The Lost Girls of Rome Read Online Free PDF Page B

reaction. She checked that the camera had completed all the panoramic photographs and then took it off the tripod.
    Before leaving the room, she turned back to Sergi. ‘I’m just replacing the memory card and then I’ll start in on the detailed shots.’ She looked around. ‘There are no windows and the light isn’tvery bright, so we’ll need a couple of low-energy lamps. What do you think?’
    Sergi looked up. ‘I think I’d rather be beaten like a whore by one of those big bikers. Yes, that’d really be good.’
    Sergi’s words took her aback. If it was a joke, she didn’t get it. But from the way he was staring at her, he didn’t seem to be expecting her to laugh. Then, as if nothing had happened, he started fiddling with his reagents and Sandra went out into the corridor.
    Trying to dismiss her colleague’s ravings from her mind, she started checking the photographs on the screen of the camera. The 360-degree panoramic shots of the bathroom had come out quite well. The camera had taken six of them, at three-minute intervals. The steam had brought out the killer’s bare footprints, but they were quite hard to decipher. At first, she had thought that there had been a quarrel between him and his wife in the bathroom, which had then led to the murder. But if that had been the case, the woman’s slippers would also have left prints on the floor.
    She was betraying one of the rules of the manual. She was looking for an explanation. However absurd this slaughter seemed, she had to report the facts in an objective manner. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t figure out a reason, her duty was to remain impartial.
    In the past five months, though, that had become increasingly difficult.
    From the general to the particular. Sandra began to focus on the details, looking for meaning.
    On the screen, she saw the razor on the shelf under the mirror. The Winnie the Pooh shower gel. The stockings hanging up to dry. The daily gestures and habits of an ordinary family. Innocent objects that had witnessed a terrible act.
    They’re not mute, she thought. Objects talk to us from the silence, you just have to know how to listen to them.
    As the images ran past her, Sandra kept wondering what could have unleashed such violence. Her sense of unease had increased, and she also felt a migraine coming on. Her eyes clouded over for a moment. All she wanted was to understand.
    How had this little domestic apocalypse come into being?
    The family wakes up shortly before seven. The woman gets out of bed and goes to make breakfast for her son. The man is the first to use the bathroom, he has to take the boy to school and then go to work. It’s cold, so he takes a little gas fire in with him.
    What happened while he was taking his shower?
    The water pours down, and his anger mounts. Maybe he’s been awake all night. Something is disturbing him. An idea, an obsession. Jealousy? Has he found out his wife had a lover? They often quarrelled, De Michelis had said.
    But there was no quarrel this morning. Why?
    The man comes out of the shower, takes the gun and goes to the kitchen. No words exchanged before he opens fire. What broke inside his head? An unbearable sense of anxiety, panic: the usual symptoms that precede a fit.
    On the screen, three dressing gowns hanging next to each other. From the largest to the smallest. Side by side. In a glass, the family of three toothbrushes. Sandra was looking for the little crack in the idyllic picture. The hairline fracture that had sent the whole thing tumbling down.
    By 7.20 it was all over, the inspector had said. That was when the neighbours heard the shots and called the police. A shower lasts a quarter of an hour at most. A quarter of an hour that decides everything.
    On the screen, the small tank with the two turtles. The box with feed. The plastic palm. The pebbles.
    The turtles, she told herself.
    Sandra checked all the panoramic shots, zooming each time into that one detail. One photograph