Chapter 4
We headed to the crime scene, which had already been delimited by the red and white plastic strips with the words “State Police.” The place was blackened by the fire and wet due to the water used to put it out, but what stroke most was the nauseating smell that we were forced to breathe. The smell of burnt human flesh, which still hovered in the air, was truly unbearable. When I first saw the body, I could barely hold back vomiting. At first glance it looked like a mannequin, bent over itself, leaning against a metal gate that closed a kind of cave, the human form blackened by the flames. There was no trace of the hair and, in some areas, bones could be glimpsed at amid some shredded skin. The shape of the breasts allowed one to see that it was the body of a woman. At the level
