‘What I’d like to know is . . . how did this porter get into the palazzo anyway, since it’s been closed and locked up all these years?’

‘Well, you see, Doctor, there’s a secret passage that leads from the Caretti-Riccardi palace to the chapel of the Holy Souls in Purgatory near the Etruscan cistern. You know the one I mean, on the other side of the state road . . .’

So there you were! He would have liked to say, ‘If that passage was so secret, how come even a porter who worked at the mill knew about it?’ But he’d finished the bean soup and so he decided to compliment the signora on her cooking instead and to order a piece of frittata with a bit of salad.

After dinner he took a little stroll around the city. All in all, his first contacts – his chats with the museum security guard and the trattoria owner – had been very agreeable, making him feel at home in this new context, among people that he’d heard were usually not very welcoming to strangers, despite the steady stream of tourists they must have become accustomed to.

It was completely dark and there wasn’t a soul on the streets by the time Fabrizio made his way back to the museum gates. He turned off the alarm, let himself in with a key and then activated the alarm again as soon as he was inside. The time had come to meet the lad of bronze who was waiting for him in the exhibition hall. He went up the stairs, took a chair, switched on the light and sat down in front of the statue. Finally.

To Fabrizio’s eyes, it was the most remarkable thing he’d ever seen. The choice of the subject was incredibly original, the crafting extraordinary. The aura that emanated from the boy was intense and emotional, capturing all the poetry of Vincenzo Gemito’s street urchins, the expressive punch of a Picasso, the exasperated fragility of Giacometti’s most inspired bronzes. This heartfelt vision was of such creative power that it left Fabrizio feeling awed and almost daunted.