Viper

by Unknown

  ‘Jack. Look at these.’

  He responded slowly to Sylvia’s voice, carefully stepping on to a short walkway that had just been put down. It took him to the heart of the group.

  The young Exhibits Officer held a long drawer across his arms and a camera whirred and flashed from somewhere to the side.

  In the left side of the drawer were maybe six or seven pairs of panties. From their size and style they looked as though they’d been worn by slim – probably young – women. Next to them was a pile of used cosmetics. Lipsticks, eyeliners, blusher, powder, even some hairspray aerosols. In the right side of the drawer was a strange mix of papers – tissues that had yellowed but still bore marks of lipstick or make-up, old letters that had been crumpled up and then straightened out, torn photographs of girls’ faces that had been Sellotaped together again.

  ‘You recognize any of these girls?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Not yet,’ answered Sylvia, ‘but I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some of them turn out to be our missing women.’

  ‘These are trophies?’ said Pietro. He pointed to the tent that covered the place where the last woman had been burned. ‘He kills his women there, then he collects here what he wants to keep from them.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Jack, his attention caught by two forensic officers struggling to move heavy cans in an adjacent corner. ‘What have they got there?’

  Pietro interrupted the search. He lifted one of the cans, his face beaming with an ear-to-ear smile. ‘Paraffina! Looks like we’ve found your paraffin.’

  59

  Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii

  Antonio Castellani was on the toilet cursing his haemorrhoids when the carabinieri rushed his caravan. By the time he’d come out, frightened and still hurting, his grandson Paolo was flat on the floor with his hands cuffed behind his back.

  They were both read their rights and told they were being taken to the carabinieri barracks for questioning in connection with three murders. The arresting officers noted they looked genuinely shocked. They also noted that another Castellani – Franco – was missing. His grandfather made frantic protests about needing to stay to run his business but his words fell on deaf ears. Confused campers crushed around the two separate police cars that flashed their blue lights and sped away.

  Search teams poured into the old man’s van and the one that Paolo and Franco shared. They found nothing in Antonio’s office, except accounts, scrap-books of his younger years, old clothes, a cupboard full of cans and dried foods, some letters from his wife and enough medicines to stock a farmacia.

  Things were different in the other caravan.

  Forensics were having a ball.

  Mud from the pit was all over the place, but especially close to one of the stinking bunks. There were specks of heroin all over the floor. They stripped the bed sheets and sent them off to be tested for other substances – specifically gunshot residue. The pillow cover was pulled off and bagged. Something soft tumbled lightly on to the floor.

  Alberto Morani, a veteran forensic investigator, felt his heart thump. ‘Stop! Don’t touch it until you’ve photographed it.’

  His assistant, newcomer Giulietta Sielli, pulled back her hand. She flicked round the camera she was holding and took several pictures of what even she knew could be hugely significant.

  Lying on the floor by Franco Castellani’s bed was a pair of tiny yellow panties. The type that undoubtedly matched the yellow bra that had been worn by Rosa Novello.

  60

  Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna

  Within seconds of seeing Antonio Castellani being interviewed in the holding cell, Jack knew he had nothing to do with the triple murder on his land. The old man’s body language showed he was completely confused by the whole affair. His brow was furrowed, his eyes startled, but there was no indicator of guilt, only genuine bewilderment.

  Sylvia was gentle but firm with him. First she explored his relationship with his grandchildren and the absence of their parents. Then she moved on to his business and the kind of activities that happened at the site. From the viewing window in the adjoining room Jack listened to the man’s strange Neapolitan dialect. It was nothing like the Italian he’d learned. What was clear, though, was how arthritis had stiffened the old guy’s joints, how old age had bent his spine and slowed his responses. Antonio Castellani would have trouble swatting a fly in his filthy caravan, let alone hunting and killing humans.

  On the other side of the viewing room, Pietro Raimondi was in another interview area using completely different tactics on Paolo Falconi. He was leaning half across the thin grey table that separated them; his broad neck bulged with bloated veins and stretched muscles, his eyes piercing and provocative. ‘Don’t mess with us, Paolo. You know something about what went down, now tell us.’

  ‘I told you. I don’t know a thing.’

  ‘Rosa Novello. You had the hots for her, right? You’ve been sniffing around her like a big bad street dog just waiting for the chance to grind up against her leg.’

  Paolo shifted in his chair. ‘No!’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Yes – no! How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t even know who you’re fucking talking about.’

  ‘Hey, watch your filthy little mouth.’

  Paolo backed up in his seat and looked away from the big lieutenant. He was staring straight off into space, right at Jack, but couldn’t see him through the one-way glass.

  The profiler studied him. Paolo was stressed to the hilt, anxious, aggressive and panicky under pressure. But was he really clever enough, mature enough and controlled enough to carry out a triple murder? Not on his own. Certainly not on his own. Did he have a killer instinct? They were about to find out.

