The Burial Hour

Chapter 24

Amelia Sachs was downstairs in the lobby of the hotel where they were staying, the Grand Hotel di Napoli.

Quite the place. The design was, she believed it was called, rococo. Gold-and-red wallpaper, flecked velvet, elaborate armoires, glass-fronted, filled with ceramics and silver and gold and ivory artifacts like ink wells, fans and key fobs. On the walls were paintings of Vesuvius — some depicting eruptions and some not. The artist might have applied brush to canvas on this very spot; looking east and south, one could see the sullen, dusky-brown pyramid. It seemed gentle, not the least imposing or ominous — but then, Sachs reflected, wasn’t that the case with many killers?

Also on the walls of the Grand Hotel were photos of the famous, presumably guests or diners: Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, Faye Dunaway, Jimmy Carter, Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Harrison Ford, Madonna, Johnny Depp, and dozens of others, actors, musicians and politicians. Sachs recognized perhaps half of them.

‘Breakfast, Signorina?’ The clerk behind the desk was smiling.

‘No, grazie.’ She was still on US time, which meant her body was clocking in about 2 a.m. Besides, she’d stuck her head into the breakfast room, to get a glass of orange juice, and been overwhelmed by the spread. There was enough food for an entire day’s calories. She wouldn’t know where to begin.

At exactly nine, Ercole Benelli pulled up in front of the hotel. Via Partenope was largely pedestrian but no one stopped the lanky man, dressed in his gray uniform, even if his vehicle was the well-worn baby-blue Mégane, missing any insignia, except for a bumper sticker with a silhouette of a bird on it. Curious.

She stepped outside into the heat and was rewarded with a spectacular view of the bay and, directly in front of the hotel, a castle, no less.

Ercole started to get out, keys in hand, but she waved him back into the driver’s seat, and a look of relief spread over his face. No need for Formula One driving today.

She was amused to see a tube of Dramamine sitting in the cup holder. It had not been there yesterday.

Sachs took off her black jacket, revealing a beige blouse, tucked into black jeans, and dropped the Beretta into her shoulder bag, which she set on the floor.

They belted in. Ercole signaled — though his was the only car on the road — and steered into the crowded, chaotic streets of Naples.

‘The hotel, she is nice?’

‘Yes, very.’

‘It is quite famous. You saw the people who have stayed there?’

‘Yes. It’s a landmark, I assume. Nineteenth century?’

‘Oh, no, no. There are certainly old buildings here — as you and I know from the ruins where Ali Maziq was held. But many of the wood and stone structures on the surface were destroyed.’

‘The war?’

‘Yes, yes. Naples was the most bombed Italian city in World War Two. Maybe in all of Europe. I do not know that. More than two hundred air strikes. You understand, one thing I am worried about: You know I do not expect you to be my translator.’

‘That was a bit odd.’

‘Yes, yes. I know the area well. I know the countryside outside of Naples like my hand’s back. And I know there are no Arab-speaking communities there. But, you see, I think this is an important possibility of a lead.’

‘Lincoln and I do too.’

‘But I am not up to the task. I don’t know the questions to ask and the places to look. But you do. This is your specialty. And so I needed you.’

‘You played Spiro.’

‘Played?’

‘Tricked.’

His long face tightened. ‘I suppose I did. Someone, another officer, told me Spiro needs to be flattered and his opinions, however wrong, must be respected. That is what I did. Or I tried to do. I am not used to such games.’

‘It worked out. Thank you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Just as well. I only know a few Arabic phrases — like the one I answered Dante with. And then: “Can I see some ID?” and “Drop the weapon, hands in the air.”’

‘Let us hope we don’t need the last one of those.’

They drove for ten minutes in silence. The landscape grew from densely urban to a mix of factories and warehouses and residences, then finally to farmland and small villages dusty and dull in the hazy autumn sun. Ercole piloted the car with great care. Sachs was making every effort to avoid even the appearance of impatience. The Mégane hovered just under the limit of ninety kph, about sixty mph. They were regularly being passed by cars — and even trucks — going much faster. One driver — in a Mini Cooper — seemed to be going twice their speed.

They passed a sprawling farm, which, for some reason, took Ercole’s attention.

‘Ah, look there. I will have to come back to that place.’

She glanced to the left, where he was gesturing — with both hands. She’d noted that this seemed to be an Italian habit. However fast the ride, however congested the roads, drivers seemed unable to grip the wheel with both hands — sometimes not even with one — when having a conversation.

Sachs studied the farm. Pigs, she noted, were the most populous animals in the spread he was indicating, a rambling two-acres of low buildings and a lot of mud. A powerful, disgusting smell swept into the car.

She noted Ercole was genuinely troubled.

‘Part of my job is to monitor the condition of farm animals. And from a rapid glance it appears to me that those swine are kept in poor quarters.’

To Sachs, they were pigs in mud.

‘The farmer will have to improve their situation. Proper drainage and sewage. Healthy for the people, of course, and better for the animals. They have souls too. I firmly believe this.’

They drove through the town of D’Abruzzo — Ercole explained that this was not to be confused with Abruzzo, a region of Italy east of Rome. She wasn’t sure why he thought she’d make the mistake but thanked him anyway. They then continued into the rolling farmland and fallow ground where the Postal Police had reported that Ali Maziq’s phone had been used.

Sachs had a map, on which was a large circled area, encompassing six small towns or clusters of stores, cafés, restaurants and bars where Maziq and his colleague might have met. She held it up for him. He nodded and pointed out one. ‘We’re closest to there. In twenty minutes.’

They drove along the two-lane road. Ercole spoke about any topics that came to mind: His pigeons, which he kept for no reason other than that he liked the cooing sound they made and the thrill of racing them. (Ah, the bumper sticker now made sense.) His modest apartment in a pleasant part of Naples, his family — two siblings, older brother and younger, both of whom were married — and his nephews, in particular. He talked reverently about his mother and father; they’d both passed away.

‘Allora, may I ask? You and Capitano Rhyme, you will be married soon?’

‘Yes.’

‘That is nice. When, do you think?’

‘It was going to be within the next couple of weeks. Until the Composer. That delayed things.’

Sachs told Ercole that Rhyme had been talking about Greenland for their honeymoon.

‘That is true? Odd. I have seen pictures of the place. It is somewhat barren. I would recommend Italy. We have Cinque Terre, Positano — not so very far from here. Florence. Piemonte, Lago di Como. Courmayeur is where I would be married. It is where Monte Bianco is located, near the border, north. Ah, so beautiful.’

‘Are you seeing anyone?’

She had observed the admiring looks he’d shot toward Daniela Canton, and she wondered if they’d known each other before the Composer case. She seemed smart, if a bit serious; she certainly was gorgeous.

‘No, no, not at the moment. It is one regret. That my mother did not see me married.’

‘You’re young.’

He shrugged. ‘I have other interests at the moment.’

Ercole then launched into a discussion of his career and his desire to get into the Police of State or, even better, the Carabinieri. She asked the difference, and it seemed the latter was a military police organization, though it had jurisdiction over civil crimes, as well. Then there was the Financial Police, which covered crimes involving immigration as well as financial irregularities. This didn’t appeal to him. He wanted to be a street cop, an investigator.

‘Like you,’ he said, blushing and smiling.

It was clear that he saw the Composer case as an entry into that world.

He asked her too about policing in New York City, and she told him about her career — from fashion model to NYPD. And about her father, a beat patrol officer all his life.

‘Ah, like father like daughter!’ Ercole’s eyes shone.

‘Yes.’

Soon they came to the first village on the list and began canvassing. It was a slow process. They would go into a restaurant or bar, approach the server or owner and Ercole would flash a picture of Maziq and ask if they had seen him on Wednesday night. The first time this happened, a lengthy and intense conversation ensued. Sachs took this as a good sign, thinking that the person he was speaking to had provided a lead.

As they returned to the car, she asked, ‘So he saw Maziq?’

‘Who, the waiter? No, no, no.’

‘What were you talking about?’

‘The government is desiring to build a new road nearby and that will improve business. He was saying that sales have been down lately. Even with the depressed price of gasoline, people don’t seem to be taking trips out into the countryside because the old road can get washed out, even in a small rainstorm. And—’

‘Ercole, we really should move along.’

He closed his eyes briefly and nodded. ‘Oh. Yes, of course.’ Then he smiled. ‘In Italy, we enjoy our conversations.’

Over the next two hours they hit eighteen establishments. The results were negative.

Just after noon they finished interviewing people in one small town and marked it off the list. Ercole looked at his watch. ‘I would say, we will have lunch.’

She looked around the small intersection. ‘I could use a sandwich, sure.’

‘Un panino, sì. Possibly.’

‘Where can we get one to go? Coffee too.’

‘To go?’

‘To take with us.’

He seemed confused. ‘We... Well, we do not do that in Italy. Not in Campania, at least. No, nowhere that I know of in Italy. We will sit down. It won’t take long.’ He nodded to a restaurant whose owner they had just interviewed. ‘That is good?’

‘Looks fine to me.’

They sat outside at a table covered by a vinyl sheet that depicted miniature Eiffel Towers, though French food did not appear on the menu.

‘We should start with mozzarella. That’s what Naples is known for — pizza, too. We invented it. Whatever they say in Brooklyn.’

She blinked. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘An article I read. A restaurant in Brooklyn in New York claimed to have created pizza.’

‘Where I live.’

‘No!’ He was delighted to learn this. ‘Well, I bring no offense.’

‘None taken.’

He ordered for them. Yes, fresh mozzarella to start and then pasta with ragù. He had a glass of red wine and she got an Americano coffee, which the waitress thought curious — apparently it was a beverage intended for after the meal.

Before the cheese, though, an antipasto plate, which they hadn’t ordered, appeared, meats sliced microscopically thin and sausages. Bread too. And the drinks.

She ate a bite of the meat, then more. Salty and explosive with flavor. A moment later the mozzarella cheese came — not slices but a ball the size of a navel orange. One for each of them. She stared. ‘You eat it all?’

Ercole, already halfway through his, laughed at the nonsensical question. She ate some — it was the best she’d ever had, and she said so — and then pushed the plate away.

‘You don’t care for it, after all?’

‘Ercole, it’s too much. I usually have coffee and a half bagel for lunch.’

‘To go.’ He shook his head, winking. ‘That is unhealthy for you.’ His eyes glowed. ‘Ah, here, the pasta.’ Two plates arrived. ‘This is ziti, which we’re famous for in Campania. It is made from our hard flour, but the very finely milled variety, semolina rimacinata. Topped with local ragù. The pasta is broken by hand before cooking. The gnocchi here would be good too — it’s how we get around our Campanian disdain for potatoes — but that’s a heavy dish for lunch.’

‘You must cook,’ Sachs said.

‘Me?’ He seemed amused. ‘No, no, no. But everyone in Campania knows food. You just... you just do.’

The sauce was rich and dense and dressed with just a bit of meat cooked down to tenderness. And there wasn’t too much; it didn’t overwhelm the pasta, which had a richness and flavor of its own.

They ate in silence for a few moments.

Sachs asked, ‘What else do you do in... what’s your organization called?’

‘In English you would say Corps of Forestry of the State. CFS. We do many things. There are thousands of us officers. Fight forest fires — though I myself do not do that. We have a large fleet of aircraft. Helicopters, too, for rescues of climbers and skiers. Agricultural product regulation. Italy takes its food and wine very seriously. You know truffles?’

‘The chocolates, sure.’

A pause, as he processed her response. ‘Ah, no, no, no. Truffles, fungi. Mushrooms.’

‘Oh, right, the ones pigs hunt for.’

‘Dogs are better. There’s a special breed that’s used. They are very expensive and prized for their fine noses. I’ve run several cases of Lagotti Romagnolo kidnappings by truffle hunters.’

‘Must be tough. I mean, without a paw print database.’

He laughed. ‘They say humor does not cross borders but that is quite funny. And, as a serious matter, it’s a shame there is no such thing. Some owners put chips in their dogs, microchips, though I’ve heard that’s not always safe.’

He proceeded to explain about how white truffles from the north of Italy and black from central and south were extremely valuable, though the former more so. A single truffle could be worth a thousand euros.

He continued to tell her a story about his search for a local truffle counterfeiter, passing off Chinese varieties for Italian. ‘A travesty!’ The Composer case had derailed his hunt. A grimace. ‘The furfante... the villain escaped. Six months of work gone.’ He scowled and finished his wine in a single gulp.

He received a text, read it, then replied.

Sachs lifted an eyebrow.

‘Ah, not about the case. My friend. The pigeons I mentioned, he and I race them together. There is a race soon. Do you know anything about birds, Detective Sachs?’

‘Amelia.’

The only ones she had experience with were the generations of peregrine falcons that had nested outside Lincoln Rhyme’s Central Park West town house. They were beautiful, striking and perhaps the most efficient and ruthless predator, pound for pound, in the world.

And their favorite meal was the fat, oblivious pigeons of New York City.

