Jeffery Deaver - The Burial Hour

Rossi, Ercole and Sachs were with Rhyme. There was little for Thom to do at the moment, so he’d left to check into the hotel and make sure the disabled accessibility was as the place claimed.

For a half hour, Maziq had been interviewed by a Police of State officer, who was fluent in Arabic and English.

Sachs had wanted to be present, or to conduct her own interview, but Rossi had declined her request. Dante Spiro would have been behind that.

Finally, the officer concluded the interview and joined the others. He handed Rossi his notes, then returned to the office across the hall. He spoke to Maziq, who still seemed bewildered. He slowly rose and followed the officer down the corridor. He clutched his orange soda as if it were a lucky charm.

Rossi said, ‘He will stay here in protective custody for the time being. He is remaining in a, how do you say, a state? Confused state. Better that we keep an eye on him. And, with the Composer still out in the world, we do not know for certain that Maziq is safe. There is, of course, no motive that we can see.’

‘Who is he?’ Sachs asked.

‘He is an asylum-seeker from Libya. One of so many. He came here on a ship that crashed.’ He frowned and spoke to Ercole, who said, ‘Beached.’

‘ Sì. Beached in Baia a week ago, a resort area northwest of Naples. He and forty others arrived there and were arrested. They had good fortune. The weather was good. They survived, all of them. That very day a ship sank off Lampedusa and a dozen died.’

Sachs said, ‘If he’d been arrested why was he out in the countryside?’

‘A very good question,’ Rossi said. ‘Perhaps it is helpful to explain our situation in Italy with regard to refugees. You are aware of the immigrants coming out of Syria, inundating Turkey and Greece and Macedonia?’

Current events held little interest for Rhyme, but the plight of refugees in the Middle East was everywhere in the news. He’d actually just read an article about the subject on the long flight from the United States.

‘We have a similar problem here. It’s a long, dangerous journey to Italy from Syria but a less long trip from Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Libya is an utterly failed state; after the Arab Spring it became a land of civil war, with extremists on the rise. ISIS and other groups. There is terrible poverty too, in addition to the political turmoil. Adding to the problem, the drought and famine in sub-Saharan Africa are driving refugees from the south into Libya, which can hardly accommodate them. So human smugglers — who are also rapists and thieves — charge huge sums to ferry people to Lampedusa, which I mentioned. It is Italy’s closest island to Africa.’ He sighed. ‘I used to vacation with my family in there, when I was a boy. Now I would never take my own children. So, the smugglers bring the poorer asylum-seekers there. Others, if they pay a premium, will be taken to the mainland — like Maziq — in hopes they can avoid arrest.

‘But, like him, most are caught, though it is an overwhelming challenge for the army, navy and the police.’ He looked toward Rhyme. ‘It has not touched your country as much. But here it is a crisis of great proportions.’

The article Rhyme had read on the plane was about a conference presently under way in Rome, on the refugee situation. The attendees, from all over the world, were looking for ways to balance the humanitarian need to help the unfortunates, on the one hand, and the concerns about economic hardship and security in the destination countries, on the other. Among the emergency measures under consideration, the story said, the US Congress was considering a bill to allow 150,000 immigrants into the country, and Italy itself was soon to vote on a measure to relax deportation laws, though both proposals were controversial and were being met with strong opposition.

‘Ali Maziq is typical of these people. Under the Dublin Regulation on asylum seeking, he was required to apply for asylum in the country of entry — Italy. He was run through Eurodac, and—’

‘Dactyloscopy?’ Rhyme asked. The technical term for fingerprinting.

It was Ercole who answered, ‘Yes, that is correct. Refugees are fingerprinted and undergo a background check.’

Rossi continued, ‘So, this is Maziq’s situation. He passed the initial review — no criminal or terrorist connections. If so, he would have been deported immediately. But he was cleared so he was removed from the intake camp and placed in a secondary site. These are hotels or old military barracks. They can slip out, as many do, but if they don’t return they will be deported to their home country when caught.

‘Maziq was staying in a residence hotel in Naples. Not a very pleasant place but serviceable. As for the events leading up to the kidnapping, he himself has no memory of what happened. The interviewer was inclined to believe him, because of the trauma of the kidnapping — the drugs and the lack of oxygen. But Daniela canvassed the hotel and a fellow refugee said Maziq told him he was planning on taking a bus to meet someone for dinner near D’Abruzzo. It’s a small town in the countryside.’

Sachs said, ‘We should find that guy he ate with and talk to him. He might have seen the Composer. Maybe tailing Maziq.’

Rossi said, ‘There is a possibility about that. The Postal Police have analyzed the data from the phone card found where he was kidnapped. It is surely his, rather than the Composer’s. He used a prepaid mobile, as all refugees do. Just before he was kidnapped he made calls to other prepaids — in Naples, in Libya and to an Italian town in the north, Bolzano, not far from the border. The Postal Police believe they can correlate the pings. You understand?’

‘Yes,’ Rhyme said. ‘To find out where he was when he was at dinner.’

‘Precisely. They will let me know soon.’

Sachs asked, ‘What does he have to say?’

‘He remembers very little. He believes he was blindfolded much of the time. He awoke in the reservoir and his kidnapper was gone.’

Unsmiling Beatrice — as womanly round as a Botticelli model — walked from the laboratory to the situation room.

‘ Ecco. ’ She held up a few printouts.

Ercole picked up a Sharpie and stepped to the board. She shook her head, adamantly, and took the marker from his hand. She glanced at Rossi and spoke.

Ercole frowned, while Rossi laughed. He explained, ‘She has said the Forestry officer’s handwriting is not the best. He will read the results of the Scientific Police’s analysis in English and she will write it on our chart. He will assist her in translation.’

As the man read from the sheets, the woman’s stubby fingers skittered over the pad on the easel in, yes, it was true, quite elegant handwriting.

Beatrice then taped up a dozen crime scene photographs of the water reservoir where Maziq had been held, as well as the entryway to the old building, the aqueduct and the musty brick basement.

Ercole stared at the pictures of the reservoir, which seemed to depict a medieval torture chamber. ‘A grim place.’

Rhyme said nothing to the Forestry officer but scanned the chart. ‘Well, I mentioned crazy. I didn’t see how right I was.’

‘What is that you mean, Captain Rhyme?’

‘You see the sodium chloride, propylene glycol and so on?’

‘Yes. What is that?’

‘Electroconductive jelly. It’s applied to the skin for electroconvulsive shock treatments for psychotics. Rare nowadays.’