The white Giulietta wedged into Via Crescenzio with a screech of brakes that drew the empty gaze of a cat on a low wall. Prati. An orderly, bourgeois neighborhood, a grid of nineteenth-century buildings that smelled of quiet and money. The address Neri had mumbled was a polished travertine doorway at number 15. The door was ajar, a sliver of darkness that breathed.
A plainclothes officer, young, with skin too pale to be Roman, waited for them on the sidewalk. He kept his hands in his pockets, but his shoulders were so tense they seemed attached to his ears.
"," said Costa, nodding also toward Martinez. "Officer Neri is upstairs. Third floor."And what is it that 'it's better if I come see for myself'?" asked Valesi, without preamble, his eyes fixed on the crack in the doorway.
Costa swallowed. "The apartment is... intact. Too intact. The disappearance is different from the others. There's... a message."
They exchanged a glance, Valesi and Martinez. The same word, again. *Message*. They climbed the marble stairs, their footsteps a solitary echo in the padded silence of the building. No sound of television, no radio, no chatter of a family. Just the smell of floor wax and an overly aggressive disinfectant.
Arturo Silvestri's apartment, the home of a Milanese architect, stood wide open before them. Neri was standing in the entrance, a giant who seemed diminished by the room's atmosphere. He remained motionless as they entered.
"Claudio?" Valesi called.
Neri gestured with his head toward the interior. "Look. But don't touch anything. Better… better this way."
They crossed the threshold.
The apartment was a manifesto of Nordic good taste. White walls, few pieces of furniture with essential design, architecture books aligned with manic precision on steel shelves. Everything clean, orderly, immaculate.
Too immaculate.
No newspaper out of place, no cup in the sink, no blanket folded poorly on the leather sofa. It was the house of a man who had done more than simply step out. It was the house of a man who had been erased, and the erasure included every trace of human disorder.
But what had prompted their call was something else.
In the center of the large living room, on the pearl-grey high-pile wool carpet, an object had been arranged. Or rather, *positioned*. With a geometric care that sent shivers down the spine.
It was an architectural model. A perfect reproduction in balsa wood, cardboard, and plexiglass, perfect in every detail. It depicted a circular temple, with slender columns and a segmented dome.
"The Temple of Vesta," murmured Martinez, taking a step closer. "Roman Forum."
Valesi was silent. His gaze was captured by the model itself and by what surrounded it. Around the base of the miniature temple, arranged like votive offerings, were about ten personal objects. A keychain with the emblem of the Politecnico di Milano. A silver fountain pen. A pair of eyeglasses with thick lenses. A wedding band.
And a business card, placed in the foreground, pure white on which two lines had been printed, in an elegant, sans-serif font:
Arturo Silvestri
Born in Milan, 12/03/1960
Removed from Roma, 04/05/1992
Beneath the date, a symbol. No signature. A small glyph, a sort of stylized eye enclosed in a perfect circle.
"Removed," Martinez said. The word came out like a hiss. "Not 'missing', not 'disappeared'. *Removed*. Like a foreign body. Like a stain."
Valesi approached, bending down without touching. He observed the edge of the card. Perfectly cut. The printing, sharp, slightly embossed on the high-weight paper. "This was done calmly. It's a statement. A… headstone."A headstone for someone who is missing even the body," muttered Neri, finally turning around. His face was grey. "We checked everything. No fingerprints different from Silvestri's. No signs of a break-in. It's as if he left and… *someone else* came in to clean up and leave this… memorial."Or as if the 'removal' itself included this process," hypothesized Martinez, his eyes fixed on the symbol. "Cleaning of physical remains and… cataloging. Archiving." He passed a hand over his forehead. "It's a bureaucracy. A bureaucracy of horror."
Valesi straightened up, his vertebrae cracking. His gaze wandered around the immaculate room, landing on a bookcase. Among the volumes by Gio Ponti and Aldo Rossi, there was one with a different, older binding. He approached. It was an eighteenth-century treatise. *The Ruins of the Roman Forum, with considerations on sacred architecture*. He extracted it with a handkerchief.
The book fell open, as if bookmarked. The page showed an engraving. The Temple of Vesta, in ruins. Someone, with a very fine ink pencil, had drawn a perfect circle around the temple. And beside it, the same date as on the card. 04/05/1992.
"More than a headstone," Valesi said, his voice a tone lower. "It's a report. A diagram of what was removed. The temple is… the reason. The Milanese architect was studying, nurturing an obsession for that place, wanted to restore something that was foreign to him. Something *Roman* to the core." He turned toward them. "They are doing more than chasing out foreigners. They are… protecting something. And leaving the receipt."
Neri's phone rang, a shrill trill that made everyone jump. The inspector answered, listened for a few seconds. "Where?… Right away." He hung up. His gaze had turned to glass. "Another one. Piazza Navona. An antique print dealer, born in Florence. They found him half an hour ago. The apartment is… 'in order'. They found a miniature model of the Fountain of the Four Rivers. With personal objects arranged around it."
Martinez looked at his watch. His twenty-four hours were melting away like ice in the sun. "It's a ritual pattern. Geographic and symbolic. They are cleaning the city, monument by monument, of those who came from outside. But why leave a trace? Why give us the map of their… operations?"They probably consider us irrelevant," said Valesi, casting a last glance at the miniature temple. "The rules of their game must be so clear to them, they think it's pointless to hide them. Or maybe…" A dark light crossed his eyes. "It's a challenge. A way of telling us: 'Go ahead and try. You're powerless anyway'."
They were about to leave when Martinez stopped on the threshold. His gaze had fallen on a small abstract painting hanging near the entrance. Geometric shapes, faded colors. Nothing special. But at the edge of the canvas, almost invisible, was a stain. Small, dark brown.
