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

‘What do you think of this, Rhyme?’

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

CHAPTER 26

Greeting Lincoln Rhyme proved troublesome for some people.

Such as Charlotte McKenzie.

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

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

This was a common excuse.

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

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

‘Lincoln.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘This is Elena Cinelli,’ McKenzie said.

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

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

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

We’ll see about that.

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

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

Sachs asked, ‘Why was Garry implicated?’

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

‘I’m familiar,’ Rhyme said.

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

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

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

‘When will the results be back?’

‘It might be weeks. Maybe longer.’

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

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

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

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

‘DNA tests of the others at the party?’

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

‘Irrelevant,’ Sachs said.

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

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

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

‘Would anyone have a motive to implicate him?’

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

‘Where is the investigation now?’ Rhyme asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sachs and Rhyme regarded each other.

Why now …?

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

Sospetto di Violenza Sessuale

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

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

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

‘Grazie, thank you.’ From Cinelli.

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

‘No,’ Rhyme muttered.

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

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

‘Santo Cielo! How did you know?’

CHAPTER 27

When will it end? she thought.

And nearly smiled at the absurdity of that question.

It will never end.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She surveyed the incoming stream of unfortunates.

A sigh.

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

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