child, or they ran off for fear of being accused of pedophilia, or rewarded her with a maximum of 20 Euros, after all she was a little girl, she needed little to live on, just enough to buy food.

"Go to a lawyer, take him that name and he will see that you receive compensation," Leonardo advises her.

The girl shakes her head.

"I don’t have any money to give to a lawyer. That bastard has to pay and I'll do everything myself, you can be certain. This leg will never be like it was before. The femur was crushed under the wheels of that huge SUV. Even though the doctors did their best, the leg is a few centimeters shorter than the other, and what’s more it continues to hurt me really a lot. Right at the moment when I had been able to make a change in my life. I had got through the selections and was going to be taken on as a model. I had a job and a career ahead of me, and now no one will call me for a fashion show or a commercial, I will have to go back to walking the street to survive."

Without rebutting further, Leonardo leaves the girl another paper and a little tobacco enough to make another cigarette and goes away. He crosses the street and walks past Veronica, the policewoman who is keeping an eye on him.

"It's not that it’s not obvious that you’re stalking me. When are you going to understand that I’m a good-living guy? I need to take you to bed to make you understand. You’d enjoy being with me and you’d look for me for other reasons."

"Quit this messing around. Rather, I clearly saw you pass the "dose" to that girl. Are you dealing now?"

"I told you, I'm clean," Leonardo replies, raising his arms. "You can search me if you want, if I were a drug dealer I’d have other doses on me, isn’t that right, Commissioner?"

Veronica pats him down and, apart from his wallet, pulls tobacco, papers, lighter and a package of Marlboro out of his pockets.

"How the hell can you make cigarettes with this junk? I don’t know!" The woman pulls a Marlboro out of the pack and lights it, then returns everything to the man. “Sooner or later I’ll catch you red-handed, and I’ll make you take a nice holiday in a pleasant hamlet of Ancona called Montacuto. In the cooler, in a residence with bars on the windows and surrounded by a very high fence."

"I think I'll get you to a bedroom first and make love to you. You're ripe for it," Leonardo replies, skillfully making a cigarette with the tobacco and lighting it as Veronica looked at him terrified. They each go their own way, while Anna remains sitting under the canopy of the bus stop for a long time. At a certain point she gets up and, one step at a time, with the calm required by her uncertain gait, she arrives at the address Leonardo gave her. She studies the house, studies its occupants and the actions and times of her revenge are already outlined in her mind.

The next day, Anna is already ready for action. She had made the Molotov cocktail following the instructions to the letter: it will work. The adrenaline circulating in her blood is at such high levels that she forgets any pain. It's three o'clock in the morning and there is not a living soul around. She leaves the crutch near the fence of the house, and very laboriously climbs over it. The ladder she had spotted in the garden must have been used to prune the trees, but what matters is that it has the right height to get to the windows of the first floor. Anna leans it under what she has understood to be the bedroom window. The guy sleeps with his wife and they have a baby of a few months who is sleeping in the adjoining room. The night before, at exactly a quarter past three, the bedside light had come on and the woman had gone to the child’s room after he had woken up and wanted the bottle. Anna calculated that the same thing could be repeated every night at about the same time. She climbs the rungs of the ladder, one by one, with a little effort, but not too much. The roller shutter is lowered only halfway. At the right moment, a jab with an elbow to break the glass and launch of the Molotov. It will be hell.

That bastard will die in the same way as my poor mom. He deserves it! If the wife is quick, she will get her ass to safety with the little one. As for me, I will wait here quietly for them to come and arrest me, as it is now...

At the top of that ladder, Anna puts a cigarette in her mouth, the lighter in one hand, the incendiary bomb in the other. Punctually, the light turns on and the woman gets up. The flame of the lighter flickers, reaches the cigarette, but can’t reach the fuse of the rudimentary device.

No, I cannot be the cause of the fact that that child will grow up like me, without a father, and with a mother destroyed by pain.

Her leg is starting to hurt again and it is difficult to go down the ladder, put it back in its place, climb over the fence and recover the crutch, but she succeeds.

Life for Anna continues to go by as usual, her economic resources are increasingly less, and every night she finds herself eating her sandwich sitting on the usual bench. She calls to the white dog, who deviates from his trajectory to come and get his dose of cuddles, dragging his master behind him. The dog lays o his back with his paws in the air, to get little tickles on his belly, which he likes so much. The vet smiles at Anna, she looks into his eyes, two green eyes that instill confidence.

"In this note is the name and address of the person who made me like this. Do what you like with it, I have neither money nor credibility to go and ask for compensation."

In silence, the man takes the note, puts it in his pocket and walks away. A few days later, the girl receives in the mail a check for 300,000 euro signed by the guy who ran over her at the time and ran away like a coward. In the envelope a note: I hope this is enough. Please do not report me. A scandal would ruin me forever.

Leonardo, as usual, suddenly appears and sits on the bench next to the girl.

"Cigarette?" he asks.

"No, thank you. I quit smoking. I don't like the taste of tobacco in my mouth anymore."

"How did it go? Have you made good use of my information?"

"Thanks to you and another angel, I now have the money to go to America and undergo an operation that will bring my leg back to its right length. I have calculated that what with the trip, the stay and expenses for the clinic I’ll need exactly 300,000 Euros. Everything I have, but when I return to Italy I will be ready to face a new life."

"Good luck, then!"

Leonardo crosses the street and arrives beside the policewoman lurking there. Unexpectedly, he brings his face closer to her face and brushes her lips. Caught off guard, Veronica accepts the kiss and runs her tongue around his tongue for a few moments. Then, she suddenly stiffens and pulls away just far enough let rip a resounding slap directed at Leonardo's cheek.

"You're crazy!" she exclaims. Then, following the thread of her reasoning as a policewoman: "Did the whore refuse the dose you offered her today? But anyway, remember, get it well into your head: sooner or later I’ll catch you red-handed."

"You’d be better off taking a look around and seeing who the real criminals are, that are certainly not lacking in this area. But why should I tell you what to do? As it is, it’s by following me that you catch criminals. Sooner or later I’ll send you the bill, my dear!"

He brings his mouth closer to Veronica's again and, this time, and not by mistake, she indulges in a long kiss. When she opens his eyes again, Leonardo has vanished into the dark, as only he is able to do.

VERONICA…

It’s dark. While honest citizens are enjoying a well-deserved rest in the tranquility of their apartments, in some areas of the city people are living an alternative life. They are the homeless, drug addicts, drunks, prostitutes, viados, immigrants who are more or less illegal and characters without a permanent job or fixed address. In Jesi the beating heart of this type of society is the area between the railway station and the bus terminal, and the sinkholes of this human scum, able to welcome it without vomiting it, are represented by the al fresco areas of the bar in Piazzale Porta Valle and the benches under the trees that are almost totally in darkness, where the light from the street lamps barely arrives or not at all. It is not uncommon to see a drunken prostitute there, sprawled on a bench with her bare butt on display, in the same position she was in after the encounter with her last client, who has perhaps left her like that without even paying her.

It is well past midnight and the shutter of the pizzeria bar has been halfway down for over half an hour. Veronica, forty-year-old Police Superintendent, a glorious past as an Olympic fencing champion, is leaning against the side of her black sedan. The smoke of the cigarette joins her condensed breath and the fog of the late autumn night that softens the silhouettes of people and things. A black prostitute approaches her.

"For 20 Euro I can give you an orgasm, better than a man."

"Piss off!" she replies, showing the badge. "You're lucky that I’m busy tonight, otherwise you’d be spending the night in a cell."

"Give me a cigarette, then."

Veronica throws away the butt, searches in her pockets, lights the last of the pack, and then crumples it and throws on the ground.

"As you can see, I don't have any more. Get lost!" and emphasizes these last words by blowing smoke straight into her face and staring at her with the fiercest look she is able to muster.

One of the few working street lamps turns on and off intermittently, almost as if it is controlled by a strange clockwork mechanism; the light bulb has arrived at the end of the line but it will be some time before a municipality worker comes by to replace it. Taking advantage of the darkness and fog, the gypsy with long gray hair and wide-brimmed hat unloads his bladder behind the silhouette of a parked bus, then returns under the awning of the bar, drains his glass and starts staggering towards his bicycle. Three turns of the pedals and he falls head over heels to the ground, gets up and is lost in the fog. Every evening, no one knows if he manages to get to his caravan unharmed, down at the bottom of the industrial area, but the following day he turns up punctually to beg for money, alcohol and cigarettes.

Veronica pulls her leather jacket tighter to protect herself from the cold and damp. And suddenly, her attention is now focused on the two figures that are coming out from under the shutter of the bar. Leonardo, engineer Leonardo Albini, is in the company of a tall amber-skinned girl, miniskirt, long legs and breasts so puffed up with hormones and silicone that they could explode at any moment.

The beanpole, rather than a she, is still a he. He has something dangling between his legs for sure! Veronica thinks, but is not too interested in it. The one who interests her is Leonardo, that construction engineer with the pretense of becoming a private investigator. And of course, he’s always in contact with the local underworld, who better than him could nab criminals?

Leonardo says goodbye to the viado, who goes off in the direction of Via Setificio, while he heads towards Porta Valle and into the historic center. Veronica follows him trying to stay at a distance, but the man disappears into the meanders of the alleyways.

A man with a strong Eastern European accent approaches her from behind and triggers a switchblade.

"It’s not a good idea for a woman to wander around here alone!"

Not at all intimidated, the policewoman performs a pirouette and, thanks to a well-aimed kick, disarms her potential aggressor.

"And not for a man either, especially if he harasses the wrong people!"

And for that night it’s done, she has lost sight of her target, she hasn’t been able to verify his connivance and complicity with the criminals of the southern area of Jesi, which was once considered a quiet provincial town. Might just as well go back to the base. With the certainty that sooner or later Leonardo will slip up. Pure fantasy? Or maybe she is secretly and unknowingly in love with him, who knows!

The local newspapers the next day, a day characterized by a pale sun peeping through the blanket of fog, report the news of yet another crime

Jesi. In the Porta Valle area a viado was attacked and stabbed. Promptly rescued by Engineer Albini, who happened to be passing by, he will need 10 days to recover. But where is the Police?

CATERINA…

On a freezing day in mid-December I presented myself to the Chief Police Commissioner of Ancona. Dr. Spanò was my old boss. I had returned to the base, but I was there just to deliver the envelope containing my request for maternity leave.

"I’m happy to have you back with us, Dr. Ruggeri. It’s better to have a precious individual like you here in the area on maternity leave, rather than knowing you were assigned to a Police District so far away. Thanks to your new rank, I have a special job in store for you. We don’t have a Homicide Section here in the Marche. Seeing how you fared in the investigation up in Triora, and because of the considerable increase in crime in our areas too, I’ve decided to open the Section here in Ancona, which will cover the entire region, and you’ll be the one running it, assisted by Inspector Santinelli.

No, it’s not possible! I said to myself. Him in my way again. But wasn't he supposed to manage the Dog Lovers Field Office in my place after I left? Has he managed to ruin all the work I did in ten years in such a short time? Is the Dog Unit in disarray and is the Field Office about to close down?

I didn’t even have the courage to ask my superior for enlightenment and he, in any case, interpreting my hidden thoughts, gave me some assurances.

"Don't worry, your beloved Dog Lovers Field Office is doing great even without you, but Inspector Santinelli was not able to manage it. During the summer, three dogs fell ill with leishmaniasis and two handlers asked to be transferred because of incompatibility with the Inspector. So, before arriving at the irreparable, I’ve replaced Santinelli with a very valid colleague, Chief Inspector Della Debbia, who moved here from Nettuno."

I breathed a sigh of relief and continued to listen to what else he had to tell me.

"But, getting back to us, I was telling you that this new section, with regional validity, will be devoted to investigations into murders and missing persons, and I really believe that you are the most suitable person to head it. Without neglecting your commitments as a future new mother, you can come when you feel like it to organize the office, and when you tell me you’re ready, we’ll get started."

I was enthusiastic, and ideas regarding the organization of the new team were already running through my mind.

"That’s all good, but do I really have to have Inspector Santinelli with me?"

"It seems you’re the only one who has always been able to handle him! I’d have to say yes!"

I nodded, not exactly satisfied with the prospect, and was about to hold out my hand to my superior to say goodbye.

"One last thing, Commissioner. In the coming days we’ll have some specialists here at headquarters who are going to hold a course on Body Language and Prosemics which should be very interesting. If you’d like to participate, even if you’re on leave, I think you could learn some really important notions in the management of interrogations."

Even though I knew that Stefano would not be at all happy, I accepted the invitation, as the course dealt with topics that had always fascinated me: to be able to understand what someone was thinking, whether they’re lying or telling the truth, from their behavior. They were notions that, once learned and combined with my new perceptive abilities, would make me an infallible detective.

So, despite my baby bump and despite the protests from my partner, I began to spend most of my time at Police Headquarters, partly to follow the course on Body Language, and partly to organize my new office and my new team. Inspector Santinelli followed me in a helpful and compliant way, and all things considered I could not complain about him. I couldn't ask to have a Lamborghini like the one we had in Imperia, but I did manage to have a computer like the one that had helped us so much in the Triora investigation mounted on an Alfa 159. I gave Santinelli a little instruction on using it and I also had him enroll in an advanced course in computer technology, although I was convinced that we couldn’t expect too much from him.

Christmas passed, New Year's Eve passed, and Carnival passed too. Time went by quickly, with many commitments, and my tummy was increasingly cumbersome; the little girl kicked inside it and made her presence felt more and more. So at the beginning of March, despite Mauro's predictions, I decided it was time to calm down, retire in good order and wait for the event.

