"Ach. There is no sign that the Composer is returning to the farmhouse in the country."
Rhyme and Spiro were alone in the situation room in the Questura. Rhyme, with no need to be anywhere but here, and bodily functions taken care of, had given Thom time off again to see the sights. The aide--irritatingly--kept checking in. Rhyme had finally said, "Hang up! Have some fun! I'll call if there's a problem. Phone reception's better here than in parts of Manhattan." Which it was.
He now digested Spiro's news. Unlike at the aqueduct scene, with Ali Maziq, the Composer had no warning system at the farmhouse to alert him that his hidey-hole had been breached. Rossi had set up surveillance at the house and around the organic fertilizer company, hoping he might return. They'd held off running the crime scene. But two hours had passed and Rossi now yielded to Rhyme's--and Beatrice Renza's--pressure to walk the grid.
Rhyme called Sachs and told her to go ahead with the farmhouse search. She, Ercole and the Scientific Police had finished with the factory in the Spanish Quarters, where Khaled Jabril had nearly been strangled.
Beatrice, in the doorway of the situation room, nodded approvingly when she heard the scene would be searched. "Bene." She cocked her head, crowned with a Tyvek bonnet. "'Even seconds can mean the difference between the successful preservation of evidence and its destruction. Scenes must be searched, evidence collected and protected, as quickly as possible.'"
The grammar and syntax were perfect, even if the delivery was mired in her thick accent.
Spiro shot her one of his glances. "And you are lecturing me for what reason, Officer Renza?"
Rhyme had to chuckle. "She's quoting, Dante. Not lecturing. And she is quoting me. My textbook. And I believe that's verbatim."
She said, "It is used here but only in English. It should be translated."
"That may very well happen." He explained that just this morning Thom had received a call from one of the best literary agents in Italy, a man named Roberto Santachiara, who had read the press account that Rhyme was in Naples and wanted to talk to him about an Italian translation of his book.
"It will be on the bestseller list. Among us, the Scientific Polices, at the least." Beatrice then lifted a file folder. "Now. I have made a discovery that is pertains to something else. This is relating to the Garry Soames case. The wine bottle Ercole wished me to run an analysis."
The bottle at the smoking station on the deck the night of the attack.
She handed the lengthy report to Dante Spiro, who scanned the text and said to Rhyme, "I will translate. There were the same results as in the first analysis, the friction ridges, the DNA, the Pinot Nero wine, which showed no traces of the date-rape drug. But there was new trace found on the surface of the bottle."
"And?"
"Beatrice found present cyclomethicone, polydimethylsiloxane, silicone, and dimethicone copolyol."
"Ah," Rhyme said.
Spiro looked his way. "Is this significant?"
"Oh, yes, it is, Dante. Significant indeed."
She was stunningly beautiful.
Though in a different way from Amelia Sachs, Rhyme reflected. Sachs radiated a hometown, neighborhood-girl attractiveness. The sort you could approach and talk to, without intimidation.
Natalia Garelli was a different species of beauty--an appropriate word, for there was something animal-like about her. High, hard cheekbones, eyes close together, the color an otherworldly green. She wore tight black leather pants, boots with heels that boosted her height three inches over Spiro's, and a thin, close-fitting brown leather jacket. As supple as water.
Natalia looked over Rhyme and Spiro, the only people in the situation room at the moment, though Rhyme saw Beatrice cast a curious look at her from the lab. The Scientific Police officer turned back to a microscope.
The woman had no interest in Rhyme's disabled condition. Her thoughts were elsewhere. "Have you brought me here for, come si dice? For a lineup. To identify a suspect?"
"Sit down, please, Signorina Garelli. You are comfortable with English? My associate here does not speak Italian."
"Yes, yes." She sat, flipping her luxurious hair. "Allora. A lineup?"
"No."
"Why am I here then? May I ask?"
Spiro said, "We have more questions about the sexual assault of Frieda Schorel."
"Yes, of course. But I spoke to you, Procuratore, and to Ispettore...What was her name?"
