She carried on in this vein for several minutes, deliberately overdoing the maternal gushiness in hopes that Danilo might take the point and leave. But he showed no signs of doing so. Eventually the conversational flow began to dry up and Naldo even started to sound slightly alarmed, as though he suspected that his mother was drunk. And perhaps she was ever so slightly tipsy, for she had a sudden urge to tell Naldo that his father’s body had been recovered. Only Danilo’s presence saved her.

The drawback was that when she hung up, Danilo was still there. Claudia regarded him with the air of someone who has just noticed a very bad smell in the room and is speculating as to its origin.

‘Do forgive me if I’m being dim,’ she said, ‘but I still haven’t the remotest idea what you’re talking about.’

Danilo walked over and took her hands in his. More physicality. Not wanting to meet his eyes, Claudia looked down at the white, perfectly manicured fingers grasping hers. Not the hands of a soldier, one would have said, although Danilo had served for almost thirty years. He had handled guns, knives, shells, bombs, and perhaps a select number of the young recruits who had passed through the Verona barracks at one time or another, but none of this had left a trace. Then she looked at her own hands, and remembered what they had done.

‘ Cara, you cannot be unaware of the rumours that circulated at the time of Gaetano’s death…’

She snatched her hands away.

‘What rumours? I don’t understand. I refuse to understand!’

Danilo sighed deeply.

‘You understand perfectly well.’

He gestured towards the window.

‘And there are plenty of people out there who understand too, or think they do. You know what this town is like. They’ll be all too ready to gossip to some snooping cop. And this will be an investigation by the polizia di stato, not the carabinieri. They’ve been squared away, but apparently the Ministry of the Interior is now launching its own enquiry. Some political battle I don’t understand. Anyway, the crucial thing is that you’re prepared. Spend a little time thinking over what you want to tell them. Go through your papers to make quite sure that there aren’t any things you’d prefer not to fall into the hands of the judicial authorities. They may have a search warrant, you see.’