But, so as not to detach myself from work completely, I installed a PC at home with a webcam and a powerful broadband connection. I quickly learned to start video chats with my friends, especially with Clara and Mauro, and long video conferences with Santinelli, to check how things were going in my new office. We now had a good organization. We had set up our section in a small wing of Police Headquarters, a few rooms, four in all, but equipped with all the most modern technologies. The interrogation room was acoustically isolated and equipped with video cameras and microphones that allowed you to follow what was happening in there from a remote room. My office was occupied by Santinelli for the moment, and I had obliged him to always keep the computer on with the webcam active so that I could check on his work. The team consisted of three other young and really smart colleagues. Superintendent Roberta Gualandi was the youngest, very determined and passionate about the job she had chosen. Inspector Andrea Rosati was good with computers for both online research and field work. The Elite Operative Gaetano Perrotta of Calabrian origin, who had only recently moved to Ancona, was extremely intelligent, a very attentive observer and had made good use of the notions learned during the course on Body Language and Prosemics. We were ready to take o any investigation and I found myself following our first case, concerning a missing boy, from my PC monitor, something that, until a few days before I would never have imagined.

One morning the parents of a nineteen-year-old boy named Thomas Vindici had shown up at Police Headquarters, worried because the young man had left home the night before and they had not heard from him since. His cell phone was turned off, and no one knew what had happened to it. I followed what Inspector Santinelli told them very attentively, hoping not to have to intervene with my voice coming from the PC speakers.

"The boy is of age and has only been missing from home since last night. I feel it’s a bit early to make a missing persons report. Have you tried at his friends’ homes or in the places he usually frequents?" began Santinelli.

"Yes, he's not at the home of any of the friends we know. He had an argument with his girlfriend last night at our house, and she too doesn’t know where he may have gone and what’s more she has clammed up and doesn’t even want to tell us the reason for their quarrel. Thomas slammed the door on the way out. Samantha, as the girl is called, tried to follow him but he got onto the scooter and disappeared before she could talk to him," said the boy's mother, while the father remained rather taciturn and let his wife do the talking.

"Well, a kids’ thing, maybe he went and had a few too many drinks so he could forget the quarrel and when he gets over the bender he’ll find his way home."

"No, Thomas is not the type, he doesn't drink alcohol, he's a good kid, and this is the first time he's behaved like this," his mother insisted.

"Let's do this, without making a missing persons report for now, let's start some low key investigation. Get me a recent picture of your son and I'll pass it on to the patrol cars. Rosati, you try to track the boy's cell phone. And you, Roberta, go to their house and take a peek at the PC, especially e-mail, saved Messenger conversations, in short, everything that could be useful for us to understand where this boy might be holed up. In addition, try to question the girl, Samantha, tactfully but don’t go too hard, she’s a minor."

All things considered, it seemed that Santinelli was managing quite well and I breathed a sigh of relief. At that juncture I couldn’t have done better and what he had proposed made sense.

A few hours later, the two colleagues appeared in the office again. Rosati had no reassuring news, Thomas' cell phone was not traceable, he had certainly removed battery and SIM card, which made it clear that the boy was not naïve. A bit more news came from Roberta.

"Nothing interesting in the boy’s PC partition. I also took a look at his Facebook profile, and I didn’t find anything there either. What I did notice, though, and it triggered an alarm bell in my head, is that on the user folders reserved for Mr. Vindici, the boy's father, there is one with the contents password protected. It was not difficult for me to bypass the protection and access the contents of the folder, where a series of images depicting women smoking have been saved, more than one thousand four hundred of them."

"Pornographic photos?" I intervened electronically, drawing the attention of my colleagues in the office.

"Not really. Yes, some nude images, but always and only young women, all beautiful and with cigarettes in their hands or mouths. Many are close-ups of these women, often inhaling or exhaling smoke, or enveloped by a bluish or whitish cloud."

"He's a fetishist. In all likelihood, relations with his wife are very sporadic or absent and he finds sexual satisfaction in front of these images. But so far, nothing wrong, I’d say, other than the portrait of a family that’s a bit 'disintegrated’."

"And you're right, commissioner. I tried to find out very discreetly what the relationship was between Giorgio Vindici and his wife Elisabetta. Basically they’ve broken up but are still living together; they sleep in separate rooms and haven’t had relations with each other for a long time. Five or six years ago, the woman was very sick and underwent major surgery, a liver transplant. The two hadn’t been getting along very well for some time, and the woman quickly took the opportunity to say that, since she was doing an immunosuppressive therapy, which was essential so as not to reject the transplanted organ, she had to stay isolated so as not to risk even catching a cold. She moved to another room at that time and no longer slept with her husband. He has never felt he could leave her and, out of respect, fear or because he is shy, he has never even found himself a lover. And therefore he must have found his natural release in front of the images he has saved on his PC."

"A somewhat complex personality. When it’s like that, there is also little dialogue in the family. But all this is of little help to us in finding Thomas."

"Agreed. Except that I discovered that the girl, Samantha, in addition to being rebellious, nonconformist and transgressive, is a heavy smoker for the age she is. How would you relate these things to the father’s little habit?"

"Do you think that Mr. Giorgio hasn’t been able to resist and has bothered the girl?"

"I think so. And I think maybe his son caught him in the act. And that's why he left slamming the door."

"Before we jump to hasty conclusions, I’d like to examine the profiles of Giorgio and Samantha for myself. We can call Mr. Vindici in. I want Perrotta to question him and I want to be at the interrogation. As for the girl, Roberta, go and have a chat with her in her home. Take your handheld and activate the video call so that I can do an analysis of her personality and hear what she has to say."

About three quarters of an hour later, Mr. Vindici was taken into the interrogation room. Perrotta left him alone for quite a while so he could study his attitudes in the video camera, based on what we had learned at the Body Language course. I could see the interrogation room on half of the screen of my PC and my office on the other half, currently occupied by Santinelli. Mr. Giorgio was apprehensive, very nervous, he was squeezing his eyes, lifting his eyelids, fiddling with whatever he had at hand, starting with his watch, and continuing with any object he found in the room. But what struck me most was that his feet were always facing the exit door or the only window in the room, meaning towards an escape route, as they had taught us at the course. He couldn't wait to get out of there. Perrotta skillfully kept him on edge for about twenty minutes, and then entered the room.

"Don’t worry, put yourself at ease, we will not tell your wife anything of what you say in here. The walls are soundproofed, no one is listening to us. Do you want a glass of water?" There was a fresh water dispenser in the room. Gaetano filled a plastic cup and handed it to him. "Well, there are some interesting photos on your PC. Shall we talk about it?"

Giorgio began to sweat and mumbled some kind of excuse.

"There is nothing illegal. They’re not pornographic photos and there are no minors in them. I'm not a pedophile."

"Of course, of course. Everyone has their own passions. I like to play soccer, you like women who smoke. By the way, do you want a cigarette?"

"N... no. I don't smoke."

"Oh really? So, how do you explain this passion?"

"I don't know, I can’t understand it myself either. The human psyche is sometimes uncontrollable. The fact is that when I see a woman smoking, especially when she uses the flame of a lighter or a match to light the cigarette, I can't help getting excited. It's been happening to me since I was a boy. I don't know what to do about it."

Meanwhile, Roberta had arrived at Samantha's house and had activated the video call from her handheld. So a third window opened on my computer, from which I could see what she looked like, a petite young girl, blonde hair in a series of thin braids, blue eyes, round face with rosy smooth skin marked here and there by some sporadic pimple. She looked even younger than her seventeen years, so she used a series of ruses to look older: first of all her makeup, quite heavy and carefully applied, then there were the piercings and the cigarettes. With the piercings, I noticed one on her nose and one under the lower lip. There was a continuous series of earrings of various types running down the side of her left ear, while the right ear had an earring on the lobe and a piercing on the highest part of the earcup. There were certainly others in areas of the body not visible at the time, navel and other more or less intimate areas. I saw her tinkering with a cigarette paper, a filter and some tobacco, then roll herself a cigarette and light it with a small red plastic lighter, much to Roberta's disappointment, who was a convinced health enthusiast and detested smoking.

"Can you tell us something about what happened last night at Thomas' place?" the superintendent asked.

"No, I don't want to say anything. I’m a minor, leave me alone, I know my rights and you can’t question me."

"It's not an interrogation. We're just trying to figure out what happened to your boyfriend. Don't you want to know too?"

The girl turned away and exhaled a puff of smoke from her nose.

"Uff!"

In the meantime, Giorgio was succumbing to Perrotta's increasingly relentless questions.

"If you don’t cooperate, we’ll have to report you for child molestation. We have sufficient elements in our hands."

"Okay, okay. I didn’t abuse the girl. She provoked me. She knew about my habit, because she had discovered that I looked at those photos on the computer, and she did it on purpose to provoke me. When we were alone for a few moments, Samantha pulled out a cigarette and put it in her mouth. She tried to light it several times, but the lighter just made sparks. Whether the gas has run out or if the girl was doing it deliberately to provoke me I don't know. I know that at one point she asked me if there were any matches in the house. I got the box, lit one and put the flame close to her cigarette. She knew very well that at that moment I was very excited, she snorted smoke in my face, then took my hand and guided it under her shirt, in contact with her bare skin. I was going crazy, my hand touched the piercing on her navel and I was fighting with myself not to go up higher in search of her breasts, which I would have found without encountering the obstacle of a bra. Without even thinking twice, Samantha had already unfastened my pants and would have taken my penis in her hand if Thomas hadn’t come into the room at that moment. I felt so ashamed. My son was furious, but before she ran after him, Samantha gave me a glance that had only one meaning: mum’s the word, I won’t say anything. I thought he would catch up to her and they would have sorted things out with each other, instead..."

At this point I asked Roberta to put the handheld closer to her ear and told her what had emerged from the interrogation of Thomas' father. Roberta nodded and turned to the girl again.

"Okay, Samantha. They’re telling me that Giorgio is spilling the beans about what happened between the two of you last night. If there is any suspicion that he has abused you, I will have to call the social worker and have you undergo a medical examination to ascertain if you have been raped. A visit like that is usually not pleasant for a young girl like you. Then we should search your room to see if you also smoke something else, in addition to tobacco. If you want to avoid all this, tell us what you know."

Samantha made herself another cigarette, to buy time, and lit it. Then, with a resigned air, she spoke.

"Oh alright, meddling police bitch. Nothing happened between me and Giorgio. I like to provoke and that's how it went. I think I know where Thomas has gone to hide. Down at the docks, between the commercial port and the marina, there are some fishermen's huts that no-one uses at this time of year. We’ve been there a few times to make love, I think you'll find him in one of those huts."

I gave Roberta immediate instructions.

"I know the port well, there are hundreds of huts like that, and Thomas can be in any one of them. We have to be quick to find him. If the boy is sensitive he may attempt suicide. Stop by his house and pick up a garment that Thomas has worn and hasn’t been washed. Send someone here to my house to get Furia and have him sniff the garment. You will certainly find the boy."

Furia carried out his task very well. When my colleagues broke into the hut through the locked door which Furia had scraped with his paw, Thomas was already standing on a stool with a rope around his neck. When he heard them break the door down, the boy jumped and was hanging on the rope, but Roberta and Gaetano were quick to rescue him and the suicide attempt did not have tragic consequences. The boy was taken back to the police station, where his parents were waiting for him. Since from my pc I could see everyone, colleagues and Vindici family gathered in front of the webcam, I could not help but lecture them from the computer screen.

"Everyone, things went well this time and we are all happy. But please, solve your family problems. I want to tell you this from the heart, as a future mother. You, Thomas, don't deserve that girl, so either she changes her character or you change girlfriend."

The boy nodded, indicating that he understood.

"And you, Giorgio and Elisabetta, don’t feel compelled to stay together under the same roof just to save a façade behind which there is nothing. Better to be separated and serene than together but in conflict. A child is much happier knowing that his parents each live an independent life, than having to witness strange situations that take place in the home. In short, either you are fond of each other and live your married life, or you immediately think about separation and a possible divorce."

I never knew, and with all sincerity I don't even care, how the relationship between Thomas and Samantha and between Giorgio and Elisabetta ended. For me, the important thing was to have seen my team at work and to have ascertained that I could sleep peacefully and begin to think exclusively about my motherhood.

On the twenty-first of March I gave birth to a beautiful little girl: Aurora.

THE FOUNDATION OF AESIS

297 B.C.

The man who was plowing the fertile fields on the slope of the hill facing east did not know what iron was, and not even bronze. The plow was made of flint stone and was pulled by a pair of docile auri, brown coat and huge horns, and you had to exert a lot of force on it to make it sink into the ground in an efficient way. From his father, belonging to the ethnic group of the Senoni Gauls, Kakin had inherited powerful muscles which seemed sculptured, they were so evident in the effort he was making as he worked the fields. From his mother instead he had inherited the delicate facial features, more typical of the populations that lived the other side of the Apennines, the Umbrians, but above all the Etruscans.

He was already twenty-five years old, he would live at most another ten, maybe fifteen, but he had not yet found a woman suitable for him. Precisely because of his mixed descent, both the women of Gallic origin and those of Umbrian origin feared retaliation from their families, if they mated with that handsome young man who lived on the hill. And besides, he too cared about his independence and would never have mixed with the newcomers, the Romans, who had crossed the Sentino River and had descended along the Esino valley to start the foundation of the camp from which they would launch the assault on the Senoni Gauls.

