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

The timestamp meant it must have come through late. Network problems, probably, he reasoned. Everyone calling at the same time. So maybe that was why she hadn’t rung and why she wasn’t answering either. He tried again. Still nothing. He closed the phone and looked about and thought about getting a bus, and he was just slipping the phone into his pocket when a call came in. “DadP”. it said on the ID. It was Paola’s father, and he never called but Paola had insisted they swap numbers, just for emergencies.

Francesco felt a sudden hot surge of fear as his thumb hovered over the icon. Her dad must be checking too, like he was. He must have seen the news. He took the call.

“Yes,” said Francesco, ready to rise to the unlikely occasion.

“Francesco,” came the reply, firm, familiar but in a tone he had never heard before. “It’s Paola, she’s not answering her phone. Have you seen the news? She was in Trastevere. Did you know? Has she called?”

***

Francesco walked on in a daze. After the initial call, there had followed a to and fro of frantic phone conversations as Paola’s father had drawn on all his available contacts to get access to the crime scene and confirmation of what had happened. They had hoped that in the initial confusion the story might prove to be the fruit of a misunderstanding, but soon the evidence relayed back to them had been crushing. The formal identification would still have to be made but it was as good as there in black and white.

Was he going in the right direction? What direction? What was the point? She was dead. There was no doubt. Her date of birth. Her height. Her hair colour. It was all there on the card she carried. The identity card they all carried like convicts in their own country. The card that said he was a citizen of the Italian Republic with its most wonderful constitution; the best in the world, so they said. The card they carried so that they could be stopped and checked and identified at any time of the day and night to ensure that they were not enemies of that same Republic, enemies of the patria. The card that could be used to trace them to their house, to their staircase, to their apartment so the knock could come in the middle of the night. So they could always be found.

He wandered on up the incline of Viale di Circo Massimo. Past the fruit sellers. Past the teenage tourists playing in the middle distance with joyful abandon in the old amphitheatre. They were climbing on each other’s backs, playing at being charioteers, like Ben Hur, the Jewish prince who took on the might of the Romans in this very place. Their cries carried to him as they surged across an imaginary finishing line acknowledging fictional crowds and falling then to the ground in mock scenes of death and slaughter. Then, like parents giving children piggyback rides, they got up again. A joyous resurrection.

He came to the crest of the hill from where he could look down to the Tiber. Behind him and towering above him was the monument to Mazzini, the father of the patria. High up in his chair, on his plinth, he seemed to be dozing in old age. Venerable, noble, yet atop his verdigris bronze head, the city’s seagulls perched one after another, as if to take their bearings, only then to foul his likeness with impunity.

He had not been able to accept it. He was sure, first, that there must have been a mistake. Any number of women could have the same name. It was a common one in Italy. Paola Mancini. But with the same date of birth? But the details they gave him were final. He and her father had discussed the formal identification briefly, but it was a father’s job to identify his own daughter no matter how close they had been. The police said she had not been caught by the full force of the blast but that she had been “unlucky”. Already, he was appropriating the lexicon of disaster as his own.

From the Municipal Rose Garden a rich, variegated perfume battled with the acrid summer smog of urban pollution. Good and evil, past and present, youth and age were tearing each other apart now in his own mind too, but beneath the surface. He wondered why he didn’t feel tired. He had instead a feeling of bizarre elation as though he had been chosen for something, been elected. Something was telling him that life now would be lived on a new level. The old life, like a bridge collapsing into a gorge, was still visible but gone for good. He moved nearer to the railings and sat down on the narrow wall. An ambulance approached from Viale Aventino, fleeing then past the Bocca della Verità in the direction of the Tiber. Maybe she was only injured. Maybe this ambulance was for her. Flowers protruded from between the railings above his head, and as a sudden light breeze lifted from over the Palatine Hill, it stirred a shower of petals, and he watched as one by one they fell to the ground before him.

Twelve

“So what about Maroni?” said Carrara, stirring his coffee. They were in the university canteen situated on the side of the building furthest from the Lungotevere, 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 for Rossi and Carrara’s benefit. “Speculators, predators, depredators of our country would be a more accurate term. But investors is what they like to be known as.”

He reeled off a list of names. Carrara took notes.

“Some of these people have form as they say. Nothing proved, of course. There never is. But take it from me, they would like me out of the way. Ever since I resurrected the ghost of my old friend Ken Saro-Wiwa, when I called for his name to be cleared, for a state pardon and recognition of his innocence, and for his murderers to be finally brought to justice. I went too far for my own good it seems.”

Rossi knew the story well. The writer who had championed the cause of the oppressed and exploited in the Niger Delta, where the oil companies and their friends in government were the kings. He had finished up on the end of a rope, widely believed to have been convicted on trumped-up charges. The whole thing stank.

