Jeffery Deaver - The Burial Hour

‘How are we coming, Ercole?’

‘I... There are quite a few underground areas of the city. I didn’t realize how — come si dice — how extensive the passages are.’

‘As I was saying,’ Beatrice offered to Ercole.

‘Some are contradictory. Indicated on one map but not another.’

‘I would think certain underground areas will have been filled in, construction,’ Rossi said. To Rhyme, Sachs and Thom he said, ‘This is a problem in Italy. A real estate man wishes to build an office or apartments and as soon as the excavation is started, a Roman or — here often — a Greek ruin is discovered, and all construction comes to a stopping.’

‘Give me something to work with, Ercole. We need to get on this.’

‘I have some, a few passageways, old buildings, grain storage warehouses, even some caves that are promising.’ He looked up. ‘How do I print?’ he asked Daniela.

‘Here.’ She leaned over him. She typed and a moment later, the Hewlett-Packard in the corner came to life. Rhyme didn’t know why he was surprised — perhaps because he was in an ancient city, looking at ancient maps; wireless printing routers seemed out of place.

Sachs fished the pages from the tray and handed them to Daniela. Rhyme instructed, ‘Draw the passages on the map.’

‘ Tutti? All of them?’

‘Except the ones that seem to be bricked off.’

In her firm, swift strokes, she outlined the networks.

Rhyme said, ‘Now add public works. Sewers. But just the older ones, from historical maps. Old shit, remember? And open, not enclosed, pipes. The Composer stepped in the trace.’

The young officer began a new search. The maps Ercole found were obviously incomplete but they showed some sewage sluices that had been in operation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Daniela put these on the map.

‘Okay, now, eliminate the walking-tour routes,’ Rhyme instructed.

Ercole printed out the website information from ‘Underground Naples, See History Up Close!’ and a half-dozen others. Daniela noted the routes and marked off any that coincided with the passageways and sewers they’d found.

Still, miles and miles of places to stash the victim remained.

Rossi said, ‘And an area where prostitutes worked, you were suggesting?’ He looked at Giacomo, who gazed at the map and said, ‘I have patrolled — you would say in vice squad — many of the areas where working women and men are found, the Spanish Quarters, Piazza Garibaldi, Corso Umberto, Gianturco, Piazzale Tecchio — the San Paolo stadium, Via Terracina, Fuorigrotta, Agnano and Corso Lucci. These are active now. The Domiziana — or now Domitiana — area, north and west of Naples, was known historically for prostitution, and still is. But it’s very congested and the population is mostly immigrant. It would be hard for the Composer to get his victim there. And no underground passages are nearby.’

Rhyme said, ‘Circle the first areas you have mentioned, Officer.’

Giacomo took the marker from Daniela and did so.

This narrowed down the number of passageways and chambers to about two dozen.

‘What are they exactly,’ Sachs asked.

Rossi said, ‘Roman roads and alleyways and sidewalks before they were built over. Tunnels for delivery of merchandise to avoid the congested streets. Water reservoirs and aqueducts. Grain warehouses.’

‘Water?’

‘Yes. The Romans built the best water delivery infrastruttura in the world.’

Then Rhyme called, ‘Beatrice, you found limestone and lead?’

She didn’t understand, and Ercole translated.

‘ Sì. Yes, we did. There it is, you can see.’

‘Were the old Roman aqueducts limestone?’

‘Yes, they were and, as you are suggesting, I believe, the pipes... shifting the water, transporting the water to the fountains and the homes and the buildings, were lead. Now replaced, of course, for healthy reasons.’

‘Ercole, maps of Roman water supplies?’

This document was readily available in the historical archives.

Ercole handed the printout to Daniela. He pointed to the document and said, ‘Here I have ten Roman water-holding chambers in the areas we have marked. They are like large wells or silos, round. These were connected to aqueducts coming into the city from the north and west. Some of them are large municipal reservoirs, twenty by twenty meters, and some are those serving smaller areas or individual homes, much smaller. When the supply of water became more modern, and pumping stations were created, many of these reservoirs were converted to warehouses and store rooms. Doors and windows were carved into the walls.’

Daniela marked them.

Rhyme: ‘I want to see the video again.’

The image came onto the screen once more. ‘Look at the wall, the stone. Is it a water reservoir?’

‘It might be.’ Ercole shrugged. ‘Carved stone. Stained with what might be water marks. And if converted, it could have had a doorway cut for access. There, that shadow suggests there is a doorway.’

Sachs said, ‘We’ve narrowed it to nine or ten locations. Can we do a search of them all? Get a hundred officers?’

Rossi seemed uncomfortable. ‘We do not have the resources I would like.’ He explained that there’d just been reports of potential terror attacks in Italy and other parts of Europe recently and many officers had been pulled off non-terror crimes.

Rhyme had the video played once more: the stone, the noose, the unconscious victim, his chest rising slowly, the trickle of dust, the—

‘Ah. Look at that.’ His voice was a whisper. But everyone in the room turned to him immediately. He grimaced, ‘I saw it before but didn’t think a damn thing of it.’

‘What, Rhyme?’

‘The dust and pebbles, falling from the wall.’

Sachs and Ercole spoke simultaneously. She: ‘Subway!’ He: ‘ Rete Metropolitana !’

‘A train’s shaking the walls. Ercole, quick, what lines run through the areas we’ve marked?’

He called up a subway system schematic on the laptop. Looking it over, Daniela drew the transit lines on their working map.

‘There!’ Rossi called. ‘That water reservoir, the small one.’

It was a room about twenty by twenty feet, at the end of an aqueduct. It was accessed by a passageway that ran to a street by a square on Viale Margherita.

Giacomo added, ‘I know that area. That reservoir would be in the basement of an old building, now abandoned. Prostitutes could have used the passages years ago, yes.’

‘Abandoned,’ Rhyme said. ‘So the doors might be sealed with the lock and chain the Composer cut though; that’s the rust and the slices of metal.’

‘I’ll call the SCO,’ Rossi said.

Daniela offered: ‘Servizio Centrale Operativo. Our SWAT force.’

Rossi spoke for several minutes, giving firm orders then hung up. ‘The central office is assembling a team.’

Sachs met Rhyme’s eyes. He nodded.

She asked, ‘How far away is that?’ She stabbed the map, the entrance around which Daniela had drawn a red circle.

‘No more than a few kilometers from us.’

‘I’m going,’ Sachs announced.

After a brief hesitation Rossi said, ‘Yes, certainly.’ He looked to Giacomo and Daniela, and the three had a brief conversation in Italian.

Rossi translated, ‘Their vehicle is with other officers. Ercole, you drive Detective Sachs.’

‘Me?’

‘You.’

As they started for the door, Rhyme said, ‘Give her a weapon.’

‘What?’ Rossi asked.

‘I don’t want her in the field without a weapon.’

‘That’s irregular.’

We are not people who are well with irregularness...