When the Dead Awaken Read Online Free

is classified?’
    â€˜I’ll take care of it, Raimondo. Forget about it.’
    â€˜Forget about it, forget about it – I’m paid not to forget, Sabrina, but to remember. All victims are entitled to someone who does that.’
    She blushed. ‘Of course they are, Dr Sapienza,’ she said quietly. ‘MIPTP –
Ministero Interno Protezione Testimoni e Pentiti
 – is a programme for the protection of witnesses or their relatives. People who have helped the police solve organized crime. Do you understand?’
    â€˜So she’s a witness?’
    â€˜Or she’s related to a witness. Dear Raimondo, few things in this country are hermetically sealed. The Vatican’s antique porn collection perhaps, but even they aren’t as impenetrable as witness protection programmes. That’swhy we have the odd breakthrough every now and again, despite everything. You can’t blame the programme just because some remorseful Mafiosi,
i pentiti
, choose to compromise their new identities and resume their old, sinful ways.’
    â€˜A couple of bottles of vodka and I’ll be prepared to overlook these intolerable restrictions,’ the giant said amicably. ‘But someone ought to know, Sabrina. Some-one needs to know that they’ve been found.’
    Sabrina, who knew that Dr Sapienza never touched alcohol, smiled and squeezed his shoulder.
    â€˜Of course. Someone will be told. I’ll make sure of it. Personally
. Subito. Grazie
.’ She walked up to the whiteboard, found a sponge and erased the names. ‘I don’t want to see those names here again, Raimondo,’ she said. ‘And call me the moment you know how they died.’
    She turned on her heel and headed for the exit.
    Raimondo Sapienza looked after the straight-backed prosecutor with melancholic eyes and shrugged. He liked her, and was saddened by the permanent twilight in which she seemed to exist.
    The man with the mobile turned and looked after her as well, but without much interest. A few minutes later he stepped out into the sunshine, lit a cigarette and walked behind the nearest stack of containers, which the Carabinieri were using as part of their cordon. He stopped,unzipped his coveralls and started to relieve himself. Making sure there were no curious onlookers nearby, he took the mobile he had used to photograph the names of the victims, put it inside a polystyrene box, sealed it with tape and threw it over the containers.

CHAPTER 3
    Like everyone else, Sabrina D’Avalos had to wait her turn in the queue outside the office of Federico Renda, the Public Prosecutor of Naples. Roughly every fifteen minutes, she moved one seat further to the right on the marble bench, and the next person in the queue behind her moved from the wall to a seat on the far left of the bench. The tall, carved mahogany doors at the end of the archway were guarded by two Carabinieri in combat uniform armed with machine guns. In Naples the Palace of Justice was always a potential war zone. To her right was a young civil servant she vaguely knew. The young man had loosened his tie and was alternately typing furiously on a laptop balanced on his knees and leafing through some papers. It was well-known that Federico Renda gave short shrift to anyone who was ill prepared.
    The young man was eventually swallowed up by the tall doors and emerged ten minutes later, visibly downcast. Sabrina smiled at him and got up, summoned by a curledindex finger. The finger belonged to one of the matrons in Renda’s anteroom.
    â€˜Would you like to go straight in,’ said the woman in the floral dress.
    It wasn’t a request.
    She walked through the dappled green light that filtered through the inch-thick bulletproof glass in the windows. The walls were lined with polished mahogany panels, the path to Renda’s desk as long as a penitential walk. The thick Persian carpets silenced her footsteps, but Renda had heard