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

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Dalla Chiesa did with the Red Brigades. He played a long game, and he didn’t take any innocent lives doing it. If we go in like you’re proposing there’ll be an exponential growth of home-grown terror.”

      “All right, gentlemen,” said Maroni, “let’s keep on an even keel here. This is neither the Wild West nor the Seventies or the Eighties. I was there for some of that and I knew the general, personally. So let’s leave it at that.”

      “You can’t go antagonizing a whole community, if you don’t want a war,” said Rossi unable to resist the parting shot. “If you target them as Muslims it will be wholly counterproductive. That’s how their recruiters work, telling these kids that their religion is their common bond, regardless of their nationality. We’d be doing their job for them.”

      “And the government doesn’t want the city in a lockdown scenario either,” said Maroni. “It’s bad for the economy, and God know’s it’s already on life support. The moment is delicate, gentlemen, very delicate. And there’s the Olympic bid to consider. There’s a lot of pressure on that front too, I don’t mind saying.”

      Rossi shook his head.

      “We need to think like they do,” said Rossi. “Try to understand what these young guys want, and they will be young, for sure. Then we can isolate them within their communities, get them to rat on each other once they realize it’s in their interests. And we can take advantage of the fact that there aren’t any true no-go areas in Rome yet, at least not like in Brussels and Paris. We can still manage this situation.”

      Inspector Katia Vanessi had raised her hand to speak. New to the team, and the only woman on RSCS, she was an as yet unknown quantity as far as Rossi was concerned.

      “Every domestic terrorist act is underwritten by a prevailing sense of social injustice validating if not the means then certainly the end.”

      Rossi adjusted his position from a half slouch to interested. He could see Maroni was growing impatient.

      “Ladies and gentlemen, I get the point but we are not the UN here. We are not delivering global solutions for the hard done by. We are trying to stop Islamist extremists planting bloody bombs in our city!”

      But Rossi wasn’t going to let it go yet.

      “In its day,” said Rossi, “the Red Brigades had a wide support base, and they did have a certain Robin-Hood quality, at least initially. But is that the case here? Putting bombs in public places?” he said, letting his own open question hang in the air like incense. “To me, it smacks more of fascism – the disdain for the masses for the advancement of a private agenda.”

      Katia appeared to have let her attention wander for a moment. Rossi waited, expecting a personalized response that didn’t come as she continued to make unhurried but assiduous notes.

      She had heard a lot about Rossi and was working out as she wrote how best to comment on his little speech. Yes, she’d heard about his intellect, his unusual background, his barely concealed disdain for authority, and his reputation for getting results, often against the odds. Well, she reflected, dotting a final i on her notepad before laying down her pen – he seemed to be able to talk the talk at least. She raised her hand.

      “Well, Inspector Rossi,” she said, giving him her firm and confident attention now, “that’s a nice little story but, given your experience on the ground, what do you propose we actually do about it?”

       Sixteen

      Jibril wiped the steam off the mirror to make sure he didn’t cut himself with the new razor. Olivia had been surprised. Yes. Very surprised. So, she was finding out that he wasn’t quite as shy and reserved as she had thought him to be. And he had made the first move. Well, really the first move had come from her and not just the invitation. That had been an open invite. But giving him her phone number as she had a few weeks earlier. Then the other stuff. Picking him out with her eyes every time there was a question that needed answering. She was drawn to him. And he’d let it happen whether he had needed it or not. It was true that she would be part of his cover but he realized he had wanted it too. So, in a corner of his battered heart, perhaps not all hope was lost. Some innocence maybe still thrived. And the others must have known too. But what of it. The class favourite? The teacher’s pet? He’d already learnt about that from his own school days in the village and after. Days that had finished so abruptly, so cruelly.

      He stopped himself. Have to keep focused. He rinsed and wiped his face with a towel then slipped his shirt on and adjusted the collar so that the chain hung around his neck against his skin just above the topmost fastened button. He smoothed his chin with one hand. His beard was gone but he’d never really got used to having it. When the rebels had first tried to reimpose the old ways on the men in the village, his father and uncles and many others had laughed at their attempts, calling it out as the harking back to some failed distant ideal, their new-found love affair with ideology, with ancient Wahabist rules and certainties.

      Yet things had changed somewhat since then, and Jibril had also lived a little in the true believers’ shoes. Now that his journey had brought him to the point where he’d understood the need for decisive action, such symbols were only that: symbols and nothing else. He’d made his case and made it well. He had bided his time with the brothers. In his hour of need they had been there for him. This much was true. He was strong, had always been, but embracing his religion and its comforts had helped him to be stronger. He had felt weakness when he had first come to Rome. Fatigue and hunger, but the strength of true brotherhood had quickly lifted him. There were decent, honest brothers who acted in good faith, but there were those, he knew very well, whose minds and hearts dwelt elsewhere. Such was life. But he was taking control in that regard too and the younger ones knew it.

      So, as he had explained, first, you had to fit in. Be like those of the country where you are a guest, or be their idea of how you should be. Play to your strengths, exploit their weaknesses. Ali had protested strongly and some of the others hadn’t been so sure either at first, but as he spoke, building an argument with patient explanation, he had begun to convince them even as he had convinced himself. The more attention you bring to yourself by your difference and your separateness, the more chance they will have of hunting you down, spotting you against the horizon. It was urban camouflage, brothers. Then you could strike unseen when the time was right. But only then. Haste was a fool’s game. Our revolution wears no watch, so it can come at anytime, when least they expect it. Let them sweat it out while we, with cool heads and focused determination, construct the perfect plan.

      He walked back across the hall into his room and picked up his phone off the nightstand. It was new. New second-hand. A decent model about whose provenance he hadn’t been encouraged to enquire. It would give him relative anonymity, linked as it was to a new identity. He would need it for everything legitimate now. There was work lined up, hopefully. He would talk to Olivia about that tonight. She would help and had already proved invaluable as a key to opening the intricacies of Italian society. She was always keen to know how he was “getting on” and whether he was going to get his permit to stay. Well, the story he would recount was that he had every intention of making a go of it and she was an attractive young woman with many of the qualities he admired. Somewhere, behind it all, if he hadn’t been at war, she might have even truly touched his soul. But he had no time for that. Not now. Not after what they had done to him.

      Perhaps they made an unlikely couple: an Italian woman and a Nigerian man. A teacher and an illegal immigrant with false papers? But he was also a care worker now, a social assistant. Once that was his identity it would not seem so strange. And that was where he was heading, on a fast track, and there was plenty of work to be had. These Italians didn’t lock their old people away like they did in some countries, but instead paid carers to shoulder the drudgery of looking after them. And yet they complained about the numbers of foreigners, the hordes of stranieri they had to put up with.

      This

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