The Absolution by Jonathan Holt Read Free Book Online Page A

intuition and instinct have almost no role. For that very reason, many also believe that P can never equal NP – that we’ve effectively reached the limits of what mathematics, and therefore computers, can do for us.
    Daniele Barbo isn’t a well-known figure in the mathematical world – he’s no Perelman or Yau. But his early work on Kullback–Leibler divergence was startlingly original. Perhaps it will take someone whothinks more like a computer than a human being to help computers move one step closer to thinking.
    Then again, that paper of his was published almost twenty years ago, and he’s done nothing of any real note since. It was 357 years before Andrew Wiles found a proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem, and over a hundred before Perelman solved the Poincaré Conjecture. The P=NP problem was only formulated in 1971 – just articulating it earned Steve Cook a Fields Medal. I wouldn’t be placing any bets on Daniele Barbo claiming that Millennium Prize just yet.
    There were fourteen comments, all agreeing with the writer. Holly was tempted to add one as well, before deciding to keep her thoughts to herself. The MIT professor might know about mathematics, but he didn’t know Daniele Barbo.

SEVEN
    â€œ IF WE WAIT until his wife’s made a formal identification, any useful evidence at his office will almost certainly have been whisked away,” Kat said patiently. “A warrant to search the place now is the only way we can be sure of getting whatever’s there.”
    The prosecutor, Flavio Li Fonti, turned to his number two, a lawyer called Melissa Romano. “I imagine you’ll have something to say about that, Avvocatessa?”
    â€œIndeed I do,” she said crisply. “As I understand it, Captain, you have no probable cause that any such evidence exists. It would be a fishing expedition, pure and simple.”
    â€œThe man was a banker, and his death is linked to Freemasonry,” Kat argued. “Given his wounds, it’s highly unlikely to be a domestic dispute. Therefore, searching his office sooner rather than later is just a sensible precaution.”
    They were in Flavio Li Fonti’s office in the Cittadella della Giustizia, the Palace of Justice, one of Venice’s few strikingly modern buildings. Both prosecutors had already been in court and were wearing the formal black robes and white cravats of their profession. Kat and Bagnasco sat opposite them, on the other side of Li Fonti’s desk.
    â€œThere’s no suggestion he was killed at his workplace. It would be more logical to search the nearest Freemason’s lodge,” Li Fonti said, crossing his legs.
    â€œHe’s not listed as a member of the official Venetian lodge.”
    â€œWhich makes the link to Freemasonry even more tenuous,” Melissa Romano interjected. “Your argument defeats itself, Captain.”
    Kat knew from experience that these objections, although couched in a tone that suggested she was wasting her time, actually meant nothing of the kind. Good prosecutors were no pushover, particularly when you were asking for something out of the ordinary. They would test your argument to destruction, and only then make a decision.
    And Flavio Li Fonti was a very good prosecutor. Proof of that could be glimpsed through the open door of his office, where two plain-clothes bodyguards sat in the vestibule, toying with their mobile phones. The long series of trials, lasting over eight years, which had cracked open a major ’Ndrangheta drugs network had been a spectacular success, with convicted mafiosi turning pentito one by one and incriminating others in return for a lighter sentence. But the ’Ndrangheta weren’t the type to forgive and forget. While the pentiti were able to disappear to new lives abroad, the price of Li Fonti’s success was that he now had to be guarded around the clock, never spending more than one night a week in