‘A woman?’ the second one interrupted and she stopped herself from asking if there were perhaps some other alternative she didn’t know about. No jokes. No jokes. There were not going to be any more jokes, not until all this was over.

‘Yes, a woman.’

With a sharp look at his partner, the first one resumed his questions. ‘What did she look like?’

‘She was in her early forties, blonde hair, shoulder-length.’

The woman’s hair was tucked inside a scarf, so at first the policemen didn’t get it. ‘What was she wearing?’ he asked.

‘A tan coat, brown boots.’

He noticed the colour of her coat, then looked down at her feet. ‘This isn’t a joke, Signora. We want to know what she looked like.’

She looked straight at him and in the light cast down from the street lamps, he saw the glint of some secret passion in her eyes. ‘No jokes, officer. I’ve told you what she was wearing.’

‘But you’re describing yourself, Signora.’ Again, her own inner alarm against melodrama prevented her from saying ‘Thou sayest it’. Instead, she nodded.

‘You did it?’ the first one asked, unable to disguise his astonishment.

She nodded again.

The other one clarified, ‘You threw a stone through that window?’

Once more she nodded.

With unspoken agreement the two men backed away from her until they were out of earshot, though they both kept their eyes on her. They put their heads together and spoke in lowered voices for a moment, then one of them pulled out his cellular and punched in the number of the Questura. Above them, a window was flung open, a head popped out, only to disappear immediately. The window slammed shut.

The policeman spoke for several minutes, giving what information he had and saying they’d already apprehended the person responsible. When the night sergeant told them to bring him in, the policeman didn’t bother to correct him. He folded the mouthpiece back into place and slipped the phone into the pocket of his jacket. ‘Danieli told me to take her in,’ he told his partner.