Outside the villa, Adami lit a cigarette. He held the pack of cigarettes out to Elizabeth. "One too?"

The lieutenant shook her head. "Not now."

Katherine raised her eyebrows. "Are you smoking again?"

Elizabeth, on the other hand, lowered her eyebrows. "What do you mean, again? I've never stopped! Except during Maggie's pregnancy with Ben, of course."

"All the worse. You stop for a moment and then start again."

"What do you have against smokers?" Adami wanted to know. "I thought you were a aesthete. They always smoke, too."

"I'm more of a drinker. Whiskey. And if they do, aesthetes are likelier to smoke cigars than cigarettes."

"That's okay too." Adami took a drag on his cigarette, and they looked out over the Arno Valley, the Ponte Vecchio, and the massive cathedral dome behind it.

"But let's get back to the subject," said the lieutenant, "there's definitely something wrong."

Adami looked at her closely. "With the Visconti?"

Katherine shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "Especially with Donatella. She's not telling us something."

Adami's eyebrows drew together. "Regarding Turelli?"

Elizabeth nodded slowly. "He was more important to her than she lets on."

"That's quite possible."

"And then there's her second son. Ottavio. If he's running the important businesses, something is going on."

"What's important doesn't have to be illegal."

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows briefly. "It doesn't have to be, but it can be. I think that Donatella has stepped on someone's toes with some pretty big, crooked deals, and they're taking revenge in a big way. Someone who not only can pull off something like the blood wedding and the Perseus head thing, as well as the lawyer thing now, but who is also mad enough to orchestrate the whole thing to such an extent." Elizabeth paused for a moment. "Whoever that was or is has patience, financial means, and willpower."

Katherine nodded slowly. "And that's a nasty combination when it comes to serial killers."

"If it's just one person." Adami waved a hand from his face.

Katherine looked at him closely. "In terms of modus operandi, it's one person. Or maybe a team. But it's not scattered murders."

Adami pulled the corners of his mouth down. "Sounds plausible. And Visconti? I mean Paolo?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "He doesn't seem to be involved."

"Or he may not be," Katherine replied.

Adami bent his head forward. "May not?"

"He'd like to say something, but he's been muzzled. And what do people do when they're not allowed to say something but want to?"

Adami took a deep breath. "Tell me."

"He blathers on about Satan all the time. I suppose even part of him means it and really believes it. But maybe that's his way of participating in the discussion he's not allowed to participate in."

"Like a small child who isn't allowed to join in with the adults at the table and is therefore making a fuss?" asked Adami.

Katherine nodded slowly. "That's right. My son is doing that at my parents' house in Boston. I just got a text about it."

Elizabeth grinned broadly. "Yes, something like that. Old men are often like little children."

Adami also looked at his cell phone. "Some more information came in about Turelli's body." He lifted his chin. "Do you want to go on the Questura?"

"Gladly," Elizabeth said without hesitation. "It would be even better if we could talk to Visconti alone."

Adami exhaled loudly and narrowed his eyes. "Difficult. Donatella is always shielding him. But he often goes for a walk in the morning. 11 am. to 11.30 am. Once around the villa and the park here. If you try tomorrow, you might bump into him. I was going to suggest that anyway. You'd have been disappointed with Donatella just now."

"We'll do that," Elizabeth replied. When she said goodbye to the Visconti family, she was annoyed that Adami had killed off the discussion so quickly. But he had probably been right. "And now off to the police station."

"And we," Katherine murmured afterward, "should go our own ways to find out about Turelli."

Elizabeth furrowed her brows. "And how exactly, Kate?"

"About the one where all the wires to organized crime and cybercrime converge." She narrowed her eyes. "Nick. You know he's more than capable of that."

"Then we should probably have a virtual coffee with him and chat with Nick."

xxx

"Do you really want to call Nick?" Nikki asked as the investigators returned from the police station and headed for the cathedral apartment. Clouds had gathered, and it was starting to drizzle lightly.

"No one else is helping us, as far as I can see," Elizabeth replied curtly.

"But Donatella pays for everything," Mike remarked.

Nikki pulled the corners of her mouth down. "The hotel in Rome, yes, as far as I know. But the apartment here belongs to Marco. And Adami seems a bit passive to me, too."

Elizabeth nodded in agreement. "You're right about that. That he confirmed my idea of meeting Visconti alone at the end also seemed like an excuse to help."

The officer nodded slowly. "I think so, too."

"On the other hand," Mike asked with a slightly furrowed brow, "are we still in charge here?"

The lieutenant raised her eyebrows briefly. "Not officially, but now I want to know who did it. Might help us with the suspension in Boston, too."

Nikki licked her lips. "Then I'll call Nick, and you'll deal with Visconti tomorrow?"

"That's what we'll do," Elizabeth replied. "Mike and I will intercept Visconti alone outside the mansion tomorrow. And you call Nick right away."

Nick took the call after the third ring. "So, how's Italy?"

Nikki blinked a few times. "Apart from the three deaths? Pretty good."

Nick paused for a moment. "I'm doing something wrong. I'm still allowed to work off all the cyberattacks from the lockdown period. That was a feast for criminals. People are sitting at home, bored, clicking on crap. Protective masks were offered; if you ordered them online, they came with a Trojan. Incidentally, many gangs now offer their cybercrime services for hire. They don't call it software as a service, but crime as a service."