She said, ‘No, Ercole. Not a thing.’

‘I have Racing Homers. Mine compete at fifty to a hundred kilometers.’ A nod to the phone. ‘My friend and I have a team. It can be quite exciting. Very competitive. Some people complain that the pigeons are at risk. There are hawks, bad weather, man-made obstacles. But I would rather be a pigeon on a mission than one that sits all day on a statue of Garibaldi.’

She chuckled. ‘That’d be my choice too.’

Pigeon on a mission...

They’d taken a long-enough break. Sachs called for the check. He absolutely refused to let her pay.

They resumed their own mission.

And, curiously, the delay for lunch — the delicious lunch — paid off.

At the next town, they stopped at a restaurant in which the server had just come on duty; had they not taken their meal in the previous town they would have missed her. The waitress in Ristorante San Giancarlo was a slim blonde, with her grandmother’s flip hairstyle and very up-to-date tats. She looked at the picture Sachs proffered of Ali Maziq and she nodded. Ercole translated: ‘The man in the picture was dining with a man who was Italian, though not from Campania, she believes. She herself is Serbian so she couldn’t place the accent but it was not like the people in this region talk.’

‘Did she know him? Had she seen him before?’

‘No,’ she said to Sachs, and spoke some more in Italian.

Ercole explained, telling Sachs that Maziq seemed uncomfortable the whole meal, looking around. The men spoke English but would fall silent when she approached. Maziq’s companion — she didn’t think they were friends — was ‘not so very nice.’ The big man, with a dark complexion and thick dark hair, complained that his soup was cold. Which it was not. And said the bill was wrong. Which it was not. His dark suit was dusty and he smoked foul cigarettes, not caring who was offended.

‘They paid with a credit card?’ Sachs asked, hoping.

‘No,’ the waitress responded. ‘Euros. And they gave no tip, of course.’ A sour pout.

Sachs asked how they had arrived but the server wasn’t sure. They had just walked in, from up the road.

Sachs inquired, ‘Did anyone seem to be interested in them? Anyone in a black car?’

She understood the English. ‘Da! I mean to say, yes.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Fascinated that you would be speaking of that.’

She returned to Italian.

Ercole said, ‘Halfway through the meal a large black or dark-blue car drove by and slowed suddenly, as if the driver took an interest in the restaurant. She was thinking that she might be having rich tourists as customers. But no. He drove on.’

‘The driver might have seen them?’

‘Yes,’ the waitress said. ‘Possible. The two men I am been talking about, they were outside. That tavola, table, there.’

Sachs looked up and down the quiet street. On the other side of the road was a tree-filled lot and, behind that, farmland. ‘You said they fell silent but did you hear them say anything?’

After a conversation with the waitress, Ercole explained, ‘She did hear them mention Trenitalia — the national train service. She believed the Italian said “you,” meaning Maziq would have a six-hour trip and Maziq seemed discouraged by that. Six hours — that means he would be going north.’ He smiled. ‘We are not such a big country. They could almost be at the northern border in that time.’

The woman had nothing more to add and seemed disappointed that they didn’t want a second lunch. The tortellini was the best in southern Italy, she promised.

So, the Composer was cruising the streets looking for a likely target — an immigrant, possibly. And he had seen Maziq. What then? She scanned the hazy street, dead quiet. And then gestured for Ercole to follow her. They crossed the road and ducked through the stand of trees and bushes bordering the empty lot opposite the restaurant.

She pointed. They were looking at the tire treads of a car with a large wheelbase. The markings seemed similar to those of the Michelins from the bus-stop kidnapping. The vehicle had pulled into the back of the vacant lot and parked. The ground here was sparse grass and dank earth, and it was easy to see where the driver had gotten out and walked to the passenger’s side — which faced the line of trees and bushes and, beyond, the very table where Maziq and his unpleasant companion had sat. It appeared that the Composer had opened the passenger’s door and sat, facing outward, toward the diners, the door open.

‘He liked the looks of his prey,’ Ercole said. ‘He sat here and spied on Maziq.’

‘So it seems,’ she said, walking up to the trees, through which she could see the tortellini restaurant clearly.

She pulled on latex gloves and told Ercole to do the same, which he did. She handed him rubber bands but he shook his head and produced a handful from his pocket. She smiled at his foresight.

‘Take pictures of the impressions — shoes and tread marks.’

He did so, shooting from a number of different angles.

‘Beatrice Renza? Is she good?’

‘As a forensic officer? I never met her until the other day. Again, I am new to the Police of State. But Beatrice seems good, yes. Though she is aloof. And... Is it a word: attitudinal?’

‘Yep.’

‘Not like Daniela,’ Ercole said wistfully.

‘You think photos will be enough for her to type the tread marks, or should we call a forensic team in?’

‘I think the photos will do for her. She will browbeat them into submission.’

Sachs laughed. ‘And scoop up samples of the dirt where he stood and sat.’

‘Yes, I will.’

She handed him some empty bags. But he had already produced some of his own from his uniform pocket.

She squinted back toward the restaurant. ‘And something else?’

‘What, Detective? Amelia.’

She said, ‘You’re a Forestry officer. Do you by any chance have a saw in the trunk of your car?’

‘As a matter of fact, I have three.’

Chapter 25

‘Cos’è quello?’ Dante Spiro muttered.

Rhyme could translate that one for himself. In fact, he was wondering the same thing.

Ercole, who was carting in the — presumably — item of evidence, answered, ‘It’s St John’s bread. You might know it as a carob tree. Ceratonia siliqua.’ The object was foliage, about five feet tall, four branches joined to a single trunk. It had been sawn off at the base.

In gloved hands Ercole also carried a large plastic bag containing smaller bags, filled with dirt and grass.

They were in the situation room once more. Sachs accompanied Ercole. Massimo Rossi and earnest, unsmiling forensic officer Beatrice Renza were present too. Though it was an odd piece of evidence, the woman regarded the large foliage with the same clinical detachment as she might a bullet casing or latent friction ridge lift.

Rhyme noted that Sachs’s hands were glove-free — in keeping with her limited role as translator. Or the appearance of her limited role.

Ercole continued enthusiastically, ‘It is quite an interesting plant. Of course, the beans are used to make carob powder, like chocolate. The name “carob,” I find most interesting, is the source for the word “carat,” as per the measuring unit for diamonds.’

‘Forestry Officer, I do not care about its esteemed place in the pantheon of plants,’ Spiro growled. ‘Could you be more responsive to my question?’ He slipped into his pocket the slim book he’d been jotting notes in, the book he was never without.

Ercole regarded the book with concern once again, it seemed, and answered quickly, ‘I found a place where the Composer was spying on Ali Maziq and the man he had dinner with.’

‘You found him, this Arabic speaker?’ Spiro asked.

‘No. But I learned he’s Italian, though most likely not Campanian,’ Ercole continued, with a glance toward Beatrice. ‘The pictures I uploaded?’

The forensic officer answered, ‘I will say that the shoe prints were not dissimilar to those left by the kidnapper in New York and at the bus stop where Maziq was kidnapped. Converse Cons, most likely. And the tire treads too are indicative of the same model as at the bus stop. The Michelins.’

Spoken like a true criminalist, though under these circumstances Rhyme would not have objected to a bolder conclusion, like: Sì, it was his shoes and his car.

Rossi asked the location of the restaurant exactly and Ercole answered. Rossi walked to a map and marked it. He said, ‘There are not bus routes there. So, following dinner, the colleague, or someone else, would have driven Maziq to the bus stop. The Composer followed.’

Ercole explained that the vehicle had driven past the restaurant and slowed, probably as he saw Maziq and his colleague dining outside. He then drove around the corner, parked and spied on them. ‘I took samples of the dirt and grass from where he stood and sat.’ He nodded down at the bags and handed them to Beatrice, who took them in her gloved hands.

They had a brief conversation in Italian, a small argument clearly, which ended with Beatrice shaking her head and Ercole grimacing. She stepped into the lab.

Speaking through the branches, his face only partly visible, Ercole continued, ‘And from the footprints, it seems that he walked to the bushes to get a good look at the restaurant. I am hoping he pushed them aside to see Maziq.’

Rossi pulled out his phone. ‘I will call an officer guarding Ali Maziq. We perhaps can find if what you learned helps out his memory.’ He placed the call and, head down, had a conversation.

Gesturing to the large, bushy branch Ercole held in front of him, Spiro said, ‘Do something with that, Forestry Officer. It is as if I am speaking to a tree.’

‘Of course, Procuratore.’ He took them into the lab and returned with some notes that, he explained, Beatrice had given him. Apparently concerned that his handwriting was not in vogue, here in the Questura, Ercole dictated; Sachs wrote.

Rossi disconnected his call and looked over the chart. His face bore a wry smile. ‘No, Signor Maziq still remembers nothing of the day or so before the kidnapping. Or claims he doesn’t. But I think perhaps it is less due to the Composer’s drugs and the suffocation than to a typical criminal’s amnesia.’

‘How’s that?’ Rhyme asked.

‘As I mentioned, leaving a refugee camp briefly is not considered a serious offense. But leaving the country of first landfall is. And that’s what Maziq was trying to do, it appears.’

Spiro added, ‘Yes, now, the phone calls on Maziq’s mobile to and from Bolzano make sense. That is in the South Tyrol — very far north in Italy, close to the Austrian border. And about six hours on Trenitalia from here. It would be a good way station for an immigrant desiring to slip out of Italy and into northern European cities, where there are better opportunities for refugees than Italy. This man he dined with? Another human smuggler arranging to spirit Maziq out of the country, north. For a substantial fee, of course. This is a serious crime and, accordingly, he remembers nothing of it.’

Rhyme noted Ercole’s face brighten as he glanced toward the doorway. The blond Flying Squad officer Daniela Canton walked briskly into the room, her posture perfect.

‘Officer,’ Spiro said.

She spoke to those assembled in Italian and Ercole translated for the Americans. ‘She and Giacomo have canvassed for witnesses and looked for CCTVs around the site of the kidnapping, Viale Margherita. They found nothing. One person thinks he saw a black car late at night but nothing else about it. And the tabaccaio where the Composer purchased the Nokia — the one to alert him that the aqueduct facility had been breached? No camera and the clerks have no memory of who it might have been.’

Daniela left the room, Ercole’s gaze following like a puppy, and then he turned back.

Sachs said, ‘So, the Composer is driving around the countryside, looking for a potential target. He sees Maziq and decides to kidnap him. But why, though? Why him?’

‘I have a thought,’ Ercole said, speaking hesitantly.

Rossi asked, ‘And what might that be?’

A glance at Spiro. ‘It takes into account your interest in patterns, Procuratore.’

‘How?’ the prosecutor muttered.

‘We’ve found the drugs, the evidence of electroconvulsive treatment. We know the Composer’s psychotic. Schizophrenia is one of the common forms of psychosis. These patients truly believe they are doing good — sometimes the work of God or alien beings or mythological figures. Now, on the surface, Maziq and Robert Ellis are very different. A refugee in Italy and a businessman in New York. But the Composer might have become convinced that they are reincarnations of some evil figures.’

Spiro asked, ‘Mussolini? Billy the Kid? Hitler?’

‘Yes, yes, just so. He is justified in killing them to rid the world of their evil. Or to get revenge on behalf of a deity or spirit.’

‘And the music? The video?’

‘Perhaps so other demons or villains will see. And flee back to hell.’

‘If they have good Internet servers,’ Spiro muttered. ‘You must have much free time in Forestry, Ercole, to study such subjects.’

He blushed and responded, ‘Procuratore, this particular fact about criminal psychosis I learned last night. Doing some, come si dice?’ A frown. ‘Doing homework.’

‘Mythological figures enlisting the Composer to rid the world of evil.’ Spiro frowned, gazing at the newsprint sheet. ‘I think we have not yet stumbled upon a pattern that satisfies me.’ He regarded his elaborate watch. ‘I have a call to Rome I must make.’

Without another word he turned and left the situation room, pulling a cheroot from his pocket.

Rhyme’s phone hummed with a text. He assumed it was Thom, who had taken a few hours off and was seeing the sights in Naples. But he saw immediately that he was wrong. The text was lengthy and, after reading it, he nodded to Sachs. She took the phone and frowned.

‘What do you think of this, Rhyme?’

‘What do I think?’ He scowled. ‘I think: Why the hell now?’

Chapter 26

Greeting Lincoln Rhyme proved troublesome for some people.

Such as Charlotte McKenzie.

Should you offer a hand and risk embarrassing a ‘patient’ unable to reciprocate? Should you not, and embarrass anyway by suggesting you don’t want to touch a person who’s different?

Rhyme could not have cared less, so he had no reaction when, after an awkward glance at the chair, the woman simply nodded and said with a stilted smile that they should keep their distance; she had a cold.

This was a common excuse.

Rhyme, Sachs and Thom were meeting with McKenzie in the US consulate, a white, functional five-story shoe box of a building, near Naples Bay. They’d showed their passports to the US Marines downstairs and been ushered up to the top floor.

