LITMIR.BIZ

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the arrangement himself when Yana, having improvements made to her flat, had found herself in limbo. Their busy schedules meant that the time spent together was only ever a few hours in the evening. Yet, he felt it was a start and steady progress in uncharted waters.

      He looked towards the Roma hills and the flickering yellow lights as he sipped on his drink and the rubbish collection truck made its slow, lumbering progress along Via Latina. It was the Prenestina fire that was beginning to occupy his thoughts and perhaps already to obsess him. He knew the signs. He knew too that it had come from on high when he and Carrara had been moved “temporarily” from homicide to arson. Why else, when by anyone’s standards they had got concrete results in the Marini case? It was dressed up as something else, of course – we need your expertise on this one, we think you’re the men for the job, and all that bullshit. And Maroni, his boss, in his best don’t shoot the messenger guise, had assured him that it all fell under the Serious Crime Squad remit.

      He looked back into the lounge. His phone was buzzing on the coffee table. It was Carrara.

      “Gigi.”

      “Another fire, Mick. Initial reports indicate it could be of interest.”

      “Where?”

      “Parioli.”

      “Parioli?”

      It was one of Rome’s more well-to-do suburbs.

      “Yep. They think there’s a family inside. Nigerians. You’d better get here quick.”

      The fire brigade were still dousing sizeable pockets of flame in the detached two-storey villa’s badly scorched shell. The worst seemed to be under control but it had spread quickly with the hot summer air and a light breeze exacerbating matters.

      A large crowd had assembled for the spectacle, but there was no hard fast news on who the occupants might be and so far chaos seemed to be reigning. Rossi and Carrara began to apprise themselves of the situation, only to find that no one could give them a simple, unified version of events.

      What they knew was that flames had been spotted about about an hour earlier, and a passerby had raised the alarm. Others had then hammered at the door to rouse the presumably sleeping occupants, but all to no avail. Attempts to kick the door in had also failed.

      Rossi walked over to a fountain and splashed his face, trying not to imagine the worst that could be about to greet them when they finally got news about the occupants’ fate. As he looked up again, Carrara was returning. He’d got something.

      “Registered in the name of a prominent local politician, the Honourable Mimmo Carducci,” he said. “But some of the neighbours are saying there’s an African family living there, fairly recently arrived.”

      Rossi pondered the information.

      “But no one’s been calling for help from any of the windows, back or front,” he said finally. They both knew what that meant: that smoke inhalation could have done for them already.

      The fire crews were gathered and assessing the level of danger. Nineteenth-century building. No reinforced concrete, a lot of wood in the ceilings. Parts of it could collapse at any moment.

      “Family of four. Nigerian asylum seekers,” said the chief fire officer.

      Behind him a squadron of four men had begun donning breathing apparatus.

      “I’m sending them in,” he continued, “if there’s half a chance of finding anyone alive. But it doesn’t look promising.”

      Rossi put an anxious hand to his face.

      Carrara, who had dashed off again, was now concluding a rapid discussion with another local family who had pulled up in a car. There was a lot of nodding of heads, then some cries of either pain or happiness. It was hard to be sure. Then Carrara turned back towards Rossi and raised a hand in what appeared to be a sign of victory and as a signal to call off the search.

      “A lucky escape,” said Carrara, the relief on his face clearly visible.

      The house had been empty. When Carrara had finally spoken to the absent occupant, a Nigerian university professor in exile, it emerged that as the dramatic scenes had been playing out on the street in Parioli he, his children and their friends had been playing blind man’s buff in someone’s converted cellar in Trastevere where there was no cell phone signal. Friends of theirs had organized a surprise party. The guy hadn’t had even an inkling of the plan and they had all left the house at the last minute. The father had seen the missed calls only when he went out for a cigarette.

      Rossi tried to rub the stress out of his face as Carrara dialled a number.

      “I’m calling the professor now.”

      The fire crew were removing their apparatus as they awaited further orders. This one at least had turned out for the better and their cold beers would go down a lot easier when this shift ended.

      The Parioli fire had now pushed the Prenestina case off their agenda. Rossi and Carrara had driven back to the office in the Alfa Romeo to weigh it all up.

      “Initial findings say that the house was torched,” said Carrara. “Accelerants and a relatively sophisticated timed incendiary device were used. The occupant has been confirmed as being the exiled Nigerian writer and professor – Chini Okoli – and his family, living there as guests of the Honourable Mimmo Carducci, who had given them the run of one of the houses he had in his portfolio.”

      “Portfolio?” said Rossi sitting up. “What do we know about him?”

      “Ex PCI, Italian Communist Party. Now part of the wobbly left-of-centre alliance. Well-to-do Roman family, connections with the university, family law firm. Active overseas in human rights work. The usual story. Seems there was a network of friends of friends in academic circles. They helped out with solidarity missions for Palestine and Brazil.”

      This was certainly different to the Prenestina fire but whether or not it was connected he didn’t know. Racial, maybe, but if they had targeted an intellectual, given the context – Nigeria, asylum seekers – it had political written all over it.

      “So, technically, it was a bomb. An incendiary. When can we speak to Okoli?”

      “I think he might need a night off first, don’t you?” said Carrara.

      Rossi nodded but knew he would need to see him as soon as was practicable, to get a handle on any motives, but there were other elements which were already interesting him.

      He got up and opened the door of the office’s mini fridge. No beers left. He went then to the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Jameson’s twelve-year-old reserve.

      “What have you got?” said Carrara. He could see Rossi might already be onto something.

      “First up,” said Rossi, pouring a large and a disgracefully small measure for himself and Carrara respectively, “the surprise party. It was so well concealed that any intelligence the firebombers might have had didn’t reveal it either.”

      “Go on,” said Carrara, warming to it now. Rossi took a bottle of water from the fridge for his whiskey, a few ice cubes for Carrara and pulled up a chair for himself.

      “So, either they hadn’t been tapping the phones or they hadn’t employed the sophistication necessary to monitor, record, and translate from their private conversations in Okoli’s native language.”

      “Which suggests a lack of sophistication on the part of the assailants.”

      “Or plain sloppiness,” said Rossi. He took a meditative sip on his whiskey and water. It was too hot for it but he needed the kick.

      “Improvised far-right aggression?” said Carrara. “A warning by way of a relatively high-profile figure?”

      “Or an attempted assassination under the cover of a spontaneous race attack.”

      “Riding on the back of

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