The Burial Hour

Chapter 44

The G6 jet settled low on the approach to Naples airport, smooth as a Cadillac in soft-suspension mode.

Amelia Sachs was the only passenger today and the flight attendant had doted.

‘More coffee? You really should try the croissants. The ones filled with prosciutto and mozzarella are the best.’

I could really get used to this...

Now, breakfasted and caffeinated, Sachs sat back and looked below the plane, on final. She got a clear view of the Capodichino Reception Center. From here it was a messy sprawl, much bigger than it appeared from the ground. Where, she wondered, would all those people end up? In ten years, would they have homes here? In other countries? Or would they have been sent back where they had come from — to meet a fate merely postponed by their voyage here.

Would they be alive or dead?

Her phone hummed — the crew didn’t require mobiles to be powered off — and she answered.

‘Yes?’

‘Detective Sachs... I am sorry, Amelia. It is Massimo Rossi. Are you in Milan still?’

‘No, just landing, Inspector.’

‘In Naples?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good, good. For we have received an email on the Questura website. The writer says that he — or she, there’s no name — saw a man on a hilltop near the camp the night of the murder of Dadi, just afterward. He was beside a dark car. The Italian is bad so we are certain he used a translation program. I would guess he is one of the vendors and Arabic is his first language.’

‘Does he say where?’

‘Yes.’ Rossi gave her the name of a road. He’d gone to Google Earth and found a footpath to a hilltop that overlooked the camp. He described it to her.

‘I probably just flew over it. I’ll stop on the way.’

‘I will have Ercole Benelli meet you there. In case translation is necessary.’ He chuckled. ‘Or a real badge must be shown to loosen tongues.’

She disconnected. Well, a concerned citizen had come forward.

A somewhat concerned citizen.

Would there be any evidence?

Maybe, maybe not. But you never missed any opportunities for the collection of even a microgram of trace.

Amelia Sachs sat in the back of Mike Hill’s limo, the cheerful driver flirting once more and regaling her with additional details of Naples. The eruption of Vesuvius was today’s topic, and she learned to her surprise that it was not ash or earthquake or lava that killed. It was poisonous fumes.

‘In only, it was, a few minutes. Poof. You would say poof?’

‘Yes.’

‘Poof and then: dead! Thousands dead. That certainly makes you think, does it not? Never waste a moment of life.’ He winked, and she wondered if he regularly used references to natural disasters to seduce women.

She’d given him the destination and the Audi limo wound through hills north of the camp. In a tree-line gully, she found Ercole Benelli, and asked the chauffeur to stop.

They greeted each other and she introduced him to the driver. The men shared a brief conversation in Italian.

‘Can you wait here? I won’t be long,’ Sachs said to the driver.

‘Yes, yes! Of course.’ The big man smiled, as if anything a beautiful lady asked would be granted.

‘That’s the path?’ she asked Ercole.

‘Yes.’

She looked around. It was impossible to see the camp from here, but she assumed that the walkway would take her to a good vantage point.

They slipped rubber bands over their shoes and started. The way was steep, mostly dirt and grass, but some stepping-stones were smooth and seemed intentionally planted. Was this an ancient Roman route?

Climbing, breathing hard. And sweating. The day was hot, even at this early hour.

A breath of wind surrounded them with a sweet smell.

‘Telinum,’ Ercole said. He’d apparently noted her head turn toward the scent.

‘A plant?’

‘A perfume. But made of some of what you’re smelling: cypress, calamus and sweet marjoram. Telinum was the most popular perfume in Caesar’s day.’

‘Julius?’

‘The only and one,’ Ercole said.

‘One and only.’

‘Ah.’

They crested the top of the hill. It was free of trees and, looking down, she saw that, yes, she did have a good view of the camp. She was discouraged to see no obvious signs that the Composer had been here. They walked farther, to the center of the clearing.

Ercole asked, ‘Milano? Captain Rhyme reported that you found nothing.’

‘No. But we eliminated a clue. That’s as important as finding one that pans out.’

‘As important?’ he asked wryly.

‘Okay. No. But you have to pursue it anyway. Besides, I just had croissants on a private jet. So, I’m hardly complaining. You know, I don’t see any footprints or... well, anything. Where would he have stood?’

They both looked about, and Ercole walked in a careful perimeter around the clearing. He returned to Sachs. ‘No, I see nothing.’

‘Why would the Composer come here? It was after the murder, the witness said.’

‘To see who was after him?’ The young officer shrugged. ‘Or to communicate with the gods or Satan or whoever might be directing him.’

‘That makes as much sense as anything.’

Ercole shook his head. ‘He would have some cover behind those trees. I will look.’

‘I’ll check out down there.’ Sachs stepped off the crest of the hill and walked to a small clearing closer to the camp.

Wondering again: What was his point in coming here?

It would have been out of his way — would have taken ten minutes of precious time needed for his escape — to climb the path.

Then she stopped. Fast.

The path!

The only way to see the camp — and to be seen from it — was here, on the crest, after climbing from the road. Yet the emailer had said the suspect had been spotted standing ‘beside’ a dark car as he looked over the camp.

Impossible.

There was no way to get a car up here; the vehicle would have had to remain in the valley, out of sight.

It’s a trap!

The Composer himself had sent the email — in bad Italian, a program translating it from English — to lure her or other officers here.

She turned and was just starting back to the crest, calling Ercole’s name, when she heard the shot. A powerful rifle shot, booming off the hills.

At the crest, Sachs dropped to a crouch in the brush that formed the perimeter of the clearing, drawing her Beretta. She glanced into the valley and saw Hill’s driver, panicked and crouching behind the fender of the Audi. He was on his mobile, apparently shouting as he summoned the police.

And then she looked over the fringe of dry, rustling weeds and saw Ercole Benelli sprawled face down in the dust beside a regal magnolia. She started to rise and run toward him when a second bullet slammed into the ground right in front of her and, a moment later, the boom of the powerful gun’s report filled the air.

‘One interview?’

The man on the other end of the line was speaking in his soft Southern (US not Italian) drawl. This always seemed to make a request more persuasive.

Still Rhyme told Daryl Mulbry, ‘No.’

The pale fellow was nothing if not persistent.

Rhyme and Thom sat in the breakfast room of their hotel. Rhyme rarely had much interest in an early meal but in Europe the room rate included a full breakfast and, perhaps because of the travel, or the intensity of the cases, his appetite was stronger than normal.

Oh, and there was the fact that the food here was damn good.

‘Garry was beat up. Anything we can say about the case might help get him moved from general population.’ Mulbry was on speakerphone in the office Charlotte McKenzie was using at the consulate. She was with him and now said, ‘The Penitentiary Police are decent folks and they’re looking out for him. But they can’t be there all the time. I just need one fact that suggests he’s innocent, to get him to a different facility.’

Mulbry came on the line. ‘At least could you give us,’ he asked, ‘an idea of what you’ve found?’

Rhyme sighed. He said, trying to be patient, ‘We have some indication he might be innocent, yes.’ He didn’t want to be more specific, for fear Mulbry would leak it.

‘Really?’ This was McKenzie. Enthusiasm in her voice.

‘But that’s only half the story. We need to be able to point to the real perp. We’re not there yet.’ Spiro had blessed their involvement but no way was Rhyme going to make a press statement without the prosecutor’s okay.

Mulbry asked, ‘Could you give us any clue?’

Rhyme looked up, across the breakfast table. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I have an important meeting now. A man is here I have to see. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’

‘Well, if—’

Click.

Rhyme turned his attention to the man he’d referred to, who was approaching the breakfast table: their server, a slim fellow in a white jacket with a flamboyant mustache. He asked Rhyme, ‘Un altro caffè?’

Thom began, ‘It means—’

‘I can figure it out and yes.’

The man left and returned a moment later with the Americano.

Thom looked around the room. ‘Nobody’s fat in Italy. Have you noticed?’

‘What was that?’ Rhyme asked Thom. His tone suggested he was not fully present mentally. He was considering both the Garry Soames and the Composer case.

The aide continued, ‘Look at this food.’ He nodded to a large buffet of different kinds of ham, salami, cheese, fish, fruit, cereal, pastries, a half-dozen varieties of fresh bread, and mysterious delicacies wrapped in shiny paper. And there were eggs and other dishes cooked to order. Everyone was eating a full meal, and, yes, nobody was fat. Plump, maybe. Like Beatrice. But not fat.

‘No,’ Rhyme said in a snappy tone, summarily ending what would probably have been a conversation about American obesity — a topic that he had absolutely no interest in. ‘Where the hell is she? We need to get going.’

Mike Hill’s private jet had collected Amelia Sachs in Milan and had transported her back to Naples. She’d landed a half hour ago. She was going to meet Ercole to check out a possible clue in the hills above the refugee camp, but Rhyme hadn’t thought that would take long.

The waiter was hovering once again.

Thom said, ‘No, grazie.’

‘Prego.’ Then, after a dawdle: ‘It is possible for un autografo?’

‘Is he serious?’ Rhyme muttered.

‘Lincoln,’ Thom said in his most admonishing tone.

‘I’m a cop. A former cop. Who cares about my autograph? He doesn’t know me from Adam.’

Thom said, ‘But you’re on the trail of the Composer.’

‘Sì! Il Compositore!’ The waiter’s eyes were bright.

‘He’d be happy to.’ Thom took the waiter’s proffered order pad and set it in front of Rhyme, who gave a labored smile and took the offered pen. In a stilted maneuver, he signed his name.

‘Grazie mille!’

Thom admonished ‘Say—’

‘Don’t be a schoolmarm,’ Rhyme whispered to Thom and then said to the server: ‘Prego.’

‘The eggs are excellent,’ Thom said. ‘Le uova sono molto buone. Is that right?’

‘Sì, sì! Perfetto! Caffè?’

‘E una grappa.’ Rhyme gave it a shot.

‘Sì.’

‘No.’ From Thom.

The man noted the aide’s steely eyes and headed off, with a conspiratorial glance toward Rhyme. He took this to mean perhaps not now, but grappa would figure in the near future. Rhyme smiled.

He glanced through the large plate-glass window and noted Mike Hill’s limousine pulling to a stop in front of the hotel. Sachs climbed out and stretched.

Something was odd. Her clothes were dusty. And, what was this? She had a fleck of blood on her blouse. She wasn’t smiling.

He looked Thom’s way. The aide too was frowning.

The driver, a big, dark-complexioned, hirsute man — so very Italian — leapt out and grabbed her small bag from the trunk. She shook her head — at the unnecessary gallantry; the bag weighed ten pounds, tops. They exchanged a few words and he tipped his head, then joined a cluster of other drivers for a smoke and — as Rhyme had observed about the Italians — conversation.

She joined Rhyme and Thom.

‘Amelia!’ Thom said, rising, as she walked into the lobby.

‘What happened?’ Rhyme asked firmly. ‘You’re hurt?’

‘Fine. I’m fine.’ She sat down, drank a whole glass of water. ‘But...’

‘Oh, hell. A trap?’

‘Yep. The Composer. He’s got a rifle, Rhyme. High caliber.’

Rhyme cocked his head. ‘Ercole? He was with you.’

‘He’s all right too. I thought he’d been hit, but the Composer was probably shooting iron sights, no scope. He missed and Ercole went to cover. He just dropped. Played dead. I got a slug parked near me but then I laid down covering fire and we got off the hill.’

‘You’re all right?’

She touched some scrapes on her neck. Then glanced down at her tan blouse, grimacing. ‘Got some spray, gravel or something, but Hill’s driver, he’d called the police and they were there real fast. The Scientific Police’re running the scene now. But I had no clue where he was shooting from and he only fired twice, so he probably took the brass with him. They’ll find the slugs, I hope. They were using metal detectors when I left. Ercole’s there helping.’

The Composer, armed. Noose. Then a knife. Now a rifle.

Well, that changed everything. Every scene, from now on, they’d have to assume he was nearby and eager to stop them.

Whatever his mission was, saving the world from demons or reincarnated Hitlers, it was important enough for him to do anything — even killing police — to make sure he finished it.

Sachs sipped from Rhyme’s coffee. Calm, as always after a run-in like this. It was only boredom and quiet that flustered her. She took a call, listened and hung up.

‘That was Ercole. They can’t find the site of the shooter and he’s bypassed or gotten through all the roadblocks they set up. They found one slug. Looks like a Winchester two-seventy round.’

A popular hunting rifle cartridge.

Rhyme explained about Spiro’s catching the unauthorized operation, to try to exculpate Garry Soames. But then softening.

‘Did Beatrice blow the whistle?’

‘No, she didn’t know it wasn’t officially sanctioned. I think Dante’s just a very, very good investigator. But we kissed and made up. That is, up to a certain point. But from now on, we clear things with him.’

Rhyme then added details about the analysis of evidence from the roof of Natalia Garelli’s flat, where the attack took place, and at Garry’s flat.

‘Well. Interesting development.’

‘Still waiting for the Rome date-rape drug analysis. And some soil samples Ercole picked up at Garry’s. But let’s get to the Questura. See if our friend was careless enough to load his hunting rifle without those damn latex gloves.’

‘Fatima!’

Hearing the friendly voice, Fatima Jabril turned and saw Rania Tasso approaching through the crowded walkways between the tents. The woman, normally severe — as much as Fatima herself — was smiling.

‘Director Tasso.’

‘Rania, please. Call me Rania.’

‘Yes, you said that. I am sorry.’ Fatima set down her backpack, filled with medical supplies — it must have weighed ten kilos — and the paper package she held. She straightened and a bone in her back popped.

‘I heard about the baby!’ Rania said.

‘Yes, both are well. The mother and the child.’

Fatima had been the midwife for a delivery just a half hour ago. Births were not uncommon, in this ‘village’ of thousands, but the baby girl had been a milestone — the hundredth infant born in Capodichino this year.

And, surprising everyone, the Tunisian parents had named her Margherita, after the queen consort of the king of Italy in the late nineteenth century.

‘It is going well for you?’ Rania asked. ‘In the clinic.’

‘Yes. The facilities are not bad.’ She nodded at the backpack of medical supplies. ‘Though I feel like a doctor in a battle zone sometimes. Going here and there, fixing scraped knees, bandaging burns. The people are careless. A man bought some goat — from the vendors.’ Fatima glanced outside the fence, where the booths and kiosks were set up. ‘And he started a fire in his tent!’

‘No!’

‘They would have asphyxiated if their son hadn’t run up to me and said, “Why are Mommy and Daddy sleeping?”’

‘Not Bedouins, of course,’ Rania said.

‘No. Tribal peoples would know how to live in tents. What is safe and what is not. These were from the suburbs of Tobruk. They will be fine, though their clothing will smell thick with smoke forever.’

‘I will send out a flyer that people are not supposed to do that.’

Fatima picked up the package, which Rania glanced at. The refugee smiled — perhaps the first such expression she’d shared with anyone here, other than her husband or Muna. She indicated the wrapped paper parcel. ‘A miracle! My mother sent some tea from Tripoli. It was addressed to me at the “Cappuccino” Reception Center in Naples.’

‘Cappuccino?’ Rania laughed.

‘Yes. Yet it arrived.’

‘That is quite amazing. The Italian post has been known to misdeliver mail with even the accurate addresses.’

The women exchanged parting nods and went their separate ways, Fatima laboring under the backpack. She returned to the tent and, setting down the burdens, greeted her husband, then scooped up her daughter and hugged the girl. Khaled had a pleased look on his face. Also, one of conspiracy.

‘What, my husband?’