‘Mr Rhyme,’ the woman said. ‘Captain?’

‘Lincoln.’

‘Yes. Lincoln.’ McKenzie was about fifty-five, with a doughy, grandmotherly face, powdered but otherwise largely makeup-free. Her light hair was short, in the style he believed favored by some famous British actress whose name he could not recall.

McKenzie opened a file folder. ‘Thank you so much for seeing me. Let me explain. I’m a legal liaison officer with the State Department. We work with citizens who’ve run into legal problems in foreign countries. I’m based in Rome but a situation’s come up in Naples and I flew down here to look into it. I’m hoping you might be able to help.’

‘How did you know we were here?’ Sachs asked.

‘That case, the serial killer? An FBI update went to the embassy and all the consular offices. What’s his name, the killer?’ she asked.

‘We don’t know. We’re calling him the Composer.’

She offered a concerned furrow of brow. ‘That’s right. Bizarre. Kidnapping and that music video. But you saved the victim yesterday, I read. Is he all right?’

‘Yes,’ Rhyme said quickly, preempting Sachs and Thom, who might be inclined to explain further.

‘How’s it working out with the Police of State? Or is it Carabinieri?’

‘Police of State. Working well enough.’ Rhyme fell silent and only the lack of a timepiece prevented him from glancing at a wristwatch. He had to convey impatience by a studied lack of interest. But this he was very good at.

McKenzie may have noticed. She got to it. ‘Well, I’m sure you’re pressed. So thanks for coming in. Your reputation is significant, Lincoln. You’re maybe the best forensic officer in the US.’

US only? he thought, unreasonably offended. He said nothing but offered a cool smile.

She said, ‘Here’s our problem. An American student attending Federico the Second, the University of Naples, has been arrested for sexual assault. His name’s Garry Soames. He and the victim — she’s known in the police reports as Frieda S. — were at a party here in town. She’s a first-term student from Amsterdam. At some point she passed out and was assaulted.’ McKenzie looked up, to the doorway. ‘Ah, here. Elena will be able to tell us more.’

Two others entered the office. The first was a woman in her forties, of athletic build, her hair pinned into a bun, taut, though errant strands escaped. She wore glasses with complex metal-and-tortoiseshell frames, the sort you’d see in upscale fashion mags. (He thought of Beatrice Renza’s eyewear.) Her outfit was a charcoal-gray pin-striped suit with a dark-blue blouse, open at the neck. Beside her was a short, slim man, in a conservative suit, also gray, though lighter. He had thinning blondish hair. He might have been thirty or fifty. His skin was so pale Rhyme thought at first he was a person with albinism, though, no, it seemed that he just didn’t get outside very much.

‘This is Elena Cinelli,’ McKenzie said.

In slightly accented English the woman said, ‘I’m an Italian attorney. I specialize in defending foreigners who’ve been accused of crimes here. Charlotte contacted me about Garry’s situation. His family has retained me.’

The pale man said, ‘Captain Rhyme, Detective Sachs. I’m Daryl Mulbry. I’m with the community and public relations office here at the consulate.’ The inflected tones situated his roots somewhere in the Carolinas, or possibly Tennessee. Seeing that Rhyme’s right arm functioned, Mulbry extended his hand and they shook. (Rhyme now tempered his criticism of Charlotte McKenzie, who was dabbing her nose and then fighting down a sneeze; apparently she did have a reason for not shaking anyone’s hand — gimps included.)

Mulbry greeted Thom too. And he lifted an eyebrow to McKenzie — apparently at her win on getting Rhyme into the office, undoubtedly to pitch a request his way.

We’ll see about that.

‘Please,’ McKenzie said, gesturing to a coffee table. Rhyme wheeled close and everyone else sat around it. ‘I was just filling in our visitors about the arrest. You can explain, Signorina Cinelli, better than I could.’

Cinelli reiterated some of what McKenzie had said, then: ‘Garry and the victim were drinking quite a bit and becoming romantic and — to seek privacy — went upstairs to the roof. The victim says she remembers going up there but soon passed out. The next thing she recalls, it is waking hours later on the roof of an adjoining building, having been sexually assaulted. Garry admits they were up there but when Frieda grew tired he left her and returned downstairs. There were, from time to time, others on the roof — at a place where people were smoking — but the adjoining roof, where the attack occurred, is not visible from there. No one saw or heard the actual attack.’

Sachs asked, ‘Why was Garry implicated?’

‘The police received an anonymous call that he seemed to have mixed something into the victim’s wineglass. We haven’t been able to find out who this person is. On the basis of that call, the police searched his flat and found traces of a date-rape drug. Like roofie?’

‘I’m familiar,’ Rhyme said.

‘And a blood test after the attack revealed that Frieda S. had the same drug in her bloodstream.’

‘The same drug? Molecularly identical? Or similar?’

‘Yes, an important question, Signor Rhyme. But we don’t know yet. The samples from his bedroom and in the victim’s blood went to the main crime scene facility in Rome for full analysis.’

‘When will the results be back?’

‘It might be weeks. Maybe longer.’

Rhyme asked, ‘In Garry’s bedroom? You said the police found trace. Was it pills?’

‘No. The apartment was searched carefully. Just residue.’ The lawyer added, ‘And on the jacket from the party were traces of the victim’s hair and DNA.’

‘They were making out,’ Charlotte McKenzie said. ‘Of course those were there. The date-rape drug, though, well, that’s problematic.’

Cinelli continued, ‘Then there was DNA found vaginally. Not Garry’s DNA, though. Frieda had been with other men recently, she admitted. That might be the source. Her other partners will be tested too.’

‘DNA tests of the others at the party?’

‘In progress.’ A pause, then she added, ‘I will say I have talked to a number of people — friends and fellow students of his. They report that Garry fancies himself quite the lover. He has apparently been with dozens of women — and he has been in Italy only a few months. He has no history of being, you might say, coercive. Or using date-rape drugs. But he has rather a large appetite sexually. And has bragged about his conquests. And there have been incidents where he was, let us say kindly, irritated when a woman rejected him.’

‘Irrelevant,’ Sachs said.

‘No, I’m afraid it is not. Our trials, in Italy, are not as limited as in the US. Questions about character and prior behavior — whether or not criminal — are admissible and can, sometimes, be the pivotal factor in deciding innocence or guilt.’

‘Did they know each other before this?’ Sachs asked. ‘Frieda and Garry.’

‘No. And she knew few others at the party. Only the host and hostess, Dev and Natalia.’

‘Would anyone have a motive to implicate him?’

‘He said there was a woman who grew furious when he reneged on an offer to take her to America. A Valentina Morelli. She is from near Florence. She has not returned my calls. The police seem uninterested in her as a suspect.’

‘Where is the investigation now?’ Rhyme asked.

‘Just beginning. And it will take a long time. Trials in Italy can last for years.’

It was the community liaison officer, Daryl Mulbry, who said, ‘The press are all over this. I’m getting requests for interviews every hour. And newspapers have already convicted him.’ A glance toward McKenzie. He said, ‘We want to push back with positive publicity, if you can find anything that even hints someone else was the attacker.’

Rhyme had wondered what a PR officer was doing here. He supposed the court of public opinion was as universal as DNA and fingerprints. The first person to be hired by a rich criminal in the United States, after his lawyer, was a good spin doctor.

Sachs asked, ‘What’s your opinion, Ms Cinelli? You’ve talked to him. Is he innocent?’

‘It is my opinion that he has exercised bad judgment in the past, living a life too lascivious and bragging about it. And he can have the arrogance of someone with charm and good looks. But I do believe he is innocent of this crime. Garry does not seem like a cruel boy. And someone who would knock out a woman and have relations with her is indisputably cruel.’

‘What do you want from us, specifically?’ Rhyme asked.

McKenzie looked at Cinelli, who said, ‘A review of the evidence that has been gathered — the report, I mean. You cannot have access to the evidence itself. And, if possible, you might search the scenes again, to the extent you can. All we need is something to point to another suspect. Not a name necessarily, just the possibility that someone other than Garry committed the crime. To introduce reasonable doubt.’

Mulbry said, ‘I’ll get the buzz going in the media, and that might help get him released, pending trial.’

McKenzie added, ‘The jail he is being held in is not a bad one. On the whole Italian prisons are rather decent. But he’s charged with rape. Fellow prisoners despise those suspects nearly as much as child molesters. The Penitentiary Police are watching him but there have already been threats. A magistrate has the power to release him until trial, if he surrenders his passport, of course. Or to place him under house arrest. Or, frankly, if the evidence against him proves irrefutable, to allow him to plead guilty and work an arrangement for safe incarceration, so he may begin his sentence.’

Sachs and Rhyme regarded each other.

Why now...?

He glanced into the lawyer’s open briefcase and saw an Italian newspaper. He didn’t need a translation of the headline to get the gist:

Below that was a picture of an extremely handsome collegiate-looking blond man, flanked by police. A Midwestern frat boy. His face was an eerie mix of frightened and bewildered... and cocky.

Rhyme nodded. ‘All right. We’ll do what we can. But our investigation for the serial kidnapper here takes priority.’

‘Yes, certainly,’ McKenzie said. Her face blossomed with gratitude.

‘Grazie, thank you.’ From Cinelli.

Daryl Mulbry said, ‘About those interviews. Would you—?’

‘No,’ Rhyme muttered.

Elena Cinelli nodded and offered, ‘I would recommend against publicly mentioning that Captain Rhyme and Detective Sachs are involved.’ To Rhyme, ‘You must be very discreet. For your own sake. The prosecutor handling the case against Garry is a brilliant man, that’s not disputed, but he can be difficult and vindictive and he is cold as ice.’

Sachs tossed a glance toward Rhyme, who asked the lawyer, ‘Is his name, by any chance, Dante Spiro?’

‘Santo Cielo! How did you know?’

Chapter 27

When will it end? she thought.

And nearly smiled at the absurdity of that question.

It will never end.

This world, her world, was like that abstraction from mathematics class at boarding school so many years, so many lives ago: a Möbius strip, endless.

Rania Tasso, in a long gray skirt and high-necked long-sleeve blouse, strode to the front of the Capodichino Reception Center. At the moment buses, three of them, sat packed with men, women, children whose faces were dark — both of color and with uncertainty and fear.

Some of those visages were taut with sorrow, too. The weather in the Mediterranean had not been bad in the past week but the boats they had sailed on, from Tunisia and Libya, from Egypt and Morocco, much farther away, had been pathetically inadequate. Ancient inflatables, rickety wooden vessels, rafts meant for river transit. Often the ‘captain’ was less competent than a cabdriver.

A number of these unfortunates had lost someone on the harrowing trip. Family, children, parents... and friends too, friends they had made on the journey. Someone in her employ at the camp (she couldn’t recall who; people tended not to stay long in the business of asylum-seeking) had said the immigrants were like soldiers: people thrown together by impossible circumstance, struggling to complete their mission and often losing, in an instant, comrades to whom they’d become vitally attached.

Rania, the director of the Capodichino Reception Center, was giving orders, endlessly. Because the work to be done here was endless. She marshaled all her troops: the paid Ministero dell’Interno employees, the volunteers, the police, the soldiers, the UN folks and the infrastructure workers, being firm, though patient and polite (except perhaps with the insufferable celebrities who had a habit of jetting in from London or Cape Town for a photo opportunity, bragging to the press about their donation, then jetting off to Antibes or Dubai, for dinner).

Rania walked around a massive pile of life preservers, orange and faded-orange, piled like a huge, squat traffic cone, and ordered several volunteers to board the buses to dispense bottled water. The month of September had not proved to be a respite from the heat.

She surveyed the incoming stream of unfortunates.

A sigh.

The camp had been intended for twelve hundred. It was now home to nearly three thousand. Despite the attempts to slow immigration from North Africa — primarily Libya — the poor folks kept coming, fleeing rape and poverty and crime and the mad ideology of ISIS and other extremists. You could talk about turning them back, you could talk about setting up camps and protective zones in their origin countries. But those solutions were absurd. They would never happen.

No, these people had to escape from the Land of No Hope, as one refugee had referred to his home. Conditions were so dire that nothing would stop them fleeing to beleaguered settlements like hers. This year alone nearly seventy thousand asylum-seekers had landed on Italian soil.

A voice intruded on her troubled thoughts.

‘There is something I would like to do. Please.’

Rania turned to the woman, who had spoken in Arabic. The director scanned the pretty face, the deep-brown eyes, the faint hint of makeup on the light-mocha skin. The name...? Ah, yes, Fatima. Fatima Jabril. Behind her was her husband. His name, Rania recalled, was Khaled. The couple whose intake she herself had processed just the other day.

In the husband’s arms lay their sleeping daughter, whose name she’d forgotten. Fatima apparently noted the director’s frown.

‘This is Muna.’

‘Yes, that’s right — a lovely name.’ The child’s round face was surrounded by a mass of glossy black curls.