"Laura Martelli. Yes. Of the Police of State."
"That's right. And then I spoke to that American woman and, curiously, a Forestry Corps officer the other day."
Spiro tossed a wry look Rhyme's way. He turned back to Natalia. "One detail I am curious about. You say you and your boyfriend had a meal of Indian food the day of the party."
A pause. "Yes, that is correct. Dinner."
"What did you have?"
"I cannot recall for certain. Possibly korma and saag. Tikka masala. Why?"
"And you did laundry in the afternoon?"
"Yes. As I told you. Or told someone who asked. So I might have clean linens in the event a guest wished to stay the night."
Spiro leaned forward slightly and asked in an abrupt tone: "The night of the party, for how long was Frieda Schorel, the victim, flirting with your boyfriend, Dev?"
"I..." He had caught her completely off guard. "They weren't flirting. Who told you that?"
"I cannot talk about witnesses who give statements in cases."
Even nonexistent ones, Rhyme reflected.
The green eyes widened momentarily. A potent color. Shamrock green. Rhyme suspected contact lenses. She sputtered: "They were joking, Dev and Frieda. That is all. Your witness is mistaken. It was a party of university students in Naples. A beautiful autumn night. Everybody was having fun."
"Joking."
"Si."
"Do you know if Dev has ever bought Comfort-Sure condoms?"
She blinked. "How dare you ask me a personal question like that?"
Spiro's tone was persistent. "Please respond."
After a hesitation she said, "I do not know what he buys."
"You are his girlfriend and this you don't know?"
"No. I don't pay any attention to such things."
"If I were to look in your medicine cabinet would I find Comfort-Sure condoms?"
"I resent that question and I resent your attitude."
Spiro gave a Gallic sneer, his lower jaw extended. "It is of no matter. After you left to come here, an officer went through your apartment. She found no Comfort-Sure."
"What? How can you do that?"
"Your apartment is a crime scene, Signorina. That is how. Now, as I was saying: None were found. However, credit card records show that your boyfriend did buy a box of Comfort-Sure three days ago. A box of twenty-four condoms. And yet there were none in the house. Where did they go? Who threw them out? For disposing of them is--let us be frank--the only way two dozen condoms might disappear within three days. Some youths have voracious appetites in that regard. But, honestly, two dozen?"
"Are you accusing my boyfriend of the rape? He would never do such a thing."
"No, I am accusing you of the sexual assault of Frieda Schorel."
"Me? You are mad!"
"Ah, Signorina Garelli. Let us explain what we have found."
He glanced at Rhyme, who wheeled to face her. He said evenly, "The lip and neck of the wine bottle on the smoking deck contained traces of condom lubricant, which profiled to be Comfort-Sure brand. It could be associated with--forgive me. I am parsing too fine here. It matched the lubricant on Frieda's thigh and within her vagina.
"In my associate's search of the scene at your apartment, she found laundry detergent and Indian food spices--you, the source of both--at the smoking station and at the scene of the assault." Rhyme's lips tightened with displeasure. "Well, of course you were at the smoking station, because it's your apartment and you hosted the party. But at the scene of the assault itself? How did that happen? I should have
thought of it earlier--it was my mistake to miss it. You and the victim both reported that she was climbing back onto your roof over the wall that separated the two buildings when you heard her cries for help and ran to her aid. That was many yards from the attack site. So how did curry and laundry detergent trace get to the place where she was actually assaulted?"
"You're mad too!"
Spiro took up the narrative: "We believe your boyfriend was flirting with Frieda at the party--and that they had been seeing each other off and on from the start of school--after you all met on the first day of class. You slipped the drug into Frieda's wine. You followed her and Garry upstairs, hoping she would pass out and Garry would rape her while she was unconscious. That would be humiliating enough for her, you believed. But he didn't; he went downstairs, leaving her alone. And you took up the matter yourself. You got one of your boyfriend's condoms and, when the deck was empty, dragged the unconscious Frieda over the wall to the neighboring roof and violated her with the bottle. Then you hid the condom, to be disposed of later, with the others, the next day, and went about your duties as hostess."