‘I have just learned of some chance for work, after our asylum is approved. There’s a Tunisian who’s lived here for years, who owns an Arab-language bookshop and he might want to hire me.’

Khaled had been happiest as a teacher — he loved words, loved stories. After the Liberation, when that was no longer possible, he had become a merchant. That was both unfulfilling and unsuccessful (largely because the men in the streets would rather loot than build a democracy). Fatima smiled at her husband but then looked away... and did not share with him that in her heart she knew it wouldn’t work out. All that had happened over the past month told her it would be impossible to simply restart a content, pleasant family life here in Italy, as if nothing had happened.

Impossible. She felt a mantle of doom ease down upon her shoulders and she clutched her daughter more tightly.

Yet her husband was so naive, she couldn’t destroy his hope, and when Khaled said that the bookseller would meet him for tea, outside the camp, would she join them, she said yes. And struggled to put aside memories of drinking tea with him on their first evening together, near the massive plaza in Tripoli that was, ironically, built by the Italians in the colonial days, originally called Piazza Italia. Now, Martyrs’ Square.

Liberation...

She shivered with rage.

Fools! Madmen! Who are ruining our world, who...

‘What, Fatima? Your face, it seems troubled?’

‘Ah, nothing, my husband. Let us go.’

They stepped outside and delivered Muna to a neighbor, who had four children of her own. Her tent was an informal child-care center.

Together, husband and wife walked to the back of the camp. Here was one of the impromptu gates — really just a cut in the chain link. The guards knew about these exits but no one made much of an effort to keep people from slipping out to make purchases or to visit with friends and relatives who had been granted asylum and moved out of the camp. They now ducked through the cut portion of the fence and walked along a row of trees and low brush.

‘Ah, look,’ Fatima said. Khaled continued a few steps on while Fatima was pausing at a low, flowering plant. The blossoms were like tiny purple stars, set among deep green leaves. She would pick some for Muna. She started to bend down. And froze, gasping.

A large man was pushing suddenly through the brush. He was light-complexioned and wore dark clothing, a dark cap and had sunglasses on. His hands were encased in blue rubber gloves.

The sort that she’d just worn to deliver beautiful little Margherita.

One hand held what seemed to be a hood, made of black cloth.

She began to scream and turn toward her husband.

But the intruder’s fist, coming from nowhere, connected solidly with her jaw and she fell backward, as silent as if God, praise be to Him, had struck her mute.

Within the hour, the Composer task force had assembled in the windowless situation room, just off the forensic lab. In addition to Rhyme, Sachs and Thom were Spiro and Rossi, and Giacomo Schiller, the sandy-haired Flying Squad officer.

‘You are injured?’ Spiro asked, his eyes dipping to Sachs’s cut.

Sachs replied that she was fine.

Rhyme asked about any more news of the Composer’s getaway after the sniper attack on Sachs and Benelli.

‘No,’ Rossi said. ‘But the Scientific Police found his sniper’s nest. Prints of his Converse shoes. They are scanning all the ridges with metal detectors but it is likely he took with him the shell casings.’ A shake of his head. ‘And I am sorry to report that there are no fingerprints on the recovered bullet, nor does it match any in our national criminal firearms database. I assume it would be a weapon he acquired or stole here.’

Rhyme agreed. The Composer wouldn’t dare bring a gun in from the United States. Even if he could do so legally, there would be too many questions at Customs.

Ercole Benelli now arrived, offering, ‘Scusatemi, scusatemi! I am late.’

Spiro eyed the young man with concern. ‘Not a worry, Ercole. Untouched?’

‘Yes, yes, fine. It is not the first time I have been shot at.’

‘Shot at before, Forestry Officer?’

‘Yes, a blind farmer believed I was a thief, on his property to steal his prize sow. He missed by a long way.’ A shrug.

Spiro said, ‘Still, a bullet is a bullet.’

‘Exactly.’

Sachs: ‘Any witnesses?’

‘No, we searched the whole area. None.’ The officer frowned. ‘It makes little sense. It doesn’t seem to fit his profile. A weapon like that.’

Sachs disagreed. ‘I think he’s getting desperate. The amobarb drug tells us he has panic attacks and suffers from anxiety. His condition could be getting worse.’

Rhyme asked, ‘Where would he get the weapon?’

Rossi said, ‘It would not be so difficult. Handguns and automatic weapons, yes. You would need an underworld connection; the Camorra has access to whole arsenals. But I would think he stole it. There are many hunters in the countryside.’

Rhyme added, ‘We all need to be particularly careful now. Assume scenes are hot. You know what I mean? That the Composer is nearby with his rifle or another weapon.’

Rossi said he would put the information out on the law enforcement wire, alerting all the officers to the risk.

‘So,’ Spiro said to Sachs, ‘I understand from Lincoln that there seemed to be no connection between the Composer and the warehouse?’

‘Very unlikely. No one saw anybody matching his description. There were footprints but no Converse Cons. No fingerprints. I’ve left soil samples with Beatrice. She might find there’s trace that connects him with the place but I really doubt it.’

Ercole said, ‘I will say too that after we had dinner I spent the evening reviewing airport security footage looking for someone who might resemble the Composer, flying to Milan. Unfortunately, most flights are connections through Rome. I had hundreds to look at. And it was several days’ worth of video. But I saw no sign of him.’

Rhyme noted the pronoun. We had dinner. And recalled Ercole’s texts and his glances toward Daniela Canton.

Beatrice walked into the office. She addressed them, struggling through English. ‘I am having the results of the tests that have been run. Primo, the soil samples you have gave to me, Ercole, from Garry Soames’s apartment, near the break-in. There is not some distinctive profile. If we are locationing some other spot, other shoes, we can link them but now, there is not a thing helpful.’

A nod toward Sachs. Now, rather than trying English, Beatrice spoke to Ercole. He translated, ‘She is mentioning the trace in the Milan warehouse. Yes, there was soil that could be associated with the soil here in Campania. Because of Vesuvius, of course, we have a great deal of unique volcanic residue. But there is much commerce between Milan and Naples — trucks drive there daily. So the presence of Neapolitan dirt in Milan does not necessarily mean much.

‘But the other trace didn’t have any particular connection with Campania or Naples, and is typical of what you would find in a warehouse: diesel fuel, regular petrol...’ He asked her to repeat something, which she did. Then he asked her once more. She frowned and repeated slowly, ‘Molybdenum disulfide and Teflon fluoropolymer.’

He glared her way and said something in Italian. A brief exchange ensued and she said something heatedly. Ercole replied, ‘How would I know what those are?’ Then to the others: ‘She says it is a grease intended for heavy outdoor equipment, lifters, conveyor belts. And there was jet fuel again. Typical too for warehouses — where the trucks drive to and from airport cargo areas.’

Massimo Rossi took a call. Rhyme could see immediately his dismay.

‘Cristo!’ the inspector muttered. ‘The Composer has struck again. And at Capodichino, the camp, once more.’

‘Another murder?’

‘No, a kidnapping. He’s left another noose.’

Rhyme said, ‘Have the Postal Police start monitoring the streaming sites. It’s just a matter of time until he uploads a new composition.’

Then a look toward Sachs. She nodded. ‘Ercole?’

Sighing, the Forestry officer dug his keys from his pocket, dropped them into her palm, and they jogged out the door.

Chapter 45

Amelia Sachs braked the Mégane to a hard stop toward the back of the Capodichino Reception Center, guided to the crime scene by the phalanx of Flying Squad cars, lights flashing. The Composer had snatched this victim from the west side of the camp, opposite from where he had slashed to death Malek Dadi.

She and Ercole Benelli climbed from the small car and strode to a uniformed officer who was directing an underling to string yellow police tape around the perimeter. He seemed not the least surprised to see an American detective with a useless NYPD badge on her hip and a Beretta in her waistband, accompanied by a tall young officer in Forestry Corps grays. Apparently Rossi or Spiro had explained who they were and by what authority they were present.

After a brief conversation with the officer, in Italian, Ercole said to her, ‘He is saying that the victim was outside the fence, about there.’

Sachs followed his finger and saw another improvised gate.

‘The kidnapper approached from those bushes and there was a scuffle. In this case, though, he was able to get the hood over the victim’s head and vanished. But more interesting and more helpful to us, I think: Someone came to the aid of the victim and fought with the Composer.’

Ah, Sachs thought. Transfer of evidence.

‘Was it a guard? Police? The person who fought?’

‘No. It was the victim’s wife.’

‘Wife?’

‘Sì. They were walking along those trees, the two of them. The Composer hit her, knocked her down. But she rose again and began fighting him. Her name is Fatima Jabril. The man taken was Khaled. They were recent arrivals.’

The Scientific Police van arrived and the two officers exited the vehicle and began to robe. She recognized them from the prior scenes. They exchanged greetings.

Sachs too pulled on a Tyvek jumpsuit, booties and cap and gloves. Though there was no formal division of labor, the woman SP officer asked, through Ercole, if Sachs would work the main scene — where the struggle had occurred — while they took the secondary scene: the far side of a stand of magnolia and vegetation, where the Composer had parked his car and, presumably, lain in wait for the victim.

‘Sì,’ Sachs said. ‘Perfetto.’

The woman smiled.

For a half hour, Sachs walked the grid, using the Italian number cards to mark spots for photography and collection of trace, including the trademark noose. She made one particularly good find in a bush beside a spot where people had clearly grappled: a Converse Con shoe — a low-top model.

When she was finished, the SP officers entered the scene and collected the trace, the noose and the shoe and then photographed and videoed around the numbers.

Outside the perimeter, Sachs stripped off the Tyvek and took the bottled water Ercole offered. ‘Thanks.’

‘Prego.’

‘I want to talk to the victim’s wife,’ she said and downed the water, then wiped her face with her sleeve. Did it ever cool off here?

They went to the front of the camp, where — as she’d seen before — buses waited in line to discharge more refugees. They walked through the gate, and an armed soldier led them to a large trailer on which was a sign that read: Direttore.

Inside the cluttered office, which was — thank you — air-conditioned, a tired-looking brunette sat behind a desk, piled high with papers. She directed them to a door in the back. Sachs knocked and identified herself. She heard, ‘Come in.’

She and Ercole entered and nodded to Rania Tasso. She was sitting with a dark-complexioned woman and an adorable child, a girl of about two years old. As the woman glanced at Ercole, her eyes widened and she quickly grabbed a cloth that rested on a chair beside her and covered her head.

Rania said, ‘This is Fatima Jabril.’ She added, ‘She’s comfortable being uncovered before kaafir women, like me and you, but not before men.’

‘Should I leave?’ Ercole asked.

‘No,’ Rania said. ‘You can stay.’

Sachs’s impression from this exchange was that Rania was respectful of others’ customs and beliefs but also insistent that they accept the protocols of their new home.

‘Sit, please.’

Fatima was attractive, with a long, narrow face — swollen and marred by a small bandage — and close-set dark eyes. She wore a long-sleeve, high-necked tunic and jeans, though her nails were polished bright red and she wore modest makeup. Her attention kept returning to her daughter and her eyes, otherwise piercing, softened when she looked at the girl. She asked something urgently in Arabic. Rania said to Sachs and Ercole, ‘She speaks some English but Arabic is better. She is, of course, worried about her husband. Have you learned anything?’

‘No,’ Sachs said. ‘But since the kidnapping was successful, we don’t think the man has hurt him, yet. Khaled is his name, right?’

‘Yes.’ From Fatima herself.

Rania asked, ‘You say not killed him yet?’

‘Correct.’

Rania considered this, then translated for Fatima.

Fatima’s reaction was both dismay... and anger. Fury. The woman was slim but not small and Sachs imagined that she’d given the Composer a good fright.

The director turned to Sachs and said, ‘I know you will want to ask Fatima some questions. But one thing I must tell you first. I have just learned something about Malek Dadi’s killing, the refugee who was stabbed to death? From what they tell me, this Composer was not responsible for his murder.’

‘No?’

‘Several men reported — separately — that they saw the Composer in the bushes. What do you say? Staking out?’

‘Yes.’

‘The Composer was staking out the informal gate in the east fence. As soon as Dadi slipped outside, he ran forward. He was holding what might have been a black mask in his hand — the sort he used today on Khaled. But suddenly several other men from the camp hurried after Dadi and jumped on him, to rob him, it seems. He fought back and one of the men slashed him in the throat and took his money. The American, the Composer, actually tried to save him.’

‘Tried to save him?’ Ercole asked. ‘This is certain?’

‘Yes. He ran toward the men, shouting, but he was too late. They fled back into the camp. When the Composer saw Dadi lying on the ground, he simply stood over him, looking shocked. Shaking his head. Then he set the noose on the ground and he too fled.’

‘All right. That’s interesting news, Rania. Thank you. Did they say anything else about him? The identification of the car?’

‘No. It happened very quickly.’

Sachs turned to Fatima. ‘Please say I’m sorry for her trouble.’

But the woman answered in English. ‘I am thanks for that.’

‘What happened, exactly, please?’

Fatima gave a fast response, in Arabic, the words edgy and staccato.

Rania explained, ‘She and Khaled left Muna, this is her daughter, there, with a neighbor and went outside to meet a man about a job for Khaled after they were granted asylum. The Composer approached them there. He struck Fatima and pushed her down — it’s very bad for a non-Muslim to touch, much less strike, a Muslim woman. This shocked and stunned her. Then he slipped a hood over Khaled’s head, and immediately Khaled grew groggy. Fatima jumped up and fought. But he hit her again hard and she fell back, dazed. When she climbed to her feet, they were gone and a car was speeding away. She couldn’t see what kind it was either. Dark. That was all she said.’

‘I kick-ed him and scratch-ed,’ Fatima said in cumbersome English, speaking slowly as she sought the words. ‘He was...’ She said a word in Arabic to Rania.

‘Surprised,’ Rania translated. ‘Unprepared.’

‘His shoe came off in the struggle?’ Ercole asked.

‘Yes. I pull-ed it. Holding to his leg.’

‘Did you see anything unusual about him? Tattoos, scars. His eye color? Clothing?’

After translation, Rania said, ‘His sunglasses fell off and his eyes were brown. A round face. She might recognize him again but she is not sure. All Westerners look alike to her. There were scars on his face, from where he had shaved, it seemed. He wore a hat. But she can’t recall his other clothing. Except it was dark.’

‘She’ll be all right?’

‘Yes, our doctors say it was a superficial injury. Nothing broken. A bruise.’

Fatima cast her eyes onto Ercole’s gray uniform. Then she turned to Sachs and gazed at her desperately. ‘Please. Fine-ed Khaled. Fine-ed my husband. It so much is important!’

‘We’ll do everything we can.’

Fatima gave a hint of a smile, then grabbed Sachs’s hand and pressed it to her cheek. She muttered in Arabic, and Rania translated. ‘She says, “Bless you.”’

Chapter 46

The injury wasn’t bad.

Stefan had been more shocked than hurt when the woman rose from the ground outside the Capodichino Reception Center and, screaming and flailing, attacked him.

He walked into his farmhouse now, carting the Browning .270 hunting rifle in his gloved hands. He hung it on hooks above the fireplace and set the box of shells beneath it. Ironic, he thought: using a hunting rifle against Artemis, the goddess of the hunt.

Well, she would be much less likely to pursue her prey now. Oh, he didn’t think she’d give up the search for him. But she’d be scared. She’d be distracted. They all would.

And that meant they’d make mistakes... and be far less likely to introduce discord into the music of the spheres.

Sitting now in his hideaway, he examined his stinging arm and leg. Just bruises. No broken skin. Still, he was shaky-hand, sweaty-skin... and a Black Scream was just waiting to burst out.