Fatima continued, ‘Earlier, I was outspoken. The journey was very difficult. I apologize.’ She glanced back at her husband, who had apparently encouraged her to say this.

‘No, it’s not necessary.’

Fatima continued, ‘We have asked and have been told that you are the director of the camp.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I come to you with a question. In Tripoli I worked in health care. I was a midwife and served as a nurse during the Liberation.’

She would be talking, of course, about the fall of Qaddafi and the months afterward, when the peace and stability, so long anticipated and so bravely fought for, had vanished like water in hot sand.

‘Liberation’ — what a mockery.

‘I would like to help here in the camp. So many people, pregnant women, about to give birth. And sick too. The burns.’

Sunburn, she meant. Yes, a week on the Mediterranean with no protection took a terrible toll — especially on young skin. And there were other diseases too. The camp’s sanitation was as good as it could be, but many refugees were racked with illness.

‘I would appreciate that. I will introduce you to the medical center director. What are your languages?’

‘Other than Arabic, some English. My husband.’ She nodded to Khaled, who gave an amiable smile. ‘He is good with English. We are teaching Muna both languages. And I am learning Italian. An hour a day at the school here.’

Rania nearly smiled — the girl was only two, and bilingual instruction seemed a bit premature. But Fatima’s eyes were hard and her mouth taut. The director plainly saw that the woman’s determination to help, and to be granted asylum and assimilate, was not a matter for humor.

‘We have no way to pay you. No funds.’

Fatima said quickly, ‘I don’t wish to be paid. I wish to help.’

‘Thank you.’

The refugees were mixed when it came to generosity. Some — like Fatima — volunteered selflessly. Others remained reclusive and a few were resentful that more was not being done for them or that the asylum-seeking process took so long.

Rania was telling Fatima about the medical center facilities when she happened to look through the fence and saw something that gave her pause.

Outside, amid the hundreds of those milling about — reporters, family members and friends of the refugees — a man stood by himself. He was in the shadows, so she had no clear image of him. But it was obvious he was staring in her direction. The thickset man wore a cap, the sort American sports figures wore, a cap you didn’t see much in Italy, where heads went mostly uncovered. His eyes were obscured with aviator sunglasses. There was something troubling about his pose.

Rania knew she had incurred the anger of many people for her devotion to these poor people. Refugees were hugely unpopular among certain segments of the population in the host countries. But he was not standing with the protesters. No, his attention — which seemed focused on Rania herself — appeared to be about something else entirely.

Rania said goodbye to Fatima and Khaled and pointed to the medical facility. As the family walked away, Rania pulled her radio off her hip and summoned the head of security — a Police of State captain — to meet her fifty meters south of the main gate.

Tomas radioed back immediately saying he was coming.

He arrived just two or three minutes later. ‘A problem?’

‘A man outside the fence. Something odd about him.’

‘Where?’

‘He was by the magnolia.’

She pointed but the view was blocked by yet another refugee bus crawling along the road.

When it passed, and the view was clear once again, she could see the man no more. Rania scanned the road and fields bordering the camp but found no trace.

‘Do you want me to call a team together?’

She debated.

A voice from the office called, ‘Rania, Rania! The shipment of plasma. They can’t find it. Jacques needs to talk to you. Jacques from the Red Cross.’

Another scan of the roadway. Nothing.

‘No, don’t bother. Thank you, Tomas.’

She swiveled about, to return to her office and cope with yet another cascade of crises.

Endless...

Chapter 28

‘Don’t really want it to deflect us too much from the Composer, do we now, Sachs? But it’s a curious case. An intriguing case.’

Rhyme, referring to the Garry Soames matter.

She gave a wry laugh. ‘A landmine of a case.’

‘Ah, because of Dante Spiro? We’ll be careful.’

They were in their secondary situation room: the café across the street from the Questura. Sachs, Rhyme and Thom. Rhyme had tried to order a grappa but Thom, damn it, had preempted him with sparkling water and coffee for everyone. How was he going to acquire a taste for the liquor if he was denied access?

In fairness, however, the cappuccino was good.

‘Ah, here we go.’

Rhyme noted the lanky figure of Ercole Benelli stride from the police headquarters toward the café. He spotted the Americans, crossed the street, stepped past the Cinzano barrier and sat down on a rickety aluminum chair.

‘Hello,’ he said formally, the tone revealing his curiosity. The young officer was, of course, wondering why Sachs had called and asked to meet out here.

Rhyme asked, ‘Has Beatrice found any prints on the plant leaves or any trace from the Composer’s surveillance outside the restaurant near D’Abruzzo?’

Ercole grimaced. ‘The woman is quite insopportabile. You say, intolerable?’

‘Yes, or insufferable.’

‘Sì, insufferable is better! I asked her several times of her progress and she glared at me. And I wished to know if you can fingerprint the bark of a tree. An innocent question. Her expression, frightening. As if saying, “Of course you can! What fool doesn’t know that?” And can she not smile? How difficult is that?’

Lincoln Rhyme was not one to turn to for sympathy in matters like this. ‘And?’ he asked impatiently.

‘No, nothing, I’m afraid. Not yet. She and her assistants are working hard, however. I will give her that.’

Ercole ordered something from the waitress and a moment later an orange juice appeared.

Rhyme said, ‘Well, we have another situation we need help with.’

‘You have more developments about our musical kidnapper?’

‘No. This is a different case.’

‘Different?’

On the small table before them Sachs was spreading out documents: copies of the crime scene reports and interviews regarding the rape Garry Soames was accused of, provided by the lawyer he and his family had retained.

‘We need translations of these reports, Ercole.’

He looked them over, shuffled through them. ‘How does this connect to the Composer?’

‘It doesn’t. Like I said, it’s another case.’

‘Another...?’ The officer chewed his lip. He read more carefully. ‘Yes, yes, the American student. This is not one of Massimo Rossi’s cases. It’s being run by Ispettore Laura Martelli.’ He nodded at the Questura.

Rhyme said nothing more and Sachs added, ‘We’ve been asked by a State Department official to review the evidence. The defendant’s lawyer’s convinced the boy is innocent.’

Ercole sipped his orange juice, which — like most non-coffee beverages in Italy, Rhyme had observed — had been served without ice. And Coca-Cola always came with lemon. The Forestry officer said, ‘Oh, but, no. I cannot do this. I am sorry.’ As if they’d missed something blatantly obvious. ‘You do not see. This would be un conflitto d’interesse. A—’

Rhyme said, ‘Not really.’

‘No. How is that possible?’

‘It would be, no, it might be a conflict of interest if you were working for the Police of State directly. But you are, technically, still a Forestry officer, isn’t that right?’

‘Signor Rhyme, Capitano Rhyme, that is not a defense that will be very persuasive at my trial. Or will stop Prosecutor Spiro from beating me half to death if he finds out. Wait... who is the procuratore?’ He flipped through the pages. And closed his eyes. ‘Mamma mia! Spiro is the prosecutor. No, no, no. I cannot do this! If he finds out, he will beat me fully to death!’

‘You’re exaggerating,’ Rhyme reassured, though he admitted to himself that Dante Spiro seemed fully capable of a blow or two.

Difficult, vindictive, cold as ice...

‘Besides, we’re simply asking you to translate. We could hire someone but it will take too long. We want to look over the evidence quickly, give our assessment and get back to the Composer. There’s no reason for Dante to find out.’

Sachs added, ‘This is very likely a case of an innocent American student in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.’

He muttered, ‘Ah, we had a case like that a few years ago. In Perugia. It did not go well for anybody.’

Rhyme nodded to the file. ‘And the evidence may very well prove Soames is guilty. In which case we will have done the prosecution and the government a service. At no charge.’

Sachs: ‘Please. Just translation. What’s the harm in that?’

With a resigned look on his face, Ercole pulled the papers forward and, with a glance around, as if Spiro were hiding in the shadows nearby, began to read.

Rhyme said, ‘Make a chart, a mini chart.’

Sachs dug into her computer bag and pulled out a yellow legal pad. She uncapped a fine-pointed marker and looked toward Ercole. ‘You dictate and I’ll write.’

‘I am still an accessory to a crime,’ he whispered.

Rhyme only smiled.

When she had finished writing, they looked the pad over. Rhyme reflected: Solid work. He would have liked to have samples of the trace from the deck or roof area where the smoking station was located, and from the site of the attack itself. But this was good for starters.

Sachs glanced at the remaining pages of notes in Italian Ercole was staring at, the official report. ‘Go on,’ she insisted kindly. ‘Please. I want to hear the accounts.’

Ercole apparently hoped he’d be let off the hook by simply translating the forensics. Reciting the witnesses’ and suspect’s statements seemed perhaps, in the young officer’s mind, to move his crime into a different category, misdemeanor to felony.

Reading, he said, ‘Natalia Garelli, twenty-one, attends the University of Naples. She hosted a party in her flat for fellow students and friends. The victim, Frieda S., arrived at ten p.m. Alone. She remembered drinking and talking with some people — mostly Natalia or her boyfriend — but was a bit shy. She too is a student, just arrived from Holland. She vaguely recalls around eleven or midnight the defendant approaching her and talking. They both had glasses of wine at the table where they were sitting — this is downstairs — and Garry kept refilling her glass. Then they embraced and... limonarono... I do not know.’

‘Made out?’ Sachs suggested.

‘Sì. Made out.’ He read more. ‘It was crowded so they went to the roof. Then Frieda has no memory until four in the morning, waking on the roof of the adjacent building and realizing she’d been assaulted. She was still quite drugged but managed to get to the wall separating the two rooftops. She climbed over, fell and was calling for help. Natalia, the hostess, heard her cries and got her downstairs into the apartment. Natalia’s boyfriend, Dev, called the police.

‘Investigators checked the door to the roof of the adjoining building but it was locked and did not appear to have been opened recently. Natalia told police that she suspected Serbian roommates living downstairs in that building — they’d been crude and drank a lot — but the police verified they were out of town. And dismissed anyone else in that building as suspects.

‘A few witnesses on the roof — at the table for smoking, the smoking station — saw Garry and Frieda together briefly, walking to an alcove on the roof, where there was a bench, but that is out of sight of the smoking station. Between about one a.m. and two, only they were upstairs. At two a.m. Garry walked down the stairs to the apartment proper and left. Several witnesses reported that he seemed distressed. No one noticed that Frieda was missing. People assumed she’d left earlier. The next day there was an anonymous call — a woman, calling from a pay phone at a tabaccaio near Naples University. After she heard about the attack, she wanted to call the police and report that she believed she’d seen Garry mixing something into Frieda’s drink.’

‘And no idea of her identity at all?’ Rhyme asked.

‘No.’ Ercole continued, ‘The call allowed the inspector to get a warrant to search his flat. That led to the discovery of traces of the date-rape drug on the jacket he’d worn the night of the party and the other articles of clothing.’

Sachs asked, ‘Garry’s story?’

‘He admits that he and Frieda were drinking wine downstairs. And, again, making out. They went upstairs for more privacy. There were people at the smoking station, so they went around the corner to a deserted area and sat down and did more making out. But she grew tired and bored and less interested. About one thirty, he was tired too and he went downstairs and left the party. She was on the bench on the roof, drowsing, when he did.’

‘Tired too,’ Sachs suggested, ‘because he took a sip of her wine, which was spiked. His DNA was on her glass.’

‘Suggesting he didn’t know about the roofie!’ Ercole said, enthusiastic for just a moment, lost in the case. Then he went back to being guilty and nervous.

Rhyme said, ‘One problem with the government’s case: The DNA found in Frieda’s vagina. It wasn’t Garry’s.’ He looked at Ercole uncertainly. He wondered if the graphic aspects of the crime would trouble a young officer who’d never worked an assault before, much less a rape.

The Italian officer glanced at Rhyme and caught his concern. ‘Capitano Rhyme, last month I ran an undercover operation to arrest men passing off inferior bull semen as that from prize animals. I surreptitiously videoed the collection process. I am someone who has made bull porn, so such matters are not bothering to me, if that’s your question.’

Rhyme nodded in amused concession. He observed that one line in the report was crossed out — bold strokes and a written note beside it. ‘What’s that?’

‘The words translate: “Inappropriate and irrelevant, reprimand the interviewer.”’

‘What’s crossed out?’ Sachs asked.

It took a moment to discern the words beneath the thick marker. ‘It is a note from one of the Flying Squad officers interviewing party attendees. The officer wrote that the victim was considered by some at the party to be quite the flirt.’

‘Ah. That offended the inspector,’ Sachs said. ‘Or Spiro. As it should have.’

Blaming women for their own sexual assault was unforgivable... and a lapse that seemed to transcend national barriers.

Sachs said, ‘So what’s the scenario, if he’s innocent?’

Rhyme said, ‘Some man, Mr X, has his eye on Frieda. He gets close and spikes her drink but it’s crowded and dark, so the witness thinks it’s Garry. Before X can move in and get Frieda to a bedroom or a deserted part of the flat, she and Garry go upstairs. X follows and watches them. Frieda starts to go under and Garry gets bored and leaves. When the roof is deserted, Mr X carries Frieda to the roof of the building next door and rapes her.’

