Jeffery Deaver - The Burial Hour

‘Good. You think this guy, the Composer, he’s left Naples? He’s up there?’

Sachs said, ‘We don’t know the connection. Just an address on a note from the crime scene at the refugee camp.’ She then said to Musgrave, ‘One thing I’m hoping. Is there someone at the consulate in Milan who could drive me, translate for me?’

Charlotte McKenzie said, ‘I have a colleague there. He does what I do, legal liaison. Pete Prescott. Good man. I can see if he’s free.’

‘That’d be great.’

She texted and a moment later her phone chimed with an incoming message. ‘Yes, he is. I’ll text you his number, Amelia.’

‘Thanks.’

Mike Hill joined them, slipping his phone away. Musgrave introduced him to McKenzie and then the businessman said to Sachs, ‘All set. You’re good to go. My driver’ll pick you up at eleven... where’s good?’

She gave him the hotel address.

‘Know it. Great old place. Makes me feel like I’m part of the Rat Pack when I stay there.’

Another figure appeared in the doorway, the slim, very pale man of indeterminate age Rhyme remembered from the other day. Ah, yes, the public relations officer. What was the name again?

He nodded to those present and introduced himself to Hill. ‘Daryl Mulbry.’

The slight man sat and said to Rhyme, ‘We’re getting inundated with requests from the press — about both Garry and the Composer. Would you be willing to sit down for an interview?’ Mulbry stopped short and blinked — undoubtedly at the awkward choice of a verb, considering Rhyme’s condition.

As if he cared. ‘No,’ Rhyme said shortly. ‘I don’t have anything to say at this point, other than that we’ve got a composite rendering of the Composer and that’s gone to the press anyway.’

‘Yes, I’ve seen it. Intimidating-looking guy. Big. But what about Garry? Any statement?’

Rhyme could just imagine Dante Spiro’s reaction when he read in the press that an unnamed ‘American consultant’ was commenting on the case.

‘Not now.’

McKenzie added, ‘I should tell you: Garry’s been getting threats. Like I mentioned, those accused of sexual assault are at particular risk. Add that he’s an American... Well, it’s a problem. The authorities keep an eye on him but there are no guarantees.’

‘No press,’ Rhyme said insistently. But he added, ‘While Amelia’s away I’ll be following up with his case, though.’

McKenzie said, ‘Ah. Good.’ The uncertainty told Rhyme she’d be wondering how exactly he could follow up when his ass was parked in a wheelchair, in a country that did not seem to have the equivalent of the American With Disabilities Act in force.

He didn’t tell her that he had a secret weapon.

Two, in fact.

The Black Screams had begun.

But the failure at the camp and the sight of the redheaded policewoman had conspired to shake him awake early and fill his head with the screams, shrilling like a dentist’s drill.

Yes, he had a plan for Artemis. Yes, Euterpe had whispered calming sentiments from on high. But, as he well knew, very little could stop determined Black Screams. He’d hoped to control them himself, but ultimately, he knew, he’d lose. It was the same as when you wake with that first twist in your gut, small, nothing really. Still, you understand without any doubt you’ll be on your knees over the toilet in an hour with the flu or food poisoning.

Whispering screams, soon to become the Black Screams.

And soon they were.

Shaky-hand, sweaty-skin — these were nothing compared with a Black Scream.

Pacing the farmhouse, then outside in the wet dawn. Stop, stop, stop!

But they hadn’t stopped. So he’d popped extra meds (that didn’t work, never did) and, in the 4MATIC, sped to where he stood now: to chaotic downtown Naples where he prayed the ricocheting cacophony would drown out the screams. (That sometimes worked. Ironically, noise was his salvation against Black Screams — as much and as loud and as chaotic as possible.)

He plunged into the jostling crowds filling the sidewalks. He passed food vendors, bars, restaurants, laundries, souvenir stores. He paused outside a café. Imagined he could hear the forks on china, the teeth biting, the jaws grinding, the lips sipping...

The knives cutting.

Like knives slashing throats...

He was sucking up the noise, inhaling the noise, to cover the screams.

Make them stop, make them stop...

Thinking of his teenage years, the girls looking away, the boys never looking away but staring and, sometimes, laughing as Stefan walked into the classrooms. He was thin then, passable in sports, could tell a joke or two, talk about TV shows, talk about music.

But the normal didn’t outshine the strange.

How often he would lose himself in the sound of a teacher’s voice, the melody of her words, not the content, which he didn’t even hear.

‘Stefan, the sum is?’

Ah, such a beautiful modulation! A triplet in the last of the sentence. Syncopated. G, G, then B flat as her voice rose in tone because of the question. Beautiful.

‘Stefan, you’ve ignored me for the last time. You’re going to the principal. Now.’

And ‘principal,’ an even better triplet!

Only then did he realize: Oh, messed up again.

And the other students either looking away or staring (equally cruel).

Strange. Stefan is strange.

Well, he was. He knew that as well as anybody. His reaction: Make me unstrange or shut the hell up.

Now, on this busy corner in a busy city, Stefan pressed his head against an old stone wall and let a thousand sounds pass over him, through him, bathing him in warm water, circling and soothing his rampaging heart.

Hearing, in his head, his fiery imagination, the tolling of the red bell on the dirt, spreading outward from the man’s neck last night.

Hearing the sound of blood roaring in his ears, loud as a blood bell ringing, ringing, ringing.

Hearing the refugee’s screams.

Hearing the Black Screams.

From the time of adolescence, when the Black Screams started, it had been a battle to keep them at bay. Sound was the lifeblood for Stefan, comforting, explaining, enlightening. The creak of boards, the stutter of branches, the clicking of tiny animal feet in the Pennsylvania garden and yard, the slither of a snake in the woods. But the same way that healthy germs can become sepsis, sounds could turn on him.

Voices became sounds and sounds voices.

Roadside construction equipment, driving piles was really a voice: ‘Cellar, cellar, cellar, cellar.’

A bird’s call was not a bird’s call. ‘Look swinging, look swinging, look swinging.’

The wind was not the wind. ‘Ahhhhhh gone, ahhhhhh gone, ahhhhhh gone.’

The creak of a branch: ‘Drip, drip, drip, drip...’

And a voice from a closed throat that might have been whispering, ‘Goodbye, I loved you,’ became merely a rattle of pebbles on wood.

Now a Black Scream, a bad one, the whining drill. It was starting in his groin — yes, you could hear them down there — and zipping up through his spine, through his jaw, through his eyes, into his brain.

Nooooooooo...

He opened his eyes and blinked. People stared uneasily as they passed. In this part of town, fortunately, there were homeless men, also damaged, so he did not stand out sufficiently for them to call the police.

That would not be good at all.

Euterpe would not forgive him.

He managed to control himself enough to move along. A block away he stopped. Wiping sweat, pressing his face against a wall, he struggled to breathe. He looked around. Stefan was near the famed Santa Chiara church, on Via Benedetto Croce — the mile-long street that bisected the ancient Roman part of town and was known to everyone as Spaccanapoli, or the Naples Splitter.