Rhyme knew that Natalia was the person who placed the anonymous call claiming to have seen Garry spiking the wine, and she herself would have broken into his apartment to plant the date-rape drug on his clothing; the footprints Ercole and Thom found could easily be a woman's size.
"Lies!" Natalia raged, eyes flashing with pure hatred.
Spiro now continued, "Our inquiries as to guests at the party focused on men. We will be interviewing witnesses about your whereabouts, at the time of the rape. We have been comparing DNA with that of the men at the party. And Frieda's other boyfriends. We will now get a warrant to compel a test of yours."
She scoffed. "This is ridiculous." Her indignation was profound. "I cannot be treated like this."
Rhyme's impression was that she truly believed normal rules did not apply...because she was so beautiful.
Natalia rose. "I will not put up with this any longer. I am leaving."
"No, you are not." Spiro stood to block her way and gestured into the hall. Daniela Canton approached, pulling cuffs from her belt, then ratcheting them on Natalia's wrists.
"No, no! You can't do that. It is...not right!"
Natalia stared down at her wrists, and it seemed to Rhyme that the horror registering in her eyes was not from the fact she was cuffed but that the silver of the shackles clashed with the gold of her bracelets.
Though this surely had to be his imagination.
Chapter 53
Hopeless.
His life was over.
Garry Soames was close to crying when he left the interview room and was let out into the prison's common area, about two acres of anemic grass and sidewalks, largely deserted at this time of day. He walked slowly back to the wing in which his cell was located.
His lawyer, Elena Cinelli, had told him that although the police were considering the possibility that he had been set up as a fall guy for the rape of Frieda Schorel, the magistrate had turned down her request that he be released, even with the surrender of his passport.
This was so unfair!
Elena had told him that two of the best forensic scientists in America, who happened to be in Naples on another case, were assisting with the evidence. But assisting wasn't the same as proving he was innocent. Valentina Morelli, the girl who'd turned on him so viciously, had been located and had given a statement--subsequently verified--that she had been in Mantua the night of Frieda's assault. Suspicion had returned once again to him.
What a nightmare this had become...
He was in a strange land, with "friends" who were suddenly wary of visiting him. His parents were still in the midst of making arrangements to fly to Italy (Garry's younger brothers and sisters had to be sorted out). The food was terrible, the hours of solitude--and despair--stretching on and on.
The uncertainty.
And the looks the other prisoners gave him. Some offered sly, conspiratorial glances, as if they shared a rapist's inclination. Those were just plain creepy. And then there were the glares--of those who seemed to want to short-circuit the judicial system and dish out fast, uncompromising justice. Several times he'd heard, in stilted English, the word "honor." Offered like a whip, lashing him for his crime of debasing a woman.
And the goddamn pisser of it all? The reason the night with Frieda on the roof, under the stars of Naples, could not have turned out to be sexual assault?
He hadn't been able to get it up. Me, Garry Soames. Mr. Ever-ready.
Kissing, touching...and he'd stayed limp as a rag.
Sorry, sorry, sorry...It's out of my hands. I can't control it.
A fact he hadn't dared to share with anyone. The most shameful thing he could think of had to be kept a secret. He couldn't tell the police, couldn't tell his lawyer. No one. "No, I couldn't have raped Frieda, even if I'd drugged her--which I didn't. No, Old Dependable hadn't worked that night."
And now? What would happen--?
His thoughts were interrupted as two men appeared nearby in the prison yard, stepping from the doorway of a wing nearby. He didn't know the short, muscled prisoners very well, other than that they weren't Italian. Albanian, he thought. Swarthy and forever unsmiling. They kept to themselves or hung out with a few others that looked somewhat like them. The two, brothers, had never said anything to Garry and had largely ignored him.
Now it was the same. They looked toward him once and returned to their conversation, continuing on a path roughly parallel to his, about twenty steps behind.
He nodded. They returned the gesture and kept walking, heads down.
