‘Your name?’ asked the first policeman, the dark focus of his glance now directed at the butcher.

‘Cola, Bettino.’

‘Address?’

‘What’s the use of asking his address?’ interrupted the foreman. ‘There’s a dead woman out there.’

The first officer turned away from Cola and tilted his head down a little, just enough to allow him to peer at the foreman over the tops of his sun-glasses. ‘She’s not going anywhere.’ Then, turning back to Cola, he repeated, ‘Address?’

‘Castello 3453.’

‘How long have you worked here?’ he asked, nodding at the building that stood behind Cola.

‘Fifteen years.’

‘What time did you get here this morning?’

‘Seven-thirty. Same as always.’

‘What were you doing in the field?’ Somehow, the way he asked the questions and the way the other one wrote down the answers made Cola feel they suspected him of something.

‘I went out to have a cigarette.’

‘The middle of August, and you went out into the sun to have a cigarette?’ the first officer asked, making it sound like lunacy. Or a lie.

‘It was my break time,’ Cola said with mounting resentment. ‘I always go outside. I like to get away from the smell.’ The word made it real to the policemen, and they looked towards the building, the one with the notebook incapable of disguising the contraction of his nostrils at what they met.

‘Where is she?’

‘Just beyond the fence. She’s under a clump of bushes, so I didn’t see her at first.’

‘Why did you go near her?’

‘I saw a shoe.’

‘You what?’

‘I saw a shoe. Out in the field, and then I saw the second one. I thought they might be good, so I went through the fence to get them. I thought maybe my wife would want them.’ That was a lie: he had thought he could sell them, but he didn’t want to tell this to the police. It was a small lie, and entirely innocent, but it was only the first of many lies that the police were going to be told about the shoe and the person who wore it.