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authorities may step in and take it out of our hands completely.’
    Reggiani instantly lost his temper. ‘That, God willing, is the least of my problems! They’re not in harm’s way and have plenty of their own headaches to worry about. As far as this situation is concerned, it has already slipped out of our control! We have two cadavers at the mortuary that have been clawed to pieces and no reason to think there may not be more coming.’
    ‘That’s impossible!’ shouted the public prosecutor. ‘It’s only an animal, for Christ’s sake. You’ve got dogs, vehicles, helicopters, scores of men.’
    Reggiani lowered his head to hide his anger and took a deep breath before he answered. ‘You see, sir, all of the means that you’ve just mentioned have been used without achieving the slightest result. I’ve put my best men out in the field and on investigations. This is not just any old case. There are other matters that concern me as well and I need your help.’
    The public prosecutor nodded, with an air of condescension.
    ‘I would like you to make a personal call to the directors of all the local papers and ask for a news blackout. I’m sure you can convince them that this is necessary due to the unique, extremely serious nature of the matter. I will arrange to inform local residents regarding the nature of the threat and the precautions to be taken. A lot of unverified stories are already going around. I’ll tell them the truth. Luckily, this isn’t a big city. There are a given number of families that must be informed. At the same time I will reorganize my investigation, starting from another angle.’
    ‘What angle might that be?’ asked the public prosecutor.
    ‘I want to start from the tomb,’ replied Reggiani. ‘From the man who opened it and excavated it. I think that’s where all this began.’
    F ABRIZIO took a bunch of keys from the hook and went down into the storeroom. Sonia had been so excited at seeing the pictures that she was eager to start immediately. He wanted to make sure that all the material would be ready for her to begin her work. If he got this out of the way, he’d be free to return to his own studies and forget about the rest. If that was an option.
    He descended a couple of floors from street level and realized he was in the middle of the ancient city: tufa walls, old substructures in ruins, foundations made of huge blocks, surely from the Etruscan age. He switched on the light and walked down a long corridor covered by a barrel vault ceiling. On either side lay the dusty odds and ends typical of the cellars of the museums and NAS facilities all over Italy: chunks of marble and stone, column segments, fragmented sculptures waiting patiently to be restored, handles and necks of vases, floor tiles and boxes. Hundreds of boxes. Yellow and red plastic stacks, each with its own label reporting the name of the excavation, the sector and the layer where the finds contained inside had been found.
    The materials from the Rovaio dig, except for the alabaster sarcophagus, which had been taken to another warehouse outside the city, were at the end of the hall, sitting on top of a shelf carved of stone which created a niche in the wall. Fabrizio laid a plastic sheet on the floor and started first of all to pick out the more scattered and splintered pieces of the human skeleton. He taped to the wall an enlargement of the digital shot he had taken inside the tomb, then switched on a portable mechanic’s light and began to gather the fragments, one after another, piecing them together with difficulty, seeking the lines of recomposition of a body almost disintegrated by a ravaging fury.
    He patiently reconstructed shoulder and collar bones, lined up the phalanges of the fingers which were strewn in every direction. Every now and then he would glance at the blown-up photo on the wall and that awful image, that horrible tangle of bones and fangs, created a mounting sense of anxiety in him that