The worker couldn’t add any details, but Rossi summoned his uniformed associate Giovanni, with whom he spoke for a moment. The officer went to his Flying Squad car and returned a moment later with a laptop. He loaded a program and Sachs saw it was SketchCop FACETTE, a good facial reconstruction software program. Though the FBI prefers actual artists, even now in this high-tech age, most law enforcement agencies found that people with suitable talent are hard to find, and so they used this or a similar program.

In ten minutes an image of the Composer was complete—if pretty generic, in Sachs’s opinion—and was uploaded to the Questura, where officers in turn sent it to police throughout Italy. Sachs would receive a copy too.

The evidence was packed into plastic bags and delivered into Ercole Benelli’s waiting, and gloved, hands. He filled out a chain-of-custody card then looked around him, studying the scene. After a moment he said that he would place the evidence in the trunk of the Mégane. He wandered off in that direction.

Rossi received a call and, taking it, walked away from the scene, gesturing Bubbico after him.

Sachs was looking over the camp. What a sprawling, chaotic place it was. Many blue tents but also improvised shelters. Stacks of firewood, laundry lines from which flags of faded cloth dangled, hundreds of empty cardboard cartons, discarded water bottles and empty food tins. People sitting on rugs, on wooden cartons, on dirt. Mostly cross-legged. Some were squatting. Everyone seemed thin, and more than a few appeared to be ill. Many of the lighter-complexioned were badly sunburned.

So many people. Thousands of them. A flood.

No, a landslide.

The Burial Hour…

A voice startled her. “Ah, it appears that you too, Detective Sachs, suffer from a disability.”

She turned and found herself face-to-face with Dante Spiro.

“Your disability is being hard of hearing.”

She blinked at these words.

He slipped a cheroot into his mouth. Being outside, he lit it and inhaled deeply, then put the gold lighter away. “You were ordered to limit your work to crime laboratory assistance. And acting as an Arabic-language interpreter. You are not doing the former and you are not doing the latter. You are here in the thick of an investigation.” He looked at her gloved hands and the rubber bands on her feet.

Dante Spiro will not be happy. But I will deal with him later.

Later is now, I’m afraid, Rhyme.

He approached. But, never one to shrink from a fight, Sachs walked up to him, stood just feet away. She was inches taller.

Another person approached. Ercole Benelli.

“And you! Forestry Officer!” The words were contemptuous. “She is not under my command but you are. Letting this woman onto the scene, out in public—exactly what I told you should not happen—is completely unacceptable!” As if the words didn’t have enough edge in a foreign language, he switched to Italian. The young officer’s face turned red and he lowered his eyes to the ground.