LITMIR.BIZ

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where the explosion had occurred. One corner had been transformed into an incident room until the usual suspects had finished clearing up outside and hosing down and gathering the necessary minutiae for Forensics. The university was an imposing building and while the bomb had torn through the soft tissue of passersby and disfigured the facade of the eighteenth-century palazzo, its structural integrity had not been compromised.

      Meanwhile, inside, all available officers had been charged with interviewing every imaginable person that had been inside or in the vicinity of the building.

      “He’ll be turning his boat around now, I reckon,” said Rossi. “And wherever he is, he’ll want to be informed of the facts as they happen. You know he brings a satellite phone on holiday.”

      Carrara knocked back his espresso.

      “So I’ve heard. Prudent man.”

      “Likes to know. Doesn’t appreciate getting ridden roughshod over when he’s out of the picture.”

      “That’s a polite way of putting it. Better not to take a holiday.”

      “Don’t worry,” said Rossi, “there won’t be any for the foreseeable future.”

      Carrara scratched his head as he recommenced scanning papers and spreadsheets and maps of the building.

      “Are you sure there’s much point trying to interview all these kids and staff today without proper interpreters?”

      “I brought that up already,” Rossi replied, “but certain individuals are convinced of their language skills.”

      “You mean the ones whose evidence then gets torn apart when the lawyers get stuck into them?”

      “That sort of thing. Anyway, not my orders, Gigi. The call goes out and we answer. This is one major security shitstorm. You realize there’s an international summit coming up, and the word from very on high is that they want answers sooner rather than later. It’ll be the Americans. You can count on it. They’ve got a shedload of interests plugged in here.”

      “But you know as well as I do that the evidence is inadmissible without a lawyer present,” Carrara insisted.

      “Well, they want ‘facts’ that might help point us in the right direction. I don’t think they’re counting on the bomber still being among us. It’s intelligence gathering.”

      “Intelligence? They might perhaps have made a better job of gathering before it all kicked off, especially if they had agents in there.”

      Rossi nodded.

      “And he managed to plant a device without anyone checking? Either the guards were sleeping or they thought it was someone who studied or worked here.”

      “What did you make of the footage?”

      “You mean the footage they let us see?”

      “You’re saying Anti-Terror were being ‘selective’?”

      “Playing it very close to their chests,” said Rossi. “Like in any good story, it’s what you choose not to reveal.”

      “But the guy in the hat walking away a minute or so before the blast? Well covered up for the time of year, don’t you think?”

      Rossi shrugged.

      “Could be anyone. But from what I saw of it, it looked like a bike bomb. There was no other vehicle in the vicinity, no cars, only passersby and students, no visible packages. They should have found a few fragments by now, so they’ll be able to put some meat on the bones.”

      “It wouldn’t be the first time,” said Carrara. “You can get a lot of plastic inside that tubing. At least a kilo, maybe two. And it only takes one to obliterate a vehicle.”

      “It was a taster, if you ask me,” said Rossi. “Small but nasty. Nails and bearings. But we’ve got six corpses in there and maybe more to come.”

      “A spectacular?” said Carrara. “In Rome? That’s turning the clock back forty years.”

      “Well, someone’s opened the betting. It all depends if the stakes rise. And who’s playing the game. Look,” said Rossi, “Bianco’s here.”

      The sergeant was approaching their table with his customary heavy tread now even heavier. He flopped down into a chair.

      “Relatives,” he said. “In the mortuary. What a fucking job.”

      He gave them the low-down on things. A temporary mortuary had been set up in a ground-floor classroom. The air-conditioning helped. Despite being August, the road diversions and massive security clampdown combined with a general heat-stoked hysteria was wreaking havoc on the city’s traffic. The scene-of-crime magistrate had agreed with the City Prefect to keep the bodies at the scene until things calmed down and until they could get next of kin informed, at least in the case of the local victims. Then they would see to the overseas students.

      “Dario’s forming his opinions already, isn’t he?” said Carrara, waiting then for Rossi’s reaction.

      “He’s going through hell! A guy like him cooped up 24/7 with an escort, as good as living on the run. There are Mafia scum who’ve got more freedom to walk the streets. The least he should be doing is concocting another conspiracy theory.”

      “As far-fetched as the last one wasn’t? I mean The Carpenter case turned out to be just about as fucked up and twisted as you could imagine. Faked deaths, suicides, triple bluffs. You couldn’t have made it up.”

      “Take every case on its merits, Gigi. Follow the facts until they prove you were right not to believe somebody’s wild theorizing, or until what you do see begins to eat away at your long-held notions of the rational and believable. Otherwise you lose your direction. There’s a place for instinct, for gut feeling but it’s the catalyst, not the constituent in the equation. Or the angle; the right kind of lighting that illuminates what you hadn’t noticed before.”

      “So how do you see this one shaping up? Us against the bad guys in a nice straight fight? Do you see a tall dark stranger?”

      Rossi gave a nervous look over his shoulder to the tables behind him in the canteen nearest to the coffee machines and the free food. They were all there. Known and unknown. Uniformed and non. Some friends and a sprinkling of well-seasoned foes. Yes, thought Rossi, it took events like this to really shake up the law and order establishment. It was like some sort of world cup and everyone was suddenly going for glory and sensing the opportunity to get their hands on the trophy.

      “Or another one where we’re watching our backs and wishing we were on traffic detail again?” Carrara added.

      Rossi flicked a used sugar sachet into his cup. “I predict interesting, Gigi. That’s what I see. As in very ‘interesting times’.”

      Carrara had set up a meeting with Dr Okoli. The professor was waiting in an interview room but without any of the accompanying security. Rossi noted that unlike the usual suspects they had to face across a desk in there, he seemed quite unperturbed by the surroundings.

      “So, it seems I am a lucky man,” he said with a broad smile as he rose to greet Rossi and Carrara with a powerful handshake.

      “I tend to agree,” said Rossi as he introduced himself. “We’ll keep this as brief as we can, Professor. I’m sure you have a lot to attend to.”

      Okoli nodded and sat down again. He had the relaxed air of a writer for whom ideas come easily and in abundance. No tortured soul here. Rossi was getting the feeling that this was a man who had probably seen worse on many occasions. Much worse.

      “Enemies?” said Rossi.

      “How long do you have?” the professor chuckled. “That part of the Nigerian establishment which is corrupt to its rotten core and in cahoots with the petrodollar touting rabble and the foreign ‘investors’.” He made his own inverted commas

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