SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,15

sin against my own principles and to approve of an evil crime remain unpunished. But blame it on age, blame it on the hedonistic prospect of the upcoming holiday, for the very first time I didn’t get the urge to trace blood.

»As a matter of fact, I’m here to distract myself from the evil world, guys«, I continued. »And like you may have guessed already, also for me the best distraction is some that can be corroded by stomach acids. Seriously, I’m starving.«

A knowing smile appeared around Antonio’s coal-black snout, and shortly his noble eyes sparkled. He had seen right through my ham.

»Unless what, Francis?«

»What do you mean ›unless what‹?«

»You started a sentence with ›unless‹ and then didn’t end it. I got the impression you find fault with my brilliant assumptions.«

»You think so?«

»Si, Signore, che ritiene, io!«

»Well yeah, there really are only some discrepancies«, I started sluggishly and haphazardly. The sky by now was a purple violet board and fitted with only a couple of stars. A lukewarm breeze sprung up and played with our fur. The heritage site pitched an inaudible dialogue with its creators over several millenniums. In my dreams I had conjured up connotations of this exact atmospheric image of Caesar’s city again and again – of course without the sad detail of the dead body lying on the rocks. Meanwhile the lights at the site had gone on. Along the sidewalls longish, oval, salmon-colored neon lights were shining and creating an ever-warm atmosphere. Spotlights in the ground illuminated some eminently picturesque colonnade or round arch rudiments and emphasized some of their features in vivid light.

»Let’s begin with the theory of accident: To me this seems to be, no offense, rank nonsense. Assuming that it actually happened to her in the street, a pretty weird vehicle must have hit her. In fact by something that has sharp items attached to its front, let’s say, rods. Otherwise the cleanly rimmed hole in her head can’t be explained.«

Awkward, awkward: My Ego that was spoiled by success literally feasted on Giovanni’s and Antonio’s faces, in which astonishment and admiration took turns in quick succession, which didn’t quite rein my desire for self-expression.

»So let’s still assume she made the fatal acquaintance of such a weird vehicle. Thus, after the collision she was tossed through the air directly onto the Largo Argentino, or she was able to drag herself to this very point where she eventually bled to death. So where is all the blood supposed to be? I just can’t see any blood at all. The body looks totally bled out. The same applies to the theory of fight: no blood, nowhere, not a single bush of hair that was ripped out during the fight, no urine splashes which our kind excretes in fearful and stressy situations. Even more, it’s unlikely that a fellow would be able to cause a wound of this size with bare teeth and claws, even if he was really freaked out. As we see, the victim misses quite a considerable part of her head. This being said, a fight like that probably couldn’t have been kept from the siesta taking colleagues.«

»So the assassino must be a weirdo, a crazed human?«

Antonio sank on his rear legs and adopted a contemplative pose. All his dandy-ado had vanished.

»I don’t know«, I said. »There is much to be said against it. A human who puts down a dead animal or throws it over a barrier in a spot that can be overseen from every angle, must have been noticed immediately. Unless he is employed here and managed this whole thing on the quiet during work. When was the body found anyway?«

»In the late afternoon, about half an hour before you showed up.«

»So someone planted her on the rocks, on the QT, while all the others were asleep. But where did this stranger come from?«

And again I was in over my head, in another bloody cesspool of mystery, which I had wanted to give a wide berth just a few minutes ago. The most frightening about this was: I felt as fit as a fiddle in the middle of this cesspool! I just wanted to scratch my face with my own claws. And right after that Antonio’s, as this fine Signore had admirably known which buttons to press on the atavistic construction called Francis, in order to start the renowned program.

I eyed the entire sight on the search for some inspiration or even better a reasonable proof that added up to