At the reference to the duration of their visit — ten days, as opposed to one, or a portion of one — Rossi cocked his head and didn’t seem pleased. Rhyme had known from the moment he and Sachs had looked at each other, following Ercole’s email about the Composer’s presence in Italy, and decided to come here, they would not be welcome. So he was pleased that Thom had fired off the ten-day line; nothing wrong with getting the Italians used to the idea that they were not to be scooted away too fast.
Sachs said to Ercole, ‘You speak English well.’
‘Thank you. I have studied from the time I was a ragazzo, a boy. You speak Italian?’
‘No.’
‘But you do! That is Italian for “no.”’
No one smiled and he fell silent, blushing.
Rhyme looked around him, noting again how familiar the place seemed, little different from the Big Building — One Police Plaza, in New York. Harried detectives and uniforms, some joking, some scowling, some bored. Directives from on high posted on bulletin boards and taped directly to the walls. Computers, a year or so past state-of-the-art. Phones ringing — more mobiles in use than landlines.
Only the language was different.
Well, that and another distinction: There were no paper coffee cups, as you’d find littering the desks of American cops. No fast-food bags either. Apparently the Italians avoided this sloppy practice. All to the good. When he’d been head of NYPD forensics, Rhyme had once fired a technician who was examining slides of evidence while he chomped on a Big Mac. ‘Contamination!’ he’d shouted. ‘Get out.’
Rossi led them into a conference room of about ten by twenty feet. It contained a battered table, four chairs, a filing cabinet and a laptop. Against the wall easels held pads of newsprint, covered with handwritten notes and photos. These were just like his own evidence charts, though paper, rather than whiteboards. While there were words he couldn’t make out, many items on the list of physical evidence were understandable.
‘Mr Rhyme,’ Rossi began.
‘Captain,’ Ercole said quickly. ‘He retired as captain from the NYPD.’ Then seemed to decide he should not be correcting his superior. A blush.
Rhyme gave a dismissing gesture with his working arm. ‘No matter.’
‘Forgive me,’ Rossi continued, apparently genuinely troubled by this lapse. ‘Captain Rhyme.’
‘He is now a consultant,’ Ercole added, ‘I have read about him. He often works with Detective Sachs here. That is correct too?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
A cheerleader, like this Ercole, was not a bad idea, Rhyme thought. He was curious about the man. He had both a confidence and a rookie’s air about him. And Rhyme had seen throughout the building no gray uniforms like his. There’s a story here.
Sachs tapped her shoulder bag. ‘We have the results of the evidence analysis at the two crime scenes involving the Composer in New York. Crime scene photos, footprints and so on.’
Rossi said, ‘Yes. We were looking forward to receiving it. Have you gathered any more information since you spoke to Officer Benelli?’
‘Nothing definitive,’ Sachs said. ‘We could find nothing about the source of the musical strings he used for the nooses. His keyboard was purchased with cash from a large retailer. There are no fingerprints anywhere. Or, at best, small fragments that aren’t helpful.’
Rhyme added, ‘Our FBI is looking at manifests for flights here.’
‘We have done so too, with no success. But flight manifests would be, what do you say, a long shot. With no picture, no passport number? And your Composer could have flown into a dozen airports in the EU and moved over borders without any record. Rented or stolen a car in Amsterdam or Geneva and driven. I assume you considered he might not have left from a New York-area airport. Perhaps Washington, Philadelphia... even Atlanta on Delta. Hartsfield is the busiest airport in the world, I have learned.’
Well, Rossi was at the top of his game.
‘Yes, we considered that,’ Rhyme said.
Rossi asked, ‘He’s American, you think?’
‘It’s our assumption but we aren’t sure.’
Ercole asked, ‘Why would a serial killer leave the country and come here to kill?’
Sachs said, ‘The Composer isn’t a serial killer.’
Ercole nodded. ‘No, he hasn’t killed, that’s true. You saved the victim. And we have not found the abducted man’s body here.’
Rossi: ‘Detective Sachs doesn’t mean that, Ercole.’
‘No, Inspector, you’re right. A serial killer is a rare and specific criminal profile. In males the motives’re sexual in nature usually, or nonsexual sadism. And while there’s ritualistic behavior, that’s limited in most cases to binding or arranging the victims in certain ways or leaving fetishes at the scene or taking trophies, postmortem. The behavior doesn’t rise to the Composer’s level of elaborate staging — the videos, the noose, the music. He’s a multiple perpetrator.’
Silence flowed into the room. Then Rossi spoke. ‘We thank you for your insights and assistance.’
‘In whatever humble way we can,’ Rhyme said. Not very humbly.
‘And in coming all this way to deliver to us that file.’ Not very subtly.
Then Rossi looked him over. ‘You, Captain Rhyme, I think, are not used to perpetrators, come si dice? Absconsioning?’
‘Absconding,’ Ercole corrected his boss. Then froze, blushing once more.
‘No, I am not,’ Rhyme said. Dramatically, perhaps overly so. Though he believed the delivery was appropriate since his impression was that Rossi, too, was a cop who would not do well with absconsioning perpetrators.
‘You are hoping for extradition,’ Rossi said. ‘After we catch him.’
‘I hadn’t thought that far,’ Rhyme lied.
‘No?’ Rossi brushed at his mustache. ‘Whether the trial is here or in America, that is a decision for the court, not for me or for you. Allora, I appreciate what you’ve done, Captain Rhyme. The effort. It must be taxing.’ He avoided a glance at the wheelchair. ‘But now you have delivered your report I cannot see how you can be of further help. You are a crime scene expert but we have crime scene experts here.’
‘Your Scientific Police.’
‘Ah, you know of them?’
‘I lectured at the main facility in Rome years ago.’
‘I do hate to disappoint you, and you, as well, Signorina Sachs. But, once again, I see little you can offer other than that.’ He nodded to her bag. ‘And there are practical issues. Officer Benelli and I speak serviceable English but most others involved in the case do not. I must add too that Naples is not a very...’ He sought a word. ‘... accessible city. For someone like you.’
‘I’ve noticed.’ Rhyme shrugged, a gesture he was fully capable of.
Silence, again.
Broken at last by Rhyme: ‘Translation is easy, thanks to Google. And regarding mobility: In New York, I don’t get out to crime scenes much. No need. I leave that to my Sachs and other officers. They return like bees with nectar. And we concoct the honey together. Forgive the metaphor. But what can it possibly hurt, Inspector, for us to hang around? We’ll be sounding boards for ideas.’
‘Sounding board’ seemed to confuse him.
Ercole translated.
Rossi paused then said, ‘This that you are proposing, it is irregular and we are not people who are well with irregularness.’
At that moment Rhyme was aware of a person striding into the room. He swiveled the chair around to see a lean man of slight build in a stylish jacket and slacks, pointy boots, thinning hair and salt-and-pepper goatee. His eyes were narrow and tiny. The word ‘demonic’ came to mind. He looked over Sachs and Rhyme and said, ‘No. No sounding boards. There will be no consulting, no assistance at all. That is out of the question.’ His accent was thicker than Rossi’s and Ercole’s but his grammar and syntax were perfect. This told Rhyme he read English frequently but probably had not been to America or the UK often and watched little English-language media.