Jeffery Deaver - The Burial Hour

‘The reference on the chart — to the organic material. Bits of solids. Look at the photo.’

Rhyme glanced at the images. He could see hundreds of tiny dark fragments.

Ercole added, ‘Since we now know about the olive oil, I would say that this trace is not olive oil alone. It is pomace. That is the paste left over after the pressing of the olives.’

Spiro said, ‘So this might have come not from a restaurant or someone’s home but from a producer?’

‘Yes.’

Narrowing things down some. But how much? He asked, ‘Do you have a lot of producers here?’

‘In Campania, our region, we don’t have as many as in Calabria, farther south. But still many, many, yes.’

Rhyme: ‘Then why is this helpful? And why do I see a goddamn smile on your face?’

Ercole asked, ‘Are you so often in an unpleasant mood, Captain Rhyme?’

‘I’ll be considerably more cheerful if you answer my question.’

‘I am smiling because of the one thing I do not see in this picture?’

Rhyme lifted an impatient eyebrow.

‘I do not see any residue of olive stones — the pits, you know.’

Sachs asked, ‘Why is that important?’

‘There are two ways to make olive oil. To crush the fruit with the pits intact or to destone them first. Cato, the Roman writer, felt that denocciolato oils — destoned before pressing — were superior. Some swear by this, others say no. I am familiar with the subject because I have, in fact, fined producers for claiming their oil is denocciolato when it is not.’

‘And,’ Rhyme said, not exactly smiling himself, but close, ‘it is a much more time-consuming and expensive process and therefore fewer producers use that technique.’

‘Exactly,’ Ercole said. ‘I would think there are only a few in the area that do so.’

‘No,’ Beatrice said, head down as she viewed her computer. ‘Not “few.” Solo uno. ’ She stabbed a blunt finger onto the map of Naples, indicating a spot no more than ten miles away. ‘ Ecco !’

Through the dirty windshield, Amelia Sachs looked over the hilly fields outside Naples.

The afternoon air was dusty, filled with the scent of early autumn. Hot too, of course. Always hot here.

She and Ercole were driving past hundreds of acres of olive trees, about eight to ten feet high. They were untidy, branches tangled. On the nearest, she could see the tiny green olives — fruit, Ercole said they were called.

They were not having much luck in the hunt for the Composer.

The Police of State and the Carabinieri had divided up the fields around the Barbera olive oil factory — the only one making oil from destoned olives — in their search for Khaled Jabril and the Composer. This was the sector Sachs and Ercole had drawn. As they had approached down a long road, she was discouraged to see... well, very little. This area, northeast of Naples, was largely deserted. Farmhouses, small companies — generally construction and warehousing — and fields.

They stopped at the few residences scattered around the Barbera factory. And they learned that, no, a man resembling the Composer was not inside. No, a man resembling Khaled Jabril was not inside, either. And neither of them had been seen recently. Or ever.

Ci dispiace...

Sorry.

Back into the car.

Soon Sachs and Ercole were bounding along a badly kept road. Now there were no businesses or residences at all, just the acres and acres of Barbera company olives.

‘Dead end,’ Ercole said.

‘Call the other teams,’ Sachs asked, distracted. She swatted lazily at a bee that had zipped into the Mégane. ‘See if they’ve had any success.’

But after three conversations, Ercole reported unsurprisingly that none of the other search parties had found anything helpful. And he confirmed that the Postal Police were carefully monitoring social media and streaming sites. But: ‘He has not uploaded the video yet.’

So Jabril was still alive. Probably.

They returned to the road.

‘Hm.’ Sachs was frowning as she looked over the fields.

‘Yes, Detective? Amelia?’

‘The paste in the Composer’s shoe? The olive oil residue. You call it what again?’

‘The word is “pomace.”’ He spelled it.

‘Is it thrown out after the oil is extracted?’

‘No, no, it’s valuable. It can be used for fuel in producing electricity. But around here it is mostly used to make organic fertilizer.’

‘Then he might not have picked it up at the Barbera oil operation.’

He gazed at her with a look of concern. ‘In fact, he would not pick it up here. This factory would be careful not to spill or waste any. They would package it and sell it. Now that I am thinking: most likely the Composer would have picked it up on his shoes at an organic fertilizer farm. Not here.’

‘And do you know where one of those farms might be?’

‘Ah, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. And the answer is, yes, I do.’

In twenty minutes they were deep in the countryside, near a town called Caiazzo, surrounded by pale wheat glimmering in the hazy sun.

Sachs was racing along the highway that would take them to Venturi Fertilizzanti Organici, SpA. She pushed the tiny car up to 120 kph, thinking: Oh, what I could do on this road with a Ferrari or Maserati... She downshifted and took a turn at close to forty. The skid was not remarkable; the volume of Ercole Benelli’s ‘ Mio Dio ’ was.

A glance at the GPS map told her they were approaching the turnoff road and she slowed and veered onto it.

Five minutes later: ‘Look there.’ Ercole pointed.

The operation was small: what appeared to be an office structure and several warehouses or processing plants, then fields containing ridges of dark material, about fifty yards long and three feet high. ‘There. Those are the composting piles?’

‘Yes.’

She braked to a stop.

‘Look, that one at the end is on top of a slope. With any rain the pomace could run down to the property in the valley. Is there a house there, can you see?’

Ercole could not.

Sachs drove to the end of the fertilizer company’s property. They discovered a small road that skirted the place. It was dirt. She started down it slowly.

‘There!’ Ercole called.

Ahead of them, set back a hundred feet from the road, was a structure just barely visible through the weeds, shrubs and oak, myrtles, pine and juniper trees.

Sachs kept the car in third gear to make sure the transmission was quiet. She tricked the clutch constantly to keep from stalling.

Finally, near the driveway that led to the house, she pulled off the road into a stand of bushes and killed the engine.

‘I don’t think I can get out.’ Ercole was trying the door — the blockade of vegetation prevented its opening.

‘Need to stay as much out of sight as we can. Climb out my side.’

Sachs got out and he joined her, awkwardly surmounting the gearshift.

Ercole pointed down at their feet. ‘That’s pomace.’ Indicating a dark grainy substance. She could definitely smell the pungent scent of fertilizer in the making.

He asked, ‘Should we call Inspector Rossi?’

‘Yes, but just have him send a half-dozen officers. There’s still a chance he’s somewhere else.’

As he called she looked toward the house. It appeared quite old, a farmhouse, of wood and uneven brick construction. The place wasn’t small. She motioned to him and they started down the long driveway, sticking to the shadows of the trees along the side.

When Ercole had disconnected, she said, ‘Let’s move fast. He hasn’t uploaded his video yet but I don’t think Signor Khaled has much time.’