So she took a detour. She told herself she was just going for a walk. It was true that she loved Venice on these winter afternoons, when the bora, the cold north wind, whisked tiny flakes of snow down from the mountains and the air seemed to sparkle as if filled with specks of gold. This was the empty month, the brief low season when the city’s sixty thousand residents were for a short time not hopelessly outnumbered by the six million tourists who filled its narrow pavements the rest of the year, and Kat took full advantage, striding purposefully towards Campo San Zaccaria without even realising at first that was where she was heading. She made her way up to the operations room, expecting to find it empty. She’d spend a couple of hours catching up on paperwork, she decided, writing up her reports from the previous week, so she’d be ready to face the new week unencumbered. To her surprise, there was a woman in Piola’s glassed-off office. As the woman stood up, nervously examining her surroundings, Kat saw she was wearing a low-cut top under her leather jacket.
