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

Скачать книгу

if I swing by in half an hour? I’m in Trastevere.

      The response was almost immediate.

       Great. Will be waiting.

      She got off at Piazza Mastai, where office couples and homeless alike had taken up their appointed spots on benches around the hexagonal fountain. To the left she could wander away into the winding streets of Trastevere. It was easy to lose yourself there, but you’d soon pop out somewhere recognizable. She passed a shop front and checked her reflection. Early lunchers were filling the outside tables of the pizzerie and trattorie. Tourists mainly. As they waited, some of their eyes strayed towards her. So, she was looking good. Well, she was a part of the city they had come to see. Better live up to their expectations then and she put an added spritz of elegance into her step.

      She continued to walk until she came to Piazza Trilussa. By day, its steps hosted workmen on their breaks and sightseers taking in the scene. The traffic tearing along the Lungotevere, the road running parallel with the course of the river below, was as noisy as a race track. She too was completing a circuit of sorts but at a human pace as the road would bring her first past the Israeli university and then to Ponte Garibaldi.

      The narrow footpath along the river was crowded with parked cars randomly slicing the pavement and bullying for space wherever it could be found. She moved into the road to avoid an oncoming mob of students. Her own student days were long gone but she still remembered them fondly.

      Back then, she had sent out hundreds of CVs to companies; she too had done concorsi, and she had taken whatever work she could find to get a foot on the ladder, to get away from home and eke out an independent existence. Now she sold textbooks for a publishing house, a job nominally related to her literary studies, but she may as well have been selling cars or insurance for all it was worth. Her own literary efforts were gathering dust in boxes or on a hard drive of an ageing computer.

      As she approached the university, armed military personnel stood cradling their automatic rifles and scanning the passersby near the entrance. There were bikes outside, chained to the waist-high railings providing an unobtrusive security cordon of sorts. A soldier began waving in an agitated manner at a white jeep that had pulled up.

      “No, no, signora. Via! Via! No parking here. No parking.

      At least someone was doing his job. Paola glanced at the selection of new and innovative bicycles she presumed must have reflected the considerable spending power of the students. One had a sophisticated-looking kilometre counter and all of its expensive-looking lights still attached. Lights, at this time of the year? And risky that, in Rome. If it wasn’t nailed down it was a goner.

      Her thoughts moved again between the present and the past. This place where they would come on Friday nights and where they used to meet foreigners and students from all over the globe. It was a window on the world, and it had been a time of fun. But that was gone. People were settling down. She thought of the melancholy and so true line from a Joyce story: “Everything changes”.

      But does it? thought Paola as she passed. Does it?

      Then, unseen to her and the smoking, chatting students, the seconds on the digital, liquid crystal display flipped from 58 to 59 to 00 and, as the detonator nestled deep in the explosive charge packed into the bicycle frame did its brief job, everything did.

       Nine

      “… which, over time, would radically reduce our dependence on oil and be a real step forward in reducing levels of atmospheric pollution linked to cancer in our cities and beyond. Besides that, the initial cost would soon be offset both by savings for the consumer and the provider. I have some figures here, if you don’t mind.”

      Francesco began to reach for his briefcase leaning against the leg of his chair.

      “That won’t be necessary, Dottor Anselmi,” the president of the commission said before Francesco had managed to extract the relevant file. “Really, time is against us, as always, but it was, I think we all agree, a most interesting presentation. Even if I’m not sure it’s what our friends in ItalOil would want to hear,” he added, leaning back and laughing out loud. The three other members gave knowing smiles and also nodded their approval as the president craned his neck slightly to make eye contact with each in turn.

      The clerk too, who had been hunched over his papers recording the candidates’ names and cross-checking documentation and identity cards all morning, would now have his small increment of institutional glory.

      “The results of the concorso,” he announced, “will be published at the end of the week on the university’s website.”

      “Ah, yes, just one thing.” The sole female interviewer was scanning the first page of Francesco’s CV through her bifocals. “If I may, it says here you are fluent in English.”

      “Yes,” Francesco replied.

      “I was wondering, could you envisage overseeing a course, or courses, for the faculty in the medium of English? How would you go about organizing, for example, training the stuff?”

      “I’m sorry?” Francesco replied.

      “How would you train the stuff,” she repeated.

      “The staff,” the president said with careful emphasis and exhibiting only minor irritation.

      “Oh, sorry,” said Francesco.

      It was the one he hadn’t prepared for.

      “Well,” he began, buying time. A helicopter’s unmistakable whop-whop overhead and a swirling emergency siren beyond the drawn blinds took everyone’s attention hostage for a moment.

      “Do go on, please,” the president enjoined Francesco.

      “Well, I would first assess their competences and then put out a call for the most suitable candidates to fill the vacant positions.”

      “And the staff not ‘up to the job’?” said the bespectacled interviewer.

      Francesco knew he had to answer, but he was fumbling.

      “They could be moved to positions better-suited to their competences, and then offered training, in the long term, to get them up to speed.”

      “Ah. I see.” She turned to the president of the commission. “I think that really is all now.”

      “Very well,” he replied. “And unless there are any other questions.”

      But something told Francesco it probably wasn’t what they had wanted to hear. And then maybe none of it had been. And his English was better than hers by a country-fucking-mile. Yet she was sitting there.

      There was a knock at the door. A minor office flunkey clutching a piece of paper popped his head round. He looked, apart from his general obsequiousness, more than a little shaken.

      “Presidente Bonucci, Dottori, scusate. C’è una communicazione.”

      Allowing his glasses to slide down his nose, Professor Bonucci scanned the note while conveying its salient points. “‘Major security alert in City of Rome. Possibility of further explosions. All universities, places of worship, public buildings and schools to remain on high alert until further notice. Senior management to evaluate the situation and assess the practicalities of executing evacuation or effecting security lockdown.’”

      He looked up.

      “Dottoresse e dottori, to use the popular contemporary lexicon, it would appear that we are ‘under attack’.”

       Ten

      An

Скачать книгу