“So do you think they could be pursuing you?” said Carrara. “You may have heard we’ve had some race-related incidents in the city. Hate crimes we think. Far-right groups targeting foreigners. That kind of thing. Did you receive any threats? Any signs of intimidation?”

The professor listened and pondered for a moment. He shrugged. Non-committal but open.

“Someone let down the tyres on my car once. Someone else lets his dog shit outside my house every day. Maybe the same person.”

“That could just be Rome,” said Carrara.

“Apart from that,” Okoli continued, “the attack on me and my family was out of the blue, gentlemen, but not, shall we say, entirely surprising.”

“Did you lose much?” said Rossi. “In the fire. Your work?”

Okoli shook his head.

“Some possessions, but I left Nigeria in rather a hurry, you know. The possessions I had I knew I would not have much chance of holding on to, so I sold or gave away what I could before leaving.”

He put his hand in his pocket and took out a USB drive.

“Everything else of real importance is on here,” he said. “My research. My sources. I never part from this. They’ll have to kill me first if they want it.”

Their eyes locked for a moment in understanding before Rossi moved things along.

“We’ll see to it that you get the right security. Do you have some work lined up?”

The question had come out spontaneously and was inspired by goodwill, but as soon as he had said it, Rossi realized it made him sound like some sort of fake-casual immigration official.

Okoli smiled.

“I was thinking of selling my body, officer. I have heard it’s all the rage among the Nigerians in Rome. Haven’t you?”

Thirteen

Rossi stood on his balcony watching the cloudless sky as the sun’s first rays began to cancel night’s all too brief dominion. It was an implacable scene, like a Cyclops’s blank stare. The temperature gauge in his living room had dropped by two degrees overnight. Small comfort. No breeze. Nevertheless, as he drank his cool coffee and looked out at the still-sleeping metropolis, his mind felt fresh, at least for now, and he reflected on what had emerged from the previous day’s events.

They had not kept Doctor Okoli long. He had his life to reorganize, again. He had not been able to put any substantive leads their way other than to indicate that plenty of well-protected diplomats in Rome were probably just as likely as any fascist organization to have been trying to kill him. He seemed perfectly credible and their background checks matched his own story. But his final wisecrack about male prostitution had set Rossi thinking more than a little. Okoli had not elaborated, had backtracked even and glossed over it, but the suggestion was that his reluctance might have been because he was working on something and may even have had confidential sources to protect.

Responsibility for the bombing at the Israeli university had been claimed by an obscure, as yet unheard of organization. An e-mail from one of the galaxy of fundamentalist Islamist websites operating from within the safe havens of the Dark Web had been sent to Iovine, Iannelli’s Editor-in-Chief at The Facet. The organization proclaimed itself the Islamic Caliphate in Europe. ICE. Despite the heat, the effect was rather less than soothing. Iannelli too was able to confirm that it had been received. As for establishing the veracity or other of their claim, that was another story. These days anyone could and would put their name to an unsolved or unclaimed attack, if only for the headlines it would generate, or as a quick shot of publicity for some plan they had hatched.

In this case, the details furnished by ICE did at least tally with what the Anti-Terror Squad had been able to ascertain from their analysis of the damage inflicted, the recovered bomb fragments, and their assessment of both the size of the device and its method of manufacture. There were also enough elements of novelty to suggest a different supply line to that of any known groups operating either in France or the UK where there had already been attacks. Neither was the hardware homemade. Military-grade explosive had been used, hence the compact nature of the device; all of which pointed to a strong possibility of a Balkan connection, as the best-case scenario. But that was reserved information.

Then there was nothing. Rossi glanced down at his empty cup, unsatisfied and wanting more coffee. Where they were now was at that point of heightened and uneasy hiatus which accompanies any terror attack. Saturation news coverage, heavy doses of human interest stories – the near misses, the shattered lives, the solidarity of a nation and the wider civilized world. Security is ratcheted up as the media machine evokes the blitz spirit, encouraging, even lauding it as the irrepressible manifestation of a city or a people’s collective character. And yet to the jaded eyes of the cynical, it appears to be some futile attempt to follow the ball rather than get inside the mind of the playmaker and second-guess his next move. Like a gambler always seeing the number he was going to bet on coming up trumps for another. It’s too late.

Rossi went back to the kitchen, and as he unscrewed the moka to make another espresso he began to prepare mentally for the day ahead.