Ercole asked, ‘Ah, but the drug residue on Garry’s jacket in his apartment? How is that explained?’

Rhyme responded, ‘One way: being close to the man who did drug her. But remember, read the chart, Ercole, there was drug residue on other clothing too.’

‘Yes, what are the implications of that?’

‘We don’t know yet. It could be that Garry is guilty and frequently carries around date-rape drugs. Or that he is innocent and someone broke in to implicate him, scattering drugs on other items of his clothing, not remembering or knowing what he wore to the party.’

Rhyme stared at the translated document. ‘And something I don’t like. “No Other Evidence Found.” There is always evidence. Ercole, do you know the name “Locard”?’

‘I don’t believe I do.’

‘A French criminalist. He lived a long time ago. He came up with a principle that is still valid. He felt that at every crime scene there is a transfer of evidence from the perpetrator to the victim or to the scene. And from that evidence it is possible, even if very difficult, to determine the perp’s identity or location. He was speaking of trace evidence, of course.’

Ercole, some sixth sense kicking in, it seemed, said quickly, ‘Allora, I am happy to have helped you. Now I must go. I will see if Beatrice has made some discoveries, as she probably has. Moving us closer to the Composer. Our important case.’ He looked to Sachs for help. None was forthcoming.

Rhyme said, ‘We need another search of Natalia’s apartment, Ercole. Particularly the smoking station. I’ll bet that’s where Mr X was waiting to keep an eye on Frieda. The roof next door too. And we need to examine Garry’s apartment — to see if the drug residue was planted to incriminate Garry... Two simple searches. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. Oh, tops.’

Both he and Sachs were staring intently at Ercole Benelli, who had taken to reassembling the file, as if by closing it he’d put this matter to rest forever. Finally, he could avoid them no longer and he looked up. ‘Quello che chiedete è impossibile. Do you understand? Impossibile!’

Chapter 29

The party where the rape had occurred had been held in an apartment in the Vomero neighborhood of Naples.

The area was atop a high hill that could be reached via funicular or a drive up steep, winding streets. From the crest, you had an Olympus-like view — of the bay, Vesuvius in the distance, and the infinite patchwork of colors and textures and shapes that was Naples.

This was, Sachs’s chauffeur, Ercole Benelli, had told her, considered the nicest part of the city. The Vomero was dotted with Art Nouveau architecture and modern-style offices and residences, while mom-and-pop stores and vintage-clothing shops were found next to the chicest designer retail locations that Italy had to offer... and Italy, of course, had chic down cold.

As they’d begun the drive, after a persuasive argument by Rhyme, Ercole had been sullen. His ‘impossibile’ eventually became ‘forse’ — perhaps — and then what must have been the Italian equivalent of a grudging, ‘Oh, all right.’ Eventually his easy spirits had returned and as they careened through Neapolitan traffic, Ercole seemed resigned to the risk of being pummeled by Spiro, and he turned tour guide, pelting Sachs with sound bites of the history of the city, present and distant past.

GPS finally got them to Natalia’s apartment, a classic Mediterranean-style structure on a small residential street, Via Carlo Cattaneo. They parked and Ercole led the way. Some children stared at them, enthralled, their attention seized by his uniform and the NYPD gold shield on her hip. Some boys tried to catch a glimpse under their jackets, hoping, she guessed, to spot a weapon. Others were more cautious.

Sachs was startled as a teenager sped past them at a run.

Ercole laughed. ‘Bene, bene... It’s all right. In certain other neighborhoods in Naples, he would be going to warn his father or brother there is a cop present. Here, though, he is simply running. To a game or to a girl... or because he wants to be star runner someday. There is crime in Naples, yes. No doubt. Pickpocketing, purse snatching, auto theft. You must be careful in some places. The Camorra are in the suburbs of Secondigliano and Scampia and in the Spanish Quarters in the city. The African gangs closer to Pozzuoli. But here, no.’

Natalia Garelli’s building was in need of paint and plastering on the outside but through spotless glass it appeared the lobby was starkly elegant. Ercole hit the intercom button. A moment later a woman’s voice clattered through the tinny speaker. The front door unlocked and they entered the lobby, dominated by an abstract painting, a swirl. A steel sculpture hung on another wall. An angel? Or a dove? Or purely fanciful? They took the elevator to the top floor, the fifth. There was a single apartment on this story.

Ercole lifted an eyebrow and kissed his fingertips, apparently meaning this was quite the posh place.

He rang the bell on a pale wooden frame and a moment later a very slim and very beautiful woman in her early twenties opened the door.

Ercole introduced himself and Sachs, and the woman nodded, smiling in a friendly way. ‘You are a policewoman from America, yes. Because Garry is American. Of course. Come in, please. Sono Natalia.’

Hands were shaken.

From the girl’s jewelry and clothes — leather pants, a silk blouse and enviable boots — Sachs deduced family money. The apartment too. Surely her parents had arranged for the place: student housing a lot better than most kids dwelled in. This place could have been the setting for a Prada fashion shoot. The walls were done in lavender stucco and hung with huge, boldly colored oil paintings, in two styles: abstract and nudes of both sexes. The couches and chairs were dark-green leather and brushed steel. A glass bar dominated one wall and a huge high-def TV the other. Silent music videos jerked across the screen.

‘Lovely place.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘My father works in design in Milan. Furniture and accessories. I am studying the subject here and will go into the profession too, when I graduate. Or fashion. Please, tell me, how is Garry?’ Her English was perfect with a faint icing of accent.

She answered, ‘As well as can be expected.’

Suitably ambiguous.

Ercole said, ‘We are looking into follow-up questions on the case. We will take little of your time.’

Natalia said, ‘It was terrible, what happened! And, I will tell you, it had to be someone not with our group. They are all simply the nicest people. Someone from the next building — there are Serbians living there.’ Her nose creased in distaste. ‘Some men, three or four of them. I have often thought they might be up to trouble. I told your colleagues about them.’

Ercole said, deferentially, ‘The residents of that building — everyone — were interviewed and dismissed as suspects. The police found the men you are speaking of were out of town that night.’

‘Still. Someone from the school? It is impossible.’

‘But someone might have tagged along with a student. You know what I mean.’

‘I do, yes. I should have been more careful, I suppose.’ Her beautiful lips, dark purple, tightened.

‘Do you know Frieda well?’

‘Not well. Only for a few weeks, when classes began. My boyfriend and I met her in European Political History.’

‘Did you see her with anyone at the party you didn’t recognize?’

‘It was crowded. I saw her with Garry and some girlfriends of ours. But I didn’t pay much attention.’

‘If you don’t mind, tell us again what you remember about that evening,’ Sachs asked.

‘My boyfriend and I went to dinner around eight and came back here to set out wine and some snacks and dolce. The people started arriving about ten for the party.’ She shrugged, touched her hair, patting it into place. Sachs, as a former fashion model, knew beauty and Natalia was one of the most stunning women she’d ever seen. That would help immeasurably in a career in the industry, even if she chose simply to design, not model. The way of the world.

Beauty rules.

‘Garry was in one of the first groups to arrive. I do not know him so good. I spoke to him. I like to hang out with the Americans and English and Canadians to improve my language. More and more people arrived and about midnight I saw Frieda and Garry together. They were very close. You know, the way people are when they meet and are flirting. Touching, kissing, whispering close. I saw them go up to the roof, carrying their drinks. They were both drunk.’ She shook her head. ‘Sometime later I saw Garry downstairs. He was, how do you say, groggy. Stumbling. I remember thinking I hope he doesn’t drive home. He was not looking good. He left before I could say anything.

‘The party went on and by about four, everyone had left. Dev, my boyfriend, and I were cleaning up. And we heard cries from the roof. I went up and found Frieda beside the wall separating the roofs. She had fallen. She was in a terrible state. Her skirt torn, scrapes on her legs. I helped her up. She was hysterical. She knew she’d been attacked but could remember nothing. Dev called the police and they were here soon.’

‘Can you show us where that was?’

‘Yes.’

Natalia took them to spring-loaded stairs that led to a trapdoor in the ceiling of the back hall. Even the stairs — a wire-and-steel contraption, which pulled down from overhead — were stylish. The climb would be a bit risqué in a skirt, Sachs thought. Like the hostess, though, she was in pants — jeans in her case, not thousand-dollar leather. On the roof was a wooden deck and several ten-foot-high sheds that may have been holding water tanks or tools. A sitting area, about twelve by twelve feet, contained metal chairs and tables, on which sat ashtrays.

The smoking station.

Sachs supposed that, unable to smoke indoors many places in Italy, nicotine addicts would migrate to places like this: decks and patios. The view was spectacular. You could see the entire expanse of Naples Bay, the misty form of the volcano to one side and, to the other, a massive castle, which was nearby.

Sachs walked from the smoking station around the corner of one of the sheds, secluded from view. There was a bench here, where Garry and Frieda would have settled in for their limonarono — or whatever the gerund of that verb might be.

Natalia said, in a weak voice, ‘The attack occurred over there.’ She pointed to the roof of the adjoining building, delineated by yellow police tape. ‘I will never look at this place again the same way. So pleasant once. And now, so terrible.’

They walked to the tape. There was no gap between this building and the one next door; they were separated only by a brick wall, about three feet high. Looking left, Sachs and Ercole could see another cordoned-off area of police tape on the adjoining structure, where the actual crime had occurred. This was out of sight of the smoking station. A logical place for an attack.

‘Let’s go.’

‘But the tape!’ Ercole whispered.

She smiled at him. Mindful of her joints, Sachs sat on the wall and eased onto the neighboring roof. Ercole sighed then leapt over. Natalia remained on the roof of her building. The pebbles covering the tar paper meant that they could find no footprints, so they didn’t worry about booties or rubber bands. Pulling on latex gloves, Sachs took samples of the stones and flecks of tar from the place where the assault had occurred and the route leading to it.

When she was finished, she looked across the street and to the south at a tall building a half block away.

‘What is that?’

Ercole noted the modern high-rise. ‘A hotel. The NV, I believe. A very nice place.’

She squinted into the sun. ‘It looks like that’s a parking garage.’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘About level with the roof here. Let’s find out if they have a CCTV, and if it’s pointed this way.’

‘Yes, yes, good. Many parking structures have video security. I’ll follow up on that.’

She nodded and they returned to the smoking station and she performed a similar evidence collection there, as Natalia watched with curiosity. ‘It is like that show, CSI. Isn’t it?’

‘Very much like that,’ Sachs said.

In ten minutes they were finished. Sachs and Ercole thanked the young woman. She shook their hands firmly and opened the door for them to leave. ‘Please, I am sure Garry could not have done this. In my heart I know.’ Her eyes darkened and she glanced in the direction of the building next door. ‘Those men, those Serbians, you should look once more at them. I read people very good. I do not trust them at all.’

Chapter 30

‘She is free.’

‘Free?’

Beatrice Renza continued speaking to Ercole Benelli. ‘She recently has broken up from a long relationship. But it had been ending for some time.’

‘Some time?’

‘Why are you repeating my statements as questions?’

Honestly. This woman. Ercole’s lips grew taut. ‘I don’t understand. Who are you speaking about?’

Though he had an idea. No, he knew exactly.

‘Surely you do. Daniela Canton, of course.’

He began to repeat the name, as a question, but stopped fast, lest he give the brittle woman more ammunition to fire his way. (Besides, as a police officer, he well knew that repeating questions is virtually an admission of guilt: ‘Poaching? Me? How can you say that I’m poaching?’)

Instead, a different inquiry: ‘Why are you telling me this?’

They stood in the laboratory on the ground floor of the Questura. The situation room for the Composer case was presently devoid of Ercole’s colleagues. Only Amelia Sachs, Rhyme and his aide Thom were there — co-conspirators in the Garry Soames matter — so he felt confident in slipping into the lab to ask Beatrice to analyze the evidence they’d collected at the scene of the sexual assault, the roof of Natalia’s apartment. Before he had been able to ask her to do this, however, she had regarded him with a tilted head and, perhaps seeing his lengthy glance toward Daniela, up the hall, had fired away.

She is free...

‘It was a sad story.’ Apparently Beatrice had no interest in responding to his question about why she was sharing Daniela’s story. She pushed her green-framed glasses higher on the bridge of her nose. ‘He was a pig,’ she snapped. ‘Her former lover.’

Ercole was offended, for two reasons: One was this prickly woman’s assumption that he had any interest whatsoever in Daniela. The other was his affection for pigs.

Still, interesting: Daniela. Unattached.

‘I hadn’t wondered about her status.’

