The Immaculate Deception. Iain Pears

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      One morning, a fine May morning in Rome, when the sun was beaming through the clouds of carbon monoxide and dust and giving a soft, fresh feel to the day, Flavia di Stefano sat immobile in a vast traffic jam which began in the Piazza del Popolo and ended somewhere near the Piazza Venezia. Many people, at least those with a different personality to her own, would have been unperturbed by this common occurrence, and would instead have contemplated their surroundings with something approaching patient smugness. Not many, after all, can call on a Mercedes, complete with chauffeur and obligatory tinted windows, to ferry them around town at the taxpayers’ expense. Fewer still at such a young age are the head (if only the acting head) of one of the more reputable departments in the Italian police force, complete with its own budget, personnel and expense accounts.

      And virtually none of the small number of departmental potentates use their splendid forms of transport to go to unspecified meetings, called late the previous evening, at the Palazzo Chigi, the official residence of the Italian prime minister.

      That, of course, was the problem, and the reason behind Flavia’s insensitivity to the early morning sunshine, and her disdain for all living things. For a start, her collar itched monstrously, and was a permanent, nagging reminder of her own inexperience and desire to create the right impression.

      Instead of sitting quietly that morning eating toast and drinking coffee, she had run around showering, choosing clothes and, worst of all, applying copious amounts of make-up. Then having a fit of defiance and taking it all off again, then weakening with nerves and putting it all back on. Worse still, she stood peering out of the window into the little piazza below, anxiously waiting for the car to arrive, checking and re-checking the contents of her handbag. She had nightmare visions of grabbing her coat and running through the streets of Rome to get there. Breaking a heel on a cobblestone. Arriving out of breath, her hair in a mess. Creating entirely the wrong impression. Career destroyed, over in a moment, just because some damn fool driver didn’t turn up. And, what was more, she felt ill; stomach in a turmoil, the rest of her queasy. Bug. Flu, probably. Nervousness. Something like that. It was going to be one of those days. She knew it.

      ‘Flavia. Do stop jiggling about like that. You’re making me nervous.’ Jonathan Argyll, her husband of four weeks’ standing, and boyfriend-cum-flatmate of near ten years, sat at the kitchen table trying to read the newspaper. ‘It’s only the prime minister, you know.’

      Flavia turned round to scowl at him.

      ‘I’m not being facetious,’ he went on calmly as he reached for the marmalade before she could tell him what she thought of his sense of whimsy. ‘You know as well as I do that bad news is always handed out by underlings. Besides, you haven’t done anything wrong recently, have you? Not misplaced a Raphael, dropped a Michelangelo, shot a senator, or anything?’

      Another scowl.

      ‘There you are, then. Nothing to worry about,’ he continued, getting up to give her a quick pat to indicate that he sympathized. ‘Even less now that your car has arrived.’

      He pointed downwards, waved cheerfully at the driver, whom he vaguely recognized, and even more cheerfully at Flavia, as she rushed for her bag and coat.

      ‘Calm. Remember?’ he said as she opened the door.

      ‘I remember.’

      Calm, she repeated to herself thirty minutes later as she looked at her watch one more time. Stuck in a traffic jam, half a mile to go, five minutes late. At least it cut the unaccustomed car sickness. Calm, she thought.

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