The silence in the Giulietta had grown thicker, laden with the revelation just absorbed. A Passage. Not a metaphor, but a physical thing, a place. Martinez looked at Valesi, the streetlight cutting his profile into hard shadows.
"A passage," she repeated, her voice a tone lower than usual. "And a Custodian who protects it. Who might have protected Silvestri, or removed him because he knew too much." She checked her watch. The digital dial reminded her that her seventeen hours had become sixteen. "We need to find Beatrice Conti. Now."
Valesi nodded, but didn't start the engine. His fingers drummed on the steering wheel. "Wait. Let's think. Conti told us Silvestri was obsessed with the Temple of Vesta. That he was looking for a 'threshold'. And that there was another, a professor, studying the same thing. But she didn't tell us *where*."The professor's study. There must be an address, some notes..."Neri is still in Silvestri's apartment with forensics. Costa is on guard outside. We can have him take a deeper look, search for diaries, a phone book." He pulled out his cell phone, a Nokia brick that seemed to have survived a bombing. He began to dial the number, then stopped. "But if 'they' are listening, if they've warned the mayor... a call could be a beacon."
Martinez opened the car door. "Then we go in person. It's faster. And if someone is following us, at least we'll see them."
They re-entered the building on Via Crescenzio with the caution of those returning to a crime scene still warm. The smell of disinfectant had been overpowered by the more metallic and antiseptic smell of fingerprint powder. Rosi, the forensic officer, was kneeling near the model, intent on collecting a microscopic sliver of balsa wood with tweezers.
Neri, on the other side of the room, was carefully leafing through a dark leather diary found on a desk. He looked up as they returned.
"Claudio," said Valesi, lowering his voice. "The professor. The one who studied with Silvestri. Conti said he taught at the University. You need to find a name, an address, anything. Check the diary, the landline's phone book, emails if you find a computer."Already looking," grumbled Neri. "But everything here is... clean. Too clean. The diary has work appointments until yesterday afternoon. Nothing personal. No strange names." He flipped another page. "Wait. Here, two weeks ago. 'P.V. – Caffè Greco – 6:30 PM'. Period. Nothing else."P.V.," repeated Martinez. "Could be the professor."Or Paolo Verdi," objected Neri. "Or Pietro Valli."Caffè Greco is on Via Condotti," said Valesi, thoughtfully. "A place for intellectuals, artists, professors indeed. Not far from the Temple of Vesta, by the way." He approached the desk. "Rosi, did you find anything on the model?"
The forensic officer stood up, stretching her back. "Nothing useful. Wood, glue, plexiglass. Precise work, but amateur. No fingerprints. It was cleaned, or whoever put it here wore gloves." She paused. "But there is one thing. The floor underneath it. It was scrubbed recently. More than the rest. As if before the model there was something else, and someone wanted to remove every trace of that thing before placing this."
An emptiness. An absence within an absence. Martinez felt a shiver run down her spine. "Blood? Did you find traces of blood?"Not with the preliminary reagent. But it could have been cleaned with bleach or something else. We'll have to analyze it in the lab." Rosi nodded her head toward an open book on the low coffee table. "That, on the other hand, hasn't been touched. It's the only thing out of place in the entire apartment."
It was the volume on the Roman Forum they had noticed earlier. Valesi approached, avoiding touching it. It was open on a double page showing a detailed plan of the Forum and a series of black and white photographs of the Temple of Vesta. On one of the photos, depicting the remains of the circular cella, someone had drawn a small circle with a blue ballpoint pen, and next to it had written, in a tiny, precise handwriting: *Accessus?*
"Access," translated Martinez, leaning over. "He was looking for an entrance. Not the temple itself, but something under, or inside."
At that moment, Valesi's cell phone vibrated. A private number. He exchanged a glance with Martinez, then answered. "Valesi."