‘No,’ the lab analyst said, clearly not believing him. Beatrice had a round face, framed by a mass of unruly black hair, presently tucked under a plastic bonnet. She was pretty in a baker’s-daughter sort of way, Ercole reflected, though he knew no bakers, nor the offspring of any. Short of stature, she had a figure that could be described as, well, bustily squat. Her feet pointed outward and she tended to waddle when she walked, making a pronounced shuffling sound if she wore booties. Daniela moved through the halls with the grace of... what? Well, Beatrice had brought up the animal metaphor. Daniela moved with the grace of a lean cheetah. A lean and sexy cheetah.

Beatrice was more a sloth or koala bear.

Then, realizing the comparison was unkind and unfair, Ercole blushed in shame.

Pulling gloves on and taking the evidence bags, Beatrice said, ‘She was with Arci — Arcibaldo — for three years. He was somewhat younger. As you can see, Daniela is thirty-five.’

That much? No, he could not see it, not at all. He was surprised. But he was intrigued that she liked younger men. Ercole being thirty.

‘He wished to be a race car driver but that was a dream, of course; driving is not in his blood.’

Unlike Amelia Sachs’s, he thought ruefully, and reminded himself once more to take the Mégane in for a checkup. The gearbox did not sound healthy.

Beatrice said, ‘He merely dabbled at the sport, Arci did. But he was a handsome man.’

‘Was? Did he die in an accident?’

‘No. By “was” I mean that he is in the past tense to Daniela. As a handsome driver, however mediocre, he had plenty of opportunities for bunga-bunga.’

The expression, coined by a former Italian prime minister, defied exact definition but, then, a likely meaning could be easily ascribed.

Beatrice looked at the bags and set them on examination tables. She noted the chain-of-evidence cards (his name only, not Amelia’s) and placed her signature below his. ‘He worked for a racing team in Modena. Doing basic things, assisting mechanics, shepherding cars here and there. What happened was that he and Daniela returned from Eurovision—’

‘She went to Eurovision?’

‘That’s right.’ Beatrice gave a dismissing laugh, nearly a snort, and had to reseat her complicated glasses. ‘If you can believe that.’

‘You don’t care for it?’ Ercole asked her, after a thoughtful pause.

‘Who on earth would? It’s juvenile.’

‘Some feel that way, yes,’ he said quickly.

Based on an Italian festival that started six decades ago, Sanremo, Eurovision was a televised songwriting and — performing contest, countries competing against one another in a theatrical show that was lavishly and gaudily produced. The music was criticized as being bubblegum, with a patriotic topping and political bias. Still, Ercole loved it. He had been six times. He had tickets for the next Grand Final. Two tickets.

Ever hopeful, Ercole Benelli.

‘They returned from the show and found police waiting at his flat. He had been selling fuel-system secrets to a competing team. The charges resulted in a fine only but in Italy, of course, people take driving very seriously. I myself was personally offended.’

‘You like car races?’

She said fervently, ‘I go to Formula One whenever I can. One day I will own a Maserati, the coupe. Used, of course. It will have to be. A Ferrari... well, that is beyond my dreams, on a Police of State salary. Do you attend?’

‘Not often. I can’t find the time.’ In fact, auto racing held no interest for him whatsoever. ‘I enjoyed the movie Rush.’ He couldn’t remember the drivers’ names. And one was Italian.

‘Ah, brilliant, wasn’t it? Niki Lauda, an artist! He drove for Ferrari, of course. I own the DVD. I attend races quite a lot. But they aren’t for everybody. You must wear sound protection, if you go. I take my earmuffs, the ones I use on the police pistol range. They also help me get good seats. People see Police of State printed on the cups and they make way for me.’

For some reason he said, ‘I race pigeons.’

‘The birds?’

He said, ‘Of course the birds.’

What other kind of pigeons were there?

‘I have never heard of that. In any event, though Arci’s offense was not serious, Daniela could hardly have a boyfriend who committed a crime.’

‘And one who was guilty, as well, of bunga-bunga when he was away at races.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Poor thing. She must have been devastated.’

Beatrice clicked her tongue, the way a disapproving nun might do in class. ‘I wouldn’t call her a thing. It’s offensive. But, yes, of course she was upset.’ Beatrice looked into the other room, toward the woman who was a foot taller, seven kilos lighter and had the face of an angelic cheetah. She said kindly, ‘Even the beautiful can suffer from heartbreak. No one is immune. So, I say to you simply that she is available, if you wish to speak to her on the matter.’

Utterly flustered, he blurted, ‘No, no, no. I have no interest in her in that way, none whatsoever. I’m merely curious. It’s my nature. I am curious about everyone. I am curious about people from different regions. People of different ages. People of different races, different colors. I am curious about men, about women, black, white, brown...’ He struggled to find something more to say.

Beatrice helped out: ‘Children, of any complexion?’

Ercole blinked, then realized she was making a joke. He laughed at her dry delivery, though uncomfortably. She gave no response, other than to study the bags.

‘So. What do we have here?’ She was holding the card. ‘“From the smoking station.” What is that?’

‘The location of a possible witness to a crime. Or a perpetrator.’

She read another card. ‘“The attack site.”’

He stepped forward, to tell her what it contained, but she waved him back, past a yellow line. ‘No, no, no. You are not gowned. Get back!’

He sighed and stepped away. ‘It’s pebbles—’

‘From a rooftop. Obviously.’

He then asked, ‘And can you see if the NV Hotel in Vomero has a CCTV pointed northeast, from the top level of their parking garage?’

Beatrice frowned. ‘Me? It would be the Postal Police who could check that.’

‘I don’t know anyone there.’ He tapped his Forestry Corps badge.

‘I suppose I could. What case is this?’

He said, ‘An independent investigation.’

‘Well, Ercole Benelli, you come to the Police of State like a newborn hatchling from the Forestry Corps and leap into the role of investigator, fully formed. With a case of your own. You are the new Montalbano.’ The beloved Sicilian detective in the murder mystery series by Andrea Camilleri. ‘So understandably you do not know the procedures here. An evidence analysis request like this must reference a case number or at least the name of a suspect.’

‘We don’t know his identity.’ This much was true. If the claim of Garry Soames’s lawyer — and Garry himself — could be believed, someone else had raped the woman on the rooftop, a person unknown.

Ah. Perfect.

‘Put down Unsub Number One.’

‘What does that refer to? “Unsub”? I’ve never heard that.’

‘English. “Unknown subject.” It’s a term the American police use when referring to a suspect whose name they have not learned.’

Beatrice looked him up and down. ‘If you are taken with American expressions I think you are maybe more Columbo than Montalbano.’

Was this an insult? Columbo was that bumbling, disheveled detective, wasn’t he? Still, he was the hero of the show.

‘As for the forensic results, should I contact you or Inspector Rossi or Prosecutor Spiro? Or another prosecutor?’

‘Me, please.’

‘Fine. Does this have priority over the Composer? I’m nearly finished with the analysis of the evidence you found outside D’Abruzzo.’

‘That should be first. The Composer may be set to strike again, though perhaps if you could call about the CCTV on the NV Hotel? I am interested in any tapes the night of the twentieth, midnight to four a.m.’

‘Midnight to four a.m. of the twentieth? Or the twenty-first of September?’

‘Well, I suppose the twenty-first.’

‘So, what you really mean is “morning”. You misspoke when you said “night”?’

He sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘All right.’ She picked up a phone, and Ercole walked into the situation room, nodding to Captain Rhyme and Thom. Detective Sachs looked up at him, questioningly.

He whispered, ‘She will review it. And now she is calling the hotel. About the CCTV.’

‘Good,’ Rhyme said.

A moment later Beatrice stepped into the situation room. She nodded to those inside and said in Italian, ‘No, Ercole. The NV Hotel does have a camera but unfortunately it seemed not to be working at the time of the attack. There is nothing on the disk.’

‘Thank you for checking that.’

She said, ‘Surely.’ Then seemed to look him over as she turned and left. He glanced down at his uniform. Was he as rumpled as Columbo? He brushed at some dust on his jacket sleeve.

‘Ercole?’ Captain Rhyme asked.

‘Ah, yes. Sorry.’ And he told them about the CCTV.

‘Always the way, isn’t it?’ Captain Rhyme asked in a voice that didn’t seem surprised. ‘Put that on our portable chart.’

‘Our portable chart?’

Thom handed him the yellow pad on which Sachs, at the café, had transcribed his translation of the evidence of the Soames case from the report provided by Elena Cinelli, Garry’s lawyer. He made a notation of the lack of video camera and slipped it under a stack of files on the table, out of sight. Well hidden. The last thing Ercole wanted was for Prosecutor Spiro to see it.

Captain Rhyme said, ‘We still need a search at Garry Soames’s apartment. To see if there’s any evidence of somebody planting the drugs.’

Ercole’s heart sank. But Captain Rhyme continued, ‘We’ll wait on that, though. We should have the evidence analysis from your trip out to the country soon. Happy to do the consulate a favor, but, like I told them, the Composer has priority.’

Relief coursing through him, Ercole nodded. ‘Yes, yes, Capitano. A good plan.’

Then Ercole saw motion from the hallway and noted Daniela standing nearby, head down, playing with a braid absently with one hand as she read from a thick folder held in the other.

She’s free...

For a solid sixty seconds Ercole Benelli wondered if there was some way he could credibly engage her in a conversation about police procedures and then smoothly — and cleverly — segue into the topic of his love for Eurovision.

He concluded that there was not.

But that didn’t stop him from excusing himself and stepping into the hallway. He nodded hello to Daniela and said, with a shy smile, that he’d heard she liked the contest and, he was just curious, not that it was important, what did she think of the Moldavian entry last year, which he considered to be the best competition song to come along in years?

Ercole was surprised, to say the least, when she agreed.

Chapter 31

Now, move.

Get going!

Huddling in his musty bedroom in this musty house, Stefan forced himself to rise and, as always, first thing, don latex gloves. Shaky-hand, sweaty-skin... He wiped his brow and neck, slipped the tissue into his pocket for later disposal. Then he slipped a pill into his mouth. Olanzapine. Ten mg. After much trial and error, doctors had determined that the drug made him as normal as he could be. Or, as he’d heard it described, behind his back: rendering him less fucking schizoid than anything else could. (For Stefan, treatment and maintenance were pretty much limited to drugs; psychotherapy was useless for someone who was far more interested in the sound of words than the content. ‘So tell me your feelings when you walked into the cellar, Stefan, on that day in April and saw what you saw’ was nothing more than a series of spoken tones that, depending on the doctor’s voice, could be ecstatically beautiful, could downright thrill him or could induce a bout of anxiety thanks to the shrink’s vocal fry.)

Olanzapine. The ‘atypical’ — or second-generation — antipsychotic worked well enough. But today, he was struggling. The Black Screams were nipping at the edges of his mind. And the desperation swelled. He had to move, move, move along the stations of his own cross, en route to Harmony.

Shaky-hand, sweaty-skin.

Had he been a drinking man, he would have taken a shot of something.

A ladies’ man, he would have bedded a woman.

But he wasn’t either of those. So he hurried to do the one thing that would keep him from surrendering to the Black Screams: find the next ‘volunteer’ for a new waltz.

So. Move!

Into his backpack he placed the black cloth hood, the thin sealed bag of chloroform, duct tape, extra gloves, the gag. And, of course, his calling card: the cello string wound into a small noose. He pulled off his blue latex gloves, showered, dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt, socks and his Converse Cons. He pulled on new gloves and peered out the window. No threats. Then he stepped outside, locked the bulky door and collected his old Mercedes 4MATIC from the garage. In three minutes he was on the uneven country road that would eventually lead to the motorway and the city.

Another step to Harmony.

To Heaven.

Religion and music have been forever intertwined. Songs in praise of the Lord. The Levites carrying the Ark of the Covenant on their shoulders amid songs and the music of cymbals, lyres and harps. David appointing four thousand righteous to be the musical voice of the temple he had hoped to build. The Psalms, of course — 150 of them.

Then that trumpet at Jericho.

Stefan had never attended church as an adult but had spent many, many hours of his early adolescence in Sunday school and vacation Bible study, deposited there by a mother who was savvy about finding convenient places to stash the boy for an afternoon here or a late morning there, sometimes a whole weekend. She probably recognized he was about to tumble into madness (bit of that herself) and she might have to keep him home, so Abigail rarely missed a chance to get him tucked away in finger-paint-scented basements or retreat tents before her male friends came a-calling.

The Sunday school days were before the Black Screams had begun in earnest, and young Stefan was as content as a boy might be, sitting among the other oblivious youngsters soaking up a bit of the old theo, dining on cookies and juice, listening to tweedy teachers recite lesson plans with the devotion of, well, the devout.

The words were mostly crap, he knew that even then, but one story stuck: how, when God (for no reason that made sense) sent evil spirits to torment the first king of Israel, Saul, only music could comfort him. Music from David’s harp.

Just like for Stefan, only music or sounds could soothe, and keep the Black Screams away.

Driving carefully, Stefan found his phone and went to his playlist. He now chose not pure sounds from his collection but a melody, ‘Greensleeves,’ not technically a waltz, though written in six-eight time, which was essentially the same. (And, rumor was, written by Henry VIII.)

