A Cold Flame: A gripping crime thriller that will keep you hooked. Aidan Conway

had now become practice. Reality now had grown harsh. “Remember, Jibril,” Victor would say, “when the day comes, what He will say to those on his left. ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’.” Well, they had killed him – his own Christian brothers – and they would have to pay for it.

      “So, my friend,” he said out loud, as if someone might be there to hear him, “who is the devil now?”

       Seventeen

      The atmosphere in the conference room was tense. The press wanted answers, wanted a story, but they weren’t getting much change out of the eight-strong panel of stony-faced city officials and law enforcement chiefs facing them in the grand hall of the prefettura’s renaissance palace. Security was high and the press had arrived in numbers, among them Elena Serena, sent by Iannelli to do the public work he couldn’t risk undertaking. She had taken up a position near an exit and had set up a tripod stand with a video camera to stream the whole proceeding back to Iannelli. She had opted to use the local WI-FI but it was just her luck to have found the only spot where the signal was shaky.

      “So, we are under attack?” The question came from a staff reporter on The Post. The journalists were hammering the same nail again and again, but the panel was resisting.

      All eyes turned to the City Prefect, Roberto Cavalleggio. It was his job to guarantee public safety and coordinate between the Home Office and local government.

      “As I think my colleagues have already made clear, it was an attack,” he replied, adjusting and leaning into the microphone almost as if in an attempt to find some shortcoming in the hardware that might distract attention from his own. “A vile and cowardly attack, I might add.” He paused, perhaps to weigh his words or to emphasize some greater gravitas. “It is not clear whether this is part of any concerted campaign or an isolated incident. I can say, however, that the police and the security services are working flat out, night and day, to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice.”

      “What do you know about the level of technological sophistication of the device?” a reporter called out from the back of the room. There was another brief pause as, after comments off mic and various sideways glances, the prefect indicated that the question would be taken by the head of the state police, Fulvio Martinelli.

      “From what the forensic police have been able to ascertain so far, it would appear that it was a fairly rudimentary device but lethal nonetheless. It was designed to inflict maximum casualties without requiring a major logistical operation.”

      Elena looked up from where she had, until then, been jotting random notes. Rudimentary? It certainly wasn’t the impression she’d had, and she’d got the low-down from Iannelli who had been on the scene early. He had said all the evidence pointed to C4, high-grade military plastic explosive and a high-spec timing device. He and she had kept that to themselves for now, though. From the front row, it was a RAI TV journalist’s turn to quiz the prefect.

      “We’ve been hearing from the Police Federation recently that in the last few years there has been a chronic lack of funding for the security budget to face an increasingly sophisticated terrorist threat. In the light of these comments, are you able to provide assurances that the public’s safety will be guaranteed? In concrete terms, what is being done?”

      An ashen-faced prefect suppressed something akin to a stifled yawn or a sigh as he prepared to speak.

      “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, assuming a tone both informal yet recognizably patrician, “as I continue to reiterate, everything in our power is being done. Rest assured,” he continued, glancing up at the crowd just long enough for the flashes’ brief frenzy, “that no stone will be left unturned and no effort spared. With specific reference to the question regarding our resources, let me say this.” He reached for a pair of reading glasses, then taking a sip from his glass of mineral water, he looked down to where he appeared to have a speech of sorts prepared. “Regardless of the resources and hardware at the disposal of its law enforcement personnel, no city can ever be 100 per cent safe, just as no other daily action we take can be in 100 per cent safety. The moment you set foot outside your apartment you are inevitably exposed to risks. You are, incidentally, statistically exposed to a great many more risks within the four walls of your home. However, when you do venture out onto the streets of your city, what we can do and what we are striving to do is to reduce