The voice that replied was low, breathless, as if the speaker was covering their mouth with their hand. "? It's Beatrice Conti. Silvestri's neighbor."Signora Conti. We're still at his place. Is something happening?"I... I found something. After you left, I remembered. Arturo, once, months ago, gave me an envelope. 'In case something happens to me,' he said. He was joking, I thought. One of those dramatic things he always said." Her voice cracked. "I opened it. There's a name. And an address. It's not the professor. It's... another."What name?" asked Valesi, signaling to Neri to take note.
"Lorenzo Fioravanti. He lives in Trastevere, vicolo del Moro, 8. Arturo had written: 'He knows. He has seen the Gate'." There was a sound of glass in the background, like a door slamming shut violently. Conti gasped. "I have to go. Don't call me on this phone. And... be careful."
The line went dead.
Valesi hung up, his eyes narrowed. "Vicolo del Moro, 8. Trastevere. A certain Lorenzo Fioravanti. According to Silvestri, 'he has seen what we're looking for'."A hot lead," said Martinez, already turning toward the exit. "Hotter than an anonymous professor."It could be a trap," murmured Neri, closing his notebook.
"Everything could be a trap, Claudio," replied Valesi, putting on his jacket. "But it's the only lead we have that doesn't end in a library. Rosi, you and Costa finish up here. Claudio, you stay at the station, try to trace this 'P.V.' from the Caffè Greco, but discreetly. Radio silence, if possible."
Trastevere at night was a different organism. Normally teeming with life, with tourists and young Romans crowding the venues, it was now breathing with difficulty. Many businesses were closed, shutters down. Others were open, but inside you could only see small groups of people, speaking in low voices, as in a living room after a bereavement. The yellow lights of the streetlamps created pools of uncertainty between the thick shadows of the alleys.
Vicolo del Moro was a slit between two tall medieval buildings, so narrow that Valesi and Martinez had to walk in single file. Number 8 was a massive wooden door, worn by time, with no doorbell. A faint light filtered from a small window on the first floor.
Valesi knocked with his knuckles. The sound seemed absorbed by the stone. No answer. He knocked again, louder.
From inside came the sound of shuffling footsteps. A lock clicked, and the door opened a few centimeters, held by a security chain. An eye, circled by deep wrinkles, scrutinized them from the darkness.
"Lorenzo Fioravanti?" asked Valesi, showing his badge.
The eye moved from the badge to Valesi, then to Martinez. The door closed, they heard the chain being undone, and then it swung open completely.
The man who let them in was thin, dressed in a patched cardigan over a faded shirt. He must have been seventy, but his movements, though slow, were not those of a frail old man. He seemed more weathered, like wood left to the elements. His home was a single room crammed with books, yellowed maps, and clay and stone models reproducing ancient Roman buildings. The air smelled of dust, old paper, and dried herbs.
"Fioravanti," said the man, without offering chairs. "I was expecting someone. Not necessarily the police. But someone." His voice was a hoarse whisper.
"Why?" asked Martinez, remaining on the threshold, her eyes scanning the room.
"Because Arturo is gone. Right?" Fioravanti didn't wait for an answer. He approached a cluttered table, stroked the surface of a terracotta model representing the Temple of Vesta. It was much cruder than Silvestri's, but the details of the circular structure were equally precise. "He was looking for proof. I... I had the misfortune to see."See what?" asked Valesi, remaining standing. The atmosphere in the room was charged with a tension different from that of Silvestri's sterile apartment. Here, the madness, or the truth, was lived in, sweated over.
Fioravanti looked at them, and for the first time Valesi saw a genuine, ancient fear in his eyes. "The Threshold. The one you call the Gate. It's not a metaphor, commissario. It's a place. A discontinuity. A point where the rules... change."Where is it?" pressed Martinez.
"In the most obvious place. Where it all began." Fioravanti pointed to the model. "The fire of Vesta wasn't just symbolic. It was a signal. A beacon. To keep it closed. To *feed it*. When the fire went out, in 394, that gap began... to yawn. Sometimes it stirs. It absorbs."Absorbs what?" Valesi's voice was harsher than intended.
