SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,16

my hypothesis. Eventually I paused at the sight of the huge iron gates and round arches along the inner wall rectangle, which was barely noticeable in the dark. There seemed to be an entry to some chambers underneath the streets. I pointed at it with my snout.

»What’s inside these chambers?«

»Small treasures of the archeologists and their tools«, Antonio replied.

»And where do they lead to?«

He shrugged.

»Everywhere and nowhere. But I know where you’re going with his. You ask yourself if these chambers are a connection to the bowels of this city. And you may be freaking right. Rome’s underground is pretty perforated indeed, Francis. There are catacombs everywhere, and almost every month new ones are discovered. All in all they are said to have a length of about ninety miles. But there aren’t just Christian catacombs, but Gnostic, and even Jewish ones. You find yourself in a city that consists of many cities, one superimposed on the other. It’s a moloch, a testimonial of great chaos. In the abstract, some passages might lead to these chambers, but as far as I know they are closed to the human public.«

»But maybe not to our kind. I mean, it might be possible that a fellow who knows his way around the place and history extremely well is aware of some undetected hallways and entries which to the human eye look unremarkable and can be easily overlooked. Through these he could have dragged the body, grabbing it by its neck like a kitten, first to the working rooms and then eventually out here into the open space.«

»Non capisco«, Giovanni said and let out a comfortless growl. Apparently he had recovered from his humiliation pretty well by now.

»You just said that our kind isn’t able to cause such big wounds. And now our noble race shall be blamed for this porcheria. I think you throw your weight around in a way I would never be able to!«

»You’re probably right, Giovanni«, I replied. »I actually give myself airs a little bit. But as a matter of fact this is partially caused by the fact that I am close to being delirious or presenting this whole matter in the form of French chansons because I’m freaking starving. Coming back to airing myself, my witty assumptions actually don’t seem to make much sense. Yet, I think they’re worth a conclusion: If your gossip factory’s information is correct, Giovanni, we’re dealing with a real series of murders. If all victims share the same kind of wounding, the suspect can only be human.«

I went back to the dead Siamese again, bend over her with a cascade of stabbing pain in my head and kept examining the horror at her head.

»I have to correct myself in one point«, I said after I had eyed up the wound very thoroughly. »I can’t see any straight fracture on her cranial bone. The natural bulge in it, where the inner ear with the funnel growing out of it is located, has just been affected by the abuse. It looks like it has been ripped out or operated with some special tool. If I were in the mood for kidding I’d say someone stole the good old thing. Did one of you know her?«

»Casually«, Antonio said.

»Well, she was very young«, Giovanni raised his paw again. »And like you still can see, molto bello. I hit at her once, but I was sent packing. I don’t know her name. Neither do I know where she comes from or who abandoned her here.«

Antonio agreed with the pirate, wordless and clueless.

»Any special skills?« I went further into it. »I mean, could she hear the grass grow with her vanished ear or juggle a ball on her nose or something like that?«

The Italiani shared some puzzled looks and then shook their heads.

»Back to my conclusion«, I continued. »Also your third theory, Antonio, isn’t very well founded to me. Right, this story does not just contain a dose but a barrel of madness. Without a doubt there are animal abusers and killers with a proclivity for bloody fetish, but I hardly believe that those are capable of delivering such clean work. My instinct tells me, there’s more to it. And how a human could have managed to place a body in such a well observed spot in the middle of the day, also remains a secret.«

I know I had contradicted myself in a couple of aspects. But this half-baked analysis was just a first attempt at putting these conflicts in