"Valesi approached. That stain was different from the paint. It was dry, but had a certain organic sheen. With his pen, Martinez pointed to a spot on the light parquet floor beneath it. A drop. Then another, smaller one, forming a microscopic trail toward the center of the room.
"Blood?" asked Neri.
"Too little for violence," observed Martinez. "A cut. A scratch. During the… removal." He followed the virtual trail with his eyes. It led straight to the model of the temple. "As if he dropped something. Or as if something was *taken* from him."
The theory of perfect cleaning cracked. There had been physicality, a moment of resistance, something elusive. An imperfection in the process.
They went down to the street, the May sun now seeming false, a bulb too strong on a theatrical set. Costa was still at his post, but now he had company.
"," said Rosi, nodding. "I just arrived. Agent Costa described the scene to me. May I come up?"Go ahead, Rosi. But be careful to leave everything as it is. Especially that little model."Little model?" she asked, an eyebrow raised.
"You'll see."
As Rosi entered the building, a black, shiny car pulled up next to the Giulietta. The window rolled down. Behind the wheel, the drawn face and dark-circled eyes of Aurelio Borghese.
"Valesi. In the car. Now." The tone was peremptory.
Martinez moved to follow him, but the mayor shook his head. "Just him. The agent… wait here. Or at the station. But away from the street."
Valesi shot a glance at Martinez. An imperceptible nod from him. *Go, see what he wants.* He slipped into the luxurious sedan, the smell of new leather and expensive cologne turning his stomach after the clean scent of death in the apartment.
Borghese remained still, his hands gripping the steering wheel as if he feared it might slip away.
"They called," he said, without preamble.
"Who?"Them. Or whatever it is." The mayor spoke while looking at the windshield, as if reading a script projected onto the glass. "Half an hour ago. On my private phone. The one with only three numbers."
Valesi remained silent. He let the tension in the cabin swell.
"A voice. Unnatural. Too precise. Too flat. Like a synthesizer, but different." Borghese swallowed with difficulty. "They said the 'restoration' process has begun. That Roma will return to its essence. They said… they said the temporary administrators will be tolerated, as long as they let the work proceed."Restoration. Temporary administrators." Valesi repeated the words, testing their absurd pomposity. "And us? The police?"
Borghese finally looked at him. In his eyes, Valesi saw the opportunist, the showman vanish. He saw an ancient, animal fear. "They said the *native* law enforcement is useful for maintaining order among those who remain. For managing the… grief of the others." A pause. "But investigations into the removals must cease. Immediately."And if they continue?"
The mayor averted his gaze. "They said the Milanese architect was a case study. The next one will be a warning. And the little model will remain just a memory." He passed a hand over his face. "They said the warning could be… administrative."
Ice spread through Valesi's stomach. "Administrative. You."Me, a councilman, who knows." Borghese shook his head. "Valesi, this is beyond solving a case. It's about survival. Managing the day after tomorrow. If this… this force… decides we are in the way, it erases us. And who is left to govern? Chaos."So your solution is to pretend nothing is happening? While your city is emptied on command?"*My* city!" Borghese burst out, a flash of his old arrogance. "That's exactly the point! They called it *my city*. But from their voice, it sounded like a… a concession. A tolerance." He lowered his tone, almost pleading. "Valesi, I have families of the missing besieging the Campidoglio. I have embassies threatening retaliation. I have the government staying silent, who knows how many of them were born in Chieti or Turin! I have to hold together the pieces of something that is crumbling. To provoke… whoever it is… would be suicide."And Agent Martinez? Her twenty-four hours are about to expire."
Borghese's face turned to stone. "Agent Martinez is a problem that… will resolve itself. According to their rules. Our task is to ensure that when it happens, the situation is handled discreetly. That her personal effects are… treated with confidentiality."
Valesi looked at him, for a long time. He saw the mayor of Roma, the man who loved spotlights and ribbons to cut, reduced to a clerk of the apocalypse, worried about forms and appearances while the sky was falling.
He opened the car door. The air of Roma, the real one, of smog and life, suddenly seemed precious to him.
"Where are you going?" asked Borghese, a last flicker of authority.
"To do my job, Mayor. The one they pay me for. Before someone decides that's also a 'foreign body' to be removed."
He got out. The door closed with a muffled thud. The black car slid away from the curb, swallowed by traffic.
Martinez was still there, standing next to her Giulietta. She was watching him. Had she heard? Seen enough from his expression?
"Well?" she asked, her voice neutral.
Valesi looked at his watch. There were less than eighteen hours left on her personal countdown. Then he looked at the entrance of number 15, imagining Rosi bent over the miniature temple, intent on packaging it as evidence of a crime that still needed a name in the penal code.
"The mayor," he said, starting the car, "has kindly suggested we drop it."
Martinez got in, her profile hard against the window light. "And us?"
Valesi engaged first gear, the clutch grating. "We, Agent, have just received our first real lead. A voice on the phone. An entity that speaks, that negotiates, that threatens. Now it's more than a ghost. It has a strategy. And where there's a strategy," he concluded, launching the car into the flow of traffic, "there's a weakness. Before your time runs out, we have to find it. And we have to do it without 'them,' or the mayor, noticing."
From the car radio, at low volume, a radio host announced with overly cheerful voice the imminent opening of a new exhibition at the Vittoriano. *A tribute to twentieth-century Italian art*, he said. Valesi turned it off. Twentieth-century Italian art was full of people born outside Roma. He wondered, with a lump in his throat, how many of those artists still had a tomorrow.