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six years. Bruno had stayed in this village he had revived. Alone, with his flock of goats.
    That night, after the interview, Babette had slept with Bruno.
    He’d asked her to stay.
    But she couldn’t. This wasn’t her life.
    Over the years, she had often been back to see him. Every time she was in or near the area. Bruno had a partner now, two children, electricity, a TV set and a computer, and he produced goat’s cheese and honey.
    â€œIf you’re ever in any trouble,” he’d said to Babette, “come here. Don’t hesitate. From up here all the way down to the valley, everyone’s a friend of mine.”
    Â 
    This evening, she was missing Marseilles a lot. But she didn’t know when she could go back. Or even if she could go back. If she did, nothing, absolutely nothing could ever be the same. She wasn’t just in trouble, it was worse than that. The horror of it was in her head all the time. As soon as she closed her eyes, she saw Gianni’s corpse. And behind his corpse, those of Francesco and Beppe, which she hadn’t seen but could imagine. Tortured, mutilated bodies. Surrounded by pools of black, congealed blood. Other corpses, too. Behind her. But mostly ahead of her. That was inevitable.
    When she’d left Rome, frantic, scared to death, she hadn’t known where to go. She needed somewhere safe. She needed to think it all through, as calmly as she could. To sort through her papers, put them in order, classify the information, check it all. Put the finishing touches to the biggest piece of investigative journalism she’d ever done. On the Mafia in France, and in the South. No one had ever dug that deep. Too deep, she realized now. She’d remembered what Bruno had said.
    â€œI’m in trouble. Big trouble.”
    She’d called him from a phone booth in La Spezia. It was almost one o’clock in the morning. She’d woken him up. He was an early riser, because of the animals. Babette was shaking. Two hours earlier, after driving from Orvieto without stopping, almost like a madwoman, she’d reached Manarola. A town in the Cinque Terre, perched on a rock, where an old friend of Gianni’s named Beppe lived. She’d dialed his number, as he’d asked her to. But be careful, he’d said that very morning.
    â€œ
Pronto.
”
    Babette had hung up. It wasn’t Beppe’s voice. Then she’d seen the carabinieri arrive in two cars that drew up on the main street. She knew immediately what had happened: the killers had gotten there before her.
    She had turned around and gone back the way she had come, along a narrow, twisting mountain road. Hands tight on the wheel, exhausted, but keeping her eyes open for any cars about to overtake her or coming toward her.
    â€œCome,” Bruno had said.
    She’d found a seedy room in the Hotel Firenze e Continentale, near the station. She hadn’t slept a wink all night. The trains. The presence of death. It all kept coming back to her, down to the smallest detail. A taxi had dropped her on Campo de’ Fiori. Gianni had just come back from Palermo. He was waiting for her in his apartment. Ten days is a long time, he’d said on the phone. It had been a long time for her, too. She didn’t know if she loved Gianni, but her whole body yearned for him.
    â€œGianni! Gianni!”
    The door was open, but that hadn’t worried her.
    â€œGianni!”
    He was there. Tied to a chair. Naked. Dead. She closed her eyes, but too late. She knew she would have to live with that image.
    When she’d opened her eyes again, she’d seen the burn marks on his chest, stomach and thighs. No, she didn’t want to look. She turned her eyes away from Gianni’s mutilated cock. She started screaming. She saw herself screaming, her body frozen rigid, her arms dangling, her mouth wide open. Her screams swelled with the smell of blood, shit and piss that filled the room. When