Free The Dark Heart of Florence: Number 6 in series (Michele Ferrara) by Michele Giuttari Page A

stroking his clammy cheek with her hand. ‘You were delirious, that’s all. You were flailing around. I’d hoped the nightmares were over…’ She held him tight in her arms, whispering, ‘It’s time to let go, you can’t carry on like this.’ It was not the first time recently that she had asked him to make that decision. ‘You were also talking in your sleep,
Schatzi
.’
    ‘What was I saying?’
    ‘I didn’t understand any of it, it was just disjointed words. But your voice was sad.’
    They got out of bed, and he went straight to the bathroom – a hot shower would do him the world of good – while Petra headed to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.
    A new day had started.

PART TWO

    I N THE D ARK

18
Monday 30 August
    She opened her eyes and looked towards the window.
    Pitch black.
    The luminous figures on the face of the digital clock on the bedside table said 5:46. She passed her hand over her forehead. It was damp with sweat, as was the pillow. She had been delirious all night, tormented by recurrent nightmares, recalling the words her parents exchanged after a kiss on the lips as her father left home each morning, always at the same time.
    Be careful, darling!
 
    Don’t worry!
 
    As a teenager, she had watched them tenderly, clutching her school satchel in her hand. She had already realised that her father’s work was quite risky, and a bit more complicated than the way they had described it to her: ‘Daddy makes sure the bad people stop doing bad things.’
    She remembered the day she had got home from school – unusually, a family friend had come to collect her – and heard the news. In the living room she had found a man in uniform with lots of stripes on the jacket and her mother in tears. She had thrown herself into her mother’s arms and hugged her tight and cried. She had cried a lot. Her father had been killed by some of those ‘bad people’ in a shootout near the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan, the city where they lived. Later, she had seen her father’s photograph on television, the one from his ID, which she had sometimes held in her hand. In an emotional voice, the newsreader had announced his name, his age and his rank: police marshal, one of the old ranks from before the shake-up. That day she had sworn to herself that her father would be her model. That was why she had chosen to join the police.
    Now Teresa lay in the dark, waiting for the dawn.
    When a faint light started to filter through the curtains, she decided to get up. She walked wearily to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t at all happy with her appearance. Her eyes seemed to have shrunk, and there were circles round them. She turned her head sideways and saw the marks from the pillow on her face. She sighed, climbed into the shower and turned on the tap. She shivered at the first jet of cold water, but that only lasted a couple of seconds.
    When she came out and saw her reflection again, it seemed to her that she was looking better already.
    She wrapped herself in her bathrobe and went into the kitchen, furnished unremarkably, like the rest of her two-room apartment. In the corridor, Mimì, her black and grey tabby cat with eyes as big as coins, jumped down from a chair and followed her, meowing. She had brought the cat with her from her mother’s house just a few days earlier, when she had found this apartment in the Piazza del Mercato Centrale and moved out of her room at the police barracks. Ten years earlier, Teresa had saved Mimì’s life, pulling her out of a dustbin in the neighbourhood where she lived. And the cat had immediately become attached to her, like a faithful friend.
    She put her Neapolitan coffee pot on the gas, all the while thinking of the image of Enrico Costanza’s body in the bathtub. She poured some kibble into a plastic bowl. ‘Look how thin you are, eat up!’ she said to Mimì, stroking her little head.
    She leant against the sink while she waited for her