PERNAZZO DID NOT leave the apartment until half past three in the morning.

He put his things into the backpack, including the unused pistol. He closed the door softly behind him and, to minimize the noise he made, slipped silently down the stairs without calling the elevator. His car was parked nearby, and he considered whether he should move it. The police would be looking for it by now. He decided against it. A legally parked car was almost invisible. The police would probably not find it for months.

He had the key to Di Tivoli’s car, a Range Rover, and was looking forward to driving it. A second key with the FAAC trade name embossed on it was attached to the ring. A steep ramp to the left of the building led down to the basement and garages, and was closed off by an automatic gate. Pernazzo inserted the key and turned. He stood nervously in the shadows as two orange lights started flashing, but the gates swung open noiselessly. He made his way down the ramp and into the garage. He pressed the electronic key, and Di Tivoli’s Range Rover whooped and blinked.

Pernazzo clambered aboard and drove up the ramp, turning the lights on to full glare to break through the blackness. He felt tall and heavy and important in the car. It had a TomTom SatNav device, and he turned it on. The screen mapped out a route to Padua. He pressed a button and another route leading out of Rome to Amatrice appeared. The address was the same as he had found on the scrap of paper in Clemente’s wallet. Stop one, Amatrice. Stop two, Bari. Stop three, Patros. Or maybe he’d go north, exit Italy by way of Slovenia or Austria.

He found the large car difficult to handle. Concentrating on driving the vehicle, he got confused in the streets that lay in the shadow of the Tangenziale, the raised highway that led to the city ring road. He stopped by the side of the road, and got the TomTom to show him where he was.

The navigator directed him to an access ramp that was blocked off with red and yellow road barriers. A sign that looked like it had been hanging there since the early eighties told him the closure was temporary. The TomTom seemed to know nothing about it.

Pernazzo had to turn around several times. There were few cars on the roads at this hour, so it was not a problem. But he could not find an alternative way onto the Tangenziale. He decided to drive until the TomTom finally came up with another idea. The dashboard clock said quarter to five. He was going to have to postpone his next twenty-minute sleep.

He pulled onto Via La Spezia and realized the TomTom had let him come too far. There was still almost no traffic, but to his left he saw lights.

He could smell saltwater and fish from the Saturday market. He felt hungry.

He could murder a cappuccino and a cornetto with apricot jam. The rules of polyphasic sleeping prohibited coffee, but Pernazzo was beginning to find Uberman’s sleep schedule tiresome. He would give it up once he reached Argentina. No, he would quit it the moment he got off Italian soil.

He pulled into a parallel street and found a parking place large enough for the oversized vehicle he was commanding. He hesitated a moment, then decided to leave the backpack with its weapons and money under the driver’s seat. He took some cash from Di Tivoli’s wallet and put it into his own.

The bar was an all-nighter for bus, tram, and train drivers. It was over-lit, and the counter was uncomfortably high, but the cappuccino was as good, perhaps better, than he had imagined it. The cornetto, too.

It was time for another twenty-minute sleep, but Pernazzo was too buzzed with caffeine, sugar, and a new sense of purpose. It was surely no chance he found himself on this street.

He climbed back into the Range Rover. In one of the buildings opposite him, the police commissioner was fast asleep. He did not know which one, but there were only two gates opposite the fish market, as the commissioner himself had said.

Pernazzo knew he had to get to sleep now, or he would be unable to operate later. The coffee had been a terrible mistake. Something subconscious had been going on there. He’d think about it later. He reprogrammed the Amatrice route into the TomTom. Finally, it came up with another route.

Pernazzo relaxed; the failure of the SatNav had been stressing him out. Now he felt able to lean back into the beige leather seat and drift.

He overslept by a full hour and awoke with a spasm from a dream about Etruscan warrior tombs. Dribble had whitened the corner of his lip, and his mouth was dry as a thistle. Outside it had gotten bright, and Via La Spezia had filled with traffic. There was no air in the car. Pernazzo cracked open the window and checked his watch. It was six thirty, Sunday morning. He decided to wait until half past eight. He had had a bad sleep, and felt like he had been smacked around the head, but one essential question had been resolved. At some point during the night, he had decided to wait for the mocking policeman to come out of his house.