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Flavier took it. She was more composed now and had wiped away the stray makeup from her face. She looked younger, more ordinary. Prettier, Costa realized.
    “My name is Leo Falcone. I'm an inspector. His inspector.”
    “Nice to meet you. Why am I here?”
    The inspector gave her his most gracious and charming of smiles. “For reasons that are both practical and political. You were the victim of some strange kind of attack. Perhaps a joke. But a very poor one, it seems to me. Allan Prime…Maybe it was a joke in his case, too. I don't know and I would like to. One man is dead. Prime is missing. The Carabinieri, meanwhile, are wandering around preening themselves while trying to work out which day it is. We have no need of further complications. Would you rather they were in charge of your safety? Or us? The choice is yours, naturally.”
    “My safety?”
    “Just in case.”
    “What's going on here?” she demanded. “I was supposed to be at a movie premiere tonight. People shooting blanks. Fake death masks.” Her bright, animated face fell. “Someone getting killed.” She looked at Costa. “Why would they shoot him? The uniformed man on the horse?”
    “Because they thought he was dangerous. They didn't know any better. Whoever he was…”
    “Not Carabinieri, that's for sure,” Falcone intervened.
    “Whoever he was,” Costa continued, “this is now a real case and it's not ours.” He caught the dismay in the inspector's eye. “I'm sorry. That's a fact, sir. The Carabinieri were given the job of security tonight. Also, there's the question of jurisdiction. Allan Prime is an American citizen. If he's missing, someone has to inform the U.S. Embassy and allow them a role in the investigation. We all know the rules when a foreign citizen's involved. We can't just drive away with a key witness and hope it's all ours. I should never have left the scene in the first place, or taken that weapon.”
    The car came to a halt in the traffic in Vittorio Emanuele. He didn't understand why they were taking this route. There were quicker ways through the tangle of alleys behind the Campo dei Fiori. A good police driver should have known about them.
    The woman at the wheel turned and smiled at them. “The U.S. authorities are involved already,” she said. “So don't worry about that. Captain Catherine Bianchi. San Francisco Police Department. Is there a better route than this? I don't drive much in Rome usually. I lack the balls.”
    She was about forty, slim, with a pleasant, bright face, Italian-looking, he would have said until he looked at her hair. That was straight and coal-coloured, with a henna sheen, tied back behind her head in a severe way that would have been rare on a Roman woman. She spoke good Italian, though with an American inflection. This was the woman he'd heard about, the one who'd caught Falcone's eye.
    The inspector outlined a faster route to the Via Giulia, with a degree of patience he would never have used on one of his officers.
    “Can I hit the siren?” Captain Catherine Bianchi asked.
    “No,” Falcone replied. “That will just give them warning.”
    “Give who warning?” Maggie Flavier asked.
    “The Carabinieri, of course,” he answered.
    Costa looked out the window, at the swarming people and the tangled cars, the familiar crush of humanity in his native city.
    He understood why Maggie Flavier was in the car. A man had died in the gardens of the Villa Borghese. Some strange, gruesome caricature of a human head had been substituted for the precious death mask of Dante which they were supposed to be guarding. A world-famous actor was missing, and his co-star had been the victim of an attack that seemed to be some kind of prank.
    There were crimes here, perhaps serious, perhaps less so. Leo Falcone had clearly had no desire to try to go near the shooting. It would have been pointless. The man who attacked them had been killed by the Carabinieri. Only they could investigate themselves.