“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 as 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.”
Ercole then said, “Ah, there is a possible target for Fatima: the military archive, Caserma Nino Bixio.”
“I don’t know that it’s still open,” Spiro said. “But, even if not, there would be residents and tourists nearby and bombing a state building would get the attention of the world.”
Rossi was already calling the SCO team.
Rhyme looked at the digital clock: 12:50.
An hour and ten minutes until the attack.
Amelia Sachs was pushing Ercole’s poor Mégane to the limit once more, though this time not speeding; the unfortunate lower gears were struggling to ascend the steep slope of Monte Echia.
They breached the top and saw ahead of them two dozen tactical officers from the SCO, as well as a number of regulars from the Police of State and the Carabinieri. The Naples Commune Police was present too, along with soldiers from the Italian army.
Towering Michelangelo, the tactical force commander, gestured angrily for two police cars to back up and let Sachs pull closer. He smiled as Sachs jumped from the car and they played the Dirty Harriet/Make My Day game again.
She rigged her headset, and she and Ercole walked into a square beside the large red stone building that was the archive. At the western edge, where a sheer cliff descended to the street below, there were tourist stations—a sketch artist who’d do a portrait of customers with Vesuvius in the background, vendors of gelato and flavored shaved ice, a man behind a pushcart, selling Italian flags, limoncello liqueur in bottles the shape of Italy, Pinocchio dolls, pizza refrigerator magnets, maps, and cold drinks.
Though the day was sunny, the temperature moderate, the area was largely deserted.
Now that Rhyme had told her of Stefan’s analysis of the phone call between Fatima and Gianni, she too was aware of the sounds that he’d identified—the pigeons, the gulls ganging over a garbage bin nearby, cars downshifting to make the summit, as she’d just done. Much dimmer were the other sounds—the ships at the docks in the far distance, south toward the volcano, the scooter repair shop, other vendors, tourists, children in a parochial school yard.
She and Ercole joined in the search, and the Forestry officer told Michelangelo that they would survey the vendors and the customers, since the police soldiers had the archives covered.
“Sì, sì!” the massive man said and plunged toward the archives with his men, his face registering disappointment, as if peeved that there was no one yet to shoot. The big, dun-colored building was not, in fact, open at the moment, but there were many alcoves and shadows and doorways where a bomb might be hidden—and that would kill or injure dozens, as Dante Spiro had pointed out.
Ercole and Sachs canvassed up and down the streets, she displaying the picture of Fatima, he asking if anyone had seen her, adding that she would be dressed in Western clothing and without the head covering, most likely. Since the photo, though, depicted the woman in hijab, the tourists and vendors surely thought that terrorism might be involved and they gazed at the picture with the eager intent to remember seeing her.