He’d lost his shoe. This was more than a little inconvenient, since he only had one pair and was reluctant to buy another, for fear the police would have put out word to retailers to alert them to a rotund white American in stocking feet buying shoes. With his prey safely unconscious in the trunk of his Mercedes, he’d driven past one of the beaches outside Naples and, when he was sure no one was looking, and there were no CCTVs, he’d snatched a pair of old running shoes a swimmer had left near the road. They fit well enough.

Then he’d hurried back here.

Stefan now walked into the darkened den off the living room. The rhythm section of his next composition lay here, on a cot. He gazed down at Khaled Jabril. The man was so scrawny. His wife had been more substantial. A man of narrow face, bushy hair, full beard. His fingernails were long and Stefan wondered what they would sound like if he clicked them together. He recalled a woman patient, in the hospital, one of the hospitals, New Jersey, he believed. She had worn a sweatshirt, pink, stained with a portion of her lunch. She was gazing out the window and clicking her nails. Thumbnail against index finger.

Click, click, click.

Again and again and again.

Another patient was obviously irritated by the noise and kept glaring at the woman angrily but staring at a mental patient to achieve a desired effect is the same as asking a tree for directions. Stefan had not been the least troubled by the sound. He disliked very few sounds — vocal fry was a rare exception.

Babies crying? So many textures of need, want, sorrow and confusion. Beautiful!

Pile drivers? The heartbeat of lonely machines.

Human screams? A tapestry of emotions.

Fingernails on a blackboard? Now, that was interesting. He had a dozen recordings in his archive. It comes third in the ranking of cringe-worthy sounds, after a fork on a plate and a knife on glass. The revulsion isn’t psychological: Some researchers thought people responded as if the sound were a primitive warning cry — it isn’t. No, it’s purely physical: a reaction to a particular megahertz range, amplified by the peculiar shape of the ear and painfully stabbing the amygdala region of the brain.

No, very few sounds troubled Stefan, though he would be fast to point out there’s a distinction between tone and volume.

Whatever the sound, crank up the decibels and it can move from unpleasant to painful... even to destructive.

Stefan knew this firsthand.

Now, that was a memory he cherished.

Shaky-hand.

He wiped sweat and put the tissue away.

Or, Euterpe... Calm me down, please!

Then he saw Khaled’s fingers twitch several times. This was not, however, a sign of waking. He would be snoozing for some period of time. Stefan knew his drugs well. Crazy people are savvy pharmacists.

Stefan relaxed. He now had a task. He sat beside Khaled. He reached down and, on a whim, took the man’s hand. He clicked his own fingernails against Khaled’s.

Click, click...

Delicious.

From his pocket he took his recorder and undid the man’s shirt.

Now he turned the device on and pressed it against Khaled’s chest. The heartbeat was, of course, slow and soft, as with anyone in sleep, but because the room was so quiet the sound was captured clearly and distinctly.

He had the beat. Now he needed the melody. Scrolling through his library, he found one that practically begged to be the soundtrack of his next video.

Stefan could think of no other waltz that so perfectly blended music and death.

Chapter 47

‘About time,’ Rhyme muttered.

The evidence from the most recent kidnapping had arrived and Ercole was assisting Beatrice in setting it out on the examination tables in the non-sterile section of the lab. Rhyme, Sachs and Thom were observing from the situation room.

‘His shoe?’ Rhyme asked. This discovery surprised, and pleased, him. Shoes are wonderful forensically; not only do they often offer distinctive tread marks to help link a perp to a scene, but the shoe itself can contain a treasure of DNA, fingerprints and, in running shoes like this, trace tucked into the cavities of the sole. Rhyme had once nailed a perp because of the precious way he tied his oxfords.

Sachs explained how the Composer had lost it in the struggle with the victim’s, Khaled’s, wife.

In a gloved hand, Ercole carried the shoe to Rhyme. ‘A Converse Con, in the proper size.’

Beatrice barked, ‘Why you have picked it up?’

He turned and glared at her. ‘I simply am showing it to Captain Rhyme. He had commented on it. It’s in an evidence bag. And I am wearing gloves.’

‘But now we are needing to include another chain-of-custody entry! And everywhere a piece of evidence travels, there can be risk of contaminated.’

True. Rhyme lifted an eyebrow to Ercole, who sighed, set the shoe down on a table and signed the card Beatrice offered.

Dante Spiro and Massimo Rossi joined them.

Spiro cast a look Ercole’s way. ‘Now, Forestry Officer, it is safe to say we have the start of a pattern. Will you concede that?’

‘Refugees.’

‘Sì. That is his preferred target — in Italy, at least. We have three such victims.’

Rossi said, ‘The director of the camp is convinced that he is targeting asylum-seekers because he believes we will not be so diligent in pursuing the case. Although that is hardly true.’ He waved at the charts.

‘But,’ Ercole said, ‘I am wondering...’

Spiro said, ‘How this is in harmony with the businessman in New York?’

‘Correct, Procuratore.’

‘There will be a way to incorporate that, I believe. Patterns are not always symmetrical. We are not sure yet. We are, however, advancing.’

Sachs then said, ‘You mentioned the director, Rania Tasso. One thing she told me that was interesting. I’m not sure what to make of it. She said the Composer didn’t kill Malek Dadi. He tried to save him.’

‘Is this true?’ Rossi asked.

Spiro was frowning but said nothing.

‘She was sure,’ Sachs continued.

‘Who then was the killer?’

‘Muggers, thieves. Some refugees in the camp. They got to him before the Composer did and when Dadi fought back, the Composer ran toward them to stop them. But it was too late.’

Ercole said, ‘Odd. A curious element to his profile.’

Rhyme, however, wasn’t interested in profiles. ‘Two lions going after a gazelle. Neither wants to give up his prey, which is going to end up as a main course one way or the other. Nothing remarkable about that. Let’s see what the evidence tells us.’

Rossi placed a call and, after a conversation in Italian, disconnected. ‘No video yet has been posted online.’

A half hour later Beatrice Renza walked from the sterile portion of the lab and joined them, clipboard in her grip. She handed it to Ercole without comment and picked up a marker. He translated and she wrote.

‘No fingerprints on his shoe?’ Rhyme muttered. ‘What the hell does he do? Wear gloves in his sleep?’ Then, frowning. ‘That entry: the gamma hydroxybutyric. The hell is that doing there?’

Spiro said, ‘Yes, how can that be?’

Ercole had a conversation with Beatrice. He said, ‘It was recovered from soil in the tread of the Composer’s shoe.’

‘Impossible. It’s not from this case. It’s from the Garry Soames case. That’s the date-rape drug. There’s been cross-contamination. Hell.’

Rossi now explained this to Beatrice, who replied in an even tone, not in the least defensive. The inspector said, ‘She says she too was surprised to find the drug on the shoe. She was very careful with the evidence. There was no contamination in the lab. Garry Soames’s clothing was processed in a different part of the lab and by a different examiner.’

All eyes were now on Ercole. Spiro said, ‘You picked it up, Forestry Officer. And you collected the drug trace at Garry Soames’s apartment.’

‘Yes. And I wore gloves. Then and now. And the shoes were in a sealed evidence bag.’

‘Still, there is obvious contamination.’

‘If I am responsible for this, then I’m sorry. But I do not believe I am.’

Beatrice turned her round, stony face his way.

Rhyme saw the dismay in the young man’s eyes. Lesson delivered. ‘It’s not the end of the world, Ercole. The problem will be at trial. A defense lawyer could get the evidence from the shoe thrown out on those grounds. But we can ignore it for the moment. Our goal is to find him. The contamination’ll be the US attorney’s problem at trial in the Southern District.’

Spiro chuckled. ‘You mean, Lincoln, it will be my problem in the Tribunale di Napoli.’

Rhyme shot him a wry look.

The Wolf Tits Rule...

Reading again, Rhyme said, ‘Now, those triacylglycerols, free fatty acids, pigment.’

Ercole said, ‘Beatrice has provided a chemical chart here. Should we write that down?’

Rhyme glanced at the molecular diagram. ‘No, not necessary. We’ve got what we need. Triacylglycerols — or triglycerides.’

‘What are they? Spiro asked.

‘Fat basically. They’re energy reserves for living things. Molecules that contain glycol and three fatty acid chains. Hence, tri-glyceride. They’re found in both plants and animals. But animal fats tend to be saturated.’

‘What does that mean?’ Rossi made this inquiry.

‘In a nutshell, saturated fats — the bad ones, if you listen to the health-minded — are so named because their carbon chains are saturated with hydrogen. This makes them more solid than unsaturated fats, which have less hydrogen.’ He nodded at the diagram. ‘These are missing some hydrogen and therefore it is a plant fat.’

‘But what kind?’ Ercole asked.

‘The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.’

‘The... what? I am not understanding,’ Beatrice said.

‘American cultural reference from a long time ago, fifty, sixty years or so.’

The officer translated for Beatrice, who gave a rare smile and said something, which Ercole translated: ‘She said that is not so “long ago,” compared with cultural references in Italy.’

Sachs laughed.

Rhyme said, ‘We need to find out what plant. Is there a database of plants in the Scientific Police?’

Beatrice’s response was that there was one in Rome. She would go online and search it. She typed and spoke to herself as she did so. ‘Allora. A triglyceride molecule, unsaturated, una hydrocarbon chain, twenty-two carbon atoms in way of length. Dark green, the pigment. What plant, what plant...?’ Finally she nodded. ‘Bene. I have gotten it. But helpful, I am not thinking so much. It is olive oil.’

Rhyme sighed, then glanced at Rossi. ‘How much olive oil would you say is produced in Italy?’

The inspector, in turn, handed off to Ercole. This would be, of course, his area of expertise. The young officer answered, ‘About four hundred and fifty thousand tons every year. We’re the world’s second largest producer.’ He grimaced and added defensively, ‘But we are closing in on Spain.’

How helpful is this? Rhyme thought, irritated. It could have come from anywhere in the country. ‘Hell.’

This was the most frustrating occurrence in forensic work, struggling to discover a clue, only to learn that while it probably did have some connection with the perpetrator, the substance was so common that it was useless forensically.

Then Ercole said something to Beatrice and she stepped away, returning a moment later with some photographs.

He studied them carefully.

‘What, Ercole, you see something?’ Rhyme asked.

‘I believe I do, Capitano.’

‘And?’

‘The reference on the chart — to the organic material. Bits of solids. Look at the photo.’

Rhyme glanced at the images. He could see hundreds of tiny dark fragments.

Ercole added, ‘Since we now know about the olive oil, I would say that this trace is not olive oil alone. It is pomace. That is the paste left over after the pressing of the olives.’

Spiro said, ‘So this might have come not from a restaurant or someone’s home but from a producer?’

‘Yes.’

Narrowing things down some. But how much? He asked, ‘Do you have a lot of producers here?’

‘In Campania, our region, we don’t have as many as in Calabria, farther south. But still many, many, yes.’

Rhyme: ‘Then why is this helpful? And why do I see a goddamn smile on your face?’

Ercole asked, ‘Are you so often in an unpleasant mood, Captain Rhyme?’

‘I’ll be considerably more cheerful if you answer my question.’

‘I am smiling because of the one thing I do not see in this picture?’

Rhyme lifted an impatient eyebrow.

‘I do not see any residue of olive stones — the pits, you know.’

Sachs asked, ‘Why is that important?’

‘There are two ways to make olive oil. To crush the fruit with the pits intact or to destone them first. Cato, the Roman writer, felt that denocciolato oils — destoned before pressing — were superior. Some swear by this, others say no. I am familiar with the subject because I have, in fact, fined producers for claiming their oil is denocciolato when it is not.’

‘And,’ Rhyme said, not exactly smiling himself, but close, ‘it is a much more time-consuming and expensive process and therefore fewer producers use that technique.’

‘Exactly,’ Ercole said. ‘I would think there are only a few in the area that do so.’

‘No,’ Beatrice said, head down as she viewed her computer. ‘Not “few.” Solo uno.’ She stabbed a blunt finger onto the map of Naples, indicating a spot no more than ten miles away. ‘Ecco!’

Chapter 48

Through the dirty windshield, Amelia Sachs looked over the hilly fields outside Naples.

The afternoon air was dusty, filled with the scent of early autumn. Hot too, of course. Always hot here.

She and Ercole were driving past hundreds of acres of olive trees, about eight to ten feet high. They were untidy, branches tangled. On the nearest, she could see the tiny green olives — fruit, Ercole said they were called.

They were not having much luck in the hunt for the Composer.

The Police of State and the Carabinieri had divided up the fields around the Barbera olive oil factory — the only one making oil from destoned olives — in their search for Khaled Jabril and the Composer. This was the sector Sachs and Ercole had drawn. As they had approached down a long road, she was discouraged to see... well, very little. This area, northeast of Naples, was largely deserted. Farmhouses, small companies — generally construction and warehousing — and fields.

They stopped at the few residences scattered around the Barbera factory. And they learned that, no, a man resembling the Composer was not inside. No, a man resembling Khaled Jabril was not inside, either. And neither of them had been seen recently. Or ever.

Ci dispiace...

Sorry.

Back into the car.

Soon Sachs and Ercole were bounding along a badly kept road. Now there were no businesses or residences at all, just the acres and acres of Barbera company olives.

‘Dead end,’ Ercole said.

‘Call the other teams,’ Sachs asked, distracted. She swatted lazily at a bee that had zipped into the Mégane. ‘See if they’ve had any success.’

But after three conversations, Ercole reported unsurprisingly that none of the other search parties had found anything helpful. And he confirmed that the Postal Police were carefully monitoring social media and streaming sites. But: ‘He has not uploaded the video yet.’

So Jabril was still alive. Probably.

They returned to the road.

‘Hm.’ Sachs was frowning as she looked over the fields.

‘Yes, Detective? Amelia?’

‘The paste in the Composer’s shoe? The olive oil residue. You call it what again?’

‘The word is “pomace.”’ He spelled it.

‘Is it thrown out after the oil is extracted?’

‘No, no, it’s valuable. It can be used for fuel in producing electricity. But around here it is mostly used to make organic fertilizer.’

‘Then he might not have picked it up at the Barbera oil operation.’

He gazed at her with a look of concern. ‘In fact, he would not pick it up here. This factory would be careful not to spill or waste any. They would package it and sell it. Now that I am thinking: most likely the Composer would have picked it up on his shoes at an organic fertilizer farm. Not here.’

‘And do you know where one of those farms might be?’

‘Ah, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. And the answer is, yes, I do.’

In twenty minutes they were deep in the countryside, near a town called Caiazzo, surrounded by pale wheat glimmering in the hazy sun.

Sachs was racing along the highway that would take them to Venturi Fertilizzanti Organici, SpA. She pushed the tiny car up to 120 kph, thinking: Oh, what I could do on this road with a Ferrari or Maserati... She downshifted and took a turn at close to forty. The skid was not remarkable; the volume of Ercole Benelli’s ‘Mio Dio’ was.

A glance at the GPS map told her they were approaching the turnoff road and she slowed and veered onto it.

Five minutes later: ‘Look there.’ Ercole pointed.

The operation was small: what appeared to be an office structure and several warehouses or processing plants, then fields containing ridges of dark material, about fifty yards long and three feet high. ‘There. Those are the composting piles?’

‘Yes.’

She braked to a stop.

‘Look, that one at the end is on top of a slope. With any rain the pomace could run down to the property in the valley. Is there a house there, can you see?’

Ercole could not.

Sachs drove to the end of the fertilizer company’s property. They discovered a small road that skirted the place. It was dirt. She started down it slowly.

