To batter the door down. To leave this room. She could see in his dead eyes that she had already been tried and condemned in his mind. This was a formality, that was all. He was seated behind a metal desk in a chilly room, a poster on the wall of Il Duce on the famous balcony of the Venezia Palace as he addressed the crowds of Rome. It was the kind of grey-painted room where a person could lose their soul.