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

Скачать книгу

Jibril have an address for the person he was looking for?” asked Carrara.

      “He gave me one but it was false. I checked it but I let it go. You have to understand how emotional and how trying all this can be. He needed to know and as far as I was concerned there was no ulterior motive, no other reason for his being there. You know, it did even occur to me that they might have been lovers.”

      “Well,” said Carrara, “he was clearly covering all bases if he didn’t want to give a real address. He wanted to appear credible without leaving any trail. As you say, probably the illegal immigrant’s preservation instinct.”

      “And his name?” said Rossi. “Do you think he gave you his real name?”

      “Like I said, it was Jibril, but more than that I don’t know.”

      “Well, it looks like we will have to get on to Dario,” said Rossi to Carrara. He turned back to Tiziana; she was taking restorative sips on her water like a witness granted time to collect herself during a cross-examination.

      “What you must remember here, Tiziana, is that this is a murder investigation. Anything that could lead us to the killer could help save lives. We don’t have reason to believe that there have been other victims but we can’t rule it out either. But whoever killed him was ruthless and could do it again. This body was meant to be found. Others may not have been. Your biggest mistake here, if there is one, is not dishonesty or dereliction of duty but simply that of having let time pass. In our job, time is everything. It is a little late in the day.”

      She first nodded with something like contrition but then rallied.

      “What you say is, of course, perfectly true, Inspector, and I realize that I fell short of certain obligations. However, if I hadn’t intervened in the first place, if I hadn’t set aside normal practice, he would have walked out that door. He was being turned away by my colleagues. I too could have done the same. At least now you have something to go on, even if it is, as you point out, ‘a little late in the day’.”

      Carrara was nodding his agreement while Rossi, taken aback first by the steeliness of her retort, couldn’t help then but smile. He sensed he might have the makings of a dependable ally in Tiziana, and allies were hard to come by at the best of times.

      “Could you leave us your number, please,” Rossi said. “Mobile and office.” He slid his notebook and pen across the table. “I think we’ll need to be seeing more of each other, Tiziana. But you can rest assured that for now, at least, you have nothing to fear.”

      Tiziana wrote down two phone numbers, then Rossi slipped the notebook back into his jacket pocket.

      “Perhaps we could accompany you to the hospital,” he proposed.

      “Thank you, Inspector,” she replied. “If it’s no trouble.”

      “Not at all,” said Rossi. “As I said, we were on our way there.”

       Six

      At the reception area, Tiziana waved them through the security checks despite the burly security guard’s evident displeasure.

      “These gentlemen are with me,” she said. “They are senior police officers.”

      The additional information seemed to make the necessary difference as the guard acquiesced and went back to studying his phone.

      “I think we know the way now,” said Rossi.

      “Wait,” she said, “let me ring ahead first. It will make things easier.”

      She unlocked a door on her right in the dim, impersonal corridor in which they now stood. “My office. The back door.”

      She emerged a moment later holding out a slip of paper. “Doctor Piredda. First floor, corridor 2, room 209. He’s not busy, so ask him as much as you want. He’s usually pretty straight up actually. Sardinian.”

      They thanked her with firm handshakes all round and made their way along the eery passageways. While there was nothing to see, what lurked behind the doors and the nature of the traffic that went through the place was enough to overload the dark side of the imagination.

      “Always prefer to come here in the morning,” said Rossi. “Gives me time to forget about it during the rest of the day.”

      “Bad dreams?” said Carrara.

      “Bad memories more than dreams,” Rossi replied. “I can deal with the dreams. You wake up from them.”

      Doctor Piredda was sitting waiting, his hands joined on a writing pad in front of him, a clunky monitor and a computer keyboard yellowed to a soiled ivory colour to one side on his sparse, largely unencumbered working space. He reached across to shake hands with them both, his white-coated bulk straining against the edge of the desk.

      “A bad business,” he began. “And still none the wiser, are we?”

      Who we was supposed to be, Rossi couldn’t quite be sure.

      “I went through it all, you know,” he continued, “with your colleague. He looked down then at his notes in an open Manilla folder. “Lallana.”

      “Yes,” said Rossi. “He’s in homicide, specifically. We, Inspector Carrara and I, are from the Serious Crime Squad. We are investigating acts of arson in the city, and we were wondering if there was anything else that may have come to light in the intervening period. Apart from the identification, of course. Any anomalies, for example? We are fairly certain it was intentional. Could you give us something that might indicate intent?”

      Piredda shook his head. Rossi knew the signs: that he wasn’t going to stick his neck out on the motive behind the fire.

      “Death was due to asphyxiation in primis. The absence of oxygen. It would have been relatively rapid, in the circumstances, with the confined space and the volume of highly toxic smoke.”

      “Even with the windows open?” said Carrara. “It was hot. There were locked bars on the windows but the windows themselves must have been open, for ventilation.”

      “I think that’s beside the point. The oxygen coming in would only have fed the flames further. They would have quickly lost consciousness, in minutes, and the burns would then in a sense have been secondary factors. Horrendous though they were. I’m sure you know that most victims are not actually burnt to death. What’s more, they will have been asleep and the chances are they were already inhaling the fumes as they slept. They were, I believe, in all but one case found close to where they would have been sleeping. It was night. You can’t orientate yourself in such conditions, and the heat would have been completely overpowering.”

      “The ethnicities?” said Rossi feeling already that it was going to be a wasted visit. “Age? Nothing you think you might be able to add?”

      “I provided my estimates for age, considering a margin of error of around three to five years either way. I also provided the racial profile. Nothing has changed, Inspector.”

      “You said African. Black African. And North African.”

      “That is correct. Three black African corpses. One North African. The other victim, of course, was identified by his jewellery. His ‘dog tags’.”

      “Could you hazard a guess as to a country, a more specific region?” Rossi asked. “South or West African? You see we’ve had very little in the line of witnesses who had even seen the occupants.”

      “Seems like we’ve run into a bit of omertà,” Carrara chipped in. “No one’s saying a goddam word.”

      The doctor gave a weak smile.

      “That’s more difficult without DNA tests, but I’d venture that the two black Africans were likely sub-Saharan,

Скачать книгу