‘There!’ Ercole called.

Ahead of them, set back a hundred feet from the road, was a structure just barely visible through the weeds, shrubs and oak, myrtles, pine and juniper trees.

Sachs kept the car in third gear to make sure the transmission was quiet. She tricked the clutch constantly to keep from stalling.

Finally, near the driveway that led to the house, she pulled off the road into a stand of bushes and killed the engine.

‘I don’t think I can get out.’ Ercole was trying the door — the blockade of vegetation prevented its opening.

‘Need to stay as much out of sight as we can. Climb out my side.’

Sachs got out and he joined her, awkwardly surmounting the gearshift.

Ercole pointed down at their feet. ‘That’s pomace.’ Indicating a dark grainy substance. She could definitely smell the pungent scent of fertilizer in the making.

He asked, ‘Should we call Inspector Rossi?’

‘Yes, but just have him send a half-dozen officers. There’s still a chance he’s somewhere else.’

As he called she looked toward the house. It appeared quite old, a farmhouse, of wood and uneven brick construction. The place wasn’t small. She motioned to him and they started down the long driveway, sticking to the shadows of the trees along the side.

When Ercole had disconnected, she said, ‘Let’s move fast. He hasn’t uploaded his video yet but I don’t think Signor Khaled has much time.’

Through brush, over fallen trees, they moved steadily toward the building. Insects streaked toward them, mosquitoes and gnats. Not far away a dove exhaled its breathy call, mournful, comforting and eerie. The smells were of smoke and something pungent, perhaps the decaying olive oil fertilizer.

They followed the driveway to the left, where the unattached garage was located. The home was even bigger than it had appeared from the road, a rambling structure of several buildings, connected by windowless hallways.

‘Gothic,’ she whispered.

‘Like Gotico? Spooky? Stephen King.’

She nodded.

The garage was locked and there were no windows. It was impossible to tell if anyone was inside.

‘What do we do now?’

‘Do you know Peeping Toms, in Italy?’

‘Yes, yes. We know the term. From a movie, many years ago, that was popular here.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘And curious. The movie is about a serial killer who films his victims. The English title is Peeping Tom.’

‘Well, we’re going to peep.’ She drew her weapon. She turned to Ercole to tell him to do the same but saw that he already had. They circled the house and began looking, quickly, through the few curtainless windows. At first it didn’t seem like anyone lived here but then she caught a glimpse of clothing in a pile. Some empty soda cans.

Was there a light on? In a distant room? Or was the illumination from the sun falling through a slit in a curtain?

Sachs saw inside a large wooden door that, she believed, led down to a cellar. It was closed. Could Khaled be down there now?

Stephen King...

They had nearly completed the circuit of the house. One window remained. It was to the left of the front door. The curtain was partially askew so she lifted her head quickly and glanced inside.

Well.

The room was unoccupied but there was plenty to seize her attention. Above the fireplace was a hunting rifle. She couldn’t be sure, but it might very well have been a .270-caliber.

And sitting prominently in the middle of a table were a half-dozen musical-instrument strings. One had been tied into a noose.

Chapter 49

Khaled Jabril woke to fear, pure fear.

He found himself in a dim room that was, damp and fetid with mold and rotting food smells. Perhaps sewage too.

Where, where?

God, praise be to Him, where am I?

Nothing made sense. He had no memory of the past... well, how long? An hour, a week? No memory at all. A vague recollection of being in a tent. It was — yes, it was under the sun. Hot sun. A tent, his home. Why was he in a tent? Had something happened to his home in Tripoli?

No, their home.

He and others. Someone... Yes! His wife! He could now picture her. Ah: Fatima! He remembered the name, praise be to God! And their child.

And she — he believed the child was a girl — was named... He could not recall, and this made him want to cry.

So cry he did.

Yes, yes, she was a girl. A beautiful curly-haired daughter.

Although was she, the girl he pictured, in fact, their daughter? She might have been his brother’s. Then another thought came to him. Italy. He was in... in Italy.

Wasn’t that right?

But where was he now? Here? He’d been in a tent. That he was pretty sure about, though for what reason, he had no idea. A tent, then nothing, then he was in this place. That was all he could recall. His memory was so bad — the result of some drug? Or had he been suffocating, his brain cells dead? Maybe. His throat hurt. And his head too. Dizzy.

A dark room. Cold.

A basement, he believed.

Who had done this? Why?

And why was his mouth gagged, sealed with tape?

Something brushed his bare feet and he screamed, loud to him, soft to the world, because of the gag.

A rat! Yes, there were several of them. Skittering, twitchy.

Were they going to devour him alive?

Oh, my God, praise be to You!

Save me!

But the half-dozen — no, dozen, no, more! — creatures passed him by on their way toward the wall to his right. They weren’t interested in him.

Not yet.

All right. What is happening here? Hands bound, feet bound. Kidnapped. Gagged. But why on earth? Why would God — praise be to Him — allow this? Now more pieces of memory returned — though none recent. Recalling being a teacher in Tripoli until education in Libya became so fraught that his secular school was closed. Then he managed an electronics store, until the economy in Libya became so fragile that the shop was looted.

Only his wife’s salary as a nurse was left to support them.

And life grew even worse. No dinars, no food, the spread of the fundamentalists, ISIS or Daesh, taking over Derna, Sirte and other cities and towns, like an infection. Were they behind his kidnapping? Those men would certainly abduct and torture. Khaled and his family were moderate Sunnis, and believed in secular government. Yet he’d never vocally opposed the extremists. How could the mullahs and generals of ISIS even know he existed?

And the Libyan government?

Well, governments, plural. There was the House of Representatives, in Tobruk, along with the Libyan National Army. And then there was the rival General National Congress, based in Tripoli, whose questionable claim was enforced by the Libya Dawn militia. Yes, Khaled favored the House of Representatives but did so discreetly.

No, this kidnapping could not be political.

Then a bit of memory returned, like a kick. A boat... rocking on a boat. Vomiting frequently, burning in the sun...

The image returned of the tent...

And his daughter. Yes, his daughter. What is her name?

He carefully scanned the place where he was being kept. An old structure. Brick walls, beams overhead. He was in a cellar. The floor was stone and well worn, scarred and uneven. He looked down to see what kind of chair he was seated in and felt a pressure at his neck. A cord of some sort. He looked up.

No!

It was a noose!

The thin cord rose to a beam over his head. It continued to the far wall, over another beam then down to a weight, one of those big round ones that are attached to the ends of barbells. It was upright and resting on a ledge about five feet off the ground. The ledge was at an angle, and had the weight been free it would have rolled off and tugged the noose taut, strangling him. But thank God — praise be to Him — it was wedged in place.

He tried to make sense of this. Then he noted movement again, from the corner of his eye.

On the floor. More rats. And, like the others, they paid him no mind. They were much more interested in something else.

And then, to Khaled’s horror, he saw what drew the squirmy creatures, with their tiny red eyes and sharp yellow teeth: a block of something that was preventing the deadly weight from rolling off the ledge and tugging the noose up to strangle him. Pink, streaked with white. A piece of meat. That was what kept the weight from rolling and pulling the noose taut.

The first of the rats, moving cautiously, untrusting, approached it now. They sniffed with their pointed noses, they leapt back, then moved closer. Some were pushed aside by others — the more aggressive — and it was collectively decided that this addition to their lair was not only harmless... it was tasty.

The four rats soon became seven and then became a dozen, swarming the meat like huge, gray bacteria.

Some fights broke out, screeching and biting. But on the whole, they shared.

And began the serious effort of dining.

Khaled shouted and screamed through the gag and shook in the chair.

Which drew the attention of merely one or two of the rodents and their response was merely to glance at him with curiosity as they happily chewed and swallowed.

In five or ten or twenty minutes, they would devour the meat entirely. And the weight would begin its fall.

Despair.

But then came a flash of joy.

Yes, yes, thank you, God, praise be to Him. He had remembered his daughter’s name.

Muna...

At least he would have her name — and the memory of her happy face, her thick curly hair — to accompany him to his death.

Chapter 50

They tried. Both of them tried, slamming into the front door of the farmhouse.

But houses built in an era before alarms, when solid oak and maple had to provide the front line of defense, were not easily breached. Then or now.

Ercole had called Rossi again, who in turn had located the closest police station. It was the rival Carabinieri, but for a case like this every officer in Italy was on the same side. A car would be there in ten to fifteen minutes. The Police of State dispatched earlier would be about the same.

‘Shoot the lock out,’ Ercole said to Sachs.

‘That doesn’t work. Not with handguns.’

They circled the farmhouse quickly, still staying vigilant. They had no evidence that the Composer wasn’t inside or nearby. And by now he could know he had visitors. And would have seen or at least guessed it was police.

Ercole stumbled over an old garden hose and jumped back to his feet, wincing. He’d cut his palm on some broken crockery. Not badly. She was keeping her eyes — and concentration — on the windows, looking for both threats and for a means of entry.

She found one. A window in the back, one they’d looked through earlier, was unlocked.

Out came her small but blinding tactical flashlight. ‘Stay back, away from the window,’ she called to Ercole.

He dropped into a crouch. She clicked the light on and, holding it in her left hand, high above her head, stepped quickly to the window and played the beam inside while aiming the Beretta with her right. If the Composer were inside, armed and ready to shoot, he would instinctively aim for the light or near it. She might take a round in the arm but would have a second or two to fire before she collapsed in pain.

Or died from a brachial artery shot.

But the room yawned back, its only occupants dusty boxes and furniture covered with mismatched sheets as drop cloths.

‘Boost me up.’

He helped her inside, then he vaulted the sill and joined her.

They walked to the closed door that led to the hallway.

He tapped her arm. She smiled. He was holding out rubber bands.

They put them on their feet. He whispered, ‘But no gloves. Tactical.’

Nodding, she whispered, ‘We clear every room. That means we assume that he’s on the other side of any closed door or he’s hiding behind anything big enough to hide behind. I’ll hit the room once, fast, with the light, high, like I did at the window. Then back to cover. Then we go in low, crouching. He’ll be expecting us standing. And I mean low.’

‘And if we find him and he doesn’t surrender, we shoot for his arms or legs?’

She frowned. ‘No, if he’s armed, we kill him.’

‘Oh.’

‘Shoot here.’ She touched her upper lip, just below the nose. ‘To hit the brain stem. Three shots. Are you okay with that?’

‘I—’

‘You have to be okay with it, Ercole.’

‘I am.’ A firm nod. ‘Sì. D’accordo.’

A few deep breaths, and so began the hunt. This was a game you never got used to, a game you hated and yet was the most exquisite drug ever concocted.

First, she directed him to the den, where she’d seen the rifle. They cleared the room and she lifted the gun down and removed and pocketed the bolt, so it couldn’t fire. Then they began a room-by-room search, from the back of the house to the front. Most rooms were empty. There was a small bedroom that had to be the Composer’s. A single Converse Con sat beside the bed.

The kitchen, too, had been used with some frequency.

They continued on.

And hit every room on the ground floor of the place, then upstairs. The Composer was not here.

Finally, they returned to the door that Sachs believed led to the cellar.

She tested the wrought-iron latch slowly. It was unlocked.

Amelia Sachs hated basements. With a full tactical operation, you could pitch down a flash bang grenade, stun a barricaded suspect and leap down fast. But now? Just the two of them? She’d have to descend the stairs, her legs then hips then torso in full view of whatever weapon the Composer had. When he’d stolen the rifle, had he gotten away with a pistol as well?

Two shots to the knees and she’d fall, helpless and screaming in pain, ready for the final kill.

She glanced up and noted that Ercole, while he would not have had any such experience, was determined and calm. She was confident he’d do fine, if anything happened to her.

She whispered, ‘If Khaled is anywhere, it’s down there. Or the garage. More likely here, I’m thinking. So let’s go. You pull the door. And I go down, fast.’

‘No, I will be the one.’

She smiled. ‘This is my thing, Ercole. I’ll go.’

‘Let me. If he fires or attacks you will be able to shoot him better than I can. It is not a subject I excelled in at training. Truffle smugglers rarely carry AK-Four-Sevens.’ A smile.

She gripped his arm. ‘All right. Go fast. Here’s the light.’

He took a deep breath. And muttered something. A name. Isabella, she believed. Maybe a saint.

‘Ready?’

He nodded.

She yanked the door open. It crashed into the wall with a cloud of dust.

Neither moved for a moment.

It wasn’t a cellar. It was a closet. Empty.

Breathing fast.

‘Okay. Garage. We need something to break the padlock.’

They rummaged for tools and, in the kitchen, Ercole found a large hatchet. They left the house and made their way, crouching, to the outbuilding.

They prepared for entry again — different this time, since they could both establish a field of fire. He would break the lock and pull the sliding door open, while Sachs crouched and aimed into the small building with her flashlight and Beretta. He would do the same.

She nodded.

One swing of the tool and the padlock flew off. He yanked the door open... and just like the closet, empty space greeted them.

A sigh. They put their weapons away and walked back to the house.

‘Let’s see what we can find.’

How much time did they have until Khaled died? Not much.

They walked into the living room and, donning blue gloves now, looked over the desk, the papers, files, notes, strings. Searching for anything that might give a clue where the Composer and Khaled might be.

Her phone hummed — she’d put it on silent before the entry.

‘Rhyme,’ she said into the microphone attached to her earbud cords. ‘It’s his hidey-hole. But they’re not here. The Composer or the vic.’

‘Massimo says the Carabinieri should be there any minute.’

She could hear the sirens.

Rhyme said, ‘There’s not much time. He’s uploaded his video. Massimo sent the link to Ercole’s phone. The Postal Police are trying to track his proxies through the Far East. He doesn’t have Edward Snowden’s chops but it’ll still be a few hours before they get a specific site.’

‘We’ll keep at it here, Rhyme.’

She disconnected and continued the search, telling the Forestry officer, ‘Check your phone.’

Ercole showed her the screen. ‘Here.’

The video showed the unconscious form of Khaled Jabril, sitting in a chair, a noose around his neck, mouth gagged. Even through the small speakers of the mobile, it was easy to hear the bass beat, keeping time to the waltz that played underneath the visuals. The tune was eerie.

Ercole said, ‘Ah, he’s not using gasping breath for the rhythm, like before. It’s the victim’s heartbeat.’

Sachs said, ‘It’s familiar, that music. Do you know what it is?’

‘Ah, yes. It is the “Danse Macabre.”’

Sachs actually shivered, hearing the pulsing, ominous piece. She then squinted as she gazed at some papers in front of her.

No. Impossible.

She hit redial.

‘Sachs. You’ve found something?’

‘It’s far-fetched, Rhyme, but it’s the only chance we’ve got. Where’s Massimo?’

‘Hold on. You’re on speaker.’

‘I’m here, Detective Sachs,’ Rossi said.

‘Here’s an address. In Naples.’ She recited it.

‘Yes, it’s in the Spanish Quarters, not too far away from us. What’s there?’

‘Khaled Jabril, I’m pretty sure. The only question is, is he still alive?’

Chapter 51

Sachs saw Massimo Rossi, standing before what seemed to be an old factory, long abandoned, boarded up. The word Produzione was legible, appearing below another word — a person’s name or a product or a service — that was not.

The inspector saw them and called, ‘Qui. This way.’

She and Ercole were on foot. They had to be on foot, for the address they sought was in what Rossi had described as Quartieri Spagnoli, a congested, chaotic warren of narrow streets and alleyways in Naples. ‘Named for the Spanish garrison that was stationed nearby in the sixteenth century,’ Ercole told her. ‘If you see a boy running here, unlike the Vomero, he very likely is alerting his father or brother to the presence of police. Camorra are here. Tanti Camorra.’

