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know it’s been six months …’
    ‘Five,’ she corrected him.
    ‘Yes, but I should have said this earlier …’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ she replied, forcing a smile. ‘Thank you, anyway.’
    Sandra turned to go back to her car. She walked quickly, with that strange sensation in her chest that never left her and that the others did not even suspect. It was like a ball inside her, a ball made up of anxiety, anger and grief. She called it
the thing
.
    She wouldn’t admit it, but for the past five months
the thing
had replaced her heart.
    11.40 a.m.
    The rain had started falling again with dogged persistence. Unlike those around them, Marcus and Clemente were in no hurry as they made their way along one of the paths leading to the city’s major hospital, the Gemelli.
    ‘The police are guarding the main entrance,’ Clemente said. ‘And we have to avoid the security cameras.’
    He turned left, leaving the path, and led Marcus towards a small white building. There was a platform roof, beneath which stood drums of detergent and trolleys filled with dirty sheets. An iron staircase led to a service entrance, which was open. They entered and found themselves in the storage area of the hospital’s laundry. From here they took a lift to the lower floor and walked along a narrow corridor until they came to a security door. They put on white coats, masks and overshoes, which they found on a trolley, then Clemente handed Marcus a magnetic card. With that around his neck, nobody would ask any questions. They used it to open the electronic lock. At last, they were inside.
    Ahead of them was a long corridor with blue walls. It smelled of alcohol and floor polish.
    Unlike the other departments, intensive care was enveloped in silence. The constant rush of doctors and nurses was absent here; staff moved through the corridors unhurriedly and without making any noise. There was no sound beyond the hum of the machines keeping patients alive.
    And yet it was in this silent realm that the most desperate life-and-death struggles took place. Whenever one of the combatants fell, it happened without any clamour. Nobody screamed, no alarms sounded, the sole announcement was a red light that went on in the nurses’ station, indicating as simply as possible the cessation of vital functions.
    In other departments, the fight to save lives meant a race against time. In IC, time passed differently, expanding to such an extent as to seem absent.
    Among those who worked here, this place was known as
the border
.
    ‘Some choose to cross that border,’ Clemente said, ‘while others turn back.’
    They were standing in front of the glass partition separating the corridor from one of the recovery rooms. There were six beds in the room.
    Only one was occupied.
    In it lay a man of around fifty, connected to a respirator. Looking at him, Marcus thought again about himself and about the time Clemente had found him in a similar bed, fighting his own battle, hovering between life and death.
    He had chosen to remain on this side of the border.
    Clemente pointed beyond the glass. ‘Last night an ambulance was called to a villa outside the city. A man had phoned Emergency, saying that he was having a heart attack. In his house they found a number of objects – a hair ribbon, a coral bracelet, a pink scarf and a roller skate – that belonged to the victims of a previously unidentified serial killer. The man’s name is Jeremiah Smith.’
    Jeremiah: a pious name, was Marcus’s first thought. Not really suited to a serial killer.
    Clemente took a folder from the inside pocket of his raincoat. It was unmarked apart from a code number:
c.g. 97-95-6.
    ‘Four victims in the space of six years. All with their throats cut. All female, aged between seventeen and twenty-eight.’
    As Clemente went through these sterile, impersonal facts, Marcus concentrated on the man’s face. He mustn’t let himself be deceived. The body was merely a disguise, a way to pass