"Energy. Attention. *Presence*." Fioravanti passed a trembling hand over his mouth. "Roma is built on layers. Not just of stone. Of time. Of intentions. That point... is a crack between the layers. And like all cracks, it tends to widen if not kept in check."Silvestri believed he could locate it precisely," said Martinez. "And you helped him."I showed him the texts. The medieval chronicles that speak of 'the disappeared in the Forum'. The Renaissance accounts of maddened excavators. The diaries of Napoleonic soldiers who spoke of 'singing voids'." He shook his head. "But he wanted more. He wanted to *measure it*. He wanted to understand the mechanism. A mistake."Why? What happened?" asked Valesi.
Fioravanti approached the window, moving the curtain a millimeter to peer into the dark alley. "Someone noticed his research. Someone who guards that passage. Or who fears it. I don't know. I know they started following him. Normal people. Romans. But with eyes… empty. As if they were being remotely controlled."
The term ‘Custodian’ hung in the room, unspoken.
“Who is the Custodian?” Martinez asked directly.
Fioravanti turned sharply. “I don’t know. No one knows. Perhaps it’s not a person. Perhaps it’s a role. A function that someone, or something, fulfills. But I know it exists. And I know it has servants. People connected to Roma in a… visceral way. For whom the city is an organism to protect at any cost, even from the rest of the world.” He took a long, painful pause. “The night of the disappearances… I was at the Forum. To… monitor.”
"And you saw something."I saw the darkness move. Not shadows. The darkness itself, like a substance. Emerging from the foundations of the Temple. Expanding. And then… withdrawing. And when it withdrew, the people were gone. Only those from outside. As if that passageway had taken a breath, a deep breath, and sucked in everything that did not belong to its body." His hand trembled as he lit a rolled cigarette. "Arturo disappeared later. They took him because he knew where to look. Because he was about to find the exact spot."
“And you? Why are you still here?” asked Valesi, staring at him.
Fioravanti exhaled a thread of smoke. “Because I was born here, commissario. In this alley. I am part of the body. For now, I am safe. But if I keep talking…” He left the sentence hanging. Then, with a sudden gesture, he went to an old piece of furniture, opened a drawer, and pulled out a sheet of tracing paper, folded in four. He held it out to Valesi. “Take it. It’s Arturo’s map. His measurements, his calculations. The spot he had identified. Don’t look at it here. Leave.”
Valesi took the sheet, feeling the thin, fragile paper under his fingers. “Why are you helping us?”
"Because I'm afraid," whispered Fioravanti, and for the first time his voice lost every trace of mystery, becoming merely human, tired, terrified. "But I am more afraid of what will happen if that passageway swings wide open. If that breath becomes a scream. Go. *Now*."
He almost physically pushed them toward the exit. As Valesi crossed the threshold, Fioravanti grabbed his arm, his grip surprisingly strong. “And be careful of the empty eyes,” he hissed. “Especially among your own.”
Then the door closed behind them, and the bolt slid shut with a definitive sound.
In the dark alley, Martinez looked around, her back against the damp wall. “Do you believe that story about breathing darkness?”
Valesi opened the tracing paper under the faint light of a distant streetlamp. It was a plan of the Roman Forum, overlaid with a grid of coordinates. In one spot, near the Curia Julia, far from the Temple of Vesta, a small red circle had been drawn. Next to it, Silvestri’s writing: *Epicenter? Point of maximum historical pressure*.
“I don’t know what to believe,” said Valesi, carefully folding the map and putting it in an inside pocket. “But I know we have a location. And that Martinez…”
He stopped. From the end of the alley, where it opened into a small square, two figures had appeared. They stood still, silent, facing them. The streetlight hit them from behind, making their faces unreadable. But their posture was identical, rigid, unnatural. Like mannequins placed there on guard.
Martinez followed his gaze. Her hand automatically slipped under her jacket, where she kept her service pistol.
The two figures did not move. They said nothing.
They simply watched.
The empty eyes, in the dark.