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.