‘Greensleeves’... A sorrowful love ballad — a man abandoned by his muse — had a second life: It was borrowed by the church as the Christmas carol ‘What Child Is This?’

The world loved this song, absolutely loved it.

What, he wondered, was there about this particular melody that had persisted for so many years? Why did this configuration of notes, set to this tempo, continue to touch souls after a thousand years? The tune spoke to us like few others. Stefan had thought long about this question, and had come to no conclusion other than that sound was God, and God was sound.

Harmony.

The sad strains of the music looping through his mind, Stefan decided it set the stage for what was about to happen.

Alas, my love, you do me wrong, to cast me off discourteously...

He slowed now and made the turn onto the side road that would take him to the Capodichino Reception Center.

Chapter 32

In the situation room beside the Scientific Police’s laboratory on the ground floor of the Questura, Beatrice Renza said in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘I am afraid I have created a fail.’ She was not particularly downcast about this glitch, whatever that might be, but it was hard to tell; she seemed to live in a perpetual state of overcast.

She was speaking to Rhyme, Massimo Rossi, Ercole Benelli and Amelia Sachs.

Rossi asked her a question in Italian.

The forensic analyst said in English, ‘I was able only to make reconstruction of a partial fingerprint from the leafs that you’ — a nod to Ercole — ‘recovered. Yes, it was a print on the leaf, yes, I would assume it was left by our furfante, our villain, the Composer, for his footprint was below the place where you sawed the branch off. But it is merely a very minor portion of a friction ridge. It is not enough for the systems to match.’

‘And the trace?’ Rhyme asked.

‘I have had more successfulness there. From the soil in the tread marks of his Converse shoes I have discovered several grains of soil... infused with carbon dioxide, unburned hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, kerosene.’

‘Engine exhaust,’ Rhyme said.

‘Yes, exactly as I had considered.’

‘What do the proportions suggest?’

‘Jet aircraft. Because of the levels of kerosene. Not automobiles or trucks. And in addition, I found this: Fibers that are coerente...’

‘Consistent,’ Ercole said.

‘Sì, with those in napkins or paper towelettes. And in the trace and in the fibers were substances that are consistent with these foods: sour milk, wheat, potatoes, chili powder, turmeric, tomatoes. And fenugreek. You are familiar?’

‘No.’

Ercole said, ‘Ingredients in Northern African cuisine, most frequently.’

Beatrice said, ‘Yes, yes. With those materials, ingredients, possibly it is being bazin, a bread from Liberia or Tunisia.’ She touched her belly and added, ‘I know food well. All types of food I know, I will say.’ No smile, no embarrassment.

She added, ‘Allora, I called restaurants in the area of his staking-out, fifteen kilometers around, a circle, from D’Abruzzo, and they are all traditional Italian. There are no establishments of Middle Eastern or North African eating nearby.’ She spoke to Ercole, who translated: ‘So, the Composer had recently been somewhere near cooking of this kind, a restaurant, a family.’

Rhyme scowled.

‘Is something wrong?’ Massimo Rossi asked.

‘The analysis is fine. The problem is I don’t know how to put the evidence in context. You have to know the geography in this business. The landscape, the culture of your crime scenes.’

‘Sì, this is true,’ Beatrice said.

‘Allora,’ Rossi said. ‘Perhaps, Captain Rhyme, I can be of help. We had an incident not long ago. Refugees from Africa refused to eat Italian pasta. True, it was simple, with only pomodoro — tomato — sauce.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘I prefer ragù or pesto. But, my story is this: The refugees complained, can you believe that? And they insisted on native food. My feeling is, your expression in English, beggars cannot be choosers, but many people took their protests to heart and an effort was made to give the refugees traditional Libyan and North African food. But the refugee camps and facilities are not always able to do so. So, near the camps are many vendors selling Libyan and Tunisian ingredients and fully cooked food.’

‘That must cover much land.’

Rossi suddenly smiled. ‘It does, except for—’

Rhyme interrupted: ‘The jet exhaust.’

‘Exactly! The biggest camp in Campania is the Capodichino Reception Center located near the airport. And there are North African food vendors there.’

‘Refugees,’ Ercole said. ‘Like Ali Maziq.’ To Rossi: ‘Could this be the pattern Procuratore Spiro was thinking of?’

‘I would say we don’t know enough yet. The Composer might have in mind as his next victim another refugee. But it might also be someone connected with the place. An employee.’

Sachs said, ‘Send Michelangelo and the tac team to the camp. And tell the security people there. And I’m going too.’

Rossi looked her way with a wary smile.

‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘Spiro won’t be happy. But I’ll deal with him later.’ She looked him over. ‘Are you going to stop me, Inspector?’

Rossi made a show of turning his back to her and staring at the evidence chart. He said, to no one in particular, ‘I wonder where Detective Sachs has gotten herself to. The last I saw of her, she was at the Questura. And now, gone. I would guess she is off to see the sights of Naples. The ruins of Pompeii, very likely.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispered to Rossi.

He said, ‘For what? I cannot imagine.’

As she and the Forestry officer headed for the door, Rhyme noted that Ercole dug into his pocket, fishing for something. Then, for a reason Rhyme could not figure out, the young man’s face tightened with dismay as he produced a set of car keys and dropped them into Sachs’s outstretched palm.

Chapter 33

Their deduction was a solid one — that the Composer might be looking for victims at the refugee camp near the airport.

The forensics were good: Aviation fuel suggested an airport, and the ingredients in Libyan food suggested refugees’ meals or vendors near a refugee camp like the Capodichino Reception Center.

And yet...

As sometimes happens with the most solidly and elegantly constructed theory, this was marred by a tragic flaw.

It had been made too late.

The Composer had done exactly what Rhyme and the others had guessed. Though with one variation: He had not bothered using a kidnapped person’s gasping breath as the rhythm section for a waltz. He’d simply slashed the victim’s throat and, after leaving his trademark noose, fled.

Amelia Sachs and Ercole Benelli had arrived about a half hour after the team at the Questura had deduced that the camp might be the site of the next kidnapping. Already present were a dozen Police of State and Carabinieri, along with some officers of the Financial Police specializing in immigration enforcement. Sachs had spotted the flashing lights and the crowd just outside the camp, at the far end from the main gate. There, the chain link had been cut open, making an impromptu exit.

Perhaps a hundred people ganged outside — and from the vigilant way the officers were watching those present, Sachs assumed that many were refugees who’d slipped through the gate to view the incident. Others, workers from the vendor stands, protesters, journalists and passersby, milled about as well, hoping for a look at the carnage, Sachs supposed.

Sachs mounted an earphone and hit a call button, then slipped the live cell back into her hip pocket, sitting just above her switchblade knife.

‘Sachs. The scene?’

‘Beyond contaminated. Must be fifty people surrounding the body.’

‘Hell.’

She turned to Ercole. ‘We have to get those people away. Clear the scene. Clear the whole area.’

‘Sì. I will do that. I will try. Look at all of them.’

He stepped away from her and spoke to some of the Police of State officers, who at first paid little attention to him. She heard him mention the names ‘Rossi’ and then ‘Spiro.’ And the men grew wary and attentive and began clearing the crowd in earnest. Some men and women, apparently soldiers with the army, assisted.

Sachs told Rhyme she’d call him back, she had to secure the scene, and disconnected.

‘Find out who’s in charge.’

‘Yes.’

Pulling on gloves and donning rubber bands — even though it was pointless, given the trampled ground — she crouched, then lifted the corner of the sheet. She studied the victim.

He was a young, dark-complexioned man, eyes half open. He lay in a thick pool of blood. A half-dozen cuts were prominent in his neck. He was in stocking feet. She laid the sheet back.

Ercole had a conversation with several officers and he and one of them walked up to Sachs. He was, she recognized, with the Police of State.

Ercole said, ‘This is Officer Bubbico. He was the first on the scene when the workers called about the death.’

‘Ask him who the victim is.’

Bubbico offered his hand and Sachs shook it. He said, ‘I speak English. I studied in America. Many years ago. But I can speak all right.’

But before he could say any more, a female voice sounded behind her. In Italian.

Sachs turned to see someone approaching quickly. A short woman with a pretty but severe face, a mass of thick auburn hair tied into a ponytail with a black ribbon. She was slim but seemed in fighting shape. She wore a dusty khaki blouse and gray skirt, long, and had a lanyard around her neck, a clattering radio on her hip.

Her demeanor, more than the laminated credentials, spoke of authority.

The woman grimaced at the sight of the corpse.

Sachs asked, ‘You’re connected to the camp?’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes were still on the covered body. ‘I am Rania Tasso.’ Sachs noted that her badge said Ministero dell’Interno. ‘The director.’ Her English revealed a slight accent.

Sachs and Ercole introduced themselves.

‘Orribile,’ she muttered. ‘This is our first murder. We’ve had robbery and fights but no rapes, no murders. This is horrible.’ The last word was solidly anglicized, with the ‘h’ pronounced.

A moment later Massimo Rossi arrived and strode close, nodding to Ercole and Sachs. He identified himself to Rania and, after a few words in Italian, they both switched to English. The inspector asked the camp director and Bubbico what had occurred.

Rania said, ‘The guards are still looking for witnesses but one worker, a cook, saw the killer crouching over the body and setting the noose on the ground. Then he fled to those bushes and trees. He got into a dark car and sped away. I asked what kind of car, but the cook did not have any thought.’

Bubbico said, ‘Several officers and I ran to the road as soon as we heard. But, as I told Director Tasso, he was gone by then. I ordered roadblocks but this is a congested area. We are near the airport and there are present many factories and some farms, of course — and there are many roads and streets by where he could escape.’ He opened a tissue and displayed the all-too-familiar noose, made of dark gut.

‘Where was it?’ Sachs asked. ‘The noose.’

‘There. Near the head,’ Bubbico explained.

‘The victim? Do we know his identity?’ Sachs asked.

Rania said, ‘Yes, yes. He had gone through the Eurodac procedure. The Dublin Regulation. You are familiar?’

‘Yes,’ Sachs said.

‘He was Malek Dadi, twenty-six. Tunisian by birth but he lived in Libya for the past twenty years, with his family — his parents and sister are still in Tripoli. He had no criminal record and was a classic economic refugee; he’d taken no public political stance in the conflict in Libya and was not a target of any of the factions there. He was not the sort the extremists, like ISIS, would target. He was here simply to make a better life and bring his family over.’

Rania looked down and added, ‘So very sad. I could not say I know about everybody here. But Malek arrived recently so he is fresher in my memory. He was suffering from depression. Very anxious. He missed his family terribly and was very homesick. We have representatives in the camp of the Italian Council for Refugees — the CIR. They arranged for help for him. Psychological help. I think it might have done him good. But now this...’ A look of disgust crossed her face.

Bubbico said, ‘And then, it was shameful. Some people ran out to the body and stripped things from him. They took his shoes and belt. Any money and his wallet.’

Rania Tasso said, ‘I was devastated. Yes, people here are desperate but he was one of them. And to steal his clothing! They would have taken this shirt, it seems, but left it merely because of the blood. Terrible.’

‘Do you know who took them?’ Ercole asked. ‘The articles might be important evidence.’

Rania and the officer did not. She said, ‘They vanished.’ She waved a hand at the mass of refugees on the other side of the fence, within the camp proper.

She added something that Sachs found interesting: She’d seen a suspicious-looking man the other night, heavyset, looking at her. But he might have been studying the security, or just looking for victims. She had no information about him, other than a general description, and she could not say exactly where he’d been standing.

The Composer?

Daniela and Giovanni, Rossi’s associates, appeared. They’d arrived earlier apparently and had been canvassing. Daniela walked up to her boss and spoke to him in Italian. Then the inspector asked Rania, ‘Can you make inquiries? Find out if anyone in the camp saw more? The refugees will not speak to us.’

She answered in Italian, clearly in the affirmative.

Sachs added, ‘Tell them, reassure them that we don’t suspect them. The killer is an American, a psychotic killer.’

‘This Composer I’ve read about.’

‘Yes.’

Rania was looking through the fence at the wall of refugees. She said thoughtfully, ‘And Malek is the second immigrant he’s killed.’

‘We saved the first one,’ Ercole pointed out. ‘But, yes, Malek is the second refugee victim.’

‘And it’s clear why, of course,’ the camp director spat out.

Rossi and Sachs turned to her.

‘The Burial Hour.’

Sachs didn’t know what this referred to and said as much, though Rossi was nodding in understanding.

Rania explained, ‘The title of a speech that a politician in Rome gave at some public forum. It has been widely reprinted. “The Burial Hour” refers to the asylum-seeker problem. Many of the citizens in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Spain, France, feel that they are endangered — they are being buried by the hordes and hordes of migrants pouring into their countries. Like a landslide, crushing them.

