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to buy a cake himself and, since he could hardly appear before his Captain carrying the beribboned parcel, he would buy it now while there was still plenty of choice and collect it on his way home.
    He chose a
torta della nonna
, a creamy tart sprinkled with almonds and icing sugar, and paid for it along with his coffee. As he crossed Via Borgo Ognissanti and entered the cloister of the ex-convent where Headquarters was housed, a squad car passed him driving out at high speed, piercing the Sunday morning quiet with its siren.
    “Me?” The Marshal sat there stunned for a moment before remembering his position. “I’m sorry … I didn’t mean—I was just so surprised.” He was searching Captain Maestrangelo’s face for some sort of clue, a hint at least of the explanation that wasn’t forthcoming in words. All he could read there was embarrassment and something of anger. The Captain wasn’t very communicative at the best of times, but the Marshal had known him for so many years that he was usually able to decipher something of what was happening behind the good-looking, deeply serious face. This time, though, the eyes were avoiding his and after a moment the smooth brown hands dropped the pen they had been turning over and over and the Captain stood up and walked over to the window. He stayed there looking out with his back to the Marshal, silent.
    Why me? Why? The Marshal too remained silent but his troubled, slightly bulging eyes scanned the room as though the dark oil paintings, the soft leather furniture or the row of army calendars hanging from their red tassels might provide him with an answer to his question. All that came into his head was another, equally baffling question.
    “And why now? I mean, nothing’s happened that I’ve heard of. He hasn’t killed for what … five years or so …”
    “Five years, yes. In nineteen eighty-five.”
    “Well, I don’t know much about these things, of course, but I’ve heard it said by those who do know that likely as not he’s dead.”
    “It seems likely, yes. It could be, though,” the Captain was choosing his words carefully, “that he’s in prison for some other offence—that’s just an example. What I’m trying to say is that there could be other reasons why he’s no longer active.”
    Not choosing his words, the Marshal corrected himself, but reciting them. “Is that what this man Simonetti thinks?” he asked as blandly as possible.
    The Captain hesitated and then turned to face him.
    “I should have known better. You’re a difficult man to deceive, Guarnaccia. I’m going to order some coffee to be brought up.” He came and sat down again and pressed the bell on his desk. But once more he took up his pen and didn’t meet the Marshal’s gaze.
    “It’s not often you try to deceive me. Don’t tell me anything you shouldn’t.” Then he frowned. “Simonetti … isn’t he the Prosecutor we had—?”
    A young carabiniere appeared at the door. The Captain ordered coffee and then waited until the door closed again.
    “On the Becker case, yes. I thought you’d remember him.”
    “Oh Lord …”
    “Quite.”
    Decent prosecutors who let you get on with your job and backed you up when necessary were few and far between, and there was little love lost between the rest of them and the investigators who had to do their bidding. You don’t learn the ins and outs of the criminal mind at university or in the drawing rooms of polite society. The best of them knew nothing and listened to those who did know. The worst of them knew nothing and listened to nobody. Simonetti belonged to the latter category and was always most elegantly dressed in court when taking credit for what you had achieved despite his arrogant misdirection of the case.
    It wasn’t that the Marshal blamed Simonetti for his own failure to resolve the Becker case, but he did blame him for ruining the life of an innocent man as an alternative to failing to arrest anybody. And