Jeffery Deaver - The Burial Hour

‘The location of a possible witness to a crime. Or a perpetrator.’

She read another card. ‘“The attack site.”’

He stepped forward, to tell her what it contained, but she waved him back, past a yellow line. ‘No, no, no. You are not gowned. Get back!’

He sighed and stepped away. ‘It’s pebbles—’

‘From a rooftop. Obviously.’

He then asked, ‘And can you see if the NV Hotel in Vomero has a CCTV pointed northeast, from the top level of their parking garage?’

Beatrice frowned. ‘Me? It would be the Postal Police who could check that.’

‘I don’t know anyone there.’ He tapped his Forestry Corps badge.

‘I suppose I could. What case is this?’

He said, ‘An independent investigation.’

‘Well, Ercole Benelli, you come to the Police of State like a newborn hatchling from the Forestry Corps and leap into the role of investigator, fully formed. With a case of your own. You are the new Montalbano.’ The beloved Sicilian detective in the murder mystery series by Andrea Camilleri. ‘So understandably you do not know the procedures here. An evidence analysis request like this must reference a case number or at least the name of a suspect.’

‘We don’t know his identity.’ This much was true. If the claim of Garry Soames’s lawyer — and Garry himself — could be believed, someone else had raped the woman on the rooftop, a person unknown.

Ah. Perfect.

‘Put down Unsub Number One.’

‘What does that refer to? “Unsub”? I’ve never heard that.’

‘English. “Unknown subject.” It’s a term the American police use when referring to a suspect whose name they have not learned.’

Beatrice looked him up and down. ‘If you are taken with American expressions I think you are maybe more Columbo than Montalbano.’

Was this an insult? Columbo was that bumbling, disheveled detective, wasn’t he? Still, he was the hero of the show.

‘As for the forensic results, should I contact you or Inspector Rossi or Prosecutor Spiro? Or another prosecutor?’

‘Me, please.’

‘Fine. Does this have priority over the Composer? I’m nearly finished with the analysis of the evidence you found outside D’Abruzzo.’

‘That should be first. The Composer may be set to strike again, though perhaps if you could call about the CCTV on the NV Hotel? I am interested in any tapes the night of the twentieth, midnight to four a.m.’

‘Midnight to four a.m. of the twentieth? Or the twenty-first of September?’

‘Well, I suppose the twenty-first.’

‘So, what you really mean is “morning”. You misspoke when you said “night”?’

He sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘All right.’ She picked up a phone, and Ercole walked into the situation room, nodding to Captain Rhyme and Thom. Detective Sachs looked up at him, questioningly.

He whispered, ‘She will review it. And now she is calling the hotel. About the CCTV.’

‘Good,’ Rhyme said.

A moment later Beatrice stepped into the situation room. She nodded to those inside and said in Italian, ‘No, Ercole. The NV Hotel does have a camera but unfortunately it seemed not to be working at the time of the attack. There is nothing on the disk.’

‘Thank you for checking that.’

She said, ‘Surely.’ Then seemed to look him over as she turned and left. He glanced down at his uniform. Was he as rumpled as Columbo? He brushed at some dust on his jacket sleeve.

‘Ercole?’ Captain Rhyme asked.

‘Ah, yes. Sorry.’ And he told them about the CCTV.

‘Always the way, isn’t it?’ Captain Rhyme asked in a voice that didn’t seem surprised. ‘Put that on our portable chart.’

‘Our portable chart?’

Thom handed him the yellow pad on which Sachs, at the café, had transcribed his translation of the evidence of the Soames case from the report provided by Elena Cinelli, Garry’s lawyer. He made a notation of the lack of video camera and slipped it under a stack of files on the table, out of sight. Well hidden. The last thing Ercole wanted was for Prosecutor Spiro to see it.

Captain Rhyme said, ‘We still need a search at Garry Soames’s apartment. To see if there’s any evidence of somebody planting the drugs.’

Ercole’s heart sank. But Captain Rhyme continued, ‘We’ll wait on that, though. We should have the evidence analysis from your trip out to the country soon. Happy to do the consulate a favor, but, like I told them, the Composer has priority.’

Relief coursing through him, Ercole nodded. ‘Yes, yes, Capitano . A good plan.’

Then Ercole saw motion from the hallway and noted Daniela standing nearby, head down, playing with a braid absently with one hand as she read from a thick folder held in the other.

She’s free...

For a solid sixty seconds Ercole Benelli wondered if there was some way he could credibly engage her in a conversation about police procedures and then smoothly — and cleverly — segue into the topic of his love for Eurovision.

He concluded that there was not.

But that didn’t stop him from excusing himself and stepping into the hallway. He nodded hello to Daniela and said, with a shy smile, that he’d heard she liked the contest and, he was just curious, not that it was important, what did she think of the Moldavian entry last year, which he considered to be the best competition song to come along in years?

Ercole was surprised, to say the least, when she agreed.

Now, move.

Get going!

Huddling in his musty bedroom in this musty house, Stefan forced himself to rise and, as always, first thing, don latex gloves. Shaky-hand, sweaty-skin... He wiped his brow and neck, slipped the tissue into his pocket for later disposal. Then he slipped a pill into his mouth. Olanzapine. Ten mg. After much trial and error, doctors had determined that the drug made him as normal as he could be. Or, as he’d heard it described, behind his back: rendering him less fucking schizoid than anything else could. (For Stefan, treatment and maintenance were pretty much limited to drugs; psychotherapy was useless for someone who was far more interested in the sound of words than the content. ‘So tell me your feelings when you walked into the cellar, Stefan, on that day in April and saw what you saw’ was nothing more than a series of spoken tones that, depending on the doctor’s voice, could be ecstatically beautiful, could downright thrill him or could induce a bout of anxiety thanks to the shrink’s vocal fry.)

Olanzapine. The ‘atypical’ — or second-generation — antipsychotic worked well enough. But today, he was struggling. The Black Screams were nipping at the edges of his mind. And the desperation swelled. He had to move, move, move along the stations of his own cross, en route to Harmony.

Shaky-hand, sweaty-skin.

Had he been a drinking man, he would have taken a shot of something.

A ladies’ man, he would have bedded a woman.

But he wasn’t either of those. So he hurried to do the one thing that would keep him from surrendering to the Black Screams: find the next ‘volunteer’ for a new waltz.

So. Move!

Into his backpack he placed the black cloth hood, the thin sealed bag of chloroform, duct tape, extra gloves, the gag. And, of course, his calling card: the cello string wound into a small noose. He pulled off his blue latex gloves, showered, dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt, socks and his Converse Cons. He pulled on new gloves and peered out the window. No threats. Then he stepped outside, locked the bulky door and collected his old Mercedes 4MATIC from the garage. In three minutes he was on the uneven country road that would eventually lead to the motorway and the city.