  Pietro undid his pistol from its holster and slid it across the table. ‘Pick it up. Cock it. Aim it at me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. Do it! Now!’

  Paolo fumbled with the Beretta. He picked it up and swapped it between hands. He ignored the safety and raised it. Pointed it, not at Pietro – but off into space, well wide of his left shoulder. His finger wasn’t even inside the guard.

  Jack had seen enough. The stunt with the gun – unloaded, of course – had been his idea. He could see that Paolo had no affinity with the weapon. He was cautious, clumsy and almost scared when he handled it. The real killer would be more than comfortable with a firearm. Even if he’d tried to disguise his familiarity with a gun, there would have been telltale traits in the lifting, levelling, sighting and gripping. Even the putting down of the weapon would have betrayed him.

  Pietro holstered his gun and stared into Paolo’s eyes. It was a look of controlled violence. A visual threat that stuck needles in the brain of anyone on the receiving end. ‘A pair of girl’s panties were found in your caravan. What were you doing with them?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You don’t know what panties are?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do. But I don’t know about any in my van.’

  ‘Well, they were found in there. Nice yellow ones, G-string type. You know, the type that Rosa would have looked really sexy in.’

  Paolo looked angry. ‘I told you – I don’t know any Rosa and I don’t know anything about her underwear!’

  Pietro slammed a hand on the table and Paolo jumped back. ‘Let me jog your memory. Rosa is the dead girl we found not far from your van. She’s the pretty kid who was staying at your camp and whose brains were blown all over the inside of a car. The girl who, according to her mother, owned yellow panties, just like the ones we found in your caravan. So, I think you do know Rosa. And I think you’d better start talking to me now, before I charge you with her murder.’

  Jack could see sweat rolling down Paolo’s cheek. Seconds passed while Pietro’s words sank in. Paolo rubbed away the salty drizzle from his forehead. ‘Franco, my cousin. I think he must have had the panties.’

  ‘Explain.’

&nb
sp; Paolo sweated some more. Finally he gave up what he was holding back, ‘I’ve seen him with women’s underwear before.’

  Pietro read his face – it was full of secrets. ‘What else, Paolo? You’re not telling me everything. What else about Franco?’

  Paolo sucked in air. All the pressure in the world seemed to be on him. ‘Look, he’s my best friend. Franco and I are like brothers. I’m not saying anything else.’

  ‘As you like. But then you both end up in jail. We will find him, Paolo. It’s only a matter of time. You know that, don’t you?’

  Paolo looked away. Stared at the wall. Stared at his hands on the table. Looked anywhere in the room except into the face of the cop who looked like he wanted to tear his head off.

  ‘Paolo, look at me. Pay attention. This is for your own good.’

  He turned his head slowly towards the big policeman. Did his best to stare him down.

  ‘From what I know, your cousin’s not well. He’s sick and he’s in trouble. Unless you tell me what you’re holding back, things are only going to get worse for him – and for you.’

  Paolo held his silence. Looked into the dark-brown eyes that were boring into him.

  ‘Paolo!’ Pietro slammed his hand on the desk again. ‘You want us to make a mistake? To chase after him and shoot him down in an alleyway? You want to risk all that?’

  Paolo swallowed. Looked around. Fought the doubt in his mind. ‘He’s got a gun. My grandfather lets him use one of his guns to kill rats on the site. I looked yesterday, and it’s missing.’

  61

  Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna

  Twenty minutes after Paolo’s interview, the photograph of Franco that his grandfather kept in his wallet had been copied and wired to every carabinieri patrol in Naples.

  Sylvia and Pietro sat with Jack and compared interview notes. Soon, life at the Castellani campsite became clearer. The two grandsons collected garbage and burned it in the pit. It was Franco’s job to do the incineration, a job he guarded closely, one he liked so much he wouldn’t let anyone else do it. Paolo merely helped drive the van and load up. Old man Castellani wasn’t capable of even helping with the heavy garbage sacks, so they all agreed that he could safely be ruled out as a murder suspect. When it came to the night of the murders, Paolo had said he’d been asleep in his bunk – no real alibi. Nevertheless, it seemed to tally with his grandfather’s version of events. What’s more, none of the team felt Paolo alone had the potential to be a killer. He was too passive, too nervous. And then came the more obvious pointers. Franco was missing. What looked like Rosa’s panties had been found beneath what was now established as his pillow. Other items of underwear and female ‘trophies’ had been discovered in the pit where only he went. On top of all that, his grandfather had admitted finding Franco using heroin. Finally, Paolo had confessed that his grandfather’s old Glock was missing.

