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

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

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

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

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

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

The Composer?

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

She answered in Italian, clearly in the affirmative.

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

‘This Composer I’ve read about.’

‘Yes.’

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

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

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

Rossi and Sachs turned to her.

‘The Burial Hour.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’re going to step the grid …

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

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

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

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

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

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

So many people. Thousands of them. A flood.

No, a landslide.

The Burial Hour …

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

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

‘Your disability is being hard of hearing.’

She blinked at these words.

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

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

Later is now, I’m afraid, Rhyme.

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

Another person approached. Ercole Benelli.

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

‘Procuratore,’ he began.

‘Silenzio!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spiro answered several more questions.

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

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

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

She did.

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

The young officer backed away.

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

‘Wait!’ she snapped.

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

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

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

He nearly crashed the Mercedes.

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

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

The man who was now forever silent.

Alas, my love …

I’m sorry, Euterpe … I’m sorry …

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

Never disappoint.

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

He dried his eyes and glanced back at the camp.

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

No!

Impossible.

This couldn’t be …

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

Was it true?

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

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

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

No, no, no …

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

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

But the sounds brought him no comfort.

Artemis … In Italy.

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

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

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

What would he do?

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

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

CHAPTER 34

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She said, ‘Fammi la traduzione.’

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