On that clear day in early autumn, as he was preparing his fields to receive the seeds of wheat, he looked at the camp of the Romans taking shape on the opposite hill beyond which, further down, the river flowed. A camp that, within a few days, had assumed the typical conformation. Under the guidance of two consuls, the two main roads had been traced, which crossed each other at right angles in the highest part of the hill, the Cardo Massimo and the Decumano Massimo. Turning his gaze to his right, the man saw the silhouettes of the Appennine Mountains standing out clearly against the blue sky. He recognized the highest mountain, with its familiar shape, because he had been onto its slopes several times, after two days of hard walking, to get an excellent food that some of his distant Umbrian relatives obtained from the milk of the sheep they raised on the green mountain pastures. His mother and father had taught him the way when he was still a child of just over ten. The last time he’d been there, his cousins had told him about the Romans who had founded an important settlement beyond those mountains, on the bank of a river that they had dedicated to their God, Janus. The Romans had weapons in bronze, but also in another metal, until then almost unknown in the Italic peninsula, which made them invincible even in the face of an incredible numerical superiority of the enemies. Precisely because of the important presence of that metal in the areas adjacent to the river dedicated to the God Janus, who was also the God of war, that valley in the middle of the mountains had become an important forge where iron weapons were manufactured by Roman blacksmiths. Thus the settlement had taken the name of Faber Janus. Samnites, Umbrians and Etruscans had teamed up to try to stem the advance of the Romans, who had now conquered the whole of Lazio and were trying to extend their supremacy to other regions of the peninsula.

"We will fight alongside Gellio Ignazio, the Samnite duce," his shepherd cousins told Kakin. "We have forces at least three times more than the Romans’. We will not allow them to advance beyond the Sentino River."

"Be careful! The Romans have weapons capable of defeating even very powerful armies. Your swords will break under the blows of theirs that are made of a metal that makes sparks when it hits the rock, and only corpses will be left under their blows."

When Kakin saw the first Romans arriving in his area at the end of the summer, he realized that his predictions had been right, that his shepherd cousins had certainly died and that he would no longer enjoy the taste of that delicious food called Kaseo. The Roman consuls, Quintus Fabius Rulliano and Publius Decius Mure, were well aware that the Samnite troops who had survived the battle of the Sentino had reunited with the Gauls a few dozen miles north of that place, and that the battle against this army would be much harder than the one they had recently won. There was also the possibility that it was the Gauls themselves, particularly fierce, who launched the offensive. They therefore decided that the settlement founded on the banks of the Esino almost five hundred years earlier by King Hesio, a mythical King of Greek origin, was difficult to defend. It would have been much better, although more impractical, to found a new encampment on the hill which had a commanding position over the river to the south-east, along the valley down to the sea, while to the north-west you could cast your gaze towards the lands controlled by Gauls and Samnites.

Quinto Fabio Rulliano laid a first square stone on the highest point of the hill: its elongated ridge, rather flat, would be crossed by the Cardo Massimo. The Decumanus Maximus would cut it perpendicularly and at the intersection of the two main roads, the Forum would arise. Publius Decius Mure, who was more of a technician than a strategist, had instead decided where the amphitheater and theater would arise and where the large cistern for the water supply would be built. Later, if the settlement remained inhabited, the Baths, the Temples and the houses of the Noble Patricians would be built, even if they had no strategic use.

For the Romans, the hill on which Kakin was working the land was half a mile away and was one of their first targets. As for him, Kakin was accustomed to calculating distances differently, on foot, paces and days of walking, but he was well aware that that Roman encampment, which was so close as the crow flies, represented an extreme danger, not only for his freedom but for his very life. He would never have tolerated becoming a slave to the Romans, and have to cultivate his land to give up the olives, and the wheat, and the grapes, and be left with just a little, barely enough to survive. Better to die with honor than to lose one's freedom.

As these thoughts crowded his untrained brain, Kakin started hearing a strange noise, like a hiss, and the intensity of it kept increasing, causing enormous discomfort to his ears. He looked up at the sky and saw a huge fireball which was falling from the sky at an incredible speed. What was it? He had never seen anything like it in his life. As it continued in its inexorable trajectory, the object projected its shadow on the figure of Kakin who, in a few moments, would never see the sunlight again. The impact of the fiery object with the ground was devastating. A cloud of earth, dust and rocky debris rose for at least three hundred feet, while the object, about two hundred cubits in diameter, sank into the ground until it reached the aquifer. The earth shook violently, and the shock was felt for miles and miles. The contact of the incandescent object with the groundwater caused a strong jet of watery vapor to rise from the bowels of the earth, escaping from the newly formed chasm. The mass of earth and debris that had risen upwards fell partly inside the chasm itself, covering the object that had caused it to open, and partly all around for a radius of at least a quarter of a mile. Kakin had been buried by the debris.

The Romans who were building the camp were shocked by what they had seen. Following the earthquake, many people had fallen to the ground and the works they were building had collapsed. The two Consuls, Quintus Fabius and Publius Decius, who came out of their respective tents as soon as they heard that strange hissing sound, were stunned as they saw what had taken place on the other hill. A new destructive weapon of the enemy? What on earth had the Gauls come up with? Would the next fiery ball hit Aesis? The two Consuls chose a handful of trusted soldiers and headed for the hill opposite the one where they were building the encampment, to go and see for themselves what had happened.

The outer layer of titanium and iridium had protected the inside of the capsule from overheating due to contact with the Earth's atmosphere. When the sensors of the sophisticated on-board equipment showed that the internal temperature had dropped to acceptable levels, the central brain began a series of checks and commanded the de-dehibernation of Alpha and Beta. The two hibernation cells opened and, in the space of a few minutes, two strange individuals came out and began to move around with familiarity inside the shuttle. Alpha and Beta had slimy skin, similar to that of frogs, and a thin body with long limbs that terminated at hands and feet with prehensile fingers and toes. The size of the head was enormous compared to the body: instead of ears there were gills, they had two holes for nostrils in the center of the face, two huge eyes and a mouth without lips. They were amphibians, so they could perform the respiratory function both in the water, by means of the gills, and in an oxygenated atmosphere thanks to the lungs which they had. They did not use language, because communication between them took place telepathically. In the same way, telepathically, they were able to communicate and give orders to the on-board computer. The other hibernated subjects, from Gamma to Omega, were what remained of the population of a remote planet at the limits of the galaxy, two thousand six hundred light years away, that was in search of a new planet that would welcome them, where the climatic conditions and the cultural level of the population favored their integration, in order to perpetuate the species, that no longer had any hope in that planet that was dying. The star of that system had in fact exhausted its energy, the planet had sunk into darkness and was covered in frost; the only hope was to leave there. The few survivors had studied the planet Earth very well, a planet surrounded by an atmosphere rich in oxygen, in which there were large masses of water and settlements in the emerged lands, towns of various sizes, illuminated artificially during the hours of darkness, inhabited by individuals endowed with intelligence not quite equal to theirs, but which came very close to it. According to their calculations, if they were not seen by the Earthlings as a threat, they would be well received, they would have the opportunity to use their technologies to take on the appearance of the native inhabitants as close as possible and they would also have the possibility of mating with them to guarantee themselves offspring. The exchange would have been beneficial for both, they would have been able to reproduce themselves, while the earthlings would have benefited from new technologies which were unknown before.

So they had planned the trip, had prepared the hibernation cells and had given the appropriate instructions to the on-board brain. Alpha and Beta had remained at the manual control console until they moved away from the orbit of their old planet, then they had inserted the autopilot and slipped into their cryogenic cells. When the hibernation procedure was terminated, the brain had given the airship the command for an extreme acceleration. Within a few nanoseconds, the capsule was launched into hyperspace at a speed a thousand times faster than that of light, covering an incredible distance in a relatively short time. In practice, the airship had traveled a distance of two thousand six hundred light years in a time corresponding to what were three years on its planet of origin.

First of all, Alpha and Beta tested the environment they were in at that moment. The capsule was immersed in water, but the pressure was not such as to suggest oceanic depths. It was a light layer of water, above which there was oxygenated atmosphere. In any case, they had to use the watertight chamber to go outside in order to prevent any liquid from coming inside, ruining the electronic equipment. Breathing through the gills, they returned to the surface of the water from which they could see light coming from much higher up. Helping themselves with their hands and feet, like flies, they began to climb the vertical walls of that well, hollowed out by the fall of their airship. As they ascended, the light coming from above became more and more evident. Through the circular hole, Alpha and Beta could see a blue sky, something they had never been able to admire in their lives. As they looked up they saw some heads leaning into the opening. They flattened themselves against the walls of the cylindrical well, while a bucket tied to a rope descended inside and rose shortly after filled with water.

Quinto Fabio and Publio Decio, who had arrived on the spot, had seen the chasm produced by the fireball which had rained down from the sky. A little further on, the head of an auroch with large horns poked out of the uneven earth.

"That animal is still alive, pull it out and help it, it can be useful to us. And dig that earth, there must be another bovine and a man there," Publio Decio ordered some men. "The Gauls usually make these animals work in pairs and the farmer guides the plow to trace the furrows."

Quinto Fabio instead concerned himself with looking to see what was at the bottom of the chasm and noticed some water, but he absolutely did not notice the two strange beings that were climbing up along the earthen walls. He ordered a soldier to tie a bucket to a rope and draw up some water.

"That thing has dug a well for us, let's see if the water is good!"

He then ordered one of his men to taste it. As the man drank, he underwent an obvious transformation. His skin, wrinkled by the sun and the scars of the battles, became smooth again like that of a boy beginning his first exercises with weapons, the muscles became robust and became evident on the surfaces left uncovered by his tunic, the sickly air of the soldier due to an incipient pulmonary emphysema, disappeared. Quinto Fabio took the sword and killed the man, as he could not bear one of his soldiers to appear stronger and more beautiful than him. Then he greedily drank the water from the bucket until not a drop remained. Within seconds, his veteran’s body was transformed into a sturdy, young warrior. Quinto felt like he did when, sixteen years old, he had first picked up an iron sword and had challenged his comrades, getting the best of them one after the other. While he was admiring his powerful biceps, the two slimy beings came out of the well, attracting the attention of the handful of Roman soldiers who, seeing them as strange enemies or as an unusual source of food, pounced on them. Every blow they tried to deliver with spears, swords, hatchets or with their bare hands, was blocked by an invisible barrier that surrounded the two strange individuals.

Alpha communicated with Beta by means of brain waves.

"These beings are strange, they are not at all as intelligent as we expected. The environment is also completely different from what we should have found based on our observations."

"Let’s try to capture the most interesting individuals and take them inside the shuttle, we’ll be able to study them and make the appropriate considerations. Let's take what looks like the leader and the man they just pulled out of the earth, they seem the strongest. Let's neutralize everyone else. Better not to have witnesses for the moment."

Pointing the index finger of their right hand at their targets, they neutralized the Roman soldiers one by one, who fell to the ground stunned, hit by a very intense laser beam. They would not be dead, they would later come to, but they would not remember anything about the encounter with the aliens.

Alpha took Kakin, while Beta loaded Quinto Fabio onto his shoulders, he too rendered harmless by the laser beam, and they went back into the vertical well, to re-enter the airship with their prisoners. Both Kakin and Quinto Fabio, still helpless, were placed in a special niche where the on-board computer would study their chemical and physical makeup, vital functions and gene pool. Electrodes were applied to their wrists and ankles, while the head of the two individuals was inserted inside a kind of helmet.

While the computer processed the data relating to the two Earthlings, Beta made rapid calculations in his mind. When he came to the conclusions, he communicated them to Alfa.

"While we were hibernating, the shuttle traveled at a speed a thousand times faster than light. We went through an infinitely large space in a short time. Considering that our planet is 2,600 light-years away from here, we have observed the Earth as it will be in more than two millennia compared to the period in which we are now!"

"So we have no hope of survival here?"

"Not necessarily. The autonomy of this equipment is about two thousand of our years, corresponding to three thousand Earth years. We can let our companions hibernate and plan their awakening in a more suitable period."

"The hibernation cells have this autonomy, but not the on-board computer. The procedure will have to be activated manually by someone. Who will do it in more than 2,500 years?"

"We must take possession of the bodies of these two Earthlings. We will train our offspring so that at the appropriate time they are able to activate the procedures and reawaken our companions," Beta said, as he began to view the results of the analysis which the computer had carried out on the bodies of earthlings.

Data relative to Kakin was being displayed on a monitor.

Vital functions interrupted, but easily restored.

Young individual, cells in good condition.

Cerebral convolutions with rather limited development.

The surface of the cerebral cortex can be greatly increased artificially.

Able to breathe only in an oxygenated environment.

Able to resist for a long time in apnea, thanks to a large lung capacity. No gills.

Genetic make-up consisting of twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, given by the combination of complex nucleotides.

Beta applied two flat electrodes to Kakin's chest area. The computer sent a series of electrical stimulations, at the right intensity and spaced between them in a calculated way, until the heart, after some extra systoles, was brought back to a normal sinus rhythm. The chest rose once, twice, then the breathing became regular too. At that point, Beta looked for a vein in the Earthling's arm, inserted a needle into it connected via a flexible tube to a strange container, then processed instructions in its mind and looked at the monitor again.

First nanobot’s inoculation taking place.

Inoculation completed.

Nanobots ready to adapt the genetic codes of the host to Alpha's body.

Completed.

Alpha lay down next to Kakin's body and in a short time the two bodies merged: Alpha disappeared inside the earthling, who began to give signs of reawakening.

Second inoculation of nanobots in progress.

Inoculation completed.

Nanobots working on brain convolutions and memory manipulation.

Completed...

All nanobots will remain on standby in the blood stream, ready to intervene in the repair of degenerated, aged or crazy cells.

The process is complete.

Kakin Alfa got up.

The same phases were repeated on the body of Quinto Fabio. After inoculating the needle into a vein of the other individual, Beta too lay down beside the earthling who would give him his body. After a few minutes, Quinto Fabio Beta rose from his niche. The two were now also able to communicate with each other, and with the Earthlings with whom they would come into contact, by means of verbal language. The two of them could speak both the language of the Romans and that of the Gauls, and their minds had the capacity to develop those primordial languages to make them much more fluid and suitable for communication. A new sense, never used in their home planet, was hearing. It was strange, but very interesting, to be able to process the sounds that came to those strange new accessories of their head, which were the ears. Although they could still communicate telepathically, they were now able to understand each other by means of sounds. It was amazing how emitting air from the mouth and synchronizing the movements of the throat, lips and tongue they were able to pronounce an infinite variety of sounds. It would only take a few minutes, thanks to their intelligence, to learn to use these two new functions, voice and hearing.