Garry thinking: Why the hell did I go to that party in the first place?
I should have been studying.
He didn't regret coming to Italy. He loved the country. He loved the people and the culture and the food. But now he was looking at the whole adventure as a mistake. I could have gone anywhere. But, no, I had to be the big famous world traveler, show everyone from a punk-ass suburb in middle America that I was different. I was special.
Garry observed the two Albanian prisoners moving slightly faster. They would catch up with him in the shadow of the children's climbing wall--in a small area where prisoners could play with their children and visit with their wives on Sunday.
But he ignored them and thought again of the party at Natalia's. He never should have left Frieda on the roof. But seeing her drowsy eyes and feeling her head on his shoulder...and feeling nothing down below, he'd had to flee. It never occurred to him that she'd been drugged and would be at risk.
What a mess...
The Albanians were now closer. Ilir and Artin, he believed, were their names. They claimed to have been wrongly arrested simply for helping refugees flee oppression. The prosecutor's charges were a bit different: that they spirited young girls away from their homes and set them up working in brothels in Scampia, a grim suburb of Naples. The altruistic argument they made--that they were saviors of the oppressed--fell on deaf ears, as most of the girls they "rescued" came not from North Africa but from the Baltic states and small towns in Italy itself, lured by their promise of modeling careers.
Garry didn't like that the men had sped up and were just a few steps behind. He diverted, hoping to avoid them.
But it was too late.
The squat, swarthy men lunged and flung him to the grass.
"No!" Gasping, his breath knocked from his lungs.
"Shhh. Quiet!" Ilir--the smaller--raged in Garry's ear.
His brother looked around to see there were no guards or other prisoners present and drew a long, thick piece of glass from his pocket, a shiv. The base was wrapped in cloth, but six inches of razor edge glistened.
"No! Please! Come on, I haven't done anything!" Maybe they thought he'd been with the prison police, just now, informing on them. "I haven't said anything!"
Artin smiled and eased back, letting Ilir hold him down. In thickly accented English, he said, "Now, h
ere. Here it is. Yes? Here is what is going to happen. You are knowing Alberto Bregia?"
"Please! I haven't done anything to you. I just--"
"Now, now. You are answering me. Yes, there you go. Answer me. Do not baby-cry. Answer me."
"Yes, I know Bregia."
Who wouldn't? A huge, psychotic prisoner--six foot four--who terrified everyone who crossed him, even if their betrayals were pure figments of his bizarre imagination.
"So, it is this. Bregia has problem with my brother and me. And he is wishing to murder us. Now, now. What we are doing is this."
Garry struggled to push Ilir off. But the wiry man held him down firmly. "Stop," he muttered. Garry complied.
"We are having to hurt you some. Stabbing you, yes." He held up the glass knife. "But we not kill you. Cut you some much. But you will not be dying. And then you will be saying that Alberto Bregia did this."
Ilir said, "So he will go to other prison. For dangerous prisoners. We have seen into this. It is how this works. All good."
"No, don't! Please!"
Artin was nodding. "Ah, it won't be much. Six, seven times. Which is nothing. I am being stabbed. Look at these scars. People here in prison, they talk. They say you should have balls cut, you rapist." He brushed the point over Garry's crotch. "No, no. We are not be doing that." They both laughed. "Just some girl you fuck? Who care? So, you good. Just face, chest, maybe cut ear bad."
"Cut off," his brother said.
"Has to look like Bregia, something he would do."
"Look, baby-cry, stop that. Okay, Artin. Cut him and we go. Hurry!"
Artin muttered something in Albanian and Ilir clamped his filthy hand over Garry's mouth and gripped him with fierce strength.
Garry tried to scream.
The glass point moved toward his ear.
And then a distant voice: "Signor Soames! Dove sei?"
From the doorway he'd just exited through, the hallway that led to the interview rooms, a man was calling him.
"Are you still in the yard?"
The Albanian brothers looked toward each other.
"Mut," Ilir spat out.
The knife vanished and they rose quickly.
The Burial Hour Page 31