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mobile number.
    ‘Sergeant Massaro,’ replied the voice on the other end.
    ‘This is Lieutenant Reggiani. How are things going there?’
    ‘Nothing’s happened, sir. In half an hour the replacements should show up, for us and the Finanza agents.’
    ‘All right, but don’t let your guard down. Don’t play cards, don’t read comics, don’t sleep in the squad car. Keep your eyes open and each other’s arses covered, because you’re in danger. Get that? Your lives are in danger. Is that clear?’
    There was a momentary pause on the other end, then the voice answered, ‘Perfectly clear, sir. We’ll be careful.’
    Reggiani looked at his watch: one a.m. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his jacket, leaned back into his chair and sighed. It felt like the night would never end.
    F ABRIZIO left the house at seven and drove directly to the excavation site, where the carabiniere on guard greeted him.
    ‘How’d it go last night?’ asked Fabrizio.
    ‘Fine. We didn’t see a soul.’
    ‘Thank God. If you like, you can go.’
    ‘No, the lieutenant says it’s best for one of us to stick around. You never know. Another agent’s coming to relieve me in an hour’s time and I’m hoping he brings coffee.’
    ‘I have coffee for you,’ said Fabrizio, unscrewing the cap of a Thermos he took from his backpack. ‘I’m never awake before I’ve had three cups, so I always carry extra with me. I see the workers haven’t shown up yet.’
    He sat on a block of smooth tufa, while the carabiniere remained on his feet with his left hand resting on the trigger of his sub-machine gun as they sipped their coffee in the cool morning air. A lovely October morning, with the leaves just turning colour and the hawthorn and dog-rose berries taking on red and orange hues.
    The pickup with the workers and the gear arrived and Fabrizio walked over to the driver.
    ‘I think the door is resting on its hinges, stone on stone. We’ll have to clear away at least five centimetres under the wings, then clean the hinges by hosing them down with water and hope the door will open by pushing it back.’
    The workers set about the task, using their pickaxes first to prise off the latch that crossed the two wings and then their mattocks to clear away the soil underneath the door. When they had worked their way down to a thin layer of earth, Fabrizio took over, using his trowel to scrape away the last centimetres, a little at a time, until the edge slipped inside.
    The air flowing out brought no particular smell to his nostrils, apart from the odour of damp earth. The unmistakable whiff of millennia, so familiar to an archaeologist’s nose, had been lost when the tomb robbers broke in. When the soil underneath the door had all been cleared away, he used the nozzle of a small compressor connected to a generator and freed the hinges of encrusted dirt with a pressure wash. The time had come to open the doors.
    He got to his feet and motioned for the workers to join him. One on the right and the other on the left, with him in the centre, pushing at the meeting point of the two door panels. They began applying steady, uniform pressure under Fabrizio’s direction.
    ‘Slowly, slowly, here we go. There’s no rush. Just a bit more now . . .’
    The two door panels finally separated from each other with a slight grinding of fine sand, letting the first beam of light into the tomb after 2,500 years. The scowl of Charun – the demon who accompanied the dead to the other world – greeted him. A fresco of good quality, the work of an artist from Tarquinia, Fabrizio thought at first glance. He had the men push the wings open further, enough to allow him to enter with ease. He turned around before he went in, remembering Francesca’s words and hoping that she’d be there to share this emotional moment with him. No one.
    It was twelve o’clock exactly when he entered under the sign of the new moon and stepped across the threshold of the ancient tomb. He