Their bodies would still age over time. Nanobots had the ability to repair and replace diseased cells, but they had a limited possibility of slowing down the body's aging process. On their home planet, nanobots maintained a body in perfect efficiency for about seventy, seventy-five years, which corresponded to about a hundred Earth years. So Alpha and Beta knew that every hundred years they would have to return to their shuttle to transfer their being and mind to a new Earthling body. But they would have had plenty of time to think about the strategies to adopt. Now they had to rise to the surface and begin their hard life on planet Earth.

Returning to the sunlight, a sun that warmed their skin in an unexpected way, they divided the tasks to have the possibility of protecting the site as much as possible over time. Kakin Alfa would stay on the hill, build a masonry well that would guarantee access to the shuttle at any time. He would continue to cultivate the land as if he were the Gallic Kakin and nothing had happened, but he would in any case build some stone fortifications to defend the hill from any busybodies, evil- or well-intentioned people.

For his part, Quinto Fabio Beta, with his handful of men who remembered nothing except that they had gone to see the effects of the fall of that strange fiery object, would return to directing the construction work of the new Roman city: Aesis. He would apply notions of engineering to his creation that the Romans did not know and, in the space of fifty years, the city would become one of the most flourishing and impregnable Roman colonies, protected by mighty walls, a Roman outpost towards the territories still occupied by the Gauls.

On the highest part of the city was the Forum, where bankers, traders and agrarians met. Not far away stood the amphitheater and the Baths. The huge water cistern, located in the northeastern sector of the highest part of the city, communicated with the well containing the amazing water located on the opposite hill, by means of an ingenious hidden underground channel. Quinto Fabio had arranged to have all the slaves used for the construction of that canal killed, because no one must be aware of its existence.

Five hundred years after the foundation of Rome, about fifty years after the battle of the Sentino, Aesis was still governed by the elderly consul Quinto Fabio Rulliano, who had eradicated the neighboring populations of Gallic Senoni and Samnites, to pave the way for Roman conquests towards the Adriatic coasts. But the hill inhabited by the Gaul Kakin, a well-known ally of the Romans and Quinto Fabio, had never been attacked and its independence had always been guaranteed, never questioned by any inhabitant of Aesis.

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL

26 May 2010

Little Aurora was now two months old, and the days passed quickly, one after the other. The little girl was easy and slept blissfully all night. I had already begun to alternate breastfeeding with meals of artificial milk. Stefano was not at all reluctant to look after Aurora, change her diapers and feed her with the bottle. Having already had two other children, he boasted of having some experience in this regard, so I could take advantage of it to have a minimum of personal freedom and begin to think about returning to work as soon as possible. But what surprised me most about the child, despite Piaget's theories on mental development, was that at two months Aurora already had full perception of her body and its relationships with the external environment. I could also imagine that Aurora emanated an intense white aura which indicated her purity as a newborn, but which also foreshadowed that in the future she would be a person with great intellectual abilities and good and altruistic by nature. I was able to enjoy that beautiful creature at all stages of her growth, with great satisfaction of being her mother. I couldn't wait to introduce her to Clara who, with her esoteric powers, would be able to reveal to me any interesting innate gift the little one had that had maybe escaped me. Meanwhile I was enjoying the lively gaze and smiles that were printed on Aurora's round face, characterized by two enormous blue eyes. During the day I often saw her observing everything that surrounded her with those big eyes, and she rarely cried, other than to demand her food at meal times.

It was a Wednesday night when I noticed Stefano sit down in front of the television to watch a football match

"Since when have you been a football fan? You've never been passionate about this sport!" I said, snuggling up on the couch next to him and receiving a tender hug in return.

"The Champions League final is on tonight: Fiorentina- Chelsea. It is an extraordinary event because the coach, Roberto Gloriani, the guy they call Mister in football jargon, hails from our city, I’ve known him since we were kids. He was a great player even as a child and played in Series A teams for several years, managing to put aside a nice nest egg. Taking into account the six zeros of his bank account, he retired from the playing field at thirty-seven, but after a couple of years spent doing nothing returned to Italian stadiums as a coach. For several years he was the ‘Mister’ for Fiorentina, and managed to bring the team back to win the major Italian championship decades after they had last won a championship. Despite the fact that Fiorentina won the championship anyway, the whole of last year was a succession of disagreements and controversies, both with some players and with the managers of the team, so Gloriani ended up breaking his contract with the company a year in advance and found himself having to pay a hefty penalty. But he immediately found something to make up for that. He was called to coach an important English team, Chelsea, which had to get back on track after finishing at the bottom of the British Premier League standings and risking relegation. So Gloriani has accepted a new multi-million dollar contract, with the clause that the team would also buy Fiorentina’s young protégé, a black player with Italian nationality whose family is originally from Ghana. He’s very good but equally as undisciplined: Annibale Burk. Chelsea didn’t win the Premier League this year, but they were always at the top end of the league in any case. To make up for missing out on the championship, our dear Mister promised the management and team a victory in the Champions League, one of the most coveted international cups. Funnily enough, the final will be played against his old team, and so tonight will be interesting... we’ll see what happens."

"Interesting indeed. Did you do a crash course to become an expert in football? I’ve never heard you so knowledgeable on the subject! But the name Roberto Gloriani rings a bell. Ah, yes, now I remember. He was the one who stumped up the funds for the restoration of Villa Brandi, there is talk of several million Euro to bring a villa in a complete state of abandonment back to its former glory and which popular belief claims is full of ghosts. But there's more. The day after tomorrow we’re invited to the official inauguration, and Gloriani himself will be present. I hadn't even considered the invitation all that much, but at this point I’m curious. We could leave Aurora with a babysitter for the first time, and go to the ceremony together!"

"Why not! I don't mind the idea. I’d be very happy to be able to shake hands with an old acquaintance who has become so famous. But now let's enjoy the game, the referee has whistled the start."

I didn’t understand why the game wasn’t being played in Florence, but at the Marassi stadium in Genoa, perhaps for security reasons, perhaps because of the greater seating capacity. The two groups of fans began raging at each other immediately. Five minutes from the start, the referee had to suspend the match for a few minutes as the smoke bombs lit by the fans had badly limited visibility on the field. I knew that there was certainly someone I’d had occasion to meet among the police who were on duty in that stadium, and that moment I didn’t envy them at all. The TV cameras were focused on the stands and after a few scuffles an apparent calm had returned. The game resumed and the first half ended in a stalemate: nil all.

The second half began with whistles and protests from the stands by the Florentine fans addressed to the old coach of their beloved team. They called him a betrayer, a despicable being only interested in money, and things along those lines. In the tenth minute after resuming play Fiorentina scored a goal, and this fact helped to calm the Italian fans and provoked the insurrection of the English ones. The match was suspended again for a few minutes, because objects like bottles and so on were being thrown onto the playing field. The referee, the Greek Passilliou, threatened to suspend the game permanently and award the victory by default. Thanks to this threat, a relative calm returned among the audience, but it was not over. Chelsea managed to equalize: exultation of the English fans and once again insults launched by the Florentine fans towards both the referee and the Chelsea coach. The second half ended one all. It went to extra time which did not change the result. During this last phase of the game it seemed that the referee was pretending not to notice the fouls by the players of both teams who were now running out of steam. Awarding penalties or free kicks to either of the two teams would have done nothing but unleash a probable war between the Italian and English fans. Not that this helped to keep them calm, but at least it wouldn't encourage violence.

"It's absolutely awful!" was my comment at the end of the second extra time. "Sport should bring people together, unite. From everything I'm seeing, though, whatever the result is, I really think that there will be urban guerrilla warfare in Genoa tonight. I’m sorry for my colleagues who are there, they won’t be able to do much against this horde of riffraff."

"But, look, most people go to the game to be entertained. The troublemakers are few and far between, but there are enough of them to drag large masses behind them in these cases. And I realize that it’s not easy for the police to take on these people."

Meanwhile, the cameras had focused on a bare-chested madman whose skin was almost completely covered with tattoos, who was inciting his companions with gestures of his arms. I imagined that he was a habitual offender, certainly known to the British Police. And he was there, no one had stopped him!

The match had to end with a penalty shoot-out. The match director got this final phase of the game underway.

Fiorentina shoots: goal.

Chelsea shoots: goal.

Two all.

Fiorentina shoots: saved by the Chelsea goalkeeper.

Chelsea shoots: out.

Still two all.

Fiorentina’s turn and the Captain of the team shoots: goal.

Chelsea shoots: parried.

Three to two.

Fiorentina shoots: it's a goal!

Annibale Burk prepares for the shot from the disk: parried by the goalkeeper but according to the referee, he moved too early.

The shot is repeated: Annibale Burk misses! The ball hits the crossbar and bounces outside the goal area. Out!

Chelsea has no other chance. Victory, four to two, for Fiorentina.

The Marassi stadium, as was to be expected, explodes. Some English fans manage to get onto the pitch, it's an invasion. They head towards the referee and Gloriani, Escorted by the police, they reach the locker rooms a moment before being lynched. On the stands the explosion of smoke bombs and firecrackers partly hides the scuffles that have begun between opposing groups of fans. The most violent fans, who have left the stadium, are busying themselves burning garbage bins and parked cars. Result of the night, as reported by the TV news and newspapers the next day: three million Euro of damage, thirteen contusions among the fans and fifteen among the police, including a policeman who ended up in intensive care, with fears for his recovery.

The Mister, Gloriani, who managed to leave the stadium through a secondary exit, had entrenched himself in the hotel, besieged by a number of fans, both English and Italian. He would leave the hotel only two days later.

MARIA LUCIA BRANDI

25 – 26 September 2009

Maria Lucia Brandi looked much younger than her age of forty. She was not tall and her features were roundish, although it couldn’t be said that she was fat. But her round face, her hazel eyes, her long, curly brown hair, her skin barely colored with a suntan made her desirable in the eyes of any man. She knew how to enhance her femininity with skimpy dresses, incredible miniskirts and unbelievable necklines. The work she did with great passion, as a lifeguard at Beach Club 59 in Marcelli di Numana, a beautiful place on the Conero Riviera, gave her the chance to show off her abundant feminine graces even more, barely contained in tiny bikinis. Giacomo, her current partner, was just twenty-two years old, eighteen years younger than her, but to see them together they seemed to be the same age. He worked at the same beach resort too, serving at the bar and doing entertainment when the opportunity arose.

Apart from the seaside, Maria Lucia had two other passions: yoga and graffiti. She had begun to practice the relaxation techniques and drills for concentration, in tantra, in the so-called journey in search of self, several years earlier when she was still a girl not yet seventeen years old.

With her spiritual guide she had even traveled to India, to learn yoga techniques, and had become a true master. Thus, at the Beach Club 59, among other things, tourists and bathers could participate in yoga sessions on the beach, which were advertised as something that, in addition to the other benefits, also favored the strengthening of the immune system. The club’s brochures and advertising posters boasted:

BEACH CLUB 59 – MARCELLI DI NUMANA

YOGA ON THE BEACH

Practicing Yoga is a healthy and relaxing activity, which is good for the body and mood.

Add to this the amount of well-being that can be achieved by doing Yoga by the sea, accompanied by the sound of the water, being able to breathe healthy air rich in Iodine, which helps fight colds and allergies.

Under the wise guidance of our Baywatch Maria Lucia Brandi, the sessions will be held in the special area, at a proper distance from the umbrellas and beach huts, so as to ensure the necessary tranquility.

The more technological of you can bring along the Yoga Hi-Tech mat, which is also on sale at our establishment for the modest sum of € 50.00; others can choose between the classic mat or a beach towel, for a Yoga session in a holiday version.

Maria Lucia's twenty-year-old companion was obliged to participate in every yoga session, and not just that. On days when these sessions were not planned, the lifeguard did at least an hour and a half of intense physical activity on the beach to keep her body in shape, and Giacomo was forced to do the same, unfortunately: running on the sand, push-ups, exercises and finally a swim in deep water until he ran he had not strength left. More than once the boy, who was not a skilled swimmer, had risked drowning, and had been rescued by his partner who had not spared sarcastic jokes about him. And after all this, poor Giacomo had to satisfy her in bed as well, and some evenings it was not exactly easy to satiate her intense sexual appetite: she could get to the first light of dawn still gripped by the desire for caresses, kisses and intercourse, after which she slept just a couple of hours and faced the new day fitter than ever.

Giacomo was able to have a night of quiet repose only when his woman dedicated herself to her other passion, which she did not want to share with anyone, other than with other graffiti artists like her. It was a transgression that excited her in a particular way and to which she dedicated herself, at least in summer, once or twice a week, more rarely in winter. When Giacomo saw his partner preparing for the special night, he felt a little jealous for excluded from the thing, but on the other hand he was happy to be able to get a good night’s sleep from eleven in the evening until the next morning.

The preparation for the outing was a ritual, which was the same each time. Maria Lucia wore only a white coat fastened on the front, of a length that reached about halfway down her thighs, usually naked. Only if it was going to be a cold night did she also wear tights. She did up only the center buttons of the shirt, leaving both those at the top and at the bottom unfastened, so that, depending on her movements, thighs and full breasts were occasionally put on display. Apart from the cans of spray paint, she put two packets of cigarettes in her bag. She was not a smoker, also because, being a convinced health enthusiast, she did not smoke as a rule, but when she was in a railway underpass or in a semi-abandoned factory doing her graffiti, she could not help lighting one cigarette after another. Smoking helped her to release the nervous tension, due to the fear that at any moment the police could come and arrest her, as well as helping her to concentrate on the work she was doing.