Above her, laundry on white lines fluttered in the soft breeze, and scores of residents watched the flashing lights and the manhunt underway by dozens of uniformed officers. The spectators’ vantage points were balconies and open windows — which were probably where they spent much of their time; there were no yards, front or back, or even door stoops to sit on and rock babies or talk about politics and the day’s adventures at work, in the evening with a beer or wine.

Sachs was startled as a large basket descended to the ground just ahead of her. A boy ran to it and dropped in a plastic grocery bag. The basket ascended; three stories above his father or older brother began to haul the heavy load upward.

Life in the Spanish Quarters seemed to be largely overhead.

They entered the factory now. The air was dank, nose-pinching with mold. The bases of some type of equipment were still bolted into the floor, though what had been mounted to them was impossible to tell. The place was not large and was now made smaller by the many police officers inside. Little sunlight reached in; bright lamps had been set up and, while the rooms were naturally spooky, something about the stark white illumination made them seem even more troubling, like a bright light shining into an open wound. She saw Daniela and Giacomo and nodded. They greeted her in return.

Rossi pointed to the back of the facility and she and Ercole continued to the doorway he indicated. ‘Down there. The Composer has outdone himself this time,’ he muttered.

The inspector was already wearing booties and now Sachs and Ercole paused to slip them on too. Blue latex gloves, as well. They entered a small room and descended to the basement of the factory.

The area did not cover the entire footprint of the building but only the back half. The sting of mold and mildew was greater here. Decay too. Overhead were beams, and the floor was pocked stone, giving the place a medieval appearance.

A torture chamber.

Which was exactly what it had been. Khaled Jabril had been stationed — in a chair again, as with Ali Maziq — against a damp wall, the backdrop for the Composer’s latest video.

‘He was taped down and the noose went over the beams. It was tied to that.’ He pointed out a body-builder’s circular weight, sitting on the floor, in a large evidence bag. Another bag held the noose.

‘Qual è il peso?’ Ercole asked.

Rossi replied, ‘Ten kilos.’

About twenty-five pounds. Maziq was going to be strangled by a water bucket that would have weighed roughly the same, Sachs guessed.

Rossi clicked his tongue. ‘But what is so devious. Look there.’

On the ledge where a number card sat was a piece of meat.

Sachs understood.

Ercole asked, ‘Ratti?’

‘Sì. Exactly. Il Compositore set the meat up as a block to prevent the weight from rolling, and then rats sensed it and began to eat. So the victim had time, perhaps much time, to contemplate his impending death.’

‘Did anyone see the Composer arrive or leave?’ Ercole asked.

‘No. There is a pushcart outside. We think he covered the unconscious victim in blankets and wheeled him here from the square nearby. He would look like any other merchant. We are conducting a canvass but even though the Quartieri Spagnoli is a small area, there are so many people, so many businesses and shops that nobody would pay him any mind.’ Rossi’s shrug translated into the hopelessness of the efforts.

Then he brightened. ‘But now, let us go upstairs. You might wish to meet the man whose life you saved. For his part, I know he wishes a word or two with you.’

Khaled Jabril sat in an ambulance. He appeared groggy and had a bandage on his neck but otherwise he seemed unharmed.

The medics spoke to Rossi and Ercole in Italian, and Ercole paraphrased to Sachs. ‘Mostly he is disoriented. From the chloroform or other drugs used to keep him submissive.’

Khaled gazed at Sachs. ‘You are the one who saved me?’ His Libyan accent was pronounced but she understood him.

‘And Officer Benelli here,’ Sachs said. ‘Your English is good.’

‘I have some, yes,’ the man said. ‘I studied in Tripoli. University. My Italian is not good. I believe I was told my wife is all right. They told me she was struck by the man who did this. I have no memory of that.’

‘She’s fine. I’ve spoken to her since the attack.’

‘And my daughter? Muna?’

‘She’s good. They’re together.’

The medic spoke to Ercole and he translated. ‘They will meet you at the hospital. A car is bringing them from the camp.’

‘Thank you.’ Then Khaled was crying. ‘I would have died if not for you. May God bless you forever, praise be to Him. You are the most brilliant police ever on earth!’

Sachs and Ercole shared a brief glance. She didn’t tell Khaled that the deduction as to his location was not so profound. The paper she had stumbled upon on the Composer’s desk in the farmhouse near the fertilizer farm was a list of names of his victims — Maziq, Dadi and Khaled Jabril — and the places where they were to be stashed for the video. Sachs didn’t quite believe it could be so obvious.

It’s far-fetched, Rhyme, but it’s the only chance we’ve got...

After she’d given Rossi the address, the inspector had sent Michelangelo and his tactical force here.

And, in the basement, they’d found Khaled.

Sachs was relieved that she could conduct an interview in English... though the results were far from satisfying. The unsteady Khaled Jabril had no memory of the kidnapping itself. In fact, he could remember very little of their days in the refugee camp. He’d woken and found the noose around his neck. He’d screamed himself hoarse through his gag, trying to scare the rats away as much as plead for help (neither worked).

Ten minutes of questioning led to nothing. No description of the kidnapper, no words he’d uttered, no memories of any car Khaled had been transported in. He supposed he’d been blindfolded for much of the time but couldn’t say that for certain.

A medic spoke and Sachs understood that they wanted to get him to the hospital for a more thorough examination. ‘Sì,’ she said.

As the vehicle nosed through the crowd, she, Ercole and Rossi stood in a clutch, watching it leave.

‘Dov’è il nostro amico?’ Rossi muttered, his eyes sweeping over this chaotic part of the city.

Where is our friend? Sachs believed was the translation.

‘Maybe the evidence will tell us,’ she said. She and Ercole turned back to the torture chamber.

Chapter 52

Rhyme watched Dante Spiro as he disconnected the phone. Yes, as Ercole Benelli had suggested, his face’s waiting state was a scowl, his eyes probing, as if they could stun like a Taser. But following the conversation, it seemed to Rhyme that his mood was particularly searing.

‘Ach. There is no sign that the Composer is returning to the farmhouse in the country.’

Rhyme and Spiro were alone in the situation room in the Questura. Rhyme, with no need to be anywhere but here, and bodily functions taken care of, had given Thom time off again to see the sights. The aide — irritatingly — kept checking in. Rhyme had finally said, ‘Hang up! Have some fun! I’ll call if there’s a problem. Phone reception’s better here than some places in Manhattan.’ Which it was.

He now digested Spiro’s news. Unlike at the aqueduct scene, with Ali Maziq, the Composer had no warning system at the farmhouse to alert him that his hidey-hole had been breached. Rossi had set up surveillance at the house and around the organic fertilizer company, hoping he might return. They’d held off running the crime scene. But two hours had passed and Rossi now yielded to Rhyme’s — and Beatrice Renza’s — pressure to walk the grid.

Rhyme called Sachs and told her to go ahead with the farmhouse search. She, Ercole and the Scientific Police had finished with the factory in the Spanish Quarters, where Khaled Jabril had nearly been strangled.

Beatrice, in the doorway of the situation room, nodded approvingly when she heard the scene would be searched. ‘Bene.’ She cocked her head, crowned with a Tyvek bonnet. ‘“Even seconds can mean the difference between the successful preservation of evidence and its destruction. Scenes must be searched, evidence collected and protected, as quickly as possible.”’

The grammar and syntax were perfect, even if the delivery was mired in her thick accent.

Spiro shot her one of his glances. ‘And you are lecturing me for what reason, Officer Renza?’

Rhyme had to chuckle. ‘She’s quoting, Dante. Not lecturing. And she is quoting me. My textbook. And I believe that’s verbatim.’

She said, ‘It is used here but only in English. It should be translated.’

‘That may very well happen.’ He explained that just this morning Thom had received a call from one of the best literary agents in Italy, a man named Roberto Santachiara, who had read the press account that Rhyme was in Naples and wanted to talk to him about an Italian translation of his book.

‘It will be on the bestseller list. Among us, the Scientific Polices, at the least.’ Beatrice then lifted a file folder. ‘Now. I have made a discovery that is pertains to something else. This is relating to the Garry Soames case. The wine bottle Ercole wished me to run an analysis.’

The bottle at the smoking station on the deck the night of the attack.

She handed the lengthy report to Dante Spiro, who scanned the text and said to Rhyme, ‘I will translate. There were the same results as in the first analysis, the friction ridges, the DNA, the Pinot Nero wine, which showed no traces of the date-rape drug. But there was new trace found on the surface of the bottle.’

‘And?’

‘Beatrice found present cyclomethicone, polydimethylsiloxane, silicone, and dimethicone copolyol.’

‘Ah,’ Rhyme said.

Spiro looked his way. ‘Is this significant?’

‘Oh, yes, it is, Dante. Significant indeed.’

She was stunningly beautiful.

Though in a different way from Amelia Sachs, Rhyme reflected. Sachs radiated a hometown, neighborhood-girl attractiveness. The sort you could approach and talk to, without intimidation.

Natalia Garelli was a different species of beauty — an appropriate word, for there was something animal-like about her. High, hard cheekbones, eyes close together, the color an otherworldly green. She wore tight black leather pants, boots with heels that boosted her height three inches over Spiro’s, and a thin, close-fitting brown leather jacket. As supple as water.

Natalia looked over Rhyme and Spiro, the only people in the situation room at the moment, though Rhyme saw Beatrice cast a curious look at her from the lab. The Scientific Police officer turned back to a microscope.

The woman had no interest in Rhyme’s disabled condition. Her thoughts were elsewhere. ‘Have you brought me here for, come si dice? For a lineup. To identify a suspect?’

‘Sit down, please, Signorina Garelli. You are comfortable with English? My associate here does not speak Italian.’

‘Yes, yes.’ She sat, flipping her luxurious hair. ‘Allora. A lineup?’

‘No.’

‘Why am I here then? May I ask?’

Spiro said, ‘We have more questions about the sexual assault of Frieda Schorel.’

‘Yes, of course. But I spoke to you, Procuratore, and to Ispettore... What was her name?’

‘Laura Martelli. Yes. Of the Police of State.’

‘That’s right. And then I spoke to that American woman and, curiously, a Forestry Corps officer the other day.’

Spiro tossed a wry look Rhyme’s way. He turned back to Natalia. ‘One detail I am curious about. You say you and your boyfriend had a meal of Indian food the day of the party.’

A pause. ‘Yes, that is correct. Dinner.’

‘What did you have?’

‘I cannot recall for certain. Possibly korma and saag. Tikka masala. Why?’

‘And you did laundry in the afternoon?’

‘Yes. As I told you. Or told someone who asked. So I might have clean linens in the event a guest wished to stay the night.’

Spiro leaned forward slightly and asked in an abrupt tone: ‘The night of the party, for how long was Frieda, the victim, flirting with your boyfriend, Dev?’

‘I...’ He had caught her completely off guard. ‘They weren’t flirting. Who told you that?’

‘I cannot talk about witnesses who give statements in cases.’

Even nonexistent ones, Rhyme reflected.

The green eyes widened momentarily. A potent color. Shamrock green. Rhyme suspected contact lenses. She sputtered: ‘They were joking, Dev and Frieda. That is all. Your witness is mistaken. It was a party of university students in Naples. A beautiful autumn night. Everybody was having fun.’

‘Joking.’

‘Sì.’

‘Do you know if Dev has ever bought Comfort-Sure condoms?’

She blinked. ‘How dare you ask me a personal question like that?’

Spiro’s tone was persistent. ‘Please respond.’

After a hesitation she said, ‘I do not know what he buys.’

‘You are his girlfriend and this you don’t know?’

‘No. I don’t pay any attention to such things.’

‘If I were to look in your medicine cabinet would I find Comfort-Sure condoms?’

‘I resent that question and I resent your attitude.’

Spiro gave a Gallic sneer, his lower jaw extended. ‘It is of no matter. After you left to come here, an officer went through your apartment. She found no Comfort-Sure.’

‘What? How can you do that?’

‘Your apartment is a crime scene, Signorina. That is how. Now, as I was saying: None were found. However, credit card records show that your boyfriend did buy a box of Comfort-Sure three days ago. A box of twenty-four condoms. And yet there were none in the house. Where did they go? Who threw them out? For disposing of them is — let us be frank — the only way two dozen condoms might disappear within three days. Some youths have voracious appetites in that regard. But, honestly, two dozen?’

‘Are you accusing my boyfriend of the rape? He would never do such a thing.’

‘No, I am accusing you of the sexual assault of Frieda Schorel.’

‘Me? You are mad!’

‘Ah, Signorina Garelli. Let us explain what we have found.’

He glanced at Rhyme, who wheeled to face her. He said evenly, ‘The lip and neck of the wine bottle on the smoking deck contained traces of condom lubricant, which profiled to be Comfort-Sure brand. It could be associated with — forgive me. I am parsing too fine here. It matched the lubricant on Frieda’s thigh and within her vagina.

‘In my associate’s search of the scene at your apartment, she found laundry detergent and Indian food spices — you, the source of both — at the smoking station and at the scene of the assault.’ Rhyme’s lips tightened with displeasure. ‘Well, of course, you were at the smoking station, because it’s your apartment and you hosted the party. But at the scene of the assault itself? How did that happen? I should have thought of it earlier — it was my mistake to miss it. You and the victim both reported that she was climbing back onto your roof over the wall that separated the two buildings when you heard her cries for help and ran to her aid. That was many yards from the attack site. So how did curry and laundry detergent trace get to the place where she was actually assaulted?’

‘You’re mad too!’

Spiro took up the narrative: ‘We believe your boyfriend was flirting with Frieda at the party — and that they had been seeing each other off and on from the start of school — after you all met on the first day of class. You slipped the drug into Frieda’s wine. You followed her and Garry upstairs, hoping she would pass out and Garry would rape her while she was unconscious. That would be humiliating enough for her, you believed. But he didn’t; he went downstairs, leaving her alone. And you took up the matter yourself. You got one of your boyfriend’s condoms and, when the deck was empty, dragged the unconscious Frieda over the wall to the neighboring roof and violated her with the bottle. Then you hid the condom, to be disposed of later, with the others, the next day, and went about your duties as hostess.’

Rhyme knew that Natalia was the person who placed the anonymous call claiming to have seen Garry spiking the wine, and she herself would have broken into his apartment to plant the date-rape drug on his clothing; the footprints Ercole and Thom found could easily be a woman’s size.

‘Lies!’ Natalia raged, eyes flashing with pure hatred.

Spiro now continued, ‘Our inquiries as to guests at the party focused on men. We will be interviewing witnesses about your whereabouts, at the time of the rape. We have been comparing DNA with that of the men at the party. And Frieda’s other boyfriends. We will now get a warrant to compel a test of yours.’

She scoffed. ‘This is ridiculous.’ Her indignation was profound. ‘I cannot be treated like this.’

Rhyme’s impression was that she truly believed normal rules did not apply... because she was so beautiful.

Natalia rose. ‘I will not put up with this any longer. I am leaving.’

‘No, you are not.’ Spiro stood to block her way and gestured into the hall. Daniela Canton approached, pulling cuffs from her belt, then ratcheting them on Natalia’s wrists.

‘No, no! You can’t do that. It is... not right!’

Natalia stared down at her wrists, and it seemed to Rhyme that the horror registering in her eyes was not from the fact she was cuffed but that the silver of the shackles clashed with the gold of her bracelets.

Though this surely had to be his imagination.

