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through the sea of silk and fine dark jackets, apologising as he went.
    By the time he reached the small stage outside the entrance to the Casa del Cinema, the area around the exhibit case was empty save for Falcone and the pathologist who stood on either side of the cabinet staring at what lay within, bloody and shocking behind the smeared glass. Peroni felt somewhat proud of himself. There'd been a time when all this would have made him feel a little sick.
    He studied the object. It appeared to be a severed head covered in some kind of thin blue plastic, which had been slashed to allow the eyes and mouth to be visible. The material enclosing most of what stood in place of Dante's death mask was pulled painfully tight—so much so that it was easy to see the features of the face that lay beneath. It was an image that had been everywhere in Rome for weeks, that of Allan Prime. This was the face of the new Dante, visible on all the posters, all the promotional material that had appeared on walls and billboards, subway trains and buses. Now it had replaced the death mask of the poet himself. Sealed inside the case by reams of ugly black duct tape, it was some kind of cruel, ironic statement, Peroni guessed. Close up, it also looked not quite real—if the word could be applied to such a situation.
    Two senior Carabinieri officers materialised at Falcone's side. He ignored them.
    “This is ours,” the older one declared. “We're responsible for the safety of the cast.”
    Falcone's grey eyebrows rose in surprise. He didn't say a thing.
    “Don't get fresh with me,” the officer went on, instantly irate. “You were supposed to be looking after the mask.”
    Peroni shrugged and observed, “One lost piece of clay. One dead famous actor. Do you want to swap?”
    “It's ours !”
    “What's yours?” Teresa asked. “A practical joke?”
    Slyly, without any of the men noticing, she had stolen the short black truncheon from the junior Carabiniere's belt. She now held it in her right hand and was quietly aiming a blow at the blood-smeared glass.
    “Touch the evidence and I will have your job,” the senior Carabiniere said, more than a little fearful.
    “And I'll have yours,” Falcone added.
    “This is evidence, gentlemen,” Teresa replied. “But not of the kind you think.” She looked at each of them and smiled. “We're in the movie business now, remember? Do the words 'special effects' mean anything at all?”
    The short baton slammed into the top of the glass cabinet. Teresa raked it round and round. When she had enough room to manoeuvre, she reached in and, to the curses of both Falcone and his Carabinieri counterparts, carefully lifted out the head and held it in her hands, turning the thing round, making approving noises.
    Teresa ran one large pale finger along the ragged line of blood and tissue at the base and then, to Peroni's horror, put the gory tip to her mouth and licked it.
    “Food colouring,” she said. “Fake blood. It's the wrong shade. Didn't you notice? Movie blood always is. Flesh and skin…it's all a joke.” The tissue at the ragged torn neckline came away in her fingers: cotton wool stained a livid red, stuck weakly to the base of the head with glue.
    Her fingers picked at the blue latex cladding around the base of the neck and revealed perfect skin beneath, the colour and complexion of that of a store window dummy. Peroni laughed. He'd known something was wrong.
    “But why?” she asked, puzzled, talking entirely to herself.
    She turned the head again in her hands, looked into the bulbous eyes staring out of the slits made in the blue plastic. They were clearly artificial, not human at all. It was all legerdemain, and obvious once you learned how to look.
    Then Teresa Lupo gazed more closely into the face and her dark, full eyebrows creased in bafflement. She pulled back the blue plastic around the lips to reveal a mouth set in an expression of pain and bewilderment. More plastic came away as