That night, she and the other two Writers, whose names she did not even know, their faces covered with handkerchiefs that left only the eyes uncovered, had targeted an old abandoned industrial settlement in Porto Recanati. A building in disuse for at least two decades, once a chemical fertilizer factory, an architectural horror, a reinforced concrete monster that no authority wanted to take the trouble to demolish or restore. The sense of the graffiti they were about to design was to stimulate someone to have the courage to undertake a recovery project for that degraded area. The first lights of dawn were already evident in the east, when Maria Lucia decided to climb to the top of an extendable ladder to give the final touch to her work. At the top of the ladder, she pulled out yet another cigarette, one of the last in the second pack, and was about to light it with the butt of the one she was about to finish smoking. As she made that movement, she lost her balance and fell to the ground after a drop of about twelve feet. Fortunately, the fall was cushioned by the fact that at that point there was no longer any concrete paving, which had been replaced by soil and sand and an abundant layer of grass had grown there. But she had sprained her ankle and her right shoulder was hurting terribly. The two writers who were with her realized, from the way the limb was deformed, that the shoulder was dislocated. Their friend had to be taken to emergency. But how could they do that? Dressed in this way, she would have been mistaken for a prostitute at least, and Luca and Damiano belonged to well-known families in the area. They were in fact the sons of important local entrepreneurs, who certainly would not like their offspring to be involved in certain things.

Luca took off the handkerchief that hid much of his face and turned to his friend.

"We need a plan to come out of this clean. Let’s try to take her up to the road, near our car. In the meantime, I'll come up with an idea."

They took Maria Lucia by the arm, one on each side, and slowly managed to lead their sore and limping friend close to their luxury car, a Mercedes station wagon.

"You go and get the ladder and clean up the place," Luca said to his friend. "We mustn’t leave any traces of our presence. I’ll take care of her."

Luca really liked the face of that woman, who never masked it with a handkerchief because while she was creating graffiti she smoked all the time, but he had never dared to touch her even with a finger. Now that he was there alone with her on the ground helpless, he was feeling desire for her, a desire that he could certainly not satisfy at that juncture. Luca took something from the car and lit a cigarette. Then he instructed Maria Lucia.

"Clearly you don’t know us, you’ve never seen us before. I'll have to make you suffer a little more, even though I'm sorry about doing it."

He blew on the lit part of the cigarette to revive the embers, and then put it closer to the girl's skin so it would burn her. He kept a hand over her mouth to prevent her from letting out a scream, but Maria Lucia was able to resist and just moaned softly. After that he tore off her panties. Then he prepared the drug. In the car he always had a small stash of pure heroin well hidden, and he sucked it into an insulin syringe.

"You were alone drawing graffiti. Three strangers, with their faces covered, tried to rape you, gave you drugs, burned you with cigarettes, and tore your underwear off you. At a certain point you managed to escape and reach the road, staggering, overcome by the effects of the drug. A car arrived, hit you and the driver didn’t stop. It was just a glancing blow from the side of the car so you only suffered minor injuries. Damiano and I arrived later, we saw you on the ground and helped you, and you had never seen us before."

As he was saying these words, she finished inoculating her with the drug. Maria Lucia nodded her head that she understood and slipped not into sleep, but into a state of oblivion caused by the heroin. Luca was very excited and would have liked to take advantage of that beautiful body, before taking his cell phone and calling 118.

"An opportunity like this will never arise again," he thought. "After all, if traces of sperm are found, it would support the rape theory."

He was about to undo his pants when he called himself a moron.

"DNA evidence could incriminate me, stupid that I am!"

He gave the final touch to his improvised work of art by tearing a button from Maria Lucia's coat, so that one of the breasts was very evident. Then he picked up panties, button and cigarette butt of the cigarette he had smoked, and put it all inside a small plastic bag that he went to hide in the spare wheel compartment of the Mercedes. While he was calling for help with his mobile phone, Damiano reappeared, and after folding down the ladder completely, he put it back in place through the tailgate. When he saw what Luca had done to the girl, he turned pale and almost fainted. Luca reassured him and instructed him too on how they were to relate their version of events.

"Let me do the talking, and you just confirm what I say. Everything will be fine, you'll see!"

In the space of a few minutes the ambulance arrived, followed shortly by a police patrol. The officers recognized the boys who, once they’d got rid of the overalls which were marked with paint, were ordinary boys from good families dressed in Lacoste polo shirts and Giorgio Armani jeans, like any kid on their patrol route who goes out in the summer, a summer that was now coming to an end, to spend the evening in some nightclub on the Riviera. The boys related what they had established and underwent the breathalyzer with total tranquility.

"Okay, guys, your alcohol level is fine and you're not on drugs. I really believe that you’ve done your duty in helping this poor woman," said one of the two policemen. "Go home now, but come to Police Headquarters tomorrow morning for your statement. Ask for Dr. Olivieri, who will take it for the record."

They were about to get back in the car, when one of the two agents noticed the ladder inside the Mercedes.

"What are you doing with that?"

Damiano's heart missed a beat. He wasn't good at improvising excuses and making up lies. He felt that those two agents could unmask them in a millisecond.

"Nothing special, agent. We organized a birthday party at a friend's house, and used it to put up the decorations," Luca was quick to respond.

After that night they would never meet Maria Lucia again. Damiano and Luca headed home, while the patrol, flashing lights on, proceeded quickly to the Emergency Department at the Regional Hospital of Ancona.

It was ten o'clock the next morning when Maria Lucia regained consciousness in a bed of the Hematology division of the University Clinic at the Regional Hospital of Ancona, a huge complex that also houses the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the Polytechnic University of the Marche. Her shoulder was sore, but it had been fixed and a brace had been applied to her, and she had an elastic bandage on her ankle. What the girl could not understand was why she had been hospitalized in that aseptic environment, with a nurse at her side ready to take at least a liter of blood from her with a huge syringe, rather than in the orthopedics department, as would have been obvious. It was not the sight of the syringe that made her shiver, but the secret that could be revealed by a blood test and of which she knew she was the guardian.

"I’m opposed to a blood sample. I am a Jehovah's Witness," she invented on the spot. "Removing blood from my body would take away part of my spirit."

"Bullshit!" replied a young doctor as he entered the room. "It's routine practice. We need to check what kind of drugs you have been given. And we also need all your blood parameters, to be able to treat you properly."

As he said that, he beckoned to a male nurse of an enormous size, thick hair and a black beard, who immobilized the woman with his powerful arms, so as to allow his colleague to take the blood sample.

"I want to make a phone call. I have the right to make a phone call. Give me my cell phone."

"I’m only doing my duty. The police are here outside the door. In a few seconds you will talk about it with the agents," was the young doctor’s curt reply.

Dr. Giannini grabbed the test tube from the nurse's hand and rushed to the laboratory, prepared a few smears on some slides and set up some coloring. He then put the only uncolored slide under the lens of the microscope to observe it fresh.

"It's incredible! It is full of nanomachines, nanobots that move autonomously, as if they were equipped with their own motor. From what I have learned to date, these results could not have been able to come about for at least another two decades from now. At the last conference on nanotechnology in Zurich, Professor Whu was clear and spoke of 2029 as a possible date to be able to see something similar. And instead..."

In a few moments he realized what he had to do. First he called the laboratory technician who had alerted him that he had observed those strange corpuscles in the blood smear sent by the Emergency Department the previous night.

"My dear Sergio, I’m asking you a favor," and while he spoke he filled out a check with the sum of ten thousand Euros written on it. "You didn’t ever see anything on that slide. Give me your word and I’ll write your name on this check. You have everything to gain, especially if you don't ask me questions. Plus I can make you another promise... You have a degree in Biology, and you work here as a laboratory technician, a role much inferior to what you might aspire to. In three months the competitive exam for the PhD in Research will take place and I am on the committee, I think you could participate and even be the winner!"

Sergio, who was unable to understand the meaning of his discovery, nor how much it could be worth in terms of money, even if it was certainly much more than what his superior was offering him, thought of his wife, his two children, the mortgage on the house, the miserable salary he received at the end of the month, and nodded his head, accepting the offer. He grabbed the check and left with his tail between his legs.

So far it had been easy. But now he had to act with the utmost circumspection, and get hold of Brandi's medical record, which he had to steal from the office of his department head, but above all getting in touch with Professor Whu without leaving obvious traces. He was certain that his discovery would be appreciated and paid handsomely by the Japanese professor.

Doing a quick calculation, he realized that at it was seven o'clock in the evening in Japan. If he was lucky he might find the Professor still in the clinic. He had his numbers, both private and direct of his studio on the twenty-third floor of the Hirohito Clinic in Kyoto. But how to call him? Forwarding the call from the mobile phone would have meant, apart from the considerable expense, leaving an indelible trace on the call records of his mobile account. From the hospital switchboard, he thought, hundreds of direct phone calls to other clinics around the world were made every day, and it would be very difficult to identify his phone call among the others, if someone thought of doing so. After all, a telephone consultation with a luminary from another nation was part of the costs and normal routine of scientific research. Rather than dial the number, having to precede it by his personal code, he decided to make the switchboard operator work.

"I have to call Kyoto Hospital on behalf of the head doctor, Professor Gabrielli."

"Any particular extension?"

"No, call the switchboard and put the call through to the Professor's office."

Professor Gabrielli was doing his rounds at that moment. As soon as he heard the phone ring in the department head’s room, he typed a code on the keypad of his telephone, so as to pick up the phone call from his own office. A little trick to confuse the issue a little.

To the voice that answered in incomprehensible Japanese, Dr. Giannini responded with a sentence in English.

"I'd like to speak with Professor Whu."

The voice thousands of miles away adapted to the language with which it had been addressed, and responded in the same idiom, with a different accent to the way the Italian had spoken, but comprehensible to the ears of the latter.

"From the attendance records, I see that the professor signed on this morning at eight o'clock and has not yet left the hospital. I’ll try to put you on to him."

"Japanese efficiency!" thought the Italian doctor. "If I had been here at seven o'clock on a Saturday night, no switchboard operator in the world would have forwarded a call to me."

After a few seconds waiting with the background of Japanese music, the Professor replied.

"Hello?"

"Professor Whu? It’s Dr. Marco Giannini, from Italy. We met at the last conference in Zurich on nanotechnologies applied to medicine. Do you remember?"

"Oh, of course! The Italian bamboccione³!" The professor spoke Italian, but used some words thinking that they sounded good and gave color to his words, not even imagining their offensive meaning.

Dr. Giannini outlined his discovery to him.

"You're the usual cazzone⁴. Do you want me to believe that the nanobots present in that woman's blood are able to use hydrogen, obtained from the water present in organic liquids, as a propeller to move autonomously from one site to another of the organism? Pure science fiction! And who would have put them inside the body of your patient, E.T. in person, by chance? We can finish the discussion here, my dear spaghetti eater!"

"Wait, professor. I managed to get a video under the electron microscope and I will email it to you. But what is more surprising is that in the emergency room they found burn caused by cigarettes on the patient. When I examined her, only a few hours later, the woman's skin was completely intact, and there was no trace of burns or injury whatsoever."

The professor began to change his attitude towards him.

"I would like to examine the patient in person. I will take the first flight to Italy and I will be there tomorrow evening. You just have to make sure that the woman does not leave the hospital!"

"I don't know if I'll succeed. If the police have no reason to detain her and Brandi recovers well, she will be discharged during the day..."

"Make them hold her back, bribe the police, I know that’s not difficult in Italy. I’ll be there as soon as possible."

The professor ended the call.

"Who knows why abroad they believe that we’re all mafia," Marco thought to himself. "But I do have some connections in the Police Headquarters. No harm in trying."

He called Police Headquarters and asked to speak to Superintendent Gualandi, an old flame of his from high school.

PARTY IN THE VILLA

28 May 2010

Seven in the evening on a quiet Friday in late May. I had finished giving the last instructions to the babysitter, a young university student, who apparently knew everything except how to deal with children, while Stefano was getting the car out of the garage, a shiny grey metallic color Class E Mercedes sedan.

When I heard the horn, I quickly said goodbye to the girl and ran down into the courtyard.

"These social events are something I hate," Stefano said, focused on driving. "Like I hate this car, which is supposed to represent the status symbol of a certain social class, made up of professionals and small entrepreneurs, who have to appear in society rather than be appreciated for how they carry out their job. Even if I belong to the same category, you know that I’m not at ease amongst them. Tonight all the elite of the city will be there, I imagine, starting with the Mayor and various Counselors, some well-known lawyers, the medical establishment, Notary Criscuoli, and so on."

As he was talking, he took a one-way road that ran along the ancient medieval walls of the city, uphill to Costa del Montirozzo, leading down a little further on to Porta Bersaglieri where, in the small gardens, was the monument dedicated to Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. He then took Via Bersaglieri and from there to Via Nazario Sauro to continue along Via Mura Occidentali. At a point where the road ran close to the castle walls, I noticed some works. An arch-shaped passage had been opened in the walls, the ancient bricks had been stacked on one side, and around the opening there were corrugated plastic pipes, the kind used for electricity cables. A board showed details of the building permit, beginning and end of the works and contractor, with the name of the project written in large letters: LIVING THE HISTORIC CENTER.

I turned to my partner, asking for enlightenment.

"It's a real mess. What the hell do they want to achieve?"

"An escalator, or an elevator, I think, to get to Piazza Federico II easily, through the old Palazzo Pianetti, which until a few decades ago housed the prisons. Except that everything is at a standstill because immediately behind the walls they came across archaeological finds that date back to Roman times. And they weren’t discovering hot water! The historical part of this city is built exactly above the plan of the Castrum built by the Romans, who arrived here around 300 BC, after defeating the coalition of Umbrians, Etruscans and Samnites in the battle of Sentino. Precisely in this area, near the San Floriano complex, there was a huge cistern for the water supply of the city of Aesis. The cistern also acted as a water reserve for the Thermal Baths, which were located in the area between Piazza Federico II and Porta Bersaglieri. Still today the area is identified by two streets that are called, in fact, Via delle Terme and Vicolo delle Terme."

"It's amazing how well you know these things, while it seems that the elevator designers were completely unaware of them."