Chapter 53

Hopeless.

His life was over.

Garry Soames was close to crying when he left the interview room and was let out into the prison’s common area, about two acres of anemic grass and sidewalks, largely deserted at this time of day. He walked slowly back to the wing in which his cell was located.

His lawyer, Elena Cinelli, had told him that although the police were considering the possibility that he had been set up as a fall guy for the rape of Frieda Schorel, the magistrate had turned down her request that he be released, even with the surrender of his passport.

This was so unfair!

Elena had told him that two of the best forensic scientists in America, who happened to be in Naples on another case, were assisting with the evidence. But assisting wasn’t the same as proving he was innocent. Valentina Morelli, who’d turned on him so viciously, had been located and had given a statement — subsequently verified — that she had been in Mantua the night of Frieda’s assault. Suspicion had returned once again to him.

What a nightmare this had become...

He was in a strange land, with ‘friends’ who were suddenly wary of visiting him. His parents were still in the midst of making arrangements to fly to Italy (Garry’s younger brothers and sisters had to be sorted out). The food was terrible, the hours of solitude — and despair — stretching on and on.

The uncertainty.

And the looks the other prisoners gave him. Some offered sly, conspiratorial glances, as if they shared a rapist’s inclination. Those were just plain creepy. And then there were the glares — of those who seemed to want to short-circuit the judicial system and dish out fast, uncompromising justice. Several times he’d heard, in stilted English, the word ‘honor.’ Offered like a whip, lashing him for his crime of debasing a woman.

And the goddamn pisser of it all? The reason the night with Frieda on the roof, under the stars of Naples, could not have turned out to be sexual assault?

He hadn’t been able to get it up. Me, Garry Soames. Mr Ever-ready.

Kissing, touching... and he’d stayed limp as a rag.

Sorry, sorry, sorry... It’s out of my hands. I can’t control it.

A fact he hadn’t dared to share with anyone. The most shameful thing he could think of had to be kept a secret. He couldn’t tell the police, couldn’t tell his lawyer. No one. ‘No, I couldn’t have raped Frieda, even if I’d drugged her — which I didn’t. No, Old Dependable hadn’t worked that night.’

And now? What would happen—?

His thoughts were interrupted as two men appeared in the prison yard, stepping from the doorway of a wing nearby. He didn’t know the short, muscled prisoners very well, other than that they weren’t Italian. Albanian, he thought. Swarthy and forever unsmiling. They kept to themselves or hung out with a few others that looked somewhat like them. The two, brothers, had never said anything to Garry and had largely ignored him.

Now it was the same. They looked toward him once and returned to their conversation, continuing on a path roughly parallel to his, about twenty steps behind.

He nodded. They returned the gesture and kept walking, heads down.

Garry thinking: Why the hell did I go to that party in the first place?

I should have been studying.

He didn’t regret coming to Italy. He loved the country. He loved the people and the culture and the food. But now he was looking at the whole adventure as a mistake. I could have gone anywhere. But, no, I had to be the big famous world traveler, show everyone from a punk-ass suburb in middle America that I was different. I was special.

Garry observed the two Albanian prisoners moving slightly faster. They would catch up with him in the shadow of the children’s climbing wall — in a small area where prisoners could play with their children and visit with their wives on Sunday.

But he ignored them and thought again of the party at Natalia’s. He never should have left Frieda on the roof. But seeing her drowsy eyes and feeling her head on his shoulder... and feeling nothing down below, he’d had to flee. It never occurred to him that she’d been drugged and would be at risk.

What a mess...

The Albanians were now closer. Ilir and Artin, he believed, were their names. They claimed to have been wrongly arrested simply for helping refugees flee oppression. The prosecutor’s charges were a bit different: that they spirited young girls away from their homes and set them up working in brothels in Scampia, a grim suburb of Naples. The altruistic argument they made — that they were saviors of the oppressed — fell on deaf ears, as most of the girls they ‘rescued’ came not from North Africa but from the Baltic states and small towns in Italy itself, lured by their promise of modeling careers.

Garry didn’t like that the men had sped up and were just a few steps behind. He diverted, hoping to avoid them.

But it was too late.

The squat, swarthy men lunged and flung him to the grass.

‘No!’ Gasping, his breath knocked from his lungs.

‘Shhh. Quiet!’ Ilir — the smaller — raged in Garry’s ear.

His brother looked around to see there were no guards or other prisoners present and drew a long, thick piece of glass from his pocket, a shiv. The base was wrapped in cloth, but six-inches of razor edge glistened.

‘No! Please! Come on, I haven’t done anything!’ Maybe they thought he’d been with the prison police, just now, informing on them. ‘I haven’t said anything!’

Artin smiled and eased back, letting Ilir hold him down. In thickly accented English, he said, ‘Now, here. Here it is. Yes? Here is what is going to happen. You are knowing Alberto Bregia?’

‘Please! I haven’t done anything to you. I just—’

‘Now, now. You are answering me. Yes, there you go. Answer me. Do not baby-cry. Answer me.’

‘Yes, I know Bregia.’

Who wouldn’t? A huge, psychotic prisoner — six foot four — who terrified everyone who crossed him, even if their betrayals were pure figments of his bizarre imagination.

‘So, it is this. Bregia has problem with my brother and me. And he is wishing to murder us. Now, now. What we are doing is this.’

Garry struggled to push Ilir off. But the wiry man held him down firmly. ‘Stop,’ he muttered. Garry complied.

‘We are having to hurt you some. Stabbing you, yes.’ He held up the glass knife. ‘But we not kill you. Cut you some much. But you will not be dying. And then you will be saying that Alberto Bregia did this.’

Ilir said, ‘So he will go to other prison. For dangerous prisoners. We have seen into this. It is how this works. All good.’

‘No, don’t! Please!’

Artin was nodding. ‘Ah, it won’t be much. Six, seven times. Which is nothing. I am being stabbed. Look at these scars. People here in prison, they talk. They say you should have balls cut, you rapist.’ He brushed the point over Garry’s crotch. ‘No, no. We are not be doing that.’ They both laughed. ‘Just some girl you fuck? Who care? So, you good. Just face, chest, maybe cut ear bad.’

‘Cut off,’ his brother said.

‘Has to look like Bregia, something he would do.’

‘Look, baby-cry, stop that. Okay, Artin. Cut him and we go. Hurry!’

Artin muttered something in Albanian and Ilir clamped his filthy hand over Garry’s mouth and gripped him with fierce strength.

Garry tried to scream.

The glass point moved toward his ear.

And then a distant voice: ‘Signor Soames! Dove sei?’

From the doorway he’d just exited through, the hallway that led to the interview rooms, a man was calling him.

‘Are you still in the yard?’

The Albanian brothers looked toward each other.

‘Mut,’ Ilir spat out.

The knife vanished and they rose quickly.

Garry struggled to his feet.

‘You are saying nothing!’ Artin whispered. ‘Silence, baby-cry.’ They turned and walked away quickly.

Garry stepped from the wall.

He saw who’d just called to him. It was the assistant director of the prison, a narrow, balding man who wore the uniform of the Penitentiary Police. It was perfectly pressed.

Garry joined the man in front of the doorway.

‘You are well? What has happened?’ He was regarding Garry’s gray, grass-stained jumpsuit.

‘I fell.’

‘Ah, fell. I see.’ He didn’t believe him, but in prison — even in this short period of time, Garry had learned — the authorities don’t question what they choose not to question.

‘Sì?’ Garry asked.

‘Signor Soames, I have for you good news. The prosecutor in your case has just called and informed me that the true attacker has been identified. He has applied to a magistrate that you be released.’

Breathlessly, Garry asked, ‘For sure?’

‘Yes, yes, he is certain. The documents for release have not been signed yet but that will happen soon.’

Garry looked back at the doorway to his cell wing, thinking of the two Albanians. ‘Do you want me to wait in my cell?’

The assistant director debated a moment, looking over Garry’s torn sleeve. ‘No, I think that’s not necessary. Come into the administrative wing. You can wait in my office. I will bring for you caffè.’

Now the tears came. And came in earnest.

Chapter 54

The team had assembled in the situation room near the lab on the ground floor of the Questura.

Sachs and Flying Squad officer Daniela Canton had brought the evidence collected at the farmhouse near the organic fertilizer farm, and Beatrice Renza was completing her analysis. The evidence was here too from the factory in Naples, dubbed by Daniela’s partner, Giovanni Schiller, Il Casa dei Ratti.

Spiro stood in the corner of the room, arms crossed. ‘Where is Ercole?’

Sachs explained that she’d sent him on another assignment; he would be back soon.

Rossi was on the telephone and when he disconnected, he explained that he had located the owner of the farmhouse, who’d rented the place to the Composer. He lived in Rome and had driven to Naples to meet an American, who had given his name as Tim Smith, from Florida. The owner confirmed he resembled the composite picture of the kidnapper. He’d paid cash for two months plus a bonus.

‘A bonus,’ Rossi said with a wink in his voice, ‘for riservatezza. Discretion, you would say. That’s not what the landlord said but it was what I understood. He supposed the man wanted a place for his mistress. He didn’t suspect a crime, he insisted. Of course he did but he hardly cared.’

The landlord had told Rossi he had none of the cash left — hence, no fingerprint possibility — but he did have a thought about the make of the man’s car. Though the renter had parked out of sight, the landlord had coincidentally driven away from the main road to get to a restaurant outside town and gotten a look at an old dark-blue Mercedes. A quick search confirmed that the Michelin tire size was compatible with older Mercedes. Rossi put the notice out to all law enforcement agencies to look for such a sedan.

‘Why all the footprints?’ Spiro wondered aloud.

Rossi: ‘Some possible tenants looking at the rental, I would assume. And the victims. The Composer kept them there until he was ready to make his video. They might have walked to and from the car — even if they can’t remember it now.’

Rhyme sighed. ‘I hope one of those prints isn’t another vic. Just because a name wasn’t on the list doesn’t mean he hasn’t taken somebody else.’

Beatrice said, ‘It is so extremely curious, no fingerprints. None at all, excepting for the victims’. It is as if, as you say, Captain Rhyme, he wears the gloves in his sleep.’

Spiro scowled. ‘He makes it difficult at every turn.’

‘Oh, no,’ Rhyme said, ‘the absence of fingerprints is very good for us. Isn’t it, Sachs?’

She was staring at the chart. ‘Uh-hum.’

‘How do you mean?’ Rossi asked.

There was a voice in the doorway, ‘Ciao.’ From Ercole Benelli, carting a trash bag with him.

Noting the Forestry officer was smiling at her, Sachs said, ‘Here’s the answer to your question, Inspector.’

Rhyme explained, ‘We had a case a few years ago. A professional hit man. We found his hidey-hole and there wasn’t a single print. He wore gloves all the time. But that meant he had to dispose of those gloves frequently — since, of course, they retain prints inside the fingers perfectly. He was unlucky enough to throw them out in a refuse bin two blocks from his place. We found them. We identified him. We caught him. I suspect that’s where Officer Benelli has been, searching trash bins.’

‘Yes, yes, Capitano Rhyme.’ He lifted the green plastic bag. ‘I found this in a bin behind an IP station — a petrol station — on the road between Caiazzo and Naples. I’m afraid I wasn’t successful as regards the gloves.’

He lifted three metal paint cans out of the bag and carefully set them on the table. Rhyme took one sniff and, smelling the astringent scent, scowled. ‘Methyl isobutyl ketone.’

‘What is that?’ Rossi asked.

In slow English, Beatrice answered. ‘It is being a solvent. Particular effective in melting latex.’

‘Yes,’ Rhyme said.

Ercole said, ‘There is simply a blue mess, sludge, you say? In the bottom. The gloves have dissolved.’

Spiro regarded the Forestry officer. ‘But you don’t look as upset as you might, given the news you have delivered. Are you being oblique intentionally? Do not be coy. Explain.’

‘Yes, Procuratore. The trash bin that these cans were in had a lid on it, and I found no glove prints on the lid but some fingerprints. From, I hope, where he opened the bin to deposit the cans, never thinking we would find them.’ He produced an SD card and handed it to Beatrice. She sat at the computer and called up the images. Ercole had used fingerprint powder — an old standby — to raise the images. They were all partials, some better than others.

Rhyme could see, however, they were not enough for an identification.

But he turned to Beatrice, who nodded knowingly. She had anticipated him. She typed at the keyboard and a moment later another print appeared, in a separate screen, beside the prints from the trash bin. They were the Composer’s other partials, pulled from the leaves on the branch where he’d spied on Ali Maziq at dinner the night he was kidnapped at the bus stop.

‘This might be a moment or several.’ She began playing Rubik’s Cube with the two sets of prints, trying to place them together, enlarging and shrinking, rotating them, moving them from side to side. The room was silent, every eye on the screen.

She adjusted her elaborate, green-framed glasses, studying it carefully. She spoke in Italian.

Ercole said, ‘She believes this is the Composer’s print, three partials combined into one nearly whole.’

Beatrice began to type fast as a machine gun. She said something in Italian. Ercole turned to Rhyme and Sachs. ‘She has sent it already to Eurodac, Interpol, Scotland Yard, and IAFIS, in the United States.’ Beatrice sat back but kept her eyes focused like gun muzzles on the print.

Spiro was about to ask a question but Ercole said, ‘And I asked the owner of the station but he saw no one at the trash bin. And his employees did not either.’

The prosecutor nodded with an expression that explained that this was to have been his question. He opened his mouth once more.

Ercole said, ‘And no CCTV.’

‘Ah.’

After two excruciating minutes, a noise interrupted. A beep from Beatrice’s computer. She bent to the screen and nodded.

‘Ecco. Il Compositore.’

She turned the monitor toward them.

The face of a bearded, shaggy-haired man was on the screen. It was a Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Sheriff’s Office mug shot. He was pudgy and stared at the camera with piercing brown eyes.

Below was the text that accompanied the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System report. ‘His name is Stefan Merck, thirty years old. He’s a mental patient, committed indefinitely for assault and attempted murder. He escaped from the hospital three weeks ago.’

Chapter 55

Amelia Sachs, on her phone, turned back to the room and announced, ‘I’ve got the director of the mental hospital in Pennsylvania. She’s Dr Sandra Coyne. Doctor, you’re on speaker.’

‘Yes, hello. Let me understand. You’re in Italy? And this is about Stefan Merck?’

‘That’s right,’ Sachs said. And explained what her patient had been up to.

The woman reacted with silence, presumably stunned. Finally she spoke. ‘Oh, my,’ she said in a husky voice after a moment. ‘Those kidnappings in Naples. Yes, they made the news here. The stories said the crimes were modeled after one in New York, I think. But it never occurred to us that Stefan might be the one behind them.’

Rhyme asked, ‘What’s his diagnosis?’

‘Schizophrenic personality, bipolar, severe anxiety disorder.’

‘How did he escape?’

‘We’re a medium-security facility. And Stefan has been on perfect behavior since he’d been here. He had grounds privileges and apparently some very careless landscapers left a shovel outside. He found it and dug under the chain link.’

‘He was committed for attempted murder?’

‘At another facility, yes. He permanently injured him. He was found incompetent to stand trial.’

Rossi said, ‘I am an investigator here, in Naples. Please, Doctor. How could he have paid for this, the trip? He has resources?’

‘His mother died years ago, his father disappeared. There was some trust money and he’s had some relatives visit recently, an aunt and uncle. They might have given him something.’

‘Can we get their names?’ Sachs asked.

‘Yes, I’ll find them in the files.’ She took down Sachs’s contact information and said she’d send the information as soon as they hung up.

