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The smell was so strong it even overwhelmed the formaldehyde and the cocktail of chemicals used to disinfect the instruments. Dicanti asked herself why coroners always kept their instruments so clean before the first incision – it wasn’t as if the dead man was going to pick up an infection.
    ‘Hey, Pontiero, do you know why the dead baby crossed the road?’
‘Yeah, Doc. Because he was stapled to the chicken. You’ve told me that one at least six or seven times. Know any others?’
The coroner was humming quietly as he went about making his incisions. He was a good singer, with a hoarse, smoky voice that reminded Paola of Louis Armstrong, above all because he was humming ‘What a Wonderful World’. He only interrupted his humming to torment Pontiero.
‘The real joke is watching you struggle not to puke, Pontiero. Now that really is funny. This guy got what was coming to him.’
Paola and Dante glanced at each other over the cardinal’s dead body. The coroner, a recalcitrant Communist, was an old hand at his job but sometimes he showed a certain lack of respect for the dead. He seemed to find Robayra’s demise terribly funny – something Dicanti didn’t find the least bit amusing.
‘Doctor, could you limit yourself to an analysis of the body and just leave it at that? Both our guest, Superintendent Dante, and I find your attempts at humour both offensive and out of place.’
The coroner threw a glance in Dicanti’s direction, then continued examining the contents of Robayra’s stomach. He gave up the satirical jabs but gritted his teeth and cursed everyone in the room as far back as the third generation. Paola ignored him because she was more concerned about the look on Pontiero’s face, which was a shade somewhere between white and green.
‘Maurizio, I don’t know why you torture yourself like this. You’ve never been able to stand the sight of blood.’
‘Damn it, if this sanctimonious little shit can take it, then so can I.’
‘You’d be surprised to know how many autopsies I’ve attended, my delicate colleague,’ Dante replied.
‘Really? Well, there’s at least one more waiting for you, though I think I’m going to enjoy it more than you.’
For Christ’s sake, here they go again, thought Paola, attempting to mediate between the two. They had carried on like this all day. Dante and Pontiero had felt a mutual repulsion from the moment they met, but, to be fair to Pontiero, anything in trousers that came within ten feet of Dicanti always wound up on the wrong side of him. She knew he treated her like a daughter but he took it too far sometimes. Fabio Dante was frivolous and he certainly wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box, but he didn’t deserve the venom her co-worker was lavishing on him. What she couldn’t work out was how a man like Dante had come to occupy such a lofty position in the Vigilanza. His constant jokes and biting comments all stood in sharp contrast to the closely guarded, shadowy figure of Inspector General Cirin.
‘Perhaps my distinguished visitors would be so kind as to lend their attention to the autopsy they’ve come here to watch.’
The coroner’s rough voice dragged Dicanti back to reality. ‘Go ahead, please.’ She shot a cold look at the two policemen to get them to stop arguing.
‘OK, the victim hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and everything indicates that he ate very early, because I’m only finding a few scraps.’
‘So maybe he skipped a meal, or he fell into the killer’s clutches before lunch.’
‘I doubt he would miss a meal . . . He ate well, as you can see. Alive, he would have weighed a little over fourteen stone, and he was six foot tall.’
‘Which tells us the killer was physically fit. Robayra was hardly as light as a feather,’ Dante interjected.
‘And it’s a hundred and thirty feet from the church’s doorway to the chapel,’ said Paola. ‘Someone must have seen the killer bringing the body into the church. Pontiero, do