The Lost Girls of Rome by Donato Carrisi

Author:Donato Carrisi [Carrisi, Donato]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316246811
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2013-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

The water was bubbling up from the drains, as if the belly of the city could no longer contain it. Three days of heavy rain had stretched the sewerage system to its limits. But it was over.

Now the wind had arrived.

It had risen without any warning, and had started to blow through the streets in the center. Loud and unpredictable, it had invaded Rome, its alleys and squares.

Sandra was making her way through an invisible multitude, as if battling an army of ghosts. The wind was trying to force her to change direction, but she carried on regardless. She felt the vibration of the mobile phone in the bag she kept with her. Frantically, she searched for it, simultaneously thinking about what she would tell Schalber, because she was sure it was him. It hadn’t been easy to persuade him to stay in the guest apartment, so she could imagine the objections he would raise on hearing that she wouldn’t be coming straight back to tell him the outcome of her conversation with Zini. But she had an excuse all ready.

At last she dug the phone out from amid the jumble of objects she carried with her and looked at the screen. She was wrong, it was De Michelis.

“Vega, what’s all that noise?”

“Just a minute.” Sandra took shelter in a doorway. “Can you hear me now?”

“That’s better, thanks. How are you?”

“There have been some interesting developments,” she said, although she had decided not to tell him that someone had shot at her that morning. “I can’t tell you too much now, but I’m putting the pieces together. David had discovered something big here in Rome.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense. When are you coming back to Milan?”

“I need a couple of days, maybe even more.”

“I’ll see if I can extend your leave.”

“Thanks, Inspector, you’re a friend. How about you, any news for me?”

“Thomas Schalber.”

“So you managed to find out something?”

“Of course. I talked to an old acquaintance who used to work for Interpol but who’s now retired. You know what they’re like, they’re a bit suspicious when you ask them about their colleagues. I couldn’t be too direct, couldn’t come straight out with it, so I had to invite him to lunch. Quite a long lunch, as it turned out…”

De Michelis had a bad habit of wandering off the point. “What did you find out?” Sandra prodded him.

“My friend doesn’t know him personally, but when he was working for Interpol he heard that Schalber’s quite a tough nut. He doesn’t have many friends, he prefers to work alone, and his superiors don’t like that. But he gets results. He’s stubborn and argumentative, but everybody agrees he’s honest. Two years ago he carried out an internal investigation into corruption. Obviously, that didn’t make him very popular, but he did nail a group of agents who were in the pay of a drugs gang. He’s one of the Untouchables!”

De Michelis’s description, however ironic and exaggerated, made her think. Why should an agent like

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