‘Is there anything you can think of,’ Sachs asked, ‘that might help us understand why he’s doing this?’

After a pause, the woman said, ‘Stefan has his own reality. His world is a world of sounds and music. Nothing else matters to him. I’m sorry to say we don’t have the money or authority to give patients like him access to what would help. In Stefan’s case, instruments or the Internet. He’s told me for years he’s starved for sounds. He was never dangerous, never threatening, but something must have pushed him even further from reality.’ A pause, then she said, ‘You want to know the kind of person you’re dealing with here? In one session he told his therapist he was very depressed. And why? Because he didn’t have a recording of Jesus’s crucifixion.’

Those words resonated with Rhyme. He sometimes imagined walking the grid at famous historical crime scenes, using modern forensic techniques to analyze the crimes. Calvary was perhaps number one on his list.

Sachs asked, ‘Why Italy? Any connection here?’

‘Nothing from his past. But I do know that just before he escaped, in one session, he kept referring to a special woman in his life.’

‘Someone with an Italian connection? Can we talk to her?’

A laugh. ‘That would be pretty difficult. It turned out he was referring to a three-thousand-year-old mythological being. Euterpe, one of the nine muses in Greek and Roman lore.’

‘The muse of music,’ Ercole said.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

Sachs asked if there were any special foods he might eat, any special interests he had — anything that might help them find stores or places he would tend to go.

She could think of nothing, except to add the curious comment that Stefan didn’t care about the taste of food. Only the sound of eating. He preferred crunchy foods to soft.

Hardly helpful, from an investigative perspective.

Rhyme asked if she had pictures of Stefan other than the mug shot.

‘Yes, let me find them. Give me an email.’

Rossi recited the address.

A moment later they appeared, a half-dozen images depicting a stout, intelligent-looking young man with perceptive eyes.

Spiro thanked her.

The woman added, ‘Please, obviously, he’s suffered a break, a bad one. But until now, he’s always been eminently reasonable. With these kidnappings, he’s become dangerous. That’s clear. But if you find him please, before you hurt him, just try to talk.’

‘We’ll do our best,’ Sachs said.

Disconnecting the call, Rossi muttered, ‘Try to talk? To a man who didn’t think twice about sniping at two officers?’

Spiro gazed at the pictures of the kidnapper. In a soft voice he said, ‘What are you up to, amico mio? How does your assault on these poor souls in New York and in Naples help you find comfort?’

Rhyme, with no interest in that question, was wheeling forward, examining the evidence chart.

Rossi spoke to Daniela Canton in Italian and she pounded the keys. He announced to the room, ‘I’m sending the pictures to our public information office. The images will get them on our website and to the press. They will go to the other law enforcement agencies too. Soon there will be a thousand officers looking for him.’

Rhyme wheeled closer yet to the evidence charts, scanning them. Again and again. The process was like reading a classic novel — every time you pick up the book again, you find something new.

Hoping for some insight, the slightest nudge toward understanding.

But he was hardly prepared for the particular revelation that burst into his thoughts.

At first, he scowled. No, it couldn’t be. There had to be a mistake. But then his eyes came to one entry and stopped abruptly. Eyes still on the easel, Rhyme asked in an edgy voice, ‘Does something up there strike anyone as odd?’

When those in the room looked toward him blankly, he added, ‘The tread marks and shoe prints.’

Sachs barked a surprised laugh. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘No, it doesn’t. But there you have it.’

Spiro understood next: ‘One of the shoe prints at the farmhouse is the same size as the shoe print at Garry Soames’s apartment.’

Ercole Benelli added, ‘And one of the auto treads, the Continental tire that I found at Garry’s, is the same as one of those at the farmhouse. How can this be?’

Rhyme said, ‘Suggesting that the same person who broke into Garry’s apartment was at the Composer’s farmhouse.’

‘But Natalia Garelli broke into Garry’s,’ Ercole said.

Rhyme turned to Spiro. ‘We assumed that. But we never asked her about it.’

‘You are right. We did not.’

Sachs added, ‘And Natalia didn’t blame Garry when we talked to her. She said he was innocent. She wanted the Serbs next door to take the fall.’

Rossi touched his mustache and said, ‘It looks like you didn’t cross-contaminate anything, Ercole, with the date-rape drug trace. The two scenes — Garry’s apartment and the Composer’s lair — are legitimately linked.’

Spiro: ‘But how?’

Lincoln Rhyme said nothing. His attention was wholly on two evidence charts — not ones from Italy, but the first two, describing the scenes in New York.

After reading the charts twice Rhyme sighed, shaking his head.

Ercole asked, ‘What, Captain Rhyme?’

‘It was right there in front of us. The whole time.’

‘But what?’

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Now I’ve got to make a call to America. But in the meantime, Massimo, put together a tactical team. We’ll have to move fast if the answer is what I think it is.’

Forty minutes later, the team was assembled on a quiet street in a residential neighborhood of Naples.

A dozen SCO officers were divided into two groups, each on either side of a door to a modest single-family home, painted mustard yellow. Rhyme could see the glint of the low sun off the equipment of a third team, heading through an alley to cover the back door.

He himself was on the street, his wheelchair parked beside the Sprinter van. Dante Spiro stood beside him, his cheroot, unlit, clamped between his teeth.

Amelia Sachs, he could see, was behind the front entry team, the one on the right, though she’d been told, to her irritation, that she wouldn’t be allowed to join in, if a dynamic entry — that is, six-guns blazin’ — was necessary. The leader of the unit, the massive officer named Michelangelo let her remain in a forward position, though. And he’d given her a bulletproof vest, Polizia printed on the front and back. She wanted to keep it as a souvenir, after the case was over.

When they’d arrived on the scene, Michelangelo had looked Sachs over and, with a sparkle in his eyes, said, ‘Allora! Dirty Harriet.’

She’d laughed. ‘Make my day!’

Now Massimo Rossi climbed from the front seat of a Flying Squad car. He pressed an earbud deeper into his ear as he listened to a transmission. He straightened. Apparently the team in the rear was ready. He walked to the house and nodded to Michelangelo. The big officer knocked with a fist — Rhyme could hear the blows from this distance — and called, ‘Polizia. Aprite! Open this door!’ And stepped back.

What followed was anticlimactic in the extreme.

No gunshots, no barricades, no battering rams.

The door simply opened and although he was too far away to hear, it was clear to Rhyme that Charlotte McKenzie from the US Consulate, uttered nothing by way of protest. Nor did she express any surprise. She nodded and held up her arms in surrender. The man standing behind her, Stefan Merck, did exactly the same.

Chapter 56

Michelangelo’s tactical team had cleared the house.

Hadn’t taken long; like most single-family homes in this part of Naples, it was small. The well-worn place had mismatched furniture, most of it a decade old. The feel of a rental.

With the help of two SCO officers, Rhyme’s clever wheelchair surmounted the single step and wheeled into the living room where Charlotte McKenzie was sitting on a divan with her hands together, as if she’d just put aside her knitting. Rossi and Spiro stood nearby, each on his own mobile, speaking quietly and quickly, the inspector’s face animated, the prosecutor’s stony. Sachs, pulling on booties and latex gloves, headed into the back of the house.

McKenzie glanced at her with the confidence of someone who has hidden all the incriminating evidence off-premises.

We’ll see about that...

The room was warm with yellow light and the air smelled of cinnamon. Stefan stood behind the woman’s chair, looking more bewildered than anything. While McKenzie was not in irons, the serial killer — the faux serial killer — had been cuffed. The tactical policemen who’d helped Rhyme into the apartment kept eyes on the prisoners. They were both dark of flesh, not big — much smaller than their boss, named after the famed artist — but were in sinewy, taut shape and looked prepared to strike fast if they needed to.

Since the police arrived, the kidnapper had said nothing other than one word to Amelia Sachs.

‘Artemis.’

A Greek goddess, Rhyme believed, recalling both Ercole’s speculation and the mental hospital director’s comments that Stefan’s crimes had a mythological connection.

He now looked over Stefan carefully. There was nothing unusual about his appearance or expression. He was just another handsome young man, pudgy but more or less fit, stubble just returning to his shaved head, which glistened with sweat. He was dressed in jeans and a Mark Zuckerberg gray T-shirt (this was the term that had been used by Rossi; Rhyme believed he was some computer guy).

Rhyme noted one curious habit of Stefan. From time to time he would close his eyes and ease his head to the side. Occasionally he would smile. Once, he frowned. At first, Rhyme didn’t understand these gestures and expressions. Then he realized that Stefan was listening. To sounds, it seemed. Not to words or to conversations — only Italian was being spoken and he probably wasn’t fluent, certainly not at the rat-tat speed of the officials in the room.

Just sounds.

But what noises might engage him wasn’t clear. Initially there didn’t seem to be many in the still apartment but, aware that Stefan was so engaged, Rhyme too closed his eyes and filtered out the voices and became aware of one or two sounds, then a dozen, then many more. The clink of Stefan’s handcuff chains. Footfalls of Sachs in the nether regions of the house. A distant siren. A creak of door. A tap of metal upon metal from outside. A tiny whine of floorboard under Spiro’s weight. A buzz of insect. A crick of metal. A skittle of vermin. A hum of refrigerator.

What had been quiet, almost silent, was in fact a smorgasbord of noise.

Spiro disconnected first and spoke to the uniformed officers in Italian. When Rossi was off the phone, he and the prosecutor agreed that Stefan would be taken to a prisoner transport van outside and kept there while Charlotte McKenzie remained here for an interview. Stefan’s part as a serial kidnapper was not disputed, while the woman’s role was not completely known. And there was one very important question that had yet to be answered.

‘This way, sir,’ an officer said to Stefan, his English languid.

Stefan looked toward McKenzie, who nodded. She then said, firmly, to Spiro and Rossi, ‘Give him his phone, so he can listen to music. Take the sim card out if you want, so he can’t make calls. But it’s better if he has music.’

The SCO officer looked quizzically at Spiro, who debated and lifted the young man’s phone from the table, slipped the card out and gave it to Stefan, along with a set of earbuds taken from him earlier.

As they walked away McKenzie said to him, ‘Don’t say anything to anyone, Stefan.’

He nodded.

Now Sachs returned. She held up four plastic bags. Two contained over-the-counter medicine bottles. Rhyme regarded them. ‘Yes,’ he said. The other bags held shoes. Sachs displayed the tread.

So not all the evidence was elsewhere.

Rhyme could not help but notice, though, that Charlotte McKenzie remained untroubled.

He tipped his head to Spiro, who consulted notes and said, ‘You will be charged with some very serious crimes, Signorina McKenzie, and we are hoping for your cooperation. We know that you and Stefan Merck were not alone in the farmhouse where you held Ali Maziq and Khaled Jabril. At least two or three of your associates were there. And there is at least one associate inside the Capodichino Reception Center working for you. So, there are several other people whose identities we wish to know, and your cooperation in helping us find them will go a long way. I’m a prosecutor and it is I who make recommendations to the magistrates for charges and for punishments. Now, to let you understand where you stand, I will turn to Capitano Rhyme, who has largely built the case against you and Signor Merck.’

Rossi nodded his agreement.

Rhyme wheeled slightly closer. She easily held his gaze. ‘I’ll lay it out very succinctly, Charlotte. We have evidence placing you at the scene of Stefan’s first kidnapping, in Brooklyn. The cold medicine. Pseudoephedrine.’

Her eyes narrowed but only slightly.

This was the main insight Rhyme had had, the one that prompted his exasperated comment in the situation room not long before.

It’s obvious, isn’t it?

‘We thought it was pseudo from meth cooking at the abandoned factory but, no, it was from the medicine you’d been taking for your cold. And, I’m sure, the composition will be the same as that.’ He nodded to the bottles in one of Sachs’s plastic bags. ‘We can get a warrant and take hair samples to verify the presence of the drug in your system.’

An inquiring glance at Spiro, who said, ‘Most easily.’

How calm she was. Like a soldier who’d been expecting to be captured by the enemy.

‘On the subject of hair, you have a short cut, dyed blond. Forgive me, but Ms Clairol is involved, isn’t she? We found similar strands at the Brooklyn kidnap site and on Robert Ellis’s phone. I’m sure they’ll be consistent with yours.’

If she displayed any expression, she seemed curious how Rhyme and the others had unraveled the story. But only mildly curious.

Rhyme wasn’t there yet, however. ‘Now, we have evidence placing you at Stefan’s farmhouse here. Your shoes.’ Gazing at another of Sachs’s evidence bags. ‘Looks like those tread marks’re the same as prints at Stefan’s. There’ll be trace in the treads associated with the soil there.’

He held up a hand, to nip quiet an impending question. ‘Please? I’ll finish. Let’s talk about the other charge against you: wrongfully implicating Garry Soames for sexual assault. And interference with judicial process.’ Another look at the law enforcers, a questioning furrow of brow.

Rossi said, ‘It would be interference with a police investigation — on the same pitch. And accusing someone of a crime wrongfully is a separate offense in Italy. Quite serious. As Amanda Knox learned.’

Rhyme resumed. ‘Shoes again: These’ll match the prints left outside Garry’s window. And Ercole has collected soil from the site, which... well, again we’ll check against trace in the shoes.

‘Now, tire treads. A car mounted with Continental 195/65R15s tires had been parked behind Garry’s apartment. And a car mounted with Continental 195/65R15s had been parked at the farmhouse. And there’s a car mounted with Continental 195/65R15s parked a block away. A Nissan Maxima, with US diplo plates on it, checked out to you from the embassy in Rome. The Nissan, by the way, is parked next to Stefan’s car, a two thousand seven Mercedes 4MATIC, mounted with the Michelins we’ve found at all the scenes.

‘So. The Composer case and the Garry Soames cases are linked. You are involved in both. Why? Because when you heard we had come from New York to help the police here, you knew you had to stop us, or at least slow us down. I’m not sure how you learned about the rape and that Garry was one of the people being questioned but it was easy enough: monitoring, or hacking, the Italian police reports, I’d imagine. You broke his bedroom window and sprinkled date-rape drug residue inside. You made the anonymous call implicating him. Then you called us in with a sob story about an innocent young American student wrongly arrested. To keep us distracted from searching for Stefan.

‘And when that wasn’t enough, you got your boy the hunting rifle. Stefan used that to “discourage” us. Slow us down. I’m sure he wasn’t shooting to hit anyone, just to make us think that he was willing to kill police, make us wary.’

He grimaced and felt true regret. ‘I might’ve tipped to it a bit earlier: The shoe that Stefan lost struggling with Khaled Jabril’s wife also had the date-rape drug on it. We — rather unfairly, I admit — gave one young officer hell for cross-contamination. But when I realized how diligent he’d been, I wondered if the Composer had been near a source of the date-rape drug. And obviously he had: you.

‘And why did I start thinking about all of this in the first place?’ Rhyme paused. Perhaps it was overdramatic, but this seemed appropriate. ‘It was the names, Charlotte. The names on the list.’ He turned to Dante Spiro.

‘Yes, yes, Signorina McKenzie. At the farmhouse Detective Sachs found a list of the names of the victims Stefan was targeting. Ali Maziq, Malek Dadi and Khaled Jabril. Their names, their mobile numbers and the locations of the sites he was going to place them for his hanging videos. That is not how serial killers behave. No, you recruited Stefan to kidnap those men specifically. And why?’

Rhyme filled in the pause with: ‘Because, of course, you’re a spy.’ He frowned. ‘I assume you people still call yourselves that, don’t you?’

Chapter 57

Charlotte McKenzie’s face continued to reveal nothing.