Stefano sighed, trying to avoid making too many comments.

"Caterina, there is always politics behind all this. We don’t know the reasons that led the municipal administration to approve these works, but for sure there will have been a good discussion at the city council. Many of the aldermen and the mayor have been friends of mine since childhood and I can assure you that they have done and are doing a good job, although sometimes not all the population appreciates their work. However, there could be someone among the administrators who, even knowing what was down there, was in favor of the contract to help a supporter of his political faction, and at the appropriate time it will bring him votes. Or there may be something involved which connected to kinships."

"Yes, after bribesville, now there is relationsville," I smiled tight-lipped at my quip.

"Well, the way things stand, it's not a nice spectacle, but we should try to understand what the area will look like when the work is finished. And in any case, right now the construction site is sealed and the works have been suspended."

I accepted my partner's explanations, even though my instinct made me think of possible rigged contracts and bribes. But, I thought, that was me exaggerating as usual.

As we chatted we had reached Villa Brandi and Stefano had parked his car next to other no less luxurious cars, between a black Lancia Thesis and a midnight blue Alfa 169.

I admired the exterior of the villa in the light of a beautiful sunset, a huge building on three levels surrounded by a park, and freshly painted in brick red. Antique style street lamps, arranged in strategic positions, were already lit despite the fact that it was still daylight. A grand stairway led to the main entrance, which was located on the first raised level. From a spacious balcony, through a huge door, you entered an atrium and then an enormous salon, lit by an incredible chandelier enriched with thousands of Swarovski crystals. The kitchens and any accommodation for the staff were on the ground floor, while the bedrooms had been built on the upper floor, for the family and guests. Before going inside, I cast my gaze from the balcony located in front of the main entrance towards the courtyard and noticed that the fencing in the same style and of the same color as the villa, completely surrounded the property, but in one place, at the front, it had a strange recess, and that on the outside it corresponded with a large well.

"What’s the reason for that artifact?" I asked Stefano. "Couldn't the well have been included in the parkland of the villa?"

"That's the well of discord!" replied Stefano who, I’d realized by now, was much better aware of the history and social issues of his city than anyone else. "This villa, and its park, of which the well was part, was in a complete state of neglect years ago. Owned by the Brandi family for centuries, when the last descendants of the family moved to Rome and abandoned the dwelling, the Municipality of Jesi acquired it to the municipal assets, with the plan to restore it and turn it into a hostel. We’re talking about the year 1983, and a lot of time has passed since then! As usual, the funds which were made available were lost in bogus contracts, bribes to local politicians, and so on. In any case, the Municipality has always guaranteed that the water of the ancient well would always be available to the public. In fact in a large slice of land, which actually pertains to the park of the villa, some citizens have had the good idea to cultivate small plots, which are now traditionally considered to be private gardens. They say that the water from the well is miraculous, and not only for irrigation purposes. It seems that, if you drink it, it has diuretic, depurative and antipyretic effects. Someone claims – but I don’t know whether it’s the truth or legend – that these healing properties of the water from the well are due to the fact that a meteorite fell in that precise point, about two and a half millennia ago, and that it released mineral salts from space into the aquifer that still make their beneficial effects felt. In any case, the Municipality put the property up for sale again in 2003, the villa and 2,700 square meters of park, because in twenty years the municipal administration had failed to commence the restoration works and the property had degraded even further.

It was bought by our Roberto Gloriani, with the promise that he would reserve some rooms for the old Brandi family, which still had to be liquidated, and that the well and vegetable gardens would remain outside the perimeter fence of the property. When Gloriani, with his economic means, gave the construction company Spergolini the task of restoring the building and carrying out the project that we see before our eyes, the entire area had to be fenced to comply with the typical safety requirements for a construction site. At that point there was a kind of popular uprising, as they feared that the water from the well could no longer be used for irrigation purposes. There was even an arson attack, and one night the scaffolding that was already mounted around the villa was set on fire, with the result of considerable economic damage. Fortunately, the works had only just started, but it took an official press release from the Mayor and the Counselor for Urban Planning and the Environment to reassure public opinion. It had been whipped up by the leader of Communist Refoundation, in order to ensure that when the works were terminated, the well and the plots of land which at that point had become vegetable gardens would remain outside the perimeter fence of the property. And that's it."

"I also heard that the villa had been abandoned for decades because it was thought to be haunted, that it was a favorite meeting place for séances, that the Brandi family had left definitively after a frightening face-to-face with an evil spirit. There is also the hearsay that the well communicates with the Roman cistern you mentioned earlier in the car, by means of an artificial channel made back in antiquity. What do you say about all that?"

"Oh, I see you've done some research yourself! Oh well, legends, rumors, fairy tales. Nothing that has anything solid to build on. But, that it’s a villa full of mysteries, you are quite right. And now let's go in."

In elegant evening dress, Stefano and I were one of the most admired couples of the evening. Despite his previous statements, Stefano moved well in the environment, greeting anyone who approached him with handshakes sometimes warm and cordial, sometimes obsequious, depending on whether they were simply acquaintances or friends. At times he would talk at length; sometimes he kissed the hand of some lady. Little by little he introduced me to everyone who greeted him, telling me stories of life, death and miracles of each person.

"Not bad for being an environment that you don’t like!" I commented in a low voice, smiling.

"Well, I adapt to the situation, I smile and make the best of it."

A waiter approached us with a tray of glasses full of champagne, while another handed us small plates with scampi cocktails. Compared to the inauguration of the Della Rosa house in Triora, everything was much more elegant here, there were no paper plates and cups and the refreshments were of a completely different tenor compared to what had been prepared by the catering company a few months earlier. I did not feel comfortable in the midst of those people, but I too made the best of the situation, smiling at anyone introduced to me and offering my hand for kisses which were as inane as they were hypocritical.

At one point, Stefano took me by the arm and led me to a small group of five particularly distinguished people.

"Come here, I’ll introduce you to our hosts. Unfortunately Roberto Gloriani was not able to be present this evening, after everything that happened the other day in Genoa."

"Is he still holed up in the hotel, besieged by the fans?"

"No, it seems that yesterday in the late evening the situation was resolved, but Roberto wasn’t in time to take the plane to Ancona. Or maybe he did make it, but wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be here and take part in the celebration, even though he’s the one who organized it."

To compensate, Stefano introduced me to Aldo, Roberto's elderly father, a tall man, athletic despite his age of seventy-three, white hair. He was the president, as well as financial backer, of an important football school for young people in our city. His brother Giulio, fifteen years younger, was here with him accompanied by his wife Giada Spergolini, sole administrator of the construction company that had restored the villa.

I get a strong whiff of contracts worth millions, here, I thought to myself. These two are certainly not together for love. Mrs. Spergolini must be twenty years younger than her husband, to say the least!

The other elderly couple was part of what remained of the Brandi family, Alfredo and Liana, and they were two octogenarians in great shape, the only ones in the group that I considered weren’t attached to the God of money. Their eyes sparkled seeing the house restored to its former glory, which they had perhaps only witnessed at a young age.

"Really charmed to meet you, Dr. Ruggeri. If your intelligence is equal to your beauty, as I have been told, I am convinced that, as a guardian of public order, you will know how to look after this town wonderfully well!" began Mr. Alfredo.

"Oh, let's not exaggerate. I'm not a sheriff. I was called here to direct the Homicide and Missing Persons Section, but thanks to having recently given birth to a beautiful baby girl, I’m not in full service yet."

"There are plenty of rumors around and I know that up in Liguria you solved a very complicated case, showing determination and contempt for danger!"

I lowered my gaze, feeling flattered, and tried to change the subject.

"Are you the only members of the Brandi family?"

"That will come to live in this house, yes. We have a daughter, Maria Lucia, who moved away from us some time ago, to be a lifeguard and yoga teacher in a town on the Conero Riviera. She is our despair, we would like her to return to live with us, and settle down, but she rejects any attempt at rapprochement."

As he was speaking, I observed Alfredo and compared him a little to a vampire. He was a tall, thin person, aquiline nose, pronounced canines, very pale complexion and eyes circled in red. His wife, Liana, was not much different: a thin woman, who tried to cover the pallor of her face with a lot of blush and a brightly colored lipstick. Her hair was thick and gray, beautifully styled, the fingers of her hand were bony and tapered.

"The other member of the family that we haven’t heard from for almost thirty years, twenty-eight to be exact, is my elderly parent, Vladimiro," continued Alfredo Brandi. "In 1983, we were in very shape economically speaking, and the only way out was to sell this house, at least in my opinion. My wife thought so too and we were in favor of the agreement of expropriation which the municipal administration of the time proposed. But my father was against that transaction and after a furious quarrel he left, slamming the door, and we have not heard from him since... He was seventy-four years old then, but he was in perfect health. Our daughter who was fourteen years old at the time, Maria Lucia, sided with her grandfather, went after him and certainly lived with him for a while. For a few months, almost a year, we had no news of either of them. In the meantime we had sold the house to the Municipality and we were about to move to Rome.

One Sunday afternoon in early summer, Maria Lucia returned home, accompanied by a kind of guru, her boyfriend and spiritual guide she said, and was about to leave for India with him, on a journey in search of herself. We tried to ask her what had happened to her grandfather Vladimiro, if she could tell us where to find him so that we could make peace with him, but the girl wouldn’t tell us anything. "My grandfather is fine, but don't contact him ever again!" were the only words that Maria Lucia said about the affair."

I was beginning to raise my antennae on the issue of the missing old man. It could be right up my alley, an unsolved case dozens of years old, to make some sense of it and bring it to a conclusion.

"If he were alive, Vladimir would now be over a hundred years old. He will certainly be dead," I intervened. "But today we police have some good methods to be able to give a name to a corpse, even if it just a skeleton, and I don’t mean only DNA tests. I like you, Mr. Brandi, and I assure you that I will do everything I can to return at least the body of your loved one to you so you can give him at least a burial. Did you report the disappearance of the two at the time?"

"Of course, we reported that my daughter had gone missing, and that she was a minor. Back then, the police said that an adult like Vladimir could voluntarily leave the family and that in any case, if the girl was in fact in the company of her grandfather, he would certainly have protected her. So, law enforcement did not put much effort into looking for her. And anyway, dear doctor, don’t sell the bear skin before you kill it. Even if he’s over a hundred years old, we can’t be certain that my father is dead. In the family we have a very long life span, and more than one of my ancestors has lived longer than a century. It seens that Bernardo Brandi, at the behest of whom this sumptuous residence was erected in 1659 in place of an ancient stronghold now in ruins, lived in good health until he was one hundred and seven! That's why I still trust that my father is alive and I can still ask him for forgiveness. And show him his villa restored to its former glory."

"Dead or alive, I promise you that I will work hard to find him." I ended the conversation with a slight bow and holding out my hand for him to kiss. I was convinced that I had made a very good impression on him and most certainly, as soon as I could, I would keep my promise, although I was more convinced that I would find a pile of bones rather than Vladimiro Brandi alive and well. Who knows why, that name reminded me of Count Dracula, Vlad Tsepesh or Vlad the Impaler. Perhaps I was influenced by the appearance of his son and the name itself, Vladimir.

With delicious tid-bits and glasses of champagne, the reception went on until the moment when the Mayor took the floor for an official inauguration speech, and his regret that Roberto Gloriani was absent, the very person who with such magnanimity had made available the funds for the magnificent restoration of the villa. He gave him much credit, along with the municipal administration, for having ensured that part of the park and the famous well had remained at the disposal of all citizens, and concluded by wishing the Gloriani and Brandi families a serene coexistence under the same roof.

"Is this an election campaign?" I whispered to Stefano.

"Oh, politicians never miss an opportunity to impress and bang their own drum, trying to secure votes for the next election."

Between eleven and midnight, one by one the illustrious guests began to disappear. Stefano had lingered to chat with Giada Spergolini, in whom he had discovered an unexpected lover of jazz music, and who was therefore an excellent interlocutor for him. Not without a touch of jealousy, which I had immediately managed to repress, I had moved away from the two to devote myself to studying some paintings hanging on the walls and an ancient bookcase where texts were rather old and unobtainable texts were kept. In particular, I noticed a book with an elegant dust cover in color depicting Piazza Colocci and the Palazzo della Signoria, entitled "History of Jesi". It was a 1969 edition and it would have been very difficult to find a copy in a bookstore. I would have liked to leaf through it, but the doors of the shelving were locked and I could only admire the text through the glass. When I realized that there were only very few guests left, besides the hosts, I went over to Stefano.

"Let's go. It's really late, and we promised the babysitter that we would be home by one," I told him. He did not object, we said goodbye to the people who were still present and headed for the exit. We went out through the main entrance, down the stairs and along the driveway that led outside the property, towards the parking lot where we had left the car.

The pressure which my eardrums felt, due to a sudden displacement of air, made me aware of a situation of serious danger. A split second before hearing the roar of the explosion, I instinctively put an arm around Stefano's shoulders, as he walked by my side, and threw myself to the ground dragging him with me. I did not have time to touch the ground, my face facing downwards, before I felt myself being hit by a shower of pieces of plaster, bricks and broken glass. When it was over, I raised my head cautiously, turning in the direction of Stefano, who was about to get up.

"Stop, let's wait a few moments. A first explosion could be followed by others, at least that’s what they taught me at the training course. Better to stay still!"

After sixty interminable seconds in which nothing more happened, I decided, even though I couldn't be sure, that we could get up. I look at Stefano covered with a blanket of white powder, the dark tuxedo had changed color, while his hair, from grizzled, had become completely white. I realized that I was in a similar if not worse condition.

