“What do you want from us, specifically?” Rhyme asked.
McKenzie looked at Cinelli, who said, “A review of the evidence that has been gathered—the report, I mean. You cannot have access to the evidence itself. And, if possible, you might search the scenes again, to the extent you can. All we need is something to point to another suspect. Not a name necessarily, just the possibility that someone other than Garry committed the crime. To introduce reasonable doubt.”
Mulbry said, “I’ll get the buzz going in the media, and that might help get him released, pending trial.”
McKenzie added, “The jail he is being held in is not a bad one. On the whole Italian prisons are rather decent. But he’s charged with rape. Fellow prisoners despise those suspects nearly as much as child molesters. The Penitentiary Police are watching him but there have already been threats. A magistrate has the power to release him until trial, if he surrenders his passport, of course. Or to place him under house arrest. Or, frankly, if the evidence against him proves irrefutable, to allow him to plead guilty and work an arrangement for safe incarceration, so he may begin his sentence.”
Sachs and Rhyme regarded each other.
Why now…?
He glanced into the lawyer’s open briefcase and saw an Italian newspaper. He didn’t need a translation of the headline to get the gist:
SOSPETTO DI VIOLENZA SESSUALE
Below that was a picture of an extremely handsome collegiate-looking blond man, flanked by police. A Midwestern frat boy. His face was an eerie mix of frightened and bewildered…and cocky.
Rhyme nodded. “All right. We’ll do what we can. But our investigation for the serial kidnapper here takes priority.”
“Yes, certainly,” McKenzie said. Her face blossomed with gratitude.
“Grazie, thank you.” From Cinelli.
Daryl Mulbry said, “About those interviews. Would you—?”
“No,” Rhyme muttered.
Elena Cinelli nodded and offered, “I would recommend against publicly mentioning that Captain Rhyme and Detective Sachs are involved.” To Rhyme, “You must be very discreet. For your own sake. The prosecutor handling the case against Garry is a brilliant man, that’s not disputed, but he can be difficult and vindictive and he is cold as ice.”
Sachs tossed a glance toward Rhyme, who asked the lawyer, “Is his name, by any chance, Dante Spiro?”
“Santo Cielo! How did you know?”
Chapter 27
When will it end? she thought.
And nearly smiled at the absurdity of that question.
It will never end.
This world, her world, was like that abstraction from mathematics class at boarding school so many years, so many lives ago: a M?bius strip, endless.
Rania Tasso, in a long gray skirt and high-necked long-sleeve blouse, strode to the front of the Capodichino Reception Center. At the moment buses, three of them, sat packed with men, women, children whose faces were dark—both of color and with uncertainty and fear.
Some of those visages were taut with sorrow, too. The weather in the Mediterranean had not been bad in the past week but the boats they had sailed on, from Tunisia and Libya, from Egypt and Morocco, much farther away, had been pathetically inadequate. Ancient inflatables, rickety wooden vessels, rafts meant for river transit. Often the “captain” was less competent than a cabdriver.
A number of these unfortunates had lost someone on the harrowing trip. Family, children, parents…and friends too, friends they had made on the journey. Someone in her employ at the camp (she couldn’t recall who; people tended not to stay long in the business of asylum-seeking) had said the immigrants were like soldiers: people thrown together by impossible circumstance, struggling to complete their mission and often losing, in an instant, comrades to whom they’d become vitally attached.
Rania, the director of the Capodichino Reception Center, was giving orders, endlessly. Because the work to be done here was endless. She marshaled all her troops: the paid Ministero dell’Interno employees, the volunteers, the police, the soldiers, the UN folks and the infrastructure workers, being firm, though patient and polite (except perhaps with the insufferable celebrities who had a habit of jetting in from London or Cape Town for a photo opportunity, bragging to the press about their donation, then jetting off to Antibes or Dubai, for dinner).
Rania walked around a massive pile of life preservers, orange and faded-orange, piled like a huge, squat traffic cone, and ordered several volunteers to board the buses to dispense bottled water. The month of September had not proved to be a respite from the heat.
She surveyed the incoming stream of unfortunates.
A sigh.
The camp had been intended for twelve hundred. It was now home to nearly three thousand. Despite the attempts to slow immigration from North Africa—primarily Libya—the poor folks kept coming, fleeing rape and poverty and crime and the mad ideology of ISIS and other extremists. You could talk about turning them back, you could talk about setting up camps and protective zones in their origin countries. But those solutions were absurd. They would never happen.
No, these people had to escape from the Land of No Hope, as one refugee had referred to his home. Conditions were so dire that nothing would stop them fleeing to beleaguered settlements like hers. This year alone nearly seventy thousand asylum-seekers had landed on Italian soil.
A voice intruded on her troubled thoughts.
“There is something I would like to do. Please.”
Rania turned to the woman, who had spoken in Arabic. The director scanned the pretty face, the deep-brown eyes, the faint hint of makeup on the light-mocha skin. The name…? Ah, yes, Fatima. Fatima Jabril. Behind her was her husband. His name, Rania recalled, was Khaled. The couple whose intake she herself had processed just the other day.
In the husband’s arms lay their sleeping daughter, whose name she’d forgotten. Fatima apparently noted the director’s frown.
“This is Muna.”
“Yes, that’s right—a lovely name.” The child’s round face was surrounded by a mass of glossy black curls.
Fatima continued, “Earlier, I was outspoken. The journey was very difficult. I apologize.” She glanced back at her husband, who had apparently encouraged her to say this.
“No, it’s not necessary.”
Fatima continued, “We have asked and have been told that you are the director of the camp.”
“That’s right.”
“I come to you with a question. In Tripoli I worked in health care. I was a midwife and served as a nurse during the Liberation.”
She would be talking, of course, about the fall of Qaddafi and the months afterward, when the peace and stability, so long anticipated and so bravely fought for, had vanished like water in hot sand.
“Liberation”—what a mockery.