  Pietro was convinced Franco was their man. Sylvia and Jack were more cautious. They could both see the clear links connecting Franco to the triple murders at the site, but struggled to see any connection between those three murders and the killing of Francesca Di Lauro. And what really troubled Jack was that he was sure the triple murders were linked to the Di Lauro case. He was certain because he couldn’t believe that two separate killers would both choose to use fire as a means to murder a victim. Such an MO was highly uncommon. It was impossible to think that two such killers would spring up at the same time in the same area.

  As Sylvia and Pietro went in for a team briefing, Jack sat alone and tried to make sense of it all. If what they were beginning to think was right, then Luciano Creed was entirely innocent. He could live with that. The guy was creepy as hell, but maybe that’s all he was – creepy as hell. Whoever said the world of psychological profiling didn’t have its fair share of sex-obsessed perverts?

  So, what about Franco Castellani?

  News was now in from search teams that shoes recovered from Franco’s caravan looked as though they matched prints at the murder scene. Analysis of soil samples from clothing was already underway to further test the link. For Jack it was another so what? Given that Franco regularly went to the pit, they were bound to be able to forensically place him there. It was all a hell of a puzzle.

  Jack looked down at the photograph of Franco. The kid’s face was a mess. Beaked nose, horribly wrinkled skin. He looked like a shrivelled sparrow. Mother Nature sure had fucked up. Sylvia had said he was suffering from Werner Syndrome. Jack knew little of it. He hit Google on the office computer in front of him and soon got lost in a mass of medical extracts. The snippets he pulled were disturbing. It was an awful disease. It kicked in around puberty and aggressively got worse until you died at an all too young age. He noted the facts:

  Cause – mutations of the WRN gene. Passed on by parents, each of them showing no symptoms but both having copies of the defective gene.

  Frequency – higher incidents in Japan than USA and Europe. Medical estimates vary from a frequency of 1 in a million to as high as 1 in 200,000.

  Life expectancy – death usually occurs between 30 and 50 through atherosclerosis or malignant tumours.

  Poor bastard.

  Life could be awfully cruel and unfair.

  The facts prompted Jack to think of a whole new batch of questions.

  Had the disease stopped him having normal sexual relationships?

  For sure it had.

  Would it screw you up to the extent that you might torture women who are repulsed by you and reject you?

  It certainly might.

  Could rejection by a mother and father at an early age, and a hard underprivileged upbringing, worsen your feelings of alienation and unfairness?

  Absolutely.

  Jack felt sad and worried. The psychological motivations were all there. Had Franco Castellani been born normal, had he been blessed with healthy cells, then his whole life could have been amazingly different. But this kid? This kid had been damned from birth. Scrub that – it’s even worse. He’d been damned before he’d even been born.

  62

  Bar Luca, Napoli

  Bar Luca had recently become Bruno Valsi’s home from home. In the past few years the Camorra had steadily increased its stake in the business – 10, 25, 40 per cent – and it hadn’t taken Bruno long to push it to 51. The two young owners, Giorgio and Marco, were smart enough to realize that 49 per cent of one of the city’s hottest night spots was better than a shallow grave somewhere.

  Valsi sat in their office, feet up on their desk, watching a bank of surveillance monitors that followed the action in the bar and pole-dancing areas. Sitting opposite him were his new trusted lieutenants, Romano Ivetta and Alberto Donatello. There was no longer any point hiding them.

  Romano couldn’t ever have been named anything other than Romano. His long broken nose, strong dark eyes and gladiatorial size made him look like he’d come straight from Hollywood casting. Donatello was totally different. Small and wiry with a shaven head, permanent five o’clock shadow and hollow cheekbones, he resembled an undernourished prisoner of war.

  ‘The way I see it,’ said Valsi, his eyes still watching the dancers on the screens, ‘we face aggression on two fronts – the Cicerone and my own Family. The big question is…’ he cued a finger at Donatello, ‘do we wait for them to come for us? Or do we take them by surprise?’

  ‘We take them by surprise,’ answered the little man.

  ‘Correct.’ Valsi took his feet off the desk and peered at the monitor. One girl was upside down now. The pole gripped by one serpent-like leg curled around the shiny steel, the other spread out like the blade of opened scissors. ‘Is it me, or is that the most fuckable woman in all of Italy?’

  Ivetta and Donatello laughed.

  The Capo grabbed the phone and hit an internal speed dial. ‘Giorgio, it’s Bruno. The girl on pole two, she has the face of a sainted angel. She looks like she was sent from heaven just for me to fuck. Tell her to stay behind when sh
e’s finished. And make sure I don’t have any trouble getting what I want.’ He dropped the phone back on its cradle. ‘So, we move first. You both agree?’

  ‘Absolutely. No question,’ said Ivetta, ‘but who first? Which one do you want us to tackle?’

  ‘Good question. And I’ve been thinking about it. My father-in-law is planning to kill me. I’m certain of that. And I’m fairly sure that he’s already told Salvatore to take care of it