"By now I should know that dressing in elegant clothes brings me bad luck!" I thought, turning to the villa to try to understand what had happened. The façade of the house had been damaged by a gash of at least fifteen feet in diameter, next to the main entrance. Two windows of the salon, inside which we had been conversing only a few minutes before, had been disintegrated and black smoke and a few tongues of fire were coming from the chasm. I looked around and saw that some of the guests, who were walking down the driveway like us, had thrown themselves to the ground covering their heads with their arms, perhaps imitating what I had done. A lady who had remained standing had been hit in the forehead by a large fragment of brick and her eyebrow was bleeding.

I took the palmheld and called my office. After a couple of rings Roberta replied.

"It is an emergency, absolute priority. There has been an explosion, I am supposing a bomb attack, here at Villa Brandi. We need firefighters and ambulances. I cannot say for sure yet how many are injured. There are certainly victims inside the villa."

"Received. I’ll send help immediately and gather our team together, it's work for us. Oh, please, Doctor, by now I know you well enough to believe that you will enter that half-destroyed house before anyone else. I’m not asking you to desist but, for heaven's sake, be careful, do not put yourself in danger too!"

Had the superintendent read my mind? Of course I would go inside, and immediately! If only to check whether there were dead or wounded.

"Is your car equipped with a fire extinguisher?" I asked Stefano.

"Yes, of course. Small, but it works. Hey, listen, you’re not thinking of going in there are you? The firefighters will be here any minute and they’ll take care of it!"

"Every moment can be precious in saving lives. Bring me the fire extinguisher and then go home. You can't be of any use here, and knowing that you're with Aurora will make me feel a little calmer."

"Well, I can see that your maternity leave finished right this minute. You have fully resumed your role as a police officer. I’ll do as you say, but please use your common sense, now that in addition to being a police officer you’re also a mother."

Hmm... Third time’s the charm. Who will be the next to make recommendations to me? I ruminated to myself. Then, out loud: "Don't worry, I know how to look after myself!"

As Stefano went to get the fire extinguisher, I thought about what was the best way to enter the villa. In fact, I considered the main entrance too risky. On the ground floor there were at least two service entrances, I chose to use the one on the opposite side from the area where, on the upper floor, the explosion had occurred. And I did well, because at the other entrance, the ceiling had collapsed and I would have found access barred by a mountain of debris. I went in with the fire extinguisher in my hand, and met some waiters and cooks who had served during the evening. Fortunately, they were unloading the dishwasher and were therefore all at the side of the house which had not been damaged. If they had been in the kitchens, they would have been hit by the ceiling above giving way.

"Police! Is everything okay here?" was the ritual question. They were all frightened, but unharmed. Since the electrical system had failed, the dwelling had been practically engulfed by darkness, apart from the dim lighting provided by the emergency lights.

"Needless to say, you have to get out of here, but no one must leave this place for any reason until my colleagues arrive to take your personal details and question you about what happened! How can I get upstairs?"

I was aware that the bomber or bombers could very well be inside the house. And I was unarmed. The only thing I could defend myself with was the fire extinguisher but, against a gun or, worse, another explosion, it would be of little use! But a sixth sense told me that I would not find criminals inside the villa. It could have been a timed device, or perhaps remote-controlled. And then why was I convinced it was an attack? Maybe because of all the stories I had heard about the villa? It could simply have been an accident, I don’t know, due to the explosion of a gas pipe. But on that particular evening and with that timing? The explosion seemed to have taken place deliberately, in the salon where at that point there were only the members of the Brandi and Gloriani families. Useless to speculate before Forensics arrived. At that moment the only thing to worry about was to see if anyone had survived and had to be rescued.

It was the chief waiter who pointed to a door, which opened to the staircase that led upstairs. As I arrived in the salon, I managed to quell the start of a small fire thanks to the fire extinguisher. Fortunately there were no furnishings which would catch on fire near the flames, such as bookcases or wooden furniture, and the floor was tiled, no carpet or parquet. But the spectacle that presented itself to my eyes was still terrifying. The five people who only a few minutes earlier had been pleasant conversationalists were lying on the ground, with no sign of life. Aldo’s head was smashed and his body, close to a wall against which he had been thrown by the explosion, was bent at a right angle, the trunk resting against the wall and the legs on the floor. His left leg was strangely folded in on itself, broken in two, while I believe that the right had disarticulated from the pelvis, as it protruded disproportionately from the trousers. His brother Giulio, judging by the trail of blood, had dragged himself, seriously injured, to the chasm opened by the explosion, perhaps hoping to escape outside, but he was now lifeless, lying face down with his head dangling from the external façade of the house and his abdomen torn open, revealing his entrails.

Giada Spergolini’s body was charred, some pieces of her clothes were still on fire, the poor woman had been hit by the blaze triggered by the explosion. She would never talk about jazz music with Stefano again. Liana and Alfredo seemed to be the ones in better condition. Perhaps they had been further away than the others and had suffered less abuse. The woman was lying on the floor, face down. I palpated her neck seeking a pulse on the jugular vein, but nothing. I repeated the same operation on her husband, there was a pulse. I tried to put him onto his back and carry out CPR, as I had been taught in first aid courses. After a few cycles of percussion over the area of the heart, alternated with forceful inputs of air into the mouth of the elderly man, holding his nose closed with my fingers, I saw his abdomen rise and make a spontaneous act of breathing, then another, and another. The sound of the sirens came like music to my ears. I looked out from the chasm, overcoming the horror that the proximity of the corpse of Giulio Gloriani caused me, and signaled to the personnel on board the first ambulance that had arrived.

"Up here, quickly! There is someone still alive. In very bad condition, but alive."

Since help had arrived, I could leave that place transformed in such a short time from a corner of paradise into a hellhole. I went down the stairs like an automaton and went to the police car, beside which I found the reassuring presence of my colleagues. I realized that I was trembling, and not from cold. The adrenaline rush had finished, and I had certainly not experienced a pleasant adventure.

As I related to Roberta and Andrea what I had witnessed, the forecourt around the house became a bustle of vehicles that illuminated the darkness of the night with flashing blue lights. Inspector Santinelli and Gaetano Perrotta had arrived in the meantime in another car, followed by the Forensics van. The Fire Department finished taming the fire hotspots and, when the team leader judged that the building was safe, they let my colleagues know that they could enter. The Coroner and the Forensics guys went in first, dressed in white overalls, shoe coverings and latex gloves, followed by Santinelli and Perrotta.

"I've already seen enough, I don't want to go in there again," I said, addressing Roberta and Andrea, who were still next to me. "How about the two of you having a chat with the staff who were present in the kitchens? It's that little group of people over there."

"Very well, Doctor! And what about you?"

"And I, for the moment, would like to retire to my private life. I'm here by mistake and..."

I didn’t have time to finish the sentence before the handheld rang. I looked at the display and saw the writing in capital letters CHIEF COMMISSIONER. I was tempted to press the reject key, which would be followed by the preset message Sorry, I’m busy. Call back later, please. But my finger deviated at the last moment onto the green button.

"Dr. Ruggeri? It’s Dr. Spanò. What is the situation there?"

"Four corpses and one seriously injured, to whom I can offer very little chance of survival. There was an incredible, devastating explosion, and I don't believe it was an accident."

"A bomb attack, then. What trail do you think we should follow, international terrorism? Or should we think of some resurgence of anarchist cells or even of Red Brigades popped up again from goodness knows where?"

"It's a bit premature to make assumptions. You could also think it’s retaliation by groups of fans, hooligans who are still mad at Gloriani as coach of the Chelsea team, after the game the other night. Or even some extremist group that holds it against the Gloriani family politically, because of their purchase of this villa. We’ll have to wait a few hours to see if anyone claims responsibility for the attack."

"I’d prefer your hypotheses. If it’s an act of terrorism we would find Secret Services under out feet, and they’d take the investigation from us and not understand anything, as they usually do. And anyway you happened to be on the spot and this is lucky for us. I’ve already spoken with the Magistrate on duty, Dr. Moscatelli, and we agreed to entrust the investigation only to you, Doctor. We think you’re the only one that can shed light on what happened quickly and effectively."

"But..,." I tried to object.

"I know you’re still on maternity leave, but I know very well that you won’t refuse to conduct the investigation."

"All right, I'll do what I can, but you'll have to let me do it my way, without breathing down my neck."

"You have my word."

For what remained of that night there wasn’t much hope of being able to join Stefano at home and get a few hours of rest in bed. I asked Andrea to connect to the Internet through the Alfa's on-board computer and pay attention to the radio. I had to know if there had been any claim of responsibility for the attack and by whom. It punctually arrived a message from Al Qaeda that Rosati, very experienced in this kind of thing, classified as unreliable.

Just as the bodies of the victims, covered with sheets, were being transported out of the house, a car without flashing lights arrived, and Roberto Gloriani got out, visibly upset. I recognized him because I had fixed his image in my mind during the football match a couple of evenings before, as well as for his incredible resemblance to his father.

I stopped him before he began to lift the sheets that covered each of the corpses to find out which one was his parent.

"I can assure you it’s not a nice sight! Believe me, it’s better to let the corpses be recomposed and you can do the recognition tomorrow at the morgue. All you can do now is pray for the souls of your poor loved ones."

"It was certainly me they wanted to kill. And instead I wasn’t not present, and five innocent people got in the way. They have decimated my family and massacred those poor Brandi as well, who I had come to like so much! I had come to consider them members of the Gloriani family. You must do everything to bring these criminals to justice, Doctor, whoever they are and whatever organization is behind them."

"Don't worry, it's my job and I'll do it to the best of my ability. Where were you tonight though? Weren’t you supposed to be present at the reception?"

He looked at me irritated, as if I immediately considered him the number one suspect.

"Forgive my question, sir. I met your parents during the evening and I swear to you that I was very impressed by them. Consider the question I asked you as pure occupational hazard. If you want you can answer me, but otherwise I will not consider you reticent."

"I'll answer you," he said, with a small smile. "Before you go and check all my movements somehow, I can tell you immediately that I arrived at Ancona airport this afternoon at about six pm by private plane. I wasn’t able to catch the scheduled flight and so I rented a Piper. I was in time to attend the inauguration of the villa, you will tell me. And it was my intention to be here. But then, at the last moment, I realized that I was not in the most suitable psychological conditions to face a party, after everything I’ve been through in Genoa these last few days. So I stayed in the hotel, where only a little while ago I heard the news of what had happened, and I rushed here."

"My most sincere condolences. I think you should go back to the hotel. You can't do anything more here tonight," I told him shaking his hand. Then I turned to my colleagues. "Like us, after all. Forensic and the Coroner have finished, the corpses have been removed and the only survivor is now in intensive care, may the good Lord help him. I’d say that we can go back to the base and start thinking about some strategy that will give us a possible lead to follow. And it won't be easy!"

To the east, beyond the sleeping silhouette of the historic center of the city, the sky was beginning to lighten. As I got in the car with my colleagues, I took a last look at the damaged villa, where some agents were surrounding it with the classic white and red plastic tape, attached to which every here and there were signs that said Area subject to judicial appropriation.

Commissioner Caterina Ruggeri was back on the job again.

BACK ON THE JOB

29 May 2010

When we arrived at Police Headquarters it was already day. I took possession of my desk once again, letting Santinelli know with just a glance, to get his stuff out of the way. He understood, and didn’t take long to clear the table and have coffee brought for everyone. I noticed with pleasure that a large white board had already been hung on the wall, the kind where you can write with markers and then erase it with a stroke of the special sponge. It is always useful for me to write outlines and have them visible, so as not to lose sight of the objectives I set myself during an investigation and remember what has already been achieved.

"Well, people! This is going to be difficult and there is no time to lose. In the late morning we will have the first results from Forensics and some sketchy information from the Coroner on the bodies of the victims. In the meantime, in my opinion, we need to focus on a few crucial points. As you all know, we have victims, four confirmed, but they will become five in the next few hours. We know the weapon that was used in the crime: explosive. Forensics will let us know the type and provenance of that soon. What we have to find out is the motive, if we want to understand who is behind this attack, or this massacre, if we want to call it that. I would exclude the line of investigation as a terrorist attack a priori, and instead look at the thing as being linked to the environment in which it occurred. We have two families, very well known at the moment, who have been decimated: the Gloriani family, of which Roberto is still alive, and the Brandi family, and we know that the only person not present at last night's party is Alfredo's daughter, Maria Lucia, who has been estranged from her relatives for some time. It seems she is a lifeguard in a bathing establishment on the Conero Riviera."

As I began to write the names Roberto Gloriani and Maria Lucia Brandi on the whiteboard, I was interrupted by Roberta.

"The name of Maria Lucia Brandi isn’t new to me. Months ago, I think it was towards the end of last summer, in September if I remember correctly, she was involved in an accident. She was stoned on heroin and maybe someone had tried to rape her. To escape, and under the influence of the drugs, she was run over by a hit and run driver. A couple of boys from good families rescued her and she was admitted to the Regional Hospital of Ancona. I remember the case because the next morning I was contacted by an old high school friend of mine, Marco Giannini, who is now a doctor and works in that hospital. He wanted to tell me that when she arrived at emergency, the woman was wearing a coat marked with spray paint, the type used by graffiti artists, the so-called Writers. According to him, the patient should therefore have been detained by the Police, because she was not only drugged, but was carrying out an illegal activity punishable by criminal law. I consulted with the magistrate and sent a patrol to the place, and in fact, not far from the site of the accident there were fresh graffiti, not yet finished, on the walls of an old abandoned factory. But the magistrate did not want to sign the warrant to arrest Brandi, because he had received news from the Hospital that from the tests which had been carried out, the woman was six weeks pregnant, and he didn’t want to be responsible for a possible interruption of pregnancy, even if the loss of the fetus would have been attributable to other elements rather than the stress of being detained by the police. The fact is that in any case the woman, perhaps because she was frightened, somehow managed to evade the surveillance of the two colleagues on guard, who had been ordered to continue to keep an eye on her, albeit discreetly. From that day she disappeared and there has been no news of her since."