In the light of the high-level summit, the City Prefect’s office was planning a press conference to put on a united front and allay the fears of a jittery public and business community. The relevant ministers had convened the heads of police, the mayor, as well as the prime movers in the secret services and wider intelligence community, charging them with formulating a new, coordinated response. Without a clear road map, and without comparable past experience to go on, the Minister of State for Home Security had demanded a shake-up. In other words, he was saying they’d been caught napping or looking the wrong way on this one and they’d better get their act together or heads would roll. The blame game again.

Maroni had summoned Rossi and Carrara and a handful of the most promising and senior operatives on the RSCS. Following a torrid crossing, their long-time chief had dropped anchor at Civitavecchia the evening after the bombing, having left Corsica only half-discovered. He was, to say the least, irascible when he finally pinned Rossi down to a telephone conversation. The meet was to be today and he wanted everyone to bring “something worth hearing”. Hence Rossi’s prompt start with hopes of getting some inspiration in the relative cool and quiet of the early hours.

He placed the compact, bomb-like machine on the gas and stared into the quietly hissing flame.

Maroni was an old hand. He’d been a raw recruit on the hunt for the last cells of the BR, the Brigate Rosse or Red Brigades in the late Eighties. Rossi had heard the stories, second-hand, and despite the ambivalence he sometimes felt towards his superior he had to give him some credit for past glories.

As was to be expected, he’d suggested Rossi and Carrara drop the arson investigations. “Keep an eye on things, you know. Set up some standard surveillance op, but it’s hardly a priority now, is it? I mean, a pyromaniac with a grudge against motorists.”

Early release for good behaviour, thought Rossi, but hadn’t Maroni been forgetting something?

“And the attempt on Dr Okoli’s life?” Rossi had ventured, at which Maroni had paused then let out a sigh which Rossi knew all too well. Rossi’s consternation had inadvertently betrayed his growing interest in the Prenestina fire and its victims as well as Lallana’s apparent reluctance to probe deeper, not to mention the question of the timer, the locked security grilles. “Am I to presume you are trying to tie all that in with the Prenestina fire too?”

“I think it’s a possibility,” Rossi had replied.

“And who the hell gave you the authorization to dig around there?” Maroni had blurted back down the line.

“Arson’s arson, isn’t it?” Rossi had countered. “And what if we’ve got a maniac on our hands who only needs a can of petrol and a box of matches to hold the city to ransom? Sooner or later we could be mourning another massacre.”

There had followed another Maroni pause. Rossi had made his point but knew he was up against a brick wall.

“The real point here, Rossi, is that you just can’t keep your nose out of another bloke’s patch, can you? The case is closed. If only you could summon up the same enthusiasm for what you’re supposed to be doing.”

Rossi had let the relatively minor storm blow itself out, judging it wiser to withhold the details of his meetings with Tiziana and Dottor Piredda. But he still had to get Iannelli to spill the beans on Jibril, if there was anything to spill. With the chaos of the bombing, and the journalist’s reluctance to court publicity, they’d had to postpone their tête-à-tête. He’d get on to him today, after the meeting, if that didn’t throw up another mega work fest. Then there were the handover reports to do, which he hadn’t even started. And Yana wanted him to help her get settled back into her flat again.

The sun came up over the rooftops and began to unleash its fury. Rossi felt he had rather too many irons in the fire.

Fourteen

The brothers were sitting cross-legged in the living room of the first-floor apartment in Torpignatarra. Newspapers and other printed materials lay strewn around the flat, on the floor on kilims and the cheap sofa draped with Arabic-style throws. A computer screen showed the fluttering black flags and the looping images of black-clad commandos tramping through dust against a brightly sunlit desert backdrop. Islamic chanting came from the soundtrack as Ali’s hijab-wearing wife left the room, backwards, curved over as if with age and with her eyes to the floor, having served the menfolk their refreshments. She closed the door behind her without making a noise. Ali, the Tunisian, unfolded a real black flag and placed it before them then began to speak.

“My brothers. You all know the seriousness of your vow of allegiance to this flag and this organization. As your emir, under the guidance of Allah, I shall take all the final decisions. I am responsible for you but you are all, as I am too, willing to die for Islam in the name of vanquishing the infidel and freeing the Islamic people from tyranny in the lands not yet returned to the bountiful and just order of the Grand Caliphate. I will ask you soon, one by one, to speak your minds. We are all from different lands but in Islam we are one. This is our strength. This, and our faith. Soon, it will be our turn to act. The moment ripens day by day. Look around you my brothers at the iniquity and the filth. And they say this is a religious city. It is a den of infidels. It is a rat hole, a sewer. And the vermin must be expunged. We must crush them until, on their knees, in the blood of their children, they acknowledge Allah as the one and only, just as we have knelt in our own children’s blood cursing the unbeliever and the collaborators for their crimes.