"Why buy when you can rent," Nikki replied, raising her shoulders, "but we weren't just enjoying the Dolce Vita here; we got involved in a fascinating case. That's why I'm calling you."

"Now you've made me curious."

"Listen, I'll explain what's going on, okay?"

"Shoot."

Nikki briefly put her uncle in the picture. She had finally arrived at the murder of Luca Turelli. "At the end of the day, it's about someone who's also renting something, and that's legal assistance. Luca Turelli."

Nick paused again. "Why are you after him like this?"

"With the first two murders, the connection is clear. The daughter and the son. Someone has a huge score to settle with Donatella, even if old Visconit always pretends it's all against him."

"And with the lawyer, it's not entirely clear what the reference is supposed to be?"

"It's got to be something big," Nikki said with a furrowed brow. "I don't think anyone lost a lawsuit against Donatella that Turelli settled, where it was about Donatella being allowed to pick apples from the neighbor's garden hanging over into her yard. And I don't think the gardens of this Visconti-Sforza-whatever dynasty have such bourgeois problems either."

"Well, in Switzerland, the head of a major Swiss bank and the deputy head had gardens next to each other. And they actually fought over a party," Nick replied. "Would have made a nice psychological case study for Kate."

The officer took a deep breath. "Good, but that's the exception rather than the rule, so we thought we'd come to the right place. Can you do anything about that?"

Nick was silent for a moment. "If Turelli did something for Donatella, money must have been involved. It was a lot of money if he did something big and bad."

"So, could Turelli have done something bad, something big?"

"I just clicked through the Europol database," he replied, "Turelli was under surveillance a while ago. Knocked out a few celebrities who were definitely murderers. Bribes probably flowed to the witnesses via black money coffers in gigantic amounts. A kind of O.J.-Simpson-Jeffrey-Eppstein thing, only in Italy."

"So he could be trusted with such crooked deals?"

"Yes, although he's considered cautious. As the old saying goes, bend the law as much as you can without breaking it. In other words, not winning isn't bad, but losing is. It is said that he was once involved in getting the daughter of a nobleman out of an unwanted marriage. Members of the Camorra are also said to have helped make the marriage impossible."

Nikki furrowed her brow. "And how?"

"By eliminating the husband."

She rolled her eyes. "That sounds logical."

"All this pushing and shoving, especially in Italy, goes way back in time," Nick said, "surely you've heard of the rat line?"

Nikki looked over at Mike and Elizabeth, who were probably busy working out a battle plan. "Not enough to answer competently."

"Via the so-called rat line," Nick said after a few seconds, "German Nazi leaders fled to South America after the Second World War. They got new papers from the Vatican, a state in its own right. The Holy See was paid with gold that the Nazis had taken from the Jews."

The young woman nodded slowly. "That's why the Vatican has such a huge gold reserve?"

"Quite possibly," her uncle replied. "I wouldn't be surprised if your Visconti family was also involved in that business back then and amassed wealth that way. Perhaps as middlemen between the Nazis and the Vatican?"

Nikki smiled briefly. "The Visconti already worked for the Germans in Milan during the Renaissance. Same employer, new era. So, can you take a look at the whole thing? We probably must follow the money trail that leads to Turelli and comes from Donatella, right?"

Nick was silent again for a few seconds. "I couldn't have said it better myself. I will try to tap into the NSA and CHIPS, the platform that monitors bank movements."

Nikki pursed her lips. "But that only applies to US banks, right?"

"Yes, but that doesn't matter. The dollar is the world's reserve currency, and there's hardly a major transaction that doesn't involve the dollar. That's why almost every transaction of a certain size automatically involves a US bank. That's why the FBI can investigate immediately, no matter where because they have jurisdiction over US banks."

"What was that saying again? The dollar is our currency, but your problem?"

"Yeah, that was Nixon, I think." Nick cleared his throat. "I'll see what I can find and get back to you tomorrow at the latest!"

Nikki looked at a copied painting on the wall. It depicted the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus. She had heard the information but had almost forgotten it. But now that she saw the child in the picture, it came back to her. "Carina," she said.

Elizabeth turned to her and furrowed her eyebrows. "What about Carina?"

The connection to Nick still stood.

"Visconti's daughter from his first marriage," the officer replied, blinking slowly. "The one who disappeared. I told you that."

The lieutenant nodded slowly. "Yes, you did. But wasn't the daughter kidnapped?"

"We don't know exactly, but she was probably abducted. The fact is, she's been missing for years."

"Oh," Nick suddenly said. "That's exciting information! You've only just come up with that? What's the daughter's name? Carina?"

"Carina Visconti."

"Good starting point," Nick replied, "I'll see if her name came up anywhere in connection with big money transactions by Turelli. Maybe Turelli was hired to free her and used unconventional methods, and the mafia or whoever is now taking revenge?"

"The question is," the officer began, "is the mafia getting revenge with such stylized ritual murders?"

"Sounds unlikely, but we should leave no stone unturned."

Nikki licked her lips. "You're calling tomorrow?"

"I'm going to grab a coffee from our break room, and then I'm on it."