Peroni’s face was serious again. “Forget Agent Leapman for a moment, Nic. Tell me this. Why did Laila run away? I don’t get it. I thought we were doing really well and normally I don’t read those situations the wrong way.”

Costa shrugged. “Who knows with a kid like that? Maybe it’s because you were doing so well. Maybe the idea of closeness terrifies her.”

“Nah,” Peroni murmured and gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. “I don’t buy that any more than I buy Leapman playing innocent. You don’t know the first thing about kids, do you, Nic?”

“As you constantly remind me.”

He watched Peroni fit his big bulk behind the wheel.

“Call me if you need me, Gianni,” he said.

“Yeah,” the big man laughed and gently eased the jeep out into the street.

Nic Costa hated instincts. They played tricks with your imagination. They lied constantly. He reminded himself of that as Gianni Peroni disappeared down what was once a narrow, medieval lane, now a line of upscale fashion shops running all the way down to the Corso. Some stupid, pointless instinct was nagging at him, raking over the dregs of his memory to find the long-dead face of another partner, Luca Rossi, one who’d wandered off without him in much the same way and never come back.

Instincts intruded into real life, disturbed what really mattered. Besides, something was happening now. Falcone was listening to the squawk of a voice coming out of the car radio. The tall inspector had a look of intense concentration on his face, one Costa recognized. One he liked.

Falcone finished the conversation and scanned the square. Then he caught Costa’s eye, clicked his fingers and pointed, with some urgency, to the car.

JOEL LEAPMAN CAME BACK to the embassy looking uncharacteristically dishevelled, shambling through the door like a bull looking for somewhere to pick a fight. He was in a foul, unpredictable mood.

“Sir?” Emily asked.

“What have you been doing all day? Don’t I get the courtesy of a call from you, girl?”

“I thought…”

She glanced at the computer screen, now back to her customary log-on with its round of low-level information. The camera was still in her purse. That was dumb. She should have taken it back to the apartment, got the evidence out of the building.

“You thought what?”

“I thought you wanted me to wait until you had something for me to do.”

“Jesus…”

Leapman seemed seriously out of sorts. Food spattered his coat.

“Is there something wrong?” she asked.

“Is there something right?” he complained.

Leapman looked like someone with doubts and that wasn’t a position he liked or understood very much at all.

“These cops,” he said. “Falcone. The other guys. Why’d they hate us so much?”

“I don’t think they do,” she answered promptly. “Not for one moment.”

“Really? I just had that big ugly bastard stuff a burger into my mouth. What was that all about?”

She thought about Gianni Peroni. It didn’t add up. “You tell me.”

“None of your business,” Leapman barked back at her.

Emily Deacon was getting deeply sick of this man. Maybe Thornton Fielding was right. She should just file a complaint and get out of his presence.

“Then why ask?”

“Because, because…” he grumbled. “You don’t need to know the reasons. Sometimes events just run away with you, Agent Deacon, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

“If that’s an apology, you should direct it at them.”

Leapman had pissed everyone off. He’d been working on it from the moment they walked into the Pantheon. It had been deliberate, determined.

“So now they’re the good guys, huh? I should go running to them?”

“I think they’re doing their best in difficult circumstances.”

His voice rose. “It’s difficult for all of us, girl!”

Enough was enough. “It’s more difficult for them, Leapman. They think they’re being kept in the dark. They’re right. And one more thing.” She pointed a slender finger at his chest. “Don’t call me ”girl.“ Not ever again.”

Or “Little Em.”

He laughed and Emily Deacon was surprised to find herself thinking that this was, perhaps, what he wanted to hear.

“So you can answer back,” Leapman said. “Who’d have believed it?”

He leaned over to his PC, keyed in a few words, then turned the screen to face her. It was the RAI news website. The lead story was about another murder in the city, with a photo of a burnt-out car by the Spanish Steps.

“We’re losing this, Emily,” he said in a flat, miserable voice. “And I don’t know why. He’s killed someone else and I’ve got to tell you that’s the last thing I expected. This isn’t part of any pattern I can figure out. He’s killed some poor, helpless bitch who got in the way somehow. I never…”

Leapman fell silent and stared at the monitor.

“You never what?”

“I never thought he’d stoop to that.”

He picked up the phone and hit a speed-dial button.

“Viale?” he asked, and there was a different tone to his voice now, a resigned, almost scared resonance she scarcely recognized. “We’ve got to talk… Just a minute.”

Leapman cupped the mouthpiece and stared at her.

“I’d like a coffee, Agent Deacon,” he said. “Cappuccino. The good stuff, from that place over the road. And take your time. I’ve got work to do.”

NIC COSTA TOOK a deep breath and found it amazing that, only an hour earlier, he’d been worried about Gianni Peroni. Wherever the big man was in the white, frozen world that was Rome, it had to be better than this: clinging to a narrow, icy fire-escape ladder a dizzying height above the cobbled streets in the labyrinthine quarter north of the Pantheon, trying to peer through the billowing blizzard that was sweeping all around him.

Another time, in different weather, when the wind wasn’t trying to peel him off the roof and dash him to the ground below, it would have been quite a view. The Palazzo Borghese should have been somewhere ahead. On a good day the great dome of St. Peter’s would have shone from across the river. Now all he could see was the blinding cloud of ice swirling painfully around his face, threatening to confuse his senses.

Falcone had made it plain: it was his choice. The sly old bastard knew all along what Costa would say too. Nic was the youngest there and the most suited for the job. He’d done some mountaineering once, solitary trips into the Dolomites and the Alps as a teenager. They could have waited until a specialist was brought in, but that meant time, in this weather perhaps a long time. The problem was simple. A woman in the block had reported that an American tourist living on the top floor had, unusually, been absent all day. The previous evening she’d been seen entering the building with a stranger. The same stranger had walked out that morning carrying a couple of big, expensive-looking suitcases. They’d got a description of the man. It could be the same person Costa and Peroni had seen twice now, outside the Pantheon and by the Tiber the previous night.

So should they pile through the door with an entry team, blundering into the place, hoping he was still hiding there? Or did they check it out first to see whether it was occupied or not? And if it was empty, wait a while outside to see if anyone happened to call back?

For Costa the decision was clear-cut. The killer was human, not a monster. It was important not to let go of that fact. The man needed somewhere warm and private to retreat to in weather like this. This could be the first real chance they had of trapping him.

Ordinarily there were easier ways to find out if someone was inside. They could spy from neighbouring blocks. They could use listening equipment through the walls. Not this time. The place was a tiny, probably illegal cabin perched high above street level like a giant toy box flung onto the big, flat roof of the nineteenth-century apartment block. The windows were higher than any of the buildings around. This must be the only home in the area with a scenic outlook, which also meant it was impregnable, impossible to watch. The only way to find out what lay inside was to try to get close somehow, and not through the front door either, which lay up a narrow covered staircase leading from the top floor, giving no visual access into the cabin whatsoever. The fire escape was the only option. If the man was at home, Costa would, the plan said, see so through the outside window and call in the forced entry team. If the place was empty, he’d just take a quick look around, get the hell out of there, then wait with the rest of them until someone came home.