Jeffery Deaver - The Burial Hour

‘ Her. Ah. I kidnapped her husband, and it was really the wife.’ A smile. ‘Who stole my shoe.’

‘Yes.’

Intelligent. Good.

Spiro asked, ‘Would it help to shut the lights out?’

‘No, I don’t need to do that.’

Ercole played the audio. Now that he was aware of its potential value, Rhyme listened carefully. He made out a few noises that he hadn’t noticed in the first or second hearing but not much.

‘Again.’ Stefan’s voice was firm. He wasn’t the least deferential. Odd how even the most insecure grow assertive when practicing their special art.

Ercole played it once more.

‘And again.’

He did so.

‘Can I have a pen and paper, please?’ Stefan asked.

Spiro produced them instantly.

‘It is hard, I am sure, to hear past the voices,’ Rossi said.

Stefan responded with a bemused frown. Apparently he could hear past the voices just fine.

‘Sound is better than words. Sounds have meanings that are more trustworthy. Robert Frost, the poet, talked about the sound of sense. I love that, don’t you? He said you could experience a poem recited on the other side of a door without hearing the words. The sounds alone would convey the intended emotion and meaning to you.’

Not exactly the ramblings of a madman.

He began to jot notes in perfect script. Beatrice Renza would approve of it.

As he wrote, he said, ‘The caller was not far from the harbor. I hear Klaxons and warning and announcement horns. Passenger and commercial vessels. Tugboat diesels.’

‘Not from trucks?’ Rossi asked.

‘Of course not, no. They are clearly echoing off undulating water. You can hear the horns and ocean liner diesels too, right?’

Rhyme could not. They were hidden in a morass of noise.

Stefan scribbled quickly, then stared at the sheet. Closed his eyes. They sprang open and he crossed out what he’d just inscribed and then started again.

‘I need to control the playback.’ He scooted close to the computer, nudging Ercole out of the way.

‘These keys can—’

‘I know,’ Stefan said brusquely and typed. He rewound the audio and replayed certain parts, jotting notes. After ten minutes, he looked up.

‘I can hear transmissions downshifting and increasing in volume, as the cars get closer to the phone. That means the caller’s on top of the hill. The hill’s steep. They are mostly cars, mostly small ones, both diesel and gas. One has a muffler about to go. Some vans, I think. But no large trucks.’

Another playback. Staring at a blank wall. ‘Birds. Two different types. First, pigeons. There are many of them. I can hear their wings flutter from time to time: once, when a roller board — those things boys ride on — went by. Once, when children, about four or five years old, ran after the birds. I can tell the age from their footfalls and the laughs. The pigeons returned at once. They didn’t fly off when cars went by. That tells us that they’re in a square or plaza. Not a street.’

Their eyes went to the map of Naples, where Spiro had circled the docks with a red marker. He now put X’s near a number of public squares and piazzas in the general area of the waterfront and on what he must have known were hills.

‘The second birds are seagulls. They’d be everywhere in and around Naples, of course, but here there are only four, I think. One is giving a copulation call. He’s some distance. The three closer to the phone are giving assault calls and alarm calls. They’re fighting aggressively, probably over food, since they wouldn’t be nesting there. And because there are only three, I think they’re fighting over trash in a small bin, behind a restaurant or house. They are farther away from the waterfront; closer, there would be more and there would be a lot of sources for food — fishermen and trash — so the fighting would not be as vicious.’

Stefan played the tape back once more and paused it. ‘There is a school nearby, grade school, we’d say in America. I would guess it’s a parochial or a private school — many of the children have leather soles. I can hear no running shoes. Leather soles would mean uniforms. So private or religious. It’s a school because they’re laughing and running and playing and then, almost at once, it stops, and the sound of their feet changes as they all walk at the same pace back to class.’ He looked at the others, all staring at him. ‘They’re grade school — I can tell this because of the sound of the voices and the interval of their footfalls. I said that before. There is construction going on not far away. Metal work. Cutting metal and riveting.’

‘The ironwork of a building,’ Rossi said.

‘I don’t know if it’s a building,’ Stefan corrected. ‘It might be anything metal. A ship.’

‘Of course.’

‘Now, we can’t ignore words. Do you hear that American voice? A man’s asking, “How much?” Speaking slowly and loud, as if that will improve understanding. Anyway, he’d be speaking to an outdoor vendor. Or, possibly, a shop with an open window.

‘There’s a man vomiting. Then he receives angry comments. So, I would think he’s a drunk, not somebody who’s sick. Somebody ill would get sympathy, and we’d hear a siren. This means there might be a bar not far away. I hear scooter engines starting, then running for a few minutes, then stopping. They seem, some of them seem, to be misfiring. The sound of tools.’

‘A repair shop,’ Ercole said.

‘Yes.’ He listened to more of the tape. ‘Church bells.’ Stefan replayed it. ‘The notes are D, G, G, B, G, G.’

Spiro asked, ‘You are able to tell?’

‘I have absolute pitch. Yes, I know those notes. I don’t know what they are playing. We have to find out.’

Rossi asked, ‘Perhaps, can you sing it?’

Without referring to the tape again Stefan sang the notes in a clear baritone. ‘I’m an octave lower,’ he said, as if that were important information.

Ercole was nodding. ‘Yes, yes, it’s the Angelus, l’Ave Maria del mezzogiorno , I would guess. The midday tolling.’

‘A Catholic church,’ Rhyme said.

‘Not very close but no more than a hundred yards, I’d think. Perhaps connected to the school.’

Dante Spiro marked churches in the area they’d been focused on.

Stefan listened to the tape once more. Then he shook his head. ‘I’m afraid that’s about it.’

Spiro asked. ‘That’s all you can hear?’

Stefan laughed. ‘Oh, no, I hear much more. Airplanes, the trickle of gravel, a gunshot very far away, a glass breaking — a drinking glass, not a window... but they are too general. They won’t help you.’

‘You’ve done fine, Stefan,’ Rhyme said.

‘Thank you,’ McKenzie said to the young man.

Spiro exhaled. ‘ Sei un’artista. That is to say, you are a true artist.’

Stefan smiled, shy once more.

Spiro was then leaning forward, his dark, focused eyes staring at the map. His finger stabbed a spot. ‘ Ecco. I think Gianni had to be here. Monte Echia. It is not far from here. A large hill downtown overlooking the bay. That would explain the gear shifting. It’s largely residential but below are shops like the one that could be the scooter repair place and the bar where the man was sick. With the vistas, it is a tourist spot, so there could be vendors there, selling food and souvenirs. The docks are not that close but within hearing range. And there is a church just below it, the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Catena.’

‘Tourists?’ Rhyme asked. ‘It might be a good target.’

Rossi said, ‘It’s not a major tourist attraction but, as Dante says, there are many residents and some restaurants. The gulls might have been fighting at one of their trash bins.’