SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - By Akif Pirincci Page 0,68

canal, which is embedded in the cranial bone, the ossicles, the so-called cochlea and the nerve pathways to the brain have remained totally sound. The part of the skull at this spot is also totally intact on the contrary to the other cases. Neither small bone fragments nor traces of blood can be found in the vicinity.«

»And what is that supposed to mean, great master?«

He gave a less confused but pretty unhappy impression now.

I turned Samantha’s head to the site and showed him the two tiny holes in her neck that were only visible on closer inspection.

»She probably went west before her ear was ripped off, and that was due to a classical neck-bite, which our kind masters expertly.«

Antonio lurched away from the body as if his view of life had just been crushed. His wedge-shaped face twitched instinctively, his whiskers trembled, and he opened and closed the mouth without giving a sound. He sat down on his rear legs far apart from me and seemed to petrify.

»When did you find her?« I said.

»At midnight. When I woke up yesterday morning, you both weren’t at the palazzo anymore. So I went into the city and looked for you everywhere. At this, I got to know about your heroic deeds. Shortly before I wanted to leave for Vatican City, I got the idea to check on Samantha once more. Privately, I had been worried about her the whole day, as it wasn’t her custom to leave the property for more than the garden walls. She was sterilized. When I still couldn’t find her around the house, I went down to the cellar and ...«

His eyes were flooded by the first tears now, which rolled down to the tip of his nose, shortly stayed there and then dripped down in heavy drops.

»I never had a dearer friend, Francis, and never a more sympathetic one ...« he said sobbingly.

»It happened like this«, I passed over the sad situation. I wanted to comfort him with at least a prospect of enlightening all this horror. »Samantha knew her killer, she trusted him. It may even be that they were in cahoots over this murder thing. After all she led me on a wrong trace. The killer, in this case clearly a fellow, wiled her to the cellar under a pretext, she followed him unsuspectingly. In an unobserved moment he inserted the neck-bite. She died right away – and yet had to endure a lot after that. The beast bit off her ear to make it look like she was just another victim of the rampant murder series in this city. I bet the good stuff is hidden somewhere around here.«

»Why?« Antonio said, and in this mournful pitch it sounded like a philosophical question.

»It sounds a little megalomaniac, but she had to die because of me. The killer knew that I would get back to her and take her to task. And then her connection to him would have been easily revealed. So it was very convenient that the incident could be disguised as another of the butcher’s deeds. Yet, it was pretty stupid of him to believe I would miss the neck-bite and let go off all logic at the sight of a wounded ear. At least we know now, that Samantha wasn’t directly working with the human monster but just with his loyal animal assistant.«

We both had to stomach these insights. In the darkness of the cellar was total silence, and not even a cockroach scuttled around the corner and nibbled on our concentration. Samantha also looked prayerfully with her amber eyes, as if she wanted to succor us from the ulterior sphere. After a small eternity Antonio was the first to move.

»Do you think what I think, Francis?«

»I guess so«, I said.

»This suspicious shadow, whom Blixa watched taking to the future victims in the Bernini Colonnades at the Piazza San Pietro, is involved in this disgrace.«

»He picks out the appropriate candidates and guides them to a human, joking and making big promises. This guy sedates them, prepares them for the operation and robs their ear and life. The rest is our four-legged friend’s part again. He carries the bodies away and spreads them throughout the city, in the justified hope the callous world out there won’t put a SWAT team together at the sight of a mutilated carcass. Probably this surely most productive teamwork between human and animal since Tarzan and Cheetah first began when it became too risky for the butcher at