"Disappeared! Like her grandfather Vladimiro, who has been missing for almost thirty years and nobody knows anything about him. A man almost a hundred years old, but who may still be alive. And maybe he could now be reunited with his granddaughter and hiding somewhere, but not too far from here. Years ago there was an argument that led to the two of them breaking up with the rest of the family. We will need to get as much information as possible about this Maria Lucia Brandi."

"Are you thinking it could be her vendetta on the rest of the family?"

"At the moment, Roberta, I don't know what to think, but we mustn’t ignore any leads, and this doesn’t seem bad to me. Would you like to take a trip to the beach and talk to people who knew her, who worked with her, who she had relationships with, that sort of thing?"

"Of course, Chief. I could go today."

"Good. Let's move on to something else: Villa Brandi." I wrote the name of the villa in large letters on the board. "It's a place that must have no secrets for us. Andrea, it's work for you. Start a search on the computer and get me everything that’s known and less known about the villa, start from prehistory, if necessary. Besides the villa, I want to know about the well. What’s so special about that water that the well had to remain outside the fence to avoid popular uprisings? I also want to know everything about the tenders, if there have been stories of bribes, who were involved, in both the distant and recent past. I also want a research on the legitimate and less legitimate activities of the Spergolini company and, if necessary, contact the Guardia di Finanza as well to find out the state of health of the company's financial statements. We’ll need to have a chat with Roberto Gloriani, and for the moment it will be best if he doesn’t move away from our areas."

"It will take days to gather all this information. And then Gloriani will soon return to England to follow his team. He must respect the contracts, mourning or non-mourning!" complained Rosati.

"Take as much time as you want, but the sooner you do, the better. I would also like a thorough search of Villa Brandi, which starts from the basements and reaches the attics. For this job, I thought that you, Gaetano, might be the most suitable. Take a couple of agents as an aid and collect all the elements that you think can be useful to us. Did anything interesting come up from the staff you questioned?"

"Very little," Roberta replied. "Almost all of them are part of a service company and were sent there for the evening. A couple of them don't have a properly immaculate criminal record, but trivial stuff, harassing drunkenness or petty drug dealing. No one in particular has anything to do with the Brandi and Gloriani families. There are two servants who are fixed employees in the villa: Nicola Giuliani and Gloria Recanatini. They are two young people, in their thirties, engaged to each other, and who, from next week, would have moved to the villa, where rooms had already been prepared for them. I took the right to summon them late in the morning to question them in more depth, maybe they can provide us with some useful elements."

The last name I wrote on the blackboard was Alfredo Brandi, the only survivor.

"Santinelli and I will take care of him. Although I think it is very difficult for him to recover and to be able to answer our questions, we will go to the Hospital to check on his condition. Have you been transferred to the Regional Hospital?"

"No, Doctor," replied Gaetano Perrotta. "His condition was really critical, and the doctors kept him in the intensive care unit of the Jesi Hospital. The hopes that he would recover were so few, that everything advised against a transfer, whether you wanted to use an ambulance, or whether you requested transport by helicopter of 118. Against all expectations, they just told me that Brandi is showing clear signs of recovery."

"It's incredible! It was very bad."

Having distributed his assignments to each one, I could focus on what I would have done, unfortunately dragging Santinelli behind me, but first it was necessary to talk to Stefano. I called him from my cell phone.

"Are you still sleeping?" you say, hearing his sleepy voice.

"Well, it's not that strange, since it's Saturday and it's not even seven in the morning! Rather, what happened to you?"

"First tell me about Aurora. How was it with the babysitter last night? Have you already given him a bottle this morning?"

I could hear a sigh on the other end of the phone.

"Aurora is sleeping, she's much better off than I am right now. And with yesterday's girl I think everything went well, even though she expected us to come back earlier. But I explained to her in summary what had happened and she understood. I also left her about twenty Euro more than the agreed and she left declaring herself very willing to return, when needed. Since I understand that for sure until tonight you will not return home, do not worry about anything. You think about your work and your investigations that I think about household chores. We are on the weekend and I have no work commitments. Given your value as a detective, I believe that by tomorrow night you will have brought the criminals to justice and you can go back to being a mother." I heard a yawn at the end of the sentence.

I couldn't tell if he was making fun of me or reasoning still prey to the fumes of sleep. In any case, I could rest assured that Aurora was in good hands, at least for the weekend.

"I don't think it's that easy. Things are more complicated than expected and, for the moment, it is groping in the dark. This is one of those investigations that could go on for months." Or maybe years, I thought. "But I promise you that tonight we will have dinner together."

After the phone call, I told Santinelli to prepare the car that we would return to Jesi. It was my intention to go to the hospital to see Alfredo Brandi's condition, but not before reviewing the crime scene in the light of day. I wanted to enter Villa Brandi again, even before Gaetano Perrotta entered it for the official search.

We left the Police Headquarters and entered the traffic of Ancona, which even on Saturdays, during peak hours, was not bad. Santinelli, driving the Alfa 159, headed out of town and took the variant to then take the two-lane state road towards Fabriano – Rome. Although the road was clear, Ennio seemed almost asleep driving and could not exceed eighty kilometers per hour. I was used to very different rhythms on board the Lamborghini driven by Mauro.

"This car has potential that you don't even imagine, I think! Stop at the next parking lot and let me move on to the guide."

As I took the steering wheel, I started again by rubberizing and reached in a few seconds the one hundred and fifty hours, keeping me in the left lane with flashing lights on. If any vehicle made me slow down, I would attack the siren for a moment and immediately have the road clear. In Imperia I had learned several tricks from Mauro, in terms of driving at speed, and I had also refined my reflexes, which is essential when traveling at high speed. Obstacles, in fact, always come earlier than expected for one accustomed to driving in normal conditions. Ennio, attached to the handle above the window, threw one eye at me and one at the street.

"Have you taken lessons from any Formula 1 drivers in Liguria? I remembered you as a much quieter driver!"

"No, but I've learned that sometimes minutes are also important."

"We're doing an investigation, not a race!"

"I know, but what we might see in five minutes at a certain place might be different from what we would find in an hour."

"Of course. But this is pure philosophy: everything flows, time, human events, our own life. In a moment there will be nothing that is the same as now. Right? But I don't think that helps us discover criminals. We wouldn't find out any more if we went to clash at this speed against New Jersey: this is a certainty."

Not wanting to give him string in this kind of discussion, I slowed down and entered the Jesi Centro exit lane. At a moderate pace, always with the flashing lights on, I headed towards the center, I bypassed the ancient part of the city following the same roads that I had traveled the night before in Stefano's car, and reached Villa Brandi. The villa was surrounded by the plastic strips that I had seen placed by some agents last night. But what immediately caught the eye, already from a certain distance, was a large SUV with darkened windows parked in the square in front of the villa, near the well. I approached with caution, beckoning Ennio to put his hand to the gun, I stopped at a distance, operated the computer and scanned the license plate of the vehicle.

No match in the database, was the inscription that appeared on the display.

"Well, it's not a stolen vehicle!" said Santinelli.

"Silly, the search was on the database of civil motorization. That is a plaque that does not exist, false, in all likelihood. Be on guard, and ready for anything, even a firefight."

Ennio pulled the gun out of the holster, though a little skeptical.

"You won't believe that there are bombers in there. What would they do, to look at their work? And then the windows of that SUV are darkened, we don't even know if there is someone inside or if it's just a parked vehicle."

"Now we'll see! Hold on."

I put the first and, taking advantage of all the power of the Alfa, I reached the SUV, first alongside it, then, with an incredible tail head artfully obtained with the handbrake, stopping a few centimeters from its nose. I operated the speaker on the roof of the car, speaking with a firm voice through the microphone from inside the passenger compartment.

"Police! This area is subject to judicial seizure. Get out of the vehicle with your hands in sight. No abrupt gestures or we will have to open fire."

In response, the SUV started reversing at full speed. Suddenly I saw a figure emerge, dressed in dark, who with a skillful pirouette came out of the fence of the villa bypassing the grille and slipped on the fly into the moving vehicle opening the door on the passenger side. Ennio exploded a first shot, which hit the door still half-open, to act as a shield to the man who was getting on board. We both got out of our car, pointing at the guns with two hands and firing a volley at the vehicle. The bullets bounced, and I heard one hissing near my ear.

"Damn! It must be an armored vehicle. It is not even scratched by our bullets", said Ennio out of breath.

"Calm. Let's try to shoot the tires."

Meanwhile, the SUV was making a quick maneuver to turn around and be able to leave more easily than in reverse. But the risky maneuver of the driver, combined with the fact that Ennio managed to blow up a tire at the right time, made the heavy vehicle unbalanced. A hole in the ground completed the work, and I saw the SUV, with movements that seemed to take place in slow motion, first slump on one side, and then overturn, with great roar of sheets and glass. The SUV had the wheels in the air still spinning, when the doors opened, showing the two people in the front seats hanging in an abnormal position thanks to the seat belts and stuck by the exploded airbags. I saw Ennio change the charger to his Beretta. I should have done the same, but all in all I didn't see much hostility in those two individuals. We approached with guns leveled and badges in evidence.

"Come down and no jokes. Immediately on the ground and hands behind your back."

The two unhooked themselves from their belts, got out of the overturned car, but they had no intention of carrying out what we had told them. Instead, they showed us badges very similar to ours except for the inscription: SISDE – SERVICES FOR DEMOCRATIC SECURITY.

"What are the Secret Services doing around here?"

"Dr. Ruggeri! I marvel at her. For years they have not called us by that bad name. The times of spies and the Secret Service are a past history." The speaker was the older of the two, dressed in a dark suit, blue eyes and graying hair. "We are at the service of the security of the country. Services for Democratic Security, have renamed us for years now. I am Captain Cecchi, and my colleague, if it is still whole, is Marshal Gregori."

The latter had risen from the ground limping and was shaking off the dust from the dark suit.

"However you want to be called, this is not a place for you. I have been officially instructed to investigate what happened here last night and I do not tolerate interference of any kind."

"We had been warned that you were quick to tongue, Doctor. But, you see, there are things about the security of the country, and we think that's one of them. Above all, we depend on the highest office of the State, on the President of the Republic, who has decided that this is a matter for us and that it must be closed as quickly as possible. Trust us, we already have our own track, and in the next twenty-four, forty-eight hours at most, we will be able to bring to justice those who carried out this massacre."

"But is it? You will find someone to scapegoat, just to close on the whole thing! I am not prepared to give you the field, not even an inch."

"I would like to point out to you that you have just destroyed an expensive vehicle belonging to the Italian government," continued the grizzled captain. "Be good and we will make sure that you are not charged for damages."

"I don't like blackmail. Do your investigation and I will do mine, but I do not want you between your feet. Santinelli, calls a tow truck and accompanies the gentlemen to the Quaestor. They will see it with him. I'll make do with it myself here."

"But, Caterina...", Ennio tried to object.

"Go ahead, do what I told you! I believe that the gentlemen have already studied our curriculum, so much so that we know even more than we know ourselves about our lives. So let's make there’s a little more complicated, so they will find a way to stop us, before tomorrow night. But for the moment we are the ones who stop them. Keep them here until the tow truck arrives and don't let them move. If necessary, threaten them with the weapon. I now enter the villa."

As I passed under a strip of white and red plastic, gave a push to the gate and entered the park, I began to worry about what I had said to Captain Cecchi and Marshal Gregori. Damn character! It would have been better to pretend to cooperate, to rip them off at the appropriate time. But now what was done was done, I had to go on at all costs on my way.

I took my cell phone and called Stefano.

"I need a big favor. I have a mishap and I need my car. Could you bring it to me here at Villa Brandi, let's do it in about an hour? Then I'll take you home and continue on my rides."

"Agreed. But I'll have to take Aurora with me too. I can't leave the little one alone. She has just done her feeding and is now awake and cheerful, and will be happy to take a ride in the car. I will mount the seat on your Toyota and in about an hour I will be there. No explosions in anticipation, I hope!"

"How do you say that? A lightning bolt never falls where another has already fallen, so don't worry! Would you be able to put Furia in the car too? It could be useful to me, if only to keep me company for the rest of the day."

"Of course. Other? Do I bring you some sandwiches, some coffee?"

I had a laugh and closed the communication. I climbed the external staircase of the sumptuous villa and reached the large balcony from which you could access the main entrance. The door was sealed by adhesive strips arranged in a cross, but what was worse was that it was barred. I have never been able to break doors, so I immediately desist from the idea of entering from there. I took a look around and decided that the easiest way to get in was to go through the breach caused by the explosion, closed at the moment only by plastic strips. Once inside, I found myself in an almost surreal environment. The light of the morning sun filtered, partly from the breach of the wall, partly from the windows still intact, to illuminate the living room that had been the scene of such a beautiful party unfortunately ended in tragedy. Silhouettes drawn with white chalk indicated the position in which the victims had been found. The bookshop where the previous evening I had noticed the text on the History of Jesi had broken glass, some books had been thrown out of the library and were half-destroyed on the floor. The precious text I was interested in had remained intact and was now within my reach. I put on the latex gloves, picked it up and ran my index finger to see if, since it was also part of the traditions and history of the city, the subject was covered. Villa Brandi. I did not find a dedicated chapter there, but I observed that there were at least a dozen references in the analytical index. I decided to take the book with me, to study it better. I took a look outside and saw with pleasure that the tow truck had arrived and Santinelli was getting the two into the car. Colleagues of SISDE. After a few moments they would all disappear. Well, at least I had time to continue my search, moreover, when Stefano arrived, there would be no strangers between my feet. I went upstairs, gave a peek at the rooms, all in perfect order, clean and clean, illuminated by the sun those with windows facing east, immersed in a soft penumbra those on the opposite side. Nothing that could arouse interest. I climbed up to the attic, where the disappointment of seeing an aseptic, unceded and very clean environment, gripped me to such an extent that I would start crying. Before the renovation, the attic certainly contained many objects that could tell the story of that dwelling, but which had now been lost, stolen