The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi

ritual. Sarah Rosa mumbled her name and rank. The man, however, held out his hand, saying clearly, “Hello, I’m Special Agent Klaus Boris.” Then he offered to carry her canvas bag: “Let me.”
    “No, thanks, I can do it myself,” said Mila.
    But he insisted: “It’s not a problem.”
    His tone, and the stubborn way he smiled at her, told Mila that Agent Boris must be a bit of a ladies’ man, convinced that he could work his charm on any woman who came within range. She was sure that he’d decided to have a try as soon as he had seen her in the distance.
    Boris suggested having a coffee before setting off, but Sarah Rosa glared at him.
    “What’s up? What did I say?” he pleaded.
    “We don’t have much time, remember?” the woman shot back dismissively.
    “Our colleague has had a long journey and I was just thinking that—”
    “There’s no need,” Mila cut in. “I’m fine, thanks.”
    Mila had no intention of getting on the wrong side of Sarah Rosa, who didn’t seem to appreciate the fact that Mila was there to work with them.
    They reached the car in the car park, and Boris sat down in the driver’s seat. Rosa sat next to him. Mila got into the back, along with her canvas bag. They pulled out into the traffic and headed down the road that ran along the river.
    Sarah Rosa seemed rather annoyed to have to act as escort to a colleague. Boris didn’t seem to mind.
    “Where are we going?” asked Mila shyly.
    Boris looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Headquarters. Chief Inspector Roche needs to talk to you. He’s going to be giving you your instructions.”
    “I’ve never had anything to do with a serial killer case before,” Mila pointed out.
    “You won’t have to catch anyone,” Rosa replied acidly. “We’ll take care of that. Your only task is to discover the name of the sixth child. I hope you’ve been able to study the file…?”
    Mila ignored the note of smugness in her colleague’s voice as she thought of the sleepless night she had spent on that envelope. The photographs of the buried arms. The sparse medico-legal data about the age of the victims and the chronology of the deaths.
    “What happened in that forest?” she asked.
    “It’s the biggest case for ages!” Boris said, taking his hands off the wheel for a moment, excited as a little boy. “Never seen anything like it. If you ask me, the shit’s about to hit the fan at the top level. That’s why Roche is bricking it.”
    Boris’s vulgar slang annoyed Sarah Rosa, and Mila too, in fact. She had never met the chief inspector but she already knew that his men didn’t hold him in especially high regard. Certainly, Boris was more direct, but if he took these liberties in front of Rosa it meant that she agreed with him, even if she didn’t let on. It’s not going well, Mila thought. She decided to judge Roche and his methods for herself, not be swayed by the comments she might come to hear.
    Rosa repeated a question and only then did Mila notice that she was talking to her.
    “Is that blood yours?”
    Sarah Rosa had turned in her seat and was pointing at a spot at the bottom. Mila looked at her thigh. Her trousers were stained with blood; the scar had opened up. She put a hand on it and hastily came up with an explanation.
    “I fell when I was jogging,” she lied.
    “Well, try and get that wound healed. We don’t want your blood contaminating any of our samples.”
    Mila felt suddenly embarrassed by the rebuke, not least because Boris was staring at her in the mirror. She hoped it would stop there, but Rosa hadn’t finished her lesson.
    “Once, a rookie who was supposed to be keeping an eye on the scene of a sexual homicide went and pissed in the victim’s bathroom. We spent six months chasing a ghost, thinking the murderer had forgotten to flush.”
    Boris laughed at the memory. Mila, though, tried to change the subject. “Why did you call me? Couldn’t you find the girl by just glancing at the list of