‘Accordingly, the citizens of the destination countries, like Italy, they are increasingly hostile to the poor souls.’ Now she was speaking to Rossi. ‘There are some who believe that the police, for instance, do not investigate crimes against the immigrants as energetically as they would crimes against citizens or tourists. This Composer may be psychotic but he is also clever. He knows about the attitudes of many people here — many officials — and he believes you won’t work so hard to stop him. So he hunts refugees.’

Rossi said slowly, ‘Yes, I have heard people say that. But you would be wrong in suggesting we don’t care about the victims. I assure you we will investigate this crime just as carefully as we did the first one. Just as carefully as if the victim were a priest or the prime minister.’ He then could not help but smile, it seemed. ‘Perhaps more diligently than if he were a prime minister.’

Rania clearly did not see the humor. ‘I do not observe many officers here.’ She looked around.

‘This is Naples. We have street crime. We have Camorra. There are recent reports of terrorist cells planning operations throughout the EU, including Italy. We are too little butter spread on too much bread.’

She was unmoved by his words. Her eyes again dipped to the sheet, now quite bloody, and she said nothing more.

The Scientific Police van arrived. From it climbed the officer Sachs remembered from the scene where they rescued Ali Maziq from the aqueduct reservoir room.

We’re going to step the grid...

They got to work but after an hour of diligent searching, there seemed precious little to show. The footprints had been obliterated near the victim, though some were recovered near where the car had been parked, behind the line of trees. A few Libyan dinars and a Post-it were recovered from under the body. No phone or prepaid card or wallet. One witness came forward, an NGO worker from a charity based in London that helped in refugee camps around the Mediterranean. He had not seen the actual killing but he had glimpsed the Composer’s face as he paused over the body, after leaving the noose.

The worker couldn’t add any details, but Rossi summoned his uniformed associate Giovanni, with whom he spoke for a moment. The officer went to his Flying Squad car and returned a moment later with a laptop. He loaded a program and Sachs saw it was SketchCop FACETTE, a good facial reconstruction software program. Though the FBI prefers actual artists, even now in this high-tech age, most law enforcement agencies found that people with suitable talent are hard to find, and so they used this or a similar program.

In ten minutes an image of the Composer was complete — if pretty generic, in Sachs’s opinion — and was uploaded to the Questura, where officers in turn sent it to police throughout Italy. Sachs would receive a copy too.

The evidence was packed into plastic bags and delivered into Ercole Benelli’s waiting, and gloved, hands. He filled out a chain-of-custody card then looked around him, studying the scene. After a moment he said that he would place the evidence in the trunk of the Mégane. He wandered off in that direction.

Rossi received a call and, taking it, walked away from the scene, gesturing Bubbico after him.

Sachs was looking over the camp. What a sprawling, chaotic place it was. Many blue tents but also improvised shelters. Stacks of firewood, laundry lines from which flags of faded cloth dangled, hundreds of empty cardboard cartons, discarded water bottles and empty food tins. People sitting on rugs, on wooden cartons, on dirt. Mostly cross-legged. Some were squatting. Everyone seemed thin, and more than a few appeared to be ill. Many of the lighter-complexioned were badly sunburned.

So many people. Thousands of them. A flood.

No, a landslide.

The Burial Hour...

A voice startled her. ‘Ah, it appears that you too, Detective Sachs, suffer from a disability.’

She turned and found herself face-to-face with Dante Spiro.

‘Your disability is being hard of hearing.’

She blinked at these words.

He slipped a cheroot into his mouth. Being outside, he lit it and inhaled deeply, then put the gold lighter away. ‘You were ordered to limit your work to crime laboratory assistance. And acting as an Arabic-language interpreter. You are not doing the former and you are not doing the latter. You are here in the thick of an investigation.’ He looked at her gloved hands and the rubber bands on her feet.

Dante Spiro will not be happy. But I will deal with him later.

Later is now, I’m afraid, Rhyme.

He approached. But, never one to shrink from a fight, Sachs walked up to him, stood just feet away. She was inches taller.

Another person approached. Ercole Benelli.

‘And you! Forestry Officer!’ The words were contemptuous. ‘She is not under my command but you are. Letting this woman onto the scene, out in public — exactly what I told you should not happen — is completely unacceptable!’ As if the words didn’t have enough edge in a foreign language, he switched to Italian. The young officer’s face turned red and he lowered his eyes to the ground.

‘Procuratore,’ he began.

‘Silenzio!’

They were interrupted by a voice that called urgently from behind the yellow tape. ‘Procuratore Spiro!’

He turned, noted that the man addressing him was a reporter, one of several at the police tape line. Since the crime had occurred outside the chain-link fence, the reporters could get closer to the action than if it had happened inside. ‘Niente domande!’ He gestured with his hand abruptly.

As if he hadn’t spoken, the reporter, a young man in a dusty, rumpled suit coat and tight jeans, moved closer and lobbed questions to him.

At which Spiro stopped, completely still, and turned to the reporter. He asked something in Italian, apparently seeking clarification.

Ercole translated in a whisper. ‘The reporter is asking the prosecutor’s response to a rumor that he is being praised in Rome for his foresight in asking two renowned American forensic detectives to come to Italy to help solve the crime.’

Spiro replied, according to Ercole, that he was unaware of such rumors.

The young officer continued. It seemed that Spiro had put aside his ego and was considering what was best for the citizens of Italy, in protecting them from this psychotic killer. ‘Other, lesser, prosecutors would have been too territorial to bring such investigators here from overseas but not Spiro. He knew it was important to use Americans to get into the mind of a killer from their own country.’

Spiro answered several more questions.

Ercole said, ‘They ask was it true that he himself deduced that the killer would strike here and nearly made it in time to catch the Composer. He answers that yes, that is true.’

Spiro then made what seemed to be a brief statement, which the reporters scribbled down.

He strode to Amelia Sachs and, shocking her, put his arm around her shoulder and gazed at the cameras. ‘You will smile,’ he whispered harshly to her.

She did.

Ercole stepped forward too but Spiro whispered a harsh, ‘Scappa!’

The young officer backed away.

When the reporter had turned, to jockey through the crowd for pictures of the body, Spiro regarded Sachs and said, ‘You have a temporary — and limited — reprieve. And your appearing at scenes? I would not object to that. Though you will not talk to the press.’ He started away.

‘Wait!’ she snapped.

Spiro paused and turned, his face reflecting an expression that said he was not used to people addressing him in this tone.

Sachs said, ‘What you said? About disability? That was beneath you.’

Their eyes locked, and neither moved a muscle for long seconds. Then it seemed he might, only might, have given her a minuscule nod of concession, before continuing on to Massimo Rossi.

He nearly crashed the Mercedes.

So upset was Stefan, about the disaster at the camp, that his eyes had filled with tears and he’d nearly missed a turn as he fled into the hills above Capodichino.

He parked, climbed from the car and sagged to the cool earth. In his mind, he was picturing the blood pouring out of the man’s neck, making a shape like a bell in the sandy ground outside the camp. The man who would now never be the downbeat for his new composition.

The man who was now forever silent.

Alas, my love...

I’m sorry, Euterpe... I’m sorry...

Oh, don’t ever turn your back on your muse. Never nevernevernever...

Never disappoint.

That Stefan hadn’t wanted the man to die this way made no difference. Stefan’s composition was ruined, his waltz — so perfect — was ruined.

He dried his eyes and glanced back at the camp.

Which was when the sight stunned him. If it had been a sound, it would have been a dynamite explosion.

No!

Impossible.

This couldn’t be...

Stefan pushed his way down the hill — still remaining under cover of the pine and magnolias — and paused, his cheek against the bark of a gnarly tree.

Was it true?

Yes, yes, it was. His eyes closed again and he sagged to his knees. He was devastated.

For below him, at the very spot where the man had died, where his blood had spilled out so fast, so relentlessly, stood Artemis.

The red-haired policewoman from the factory in Brooklyn. Stefan knew that some people from New York had come to Italy to help in the investigation against Il Compositore. But he’d never thought it would be the same woman who had so cleverly tracked down the plant and burst through the fence, like the goddess from Olympus that she was, the huntress winging her way to her prey.

No, no, no...

All that mattered in Stefan’s life was arriving at Harmony. He would not allow anything or anyone to deflect him from that state of grace, where the music of the spheres hummed in perfection. And yet here she was, Artemis, intent on stopping him and driving his life to discord.

He lay curled on the ground, knowing he should be moving, but shivering in despair. Nearby, an insect clicked, an owl hoo-ahed, a large animal broke a branch and swished some dry grass.

But the sounds brought him no comfort.

Artemis... In Italy.

Get back to your house, he told himself. Before she starts looking here. Because she will. She’s lethal, she’s keen and she’s hungry for the hunt.

She’s a goddess. She’ll sense where I am!

He rose and stumbled back to the car. He started the engine, wiped the last of his tears and pulled back onto the road.

What would he do?

An idea occurred. What was the one thing that a huntress might not expect?

Obvious: that she would become another hunter’s prey.

Chapter 34

Later that evening, ten o’clock, the Composer team reconvened at the Questura.

All except Dante Spiro, the man who kept his own hours... and his own counsel.

Rhyme kept glancing impatiently into the lab, at Beatrice, who was silently plodding away in her analysis of the evidence. Her fingers were stubby, her hands small. Yet even from here Rhyme could see a deftness about her movements.

Rhyme was also aware of Thom, who’d glanced pointedly at his watch twice in the past few minutes. Yes, yes, I get it.

But Rhyme was in no mood to leave, certainly in no mood to sleep. He was exhilarated, as always when on a thorny case. Tired from the travel, yes, but sleep would remain evasive, he knew, even back in the luxurious hotel.

Sachs said, ‘But the killing: Intentional? Or because the snatch — the kidnapping — went bad? Somebody showed up. Or the victim saw him and fought back. After he was dead he left the noose as a concession to his plan.’

‘Or,’ Ercole offered, ‘his psychosis took over and he is becoming more homicidal. He doesn’t want to take the time to make more compositions.’

Beatrice Renza walked into the room, carrying a yellow pad with her notes. ‘Here, finally, is the things I have. For the board.’ She nodded to an easel. ‘And I have included the report from the notes by one of the present officers.’

Ercole handed her the marker, conceding the handwriting issue without a fight.

She said, ‘Fammi la traduzione.’

He nodded and he both spoke and spelled some of the entries for her in English, correcting her errors as she wrote.

The Composer’s composite picture revealed a round, bald white man, depicted both with a hat and without. He resembled ten thousand other round white men. Rhyme had worked very few cases in which an artist’s rendering provided leads that resulted in an arrest.

Looking at the chart, Rossi mused, ‘That Post-it note, Milan... What could it be? Was it Malek Dadi’s? Or does the Composer have a connection there? He might have flown in there, established a base, and then drove to Naples for his mischief.’

‘Is it nearby?’ Rhyme asked.

‘No. Seven hundred kilometers.’

Sachs said, ‘We have to follow up.’

‘Someone from the Milan police,’ Ercole suggested. ‘You must know officers there, Ispettore.’

‘Of course I do. But one who can understand the nature of the case quickly? What to look for? I think it would be better for someone here to go. Daniela and Giacomo have other caseloads. Ercole, with respect, you are new to this game. I wonder if—’

Sachs said, ‘I’ll go.’

‘That is what I was going to suggest.’

Rhyme said, ‘But what about Spiro?’

‘Oh, I didn’t tell you, Rhyme,’ Sachs offered. ‘I’m on the A list. Some reporter was talking about him getting praised for the insight of flying us here from America.’ She lowered her voice. ‘He came close to smiling.’

‘Dante Spiro smiling?’ Rossi laughed. ‘As often as a pope’s death.’

Sachs said, ‘I’ll find somebody in the consulate there to translate for me.’ She looked at Ercole. ‘You can stay here and take care of other matters.’

Other matters...

He understood, as Rhyme did, that she was talking about the Garry Soames case. There was still the student’s apartment to search. Ercole looked worried for a moment, concerned that she might mention this mission in front of Rossi, but of course she did not.

She said, ‘The jet we flew here on is in England for the time being. Is there an aircraft of yours I can use?

Rossi laughed. ‘We have none, I’m afraid. We fly Alitalia, like everyone else, except in very rare cases.’ He looked at Ercole. ‘The Forestry Corps has aircraft.’

‘For forest fires. Bombardier Four-Fifteen Super Scoopers. We have a Piaggio P One-Eighty. But none of those are nearby.’

He said this in a tone that, to Rhyme, really meant they were not available to shuttle American detectives anywhere, even if one had been nearby.

‘I will check with Alitalia,’ Ercole said.

‘No,’ Rhyme replied. Then to Sachs, ‘No commercial flights. I want you to have your weapon with you.’

Rossi said, ‘Yes, it would add considerable time and paperwork.’

Irregularness...

Sachs asked, ‘Then what? An overnight drive?’

Rhyme said, ‘No. I have an idea. But I’ll need to make a call.’ Then he looked Thom’s way. ‘All right, all right. I’ll do it from the hotel.’

Besides, he was eager to continue his mission to acquire the acquired taste for grappa.