“Why all the footprints?” Spiro wondered aloud.

Rossi: “Some possible tenants looking at the rental, I would assume. And the victims. The Composer kept them there until he was ready to make his video. They might have walked to and from the car—even if they can’t remember it now.”

Rhyme sighed. “I hope one of those prints isn’t another vic. Just because a name wasn’t on the list doesn’t mean he hasn’t taken somebody else.”

Beatrice said, “It is so extremely curious, no fingerprints. None at all, excepting for the victims’. It is as if, as you say, Captain Rhyme, he wears the gloves in his sleep.”

Spiro scowled. “He makes it difficult at every turn.”

“Oh, no,” Rhyme said, “the absence of fingerprints is very good for us. Isn’t it, Sachs?”

She was staring at the chart. “Uh-hum.”

“How do you mean?” Rossi asked.

There was a voice in the doorway, “Ciao.” From Ercole Benelli, carting a trash bag with him.

Noting the Forestry officer was smiling at her, Sachs said, “Here’s the answer to your question, Inspector.”

Rhyme explained, “We had a case a few years ago. A professional hit man. We found his hidey-hole and there wasn’t a single print. He wore gloves all the time. But that meant he had to dispose of those gloves frequently—since, of course, they retain prints inside the fingers perfectly. He was unlucky enough to throw them out in a refuse bin two blocks from his place. We found them. We identified him. We caught him. I suspect that’s where Officer Benelli has been, searching trash bins.”

“Yes, yes, Capitano Rhyme.” He lifted the green plastic bag. “I found this in a bin behind an IP station—a petrol station—on the road between Caiazzo and Naples. I’m afraid I wasn’t successful as regards the gloves.”

He lifted three metal paint cans out of the bag and carefully set them on the table. Rhyme took one sniff and, smelling the astringent scent, scowled. “Methyl isobutyl ketone.”

“What is that?” Rossi asked.

In slow English, Beatrice answered. “It is being a solvent. Particular effective in melting latex.”

“Yes,” Rhyme said.

Ercole said, “There is simply a blue mess, sludge, you say? In the bottom. The gloves have dissolved.”

Spiro regarded the Forestry officer. “But you don’t look as upset as you might, given the news you have delivered. Are you being oblique intentionally? Do not be coy. Explain.”

“Yes, Procuratore. The trash bin that these cans were in had a lid on it, and I found no glove prints on the lid but some fingerprints. From, I hope, where he opened the bin to deposit the cans, never thinking we would find them.” He produced an SD card and handed it to Beatrice. She sat at the computer and called up the images. Ercole had used fingerprint powder—an old standby—to raise the images. They were all partials, some better than others.

Rhyme could see, however, they were not enough for an identification.

But he turned to Beatrice, who nodded knowingly. She had anticipated him. She typed at the keyboard and a moment later another print appeared, in a separate screen, beside the partials from the trash bin. They were the Composer’s other prints, pulled from the leaves on the branch where he’d spied on Ali Maziq at dinner the night he was kidnapped at the bus stop.