Rhyme originally thought that she was feigning innocence but that wasn’t accurate, he realized. Hers was the expression of someone who, though guilty as sin, didn’t care if she’d been nabbed or not. That image from before, a captured soldier, came to mind again. With this qualification: a soldier who had already accomplished her mission.

Rhyme said, ‘I spoke to an FBI agent in New York an hour ago. I asked him to make some calls. I was particularly interested to know about a legal liaison officer with the State Department named Charlotte McKenzie. Yes, there was. But a little more digging and he hit a dead end. No specifics, no C.V. other than a generic resume. Which is exactly what happens, he told me, in a quote “official cover” situation. Somebody apparently working for State is actually working for the CIA or another security agency. Legal liaison is a frequent official cover.

‘I asked him to see about any US security operations in Italy. A blank there too but he did find out at least that there’d been a lot of encrypted communications into and out of Naples. To and from some new government agency called the AIS. Alternative Intelligence Service, based in northern Virginia.

‘Well, my theory: You’re a field agent for this AIS and were assigned to interrogate three suspected terrorists in Italy, who’d come here from Libya, pretending to be asylum-seekers. It’s happened before — an ISIS terrorist was arrested by Italian police in a refugee camp in Bari, the Puglia region — just last year.’

Her eyes said, Yes, I know. Her mouth was silent.

‘Now, I’m guessing the Alternative part of your organization means you use unusual methods to detain and interrogate your suspects. You came up with the idea of using a serial killer as a cover for extraordinary rendition and interrogation. Somehow you learned about Stefan and thought he’d be a good pick for your project. You and another officer met with him in the hospital — pretending to be his aunt and uncle — and cut some kind of deal with him.

‘The first snatch — in New York, the one the little girl witnessed — was fake all around. The victim was a fellow agent. You needed to make it seem like Stefan was really psychotic, with no particular interest in refugees. I thought that that kidnapping seemed odd. The vic’s girlfriend never getting back to us. Robert Ellis never seemed particularly upset about nearly being hanged by a crazy man.’ Rhyme tilted his head to the side. ‘You had to be concerned that we were getting close to Stefan, when he was in the factory. Did you pull Fred Dellray and the FBI off the case? Make any phone calls to Washington?’

She said nothing, her eyes revealed nothing.

Rhyme continued: ‘After that prelude, you set up Stefan over here, you and others in your team. And you went to work tracking the terror suspects, then kidnapping them and interrogating them in the farmhouse.’

Rhyme turned to Spiro: ‘Your pattern is now clear, Dante.’

‘It is, yes. Finally. Now, that is our case. And it will all go before the court. Allora, Signorina McKenzie, we need the names of your associates. And we need you to admit that this is what has happened. Since no one died at your hand, and the kidnap victims were apparent terrorists, the punishments for you and your co-workers will not be extreme. But, of course, punishments there must be. So, what have you to say?’

At last, after a considered moment, she spoke, ‘I need to talk to you. All of you.’ Her voice calm, confident. As if she were the person who’d convened this meeting. As if she were the one in charge. ‘Everything I am about to tell you is hypothetical. And in the future I’ll deny every sentence.’

Spiro, Rossi and Rhyme looked at each other. Spiro said, ‘I’m not agreeing to any conditions of any kind.’

‘Agreement is not an issue. What I just said is a statement of fact. This is hypothetical and I’ll deny everything if asked.’ Without waiting for any response she said, ‘Abu Omar.’

Rhyme didn’t get the reference but noted that Dante Spiro and Massimo Rossi both reacted. They shared a glance and a frown.

Spiro said to Rhyme, ‘Sì. An incident in Italy a few years ago. Abu Omar was the imam of Milan. He was abducted in an extraordinary rendition conducted by your CIA and our own security agency. He was taken to Egypt where, he claims, he was tortured and interrogated. Prosecutors here brought charges against the CIA and our officers who conducted the operation. The incident, I’ve read, virtually closed down the CIA’s Italian operation for a long time, and resulted in prison sentences, in absentia, against some of your senior agents.’

McKenzie said, ‘The Abu Omar case is typical of the two problems that intelligence services face overseas. First, sovereignty. They have no legal right to arrest or detain anyone on foreign soil, unless that government agrees. If foreign governments find out, there are serious repercussions — like the CIA station chief being indicted. The second problem is finding a suitable means of interrogation. Waterboarding, torture, enhanced interrogation, imprisonment without due process — that’s not our policy anymore. And, frankly, that’s not what America is. We need a humane way to extract information. And a more efficient way. Torture doesn’t work. I’ve studied it.’

Begging the questions: How and where and against whom?

Sachs now spoke. ‘So your AIS sets up fictions, like theater, to kidnap and interrogate subjects?’

‘You could say that.’ Hypothetically.

Rhyme had a thought. ‘Ah, the amobarbital. I thought it was a sedative Stefan took for panic attacks. But you used it for its original purpose. Truth serum.’

‘That’s right, though in conjunction with other synthetic psychotropics we developed ourselves. Combining the drugs and specialized interviewing techniques, we can hit an eighty-five to ninety percent cooperation rate. The subject has virtually no will to deceive or withhold information.’ There was pride in her voice.

But Dante Spiro said, ‘You say humane but these men were at risk!’

‘No. They were never in any danger.’

Sachs gave a faint laugh. ‘You know, the gallows were very shoddy.’

‘Exactly. We designed them to fall apart before they’d do any damage. And in any event, an anonymous call would be made to the police reporting a crime and a victim held captive.’

‘And Malek Dadi, the man killed outside Capodichino?’ Rossi asked. ‘Ah, but he was killed coincidentally by robbers.’

‘Stefan tried to save him. He was very upset that the man had died. He took it personally.’

Lifting his hands, palms up, Spiro said, ‘But one matter confuses me. The victims—’

‘The suspects, the terrorists,’ she corrected evenly.

‘— the victims would know about the interrogation. They could tell someone and word would get out about your operation.’

Sachs said slowly, ‘Except they didn’t. Maziq and Jabril didn’t remember anything that happened. And that seemed genuine.’

‘It was.’

‘Of course,’ Rhyme said. Those in the room turned to him. ‘We assumed the electroconductive gel found at the first kidnapping site in Naples was from Stefan’s treatments. But, no, you gave the victims shock treatment. To destroy their short-term memory.’

McKenzie nodded. ‘That’s right. They might have fragments of memories, but those’d be like memories of a dream.’

Rhyme said, ‘But what happens to them afterward? They’re still terrorists.’

‘We monitor them. Hope they change their ways. If not, we have a preemptive talk with them. At worst, relocate them where they won’t do any damage.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘What in life is one hundred percent effective all the time? We’re stopping terror attacks humanely. There’ll be speed bumps along the way, but on the whole our project is working.’

Spiro regarded her with his narrow eyes. ‘Your operation... The fake kidnapping in New York, the real kidnappings here, the release of a psychotic patient, exotic drugs... So very much work. So very complicated.’

McKenzie didn’t hesitate. She said evenly, ‘You could try to fly from here to Tuscany by balloon and, if the winds cooperated and with some luck, end up in the vicinity of Florence, after a day or so. Or you could get into a jet and be in the city, efficiently and quickly, whatever the conditions, in one hour. A balloon is a very simple way to travel. A jet much more complicated. But what’s the most effective?’

Rhyme was sure she had made this argument before — probably before a Senate or House finance committee.

McKenzie continued, ‘I’ll tell you my background... and the background of the director of our organization.’

Rossi said, ‘Intelligence officers usually come from the military or other branches of government. Academia sometimes.’

‘Well, I was government service and he was army intelligence, but before that: I was a producer in Hollywood, working on indie films. He was an actor in college and worked on Broadway some. We have experience turning the implausible into the believable. And do you know what people buy into the most? The biggest fantasies. So outrageous that nobody thinks to question them. Hence, Stefan Merck, the psychotic kidnapper, composing waltzes to die by. How could he possibly be involved in espionage? And even if he told anyone, why, he’d be dismissed as crazy.’

Sachs said, ‘Still, even if nobody questioned your cover story, picking Stefan was risky — he was committed for kidnapping, assault and attempted murder.’

‘Those are the bald facts,’ McKenzie said. ‘But it’s more complicated than that. A few years ago, while Stefan was an outpatient at a facility in Philadelphia, he saw a male nurse abusing patients, some very disabled. The nurse was reported but the executives at the hospital did nothing about it, and he went on abusing women, but was just more careful.

‘Stefan found out where the man lived and broke in. He taped the man to a chair — that was the kidnapping charge — and put homemade earphones on the man. He hooked them to a sound generator and turned up the volume so high that it ruptured the man’s eardrums. He’s permanently deaf.’

‘The attempted murder?’

‘Apparently if you play sound loud enough for a long-enough period of time, it can be fatal. Stefan’s lawyers claimed that wasn’t his intention. I’m sure it wasn’t. To Stefan, being deaf is worse than dying. His psych evaluation led the judge to rule he wasn’t fit for trial, and he was committed indefinitely.’

‘How did you find him?’ Spiro asked.

‘We wanted a functioning mental patient, with a history of schizophrenic behavior. We searched medical records. Stefan seemed like a good possibility. The deal you were talking about, Lincoln? I told him if he helped us, I guaranteed he be moved to a nicer facility. He’d have access to music, the Internet. He’d get an electronic keyboard. He was starved for his music, for his collection of sounds. He’d be in Harmony if I’d do that, he said.’

Rhyme recalled that Stefan’s doctor, the director of the mental facility, had said much the same.

McKenzie said, ‘No, Stefan is unsettling but he’s not dangerous. He’s actually quite timid. Shy. He met a girl the other day. He was having an episode, so he went to downtown Naples. The noise, the chaos in the streets helps him. Calms him down. It’s silence that’s bad for him. Anyway, he met this girl. Her name was Lilly. He went with her to the Fontanelle Cemetery — an underground cavern here.’

Rossi and Spiro nodded, obviously familiar with it.

She said, ‘An unstable person might have hurt her, assaulted her. But you know what he did? He secretly recorded her footsteps. Apparently he loved the sound her boots made in the cavern. After, he drove her home. That’s the kind of “danger” Stefan Merck represents. And, yes, the rifle shots? Only to scare you off.’

Sachs said, ‘But Garry Soames? He could have been convicted.’

‘No. That wouldn’t’ve happened. We have absolute proof that Natalia Garelli assaulted Frieda. As soon as the operation was completed here—’

Sachs shook her head with dawning awareness. ‘You have the goddamn CCTV video from the hotel across the street.’

McKenzie was nodding. ‘We hacked the security system and downloaded it, then overwrote their drive. It clearly showed Natalia committed the crime. I’ll send it to the police tomorrow.’

The comment about the security tape reminded Rhyme of something. ‘And the videos Stefan made? You had him do that?’

‘No, no. His own idea, actually. We thought he might leave a noose and maybe a note to the press. But he thought the video would make the world think he was truly psychotic.’

‘Why the waltz?’ Spiro asked.

‘He loves them, for some reason. He’s never told me why. Something about his parents, I think. This might be too tidy, but they weren’t married when he was born. He was ten when they got married. I saw a picture of them dancing together. Stefan was there, watching them. She had problems too, drinking and prescription drugs — and serial affairs. She eventually killed herself. His father just vanished, disappeared. Maybe he associates waltzes with a happier time. Or a sad time. I don’t know. He told me he found his mother’s body in the family cellar.’

‘She hanged herself?’

McKenzie shook her head. ‘Yes.’

Explains a few things, Rhyme reflected. In this line of work you reject the obvious, and dig for unnecessary subtlety, at your peril.

‘He wouldn’t say anything more. No reason for him to. We’re close in some ways. Close enough so that he does whatever I ask him to. Well, whatever Euterpe tells him.’

Sachs said, ‘You’re Euterpe. His muse.’

‘That’s what he calls me. When I said I could get him access to music and computers, he hugged me and said I was his muse. I’m his inspiration to get to Heaven — well, he calls it Harmony. Stefan has a very complex worldview. It’s based on the medieval concept of the music of the spheres. And I’m helping him on his way to enlightenment — Harmony.’ McKenzie’s face broke into a smile. ‘And you, Detective, are Artemis. The goddess of the hunt. We’re half-sisters, by the way.’

Ah, that was Stefan’s meaning not long ago.

Rhyme said, ‘Okay. The big question: How successful was AIS here?’

‘Very. We found out through our techniques that Ali Maziq’s terrorist assignment was to travel to Vienna, collect explosives from a garage outside of town and detonate them in a shopping mall.’

Rhyme recalled that Henry Musgrave, the consulate general, had told them about a foiled attack.

‘The calls to Bolzano,’ Spiro said. ‘The Trenitalia trip, six hours to get him there.’

‘Yes. He’d meet a German-speaking contact who would drive him into Austria. We didn’t have a chance to interrogate Malek Dadi before he was killed. His target was in Milan. But you helped us there — finding the Post-it note with the address of the warehouse in Milan.’

Sachs shook her head. ‘Ah. Your quote “legal liaison,” Prescott? He’s with AIS too. Of course. Before Mike Hill’s private plane landed at Linate, I gave Prescott the address of the warehouse. But he didn’t drive me right there. He took me all over Milan, complaining about the traffic — but that was to give your team time to raid the place. I found a broken beer bottle on the driveway apron. Your people must’ve finished removing the explosives just before we got there.’

McKenzie said, ‘That’s right. We recovered another half kilo of C4. We don’t know what the target was, somewhere in Milan. But that’s one attack that’s not going to happen.’

Rossi asked, ‘And Khaled Jabril? The third terrorist you interrogated?’

Her face tightened. ‘That was bad intel. Our asset in Libya gave us his name but he turned out to be innocent. We interrogated him thoroughly but he didn’t know about any plots. Our techniques are very, very good. If there’d been anything, we would have found it.’ McKenzie looked from one to the other. ‘So, I’ve told you everything. Hypothetically, of course. Now I need your help. There’s a problem.’

Rossi said, ‘I must say, Signorina, I have met many criminals in my day but no one who is as immune to contrizione... contrition, as you.’

She turned cool eyes toward him. ‘This is for everyone’s own good. Your country, as well as ours.’

Spiro said, ‘Continue, per favore.’

‘The terrorists here, Malik and Dadi, were recruited in Tripoli by a man named Ibrahim. We don’t know much about him or his affiliation, maybe ISIS or al-Qaeda. Or other radicalized groups. Or he might be freelancing, working for anyone who pays him. Ibrahim’s accomplice is in Naples, or nearby. He was the terrorists’ contact here. He supplied the explosives and was the on-the-ground person planning the attacks in Vienna and Milan.’

Sachs said, ‘He’s the man Ali Maziq had dinner with before he was kidnapped near D’Abruzzo.’

‘Exactly. Under interrogation Maziq said that his name was Gianni. A code name, of course. But he didn’t have any more information.’

Rhyme recalled that Beatrice had found samples of Neapolitan soil — rich with volcanic trace — in the warehouse. It would have come from this man. He mentioned this now.

‘Yes, Gianni would be the one who left the explosives in Vienna and in Milan then returned here. Now, the point of our operation wasn’t just to stop the attacks; it was also to learn Ibrahim’s real identity and address in Tripoli. Finding Gianni is our only hope. But we have no more leads. Will you help me?’

And in her eyes, true, there was not a wisp of contrition. It seemed that she had hardly heard of — and certainly didn’t care about — the case against her that had just been laid out.

Spiro and Rossi shared a glance. Then the prosecutor turned. ‘And what, Capitano Rhyme, is your thinking on this matter?’