We planned to have dinner that evening at L'Oca, where we were to meet Valentina and Carmen, who had invited us twice now to visit them in Naples. Valentina said that three men had been shot dead the day before, halfway between the studio and the Cappella Sansevero, not 100 metres from where I had read. The next morning we packed our things and rode with Ralf to Raimondo's bookstore Dante & Descartes, where we could leave our baggage. I briefly considered trying the museum again for the Tadema show, but this was to be the girls' day. And they wanted to see manger figurines and visit the aquarium.

The Via S. Gregorio Armeno has row upon row of shops, every single one with nothing but crèche figurines. As I said, it was Ralf who gave us the angel as a gift. What he probably would have liked best was for us to buy another angel too, one for each girl. Paula and Anna were each allowed to pick out a statuette, and both chose a shepherd with a lamb over his shoulders. Ralf bore the big green box before us on the walk back to the bookstore.

Raimondo had made coffee, and for the adults there were baba cocktails, the children got cocoa and biscuits and the inevitable oranges.

Ralf had stepped outside to smoke. I told Raimondo about our failed attempt to see the Tadema exhibition and said that it was in fact true what the guidebook said: that in Naples everything is put to immediate use, it all happens in the now. Not even the museum, I said, is a place for the past, because there too the present triumphed in the form of a protest by the unemployed, just as Vesuvius would likewise triumph again someday. My final words were mixed in with a shout in the street. I heard it but paid no attention. In Naples, someone is always shouting, and no one was to be seen at the door that opened on to the Via Mezzocannone, either.

Later, we tried to reconstruct what we had actually heard. We had all definitely heard "Stop!" but we couldn't even agree on the name. "Felice," is what I thought I'd made out, but neither Natalia nor Raimondo could recall that.

Natalia was the first to react. "That's Ralf shouting," she said, "it's Ralf." She said it very calmly, as if she didn't want to upset anyone. We got up and went outside.

Ralf came running up the street towards us, waving and shouting that name, Felice, at least that's what I think. He had seen her in a car with three other women, he had recognised her. "And they didn't have any clothes on," he cried. A car was heading down the street, its brake lights flashed, a silver-coloured car, I couldn't tell what make. Ralf hailed a taxi, which drove on to the taxi stand at the upper end of the street, manoeuvred back and forth to turn around, and came back down the street. "Call the police," Ralf said, leapt into the taxi and slammed the door. We could see him leaning over the front seat, gesticulating. The silver car turned left.