The Lost Girls of Rome Read Online Free Page B

mostly of summer holidays: the only ones they could afford. Thetartan cover on the sofa in front of the TV: it was here that they took refuge every evening, sitting crammed together watching the programmes until sleep overcame them.
    Sandra mentally catalogued these images. There was no warning in them of what was going to happen. No one could have predicted that.
    The police officers were moving through the rooms like uninvited guests, violating the family’s privacy with their mere presence. But she had long since got past the feeling that she was an intruder.
    Hardly anyone spoke at crime scenes like this one. Even horror had its code. In this silent choreography, words were superfluous, because everyone knew exactly what to do.
    But there were always exceptions. One of these was Fabio Sergi. She heard him cursing from somewhere in the apartment.
    ‘Fuck, I don’t believe it!’
    All Sandra had to do was follow his voice: it came from a narrow windowless bathroom.
    ‘What’s happening?’ she asked, putting the two bags with her equipment down on the floor of the corridor and slipping on plastic overshoes.
    ‘It’s been a great day so far,’ he replied sarcastically, without looking at her. He was busy giving energetic taps to a portable gas fire. ‘This damn thing doesn’t work!’
    ‘I hope you’re not going to blow us all up.’
    Sergi glared at her. Sandra didn’t say anything else, her colleague was too nervous. Instead she looked down at the corpse of the man occupying the space between the bathroom door and the toilet bowl. He was lying face down, stark naked. Forty years old, she estimated. Weight approximately fourteen stone, height six feet. The head was twisted at an unnatural angle, and there was an oblique gash across his skull. Blood had formed a dark pool on the black-and-white tiles.
    He was clutching a gun in his hand.
    Next to the body lay a chunk of porcelain that corresponded to the left-hand corner of the wash basin. It had presumably broken off when the man had fallen on it.
    ‘What do you need a gas fire for?’ Sandra asked.
    ‘I need to recreate the scene,’ he replied curtly. ‘The guy was having his shower and he brought this thing in to heat the bathroom. In a while I’ll also turn the water on, so you’d better get your stuff sorted as soon as possible.’
    Sandra knew what Sergi had in mind: the steam would bring out the footprints on the floor. That way they would be able to reconstruct the victim’s movements within the room.
    ‘I need a screwdriver,’ Sergi said angrily. ‘I’ll be right back. Try to stay as close to the walls as you can.’
    Sandra didn’t reply, she was used to that kind of instruction: finger print experts always thought they were the only ones capable of preserving a crime scene. And there was also the fact that she was a twenty-nine-year-old woman operating in a predominantly masculine environment. She was accustomed to being patronised by her colleagues. Sergi was the worst of the lot; they had never bonded and she didn’t enjoy working with him.
    While he was out of the room, Sandra took the opportunity to take the camera and tripod from her bags. She placed sponges on the feet of the tripod, to avoid leaving marks. Then she mounted the camera with the lens pointing upwards. After wiping it with a piece of gauze impregnated with ammonia, to stop it steaming up, she attached a single-shot panoramic optic, which would allow her to take 360-degree photographs of the room.
    From the general to the particular, that was the rule.
    The camera would focus on the entire scenario of the event through a series of automatic shots, then she would complete the reconstruction of events by manually taking ever more detailed photographs, marking her discoveries with numbered stickers to indicate the chronology.
    Sandra had just finished positioning the camera in the middle of the room when she noticed a little tank on a shelf. In it were two small turtles.