Maybe it had even been fifteen euros the first time. Anyway, at least he’d paid for them, unlike some people, hence the coin-in-the-slot replicas.

On a rational level, of course, he knew precisely how his early return from the German-speaking Sudtirol region had come about, but this didn’t alter the fact that a miracle of some sort had definitely been involved. Consider the odds. First, this high-flyer from the Criminalpol squad in Rome named Aurelio Zen gets sent up to Bolzano on some shady case with important political ramifications the exact nature of which Bruno had never understood. Second, he, Bruno, is detailed to drive the ministerial envoy or whatever he was to a windswept inn on a God-forsaken pass way up in the mountains on a back road to Cortina. Third, Bruno himself-stuck in said inn for the rest of the day while his passenger goes off with a young Austrian witness to pursue his investigations-finally cracks up under the dour cloud of graceless silence and the glares of loathing lasered his way by the locals, and finally freaks out completely at a cafe where he and Zen stop on the way back down the mountain, screaming actionably offensive abuse at the stocky, stolid Teutonic blockheads who have made his life and those of all his fellow recruits a misery for months on end. Fourth, instead of putting him on a charge for grossly inappropriate behaviour such as to cause serious unrest in an area notorious for its political sensitivities and separatist aspirations, this Vice-Questore Zen offers, without even being asked, to try and have Bruno transferred back to Bologna immediately, despite the fact that his posting still had over three months to run. Fifth, and most unlikely of all, his benefactor delivers. Was that a miracle, or what?