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

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of their theorizing as they sipped on their drinks. Some unifying strategy could have been behind it. Attacking minorities, blacks, immigrants. That was Nazi-style. It also grabbed the headlines.

      “Or what if we’re talking some kind of Unabomber?” said Carrara. “A lone wolf carrying out random strikes, varying his technique, leading us all a merry dance as we try to come up with some ideological motive behind it all?”

      They both knew the story well. The Italian Unabomber had never been caught. He, and a he it almost certainly was, as far as the psychological profiling went, had terrorized the north of the country for over ten years with random attacks, planting pipe bombs and incendiary devices in public spaces – park benches, beaches, bus shelters and the like. He had caused only one direct fatality but had maimed and traumatized numerous members of the public. He had once booby-trapped a child’s chocolate egg.

      The theory went that since the last attack some six or seven years before, he had either died, or was on an extended cooling-off period, serial-killer style. That there might be more than one, other emulators, could not be ruled out either. That he might have moved south or spawned an imitator in Rome was also a possibility.

      “Perhaps someone with military experience,” said Rossi. “Someone with a generalized grudge. PTSD from Iraq or Afghanistan. The race-hate agenda might be right up his street.”

      “Maybe” said Carrara. “Have you seen this?” he said then, holding up a printout.

      Rossi reached across the desk. Another “potentially relevant” incident had come up on the radar from earlier in the evening. A lot of motorbikes had gone up in flames in a car park in the affluent Prati area and their none-too-pleased and, in some cases, influential owners had already been harassing the local cops.

      “No casualties, no homicide,” said Rossi.

      “But they want answers,” said Carrara. He was scrolling through the latest headlines and news on social media. “And those with a bit of weight to throw around are calling for ‘deployment of resources, protection of Italian interests. Get the police out of the ghettos and back in the heartlands’.”

      Rossi was now beginning to toy with the idea of there being some link there too, but knew it was early days. What if someone was trying to sow chaos, stretch their resources? Crazy environmentalists maybe. There were nuts everywhere in Rome, especially when the mercury was rising. He got up and went to the window to get some air. There wasn’t much.

      “Priority goes to the house fires for now,” he said turning back to face Carrara. “Send out some uniforms. Get statements, check for witnesses and CCTV. Then we’ll see.”

      The others would get their precious insurance eventually. He was going to nail the real cowardly scum who got their kicks out of burning working men, women, and children in their beds.

       Three

      Yana was going in late to the Wellness Health and Fitness Centre, so Rossi had let her sleep. She was her own boss and could do as she pleased, but she had a business head and a work ethic that put others to shame. Plans were afoot for expansion and her hunger was plain to see. He steered clear, not understanding a thing of that world. He hoped they would find a balance, however, as his own obsessive approach to cases was not always ideal for those around him.

      He laid the table for them both and then allowed himself a quiet, meditative breakfast before the sun began to emerge from behind the apartment blocks, extinguishing with all its gathering fury the night’s last vague hints of coolness. It was relentless, sapping. He lowered the shutter a few notches to keep the heat minimally at bay and then finished his coffee, leaving enough in the pot for Yana. He did a couple of yoga stretches that Yana had taught him, just so as to render the exercise not wholly perfunctory. He was sweating already and headed for the shower.

      She was waking as he slipped on his lightest summer jacket.

      “Don’t make yourself too beautiful,” she said through her sleep-infused languor. A strap had slipped off one shoulder of her ivory silk camisole and her smooth body was again calling, siren-like, to Rossi. He knotted his tie as loosely as decency would allow and leaned over to kiss her, his lips straying then along her neck and shoulder and into the warmth of her breasts. As Yana flopped back onto the bed the sunlight fell across her body evoking the promise of long carefree hours. But he stopped and tore himself away.

      “Have to go,” he mumbled. “Gigi will be waiting.” He didn’t say where. On a morning like this, when life seemed to burst from every pore of his and their being, it was neither the time nor the place to talk of mortuaries, death, and carbonized corpses. She flopped back down onto the bed. Her strength seemed neutralized, and he couldn’t help feeling protective again, even now. A good deal of time had passed since the winter’s events but Rossi knew that doing the job he did and having the enemies he had would always mean she was vulnerable. They could always hit her to get to him. Always.

      “Don’t forget to lock the door,” he said then, trying to assuage something of his guilt. As if that action would lock off his darkest and most persistent fears. As if that could stop the worst they could ever do, if they chose to.

      He felt tense. The relief after tracing the professor and his family had worn off and he had slept badly, fitfully, in the near-tropical humidity, his thoughts looping as he turned over the various scenarios again and again.

      The city was tense too and that same heat wasn’t helping. Grievances often rankled in the punishing summer torpor, especially in situations where numbers or circumstances created a critical mass – a crowded bus, a queue in the post office, a traffic jam. People didn’t move on with their problems here and in the stifling humidity they could fester. They were oversensitive, their assailed and worn-down egos were fragile. And August in the city was also the time of the forgotten and marginalized – the loners, the rejects; those who didn’t or couldn’t get away to summer retreats to enjoy the fruits of their year-long labours. They too had their own axes to grind.

      Only the other day Yana had dared to remind a dog walker not to let his animal foul the street outside her building, and the owner in question, once he had quickly established Yana’s non-native status, had subjected her to a tirade of the most venomous abuse. Racist, misogynist, vile and frightening. A few phrases echoed now in Rossi’s mind as he remembered Yana’s stunned retelling of the event.

       We wanna be the bosses in our own country!… Italy for the Italians … Burn the lot of ’em!

      In another part of the city, as she stepped into the bathroom, Tiziana Belfonte amused herself by thinking again of the extra touches and final details she might add to a well-deserved holiday she had been planning. She had stayed up late the night before to profit from some of the cooler air that had finally wafted in over the city and onto her balcony. She had been organizing the vacation for months now and had decided to take it in September with a good friend in similar circumstances – happily single, feisty and ready for whatever may come, be it fair or foul.

      She was also one of the tribe who liked to work through the hottest months, drawing comfort and real benefit from living in the city when it was at its most arid and deserted. True, the sleep-impaired nights could be torrid and also, being a fairly strict ecologist in her outlook, she didn’t use any artificial air-conditioning. Only adding to the source problem, wasn’t it? Heating up the atmosphere to keep you cool. It was against nature. The summer heat meant you had to slow down, find natural solutions to combat its toll on the body. As such, she enjoyed these months when an ice-cold shower before breakfast was like plunging into the waters of some imagined crystal lagoon. That would soon be a reality and the thought gave her a frisson of anticipated pleasure as the water rushed against her lightly tanned skin. She glanced at her own reflection in the misted mirror panelling, patting and caressing herself a little with satisfaction. Not bad. Not bad at all considering she’d been doing the daily grind for nearly twenty years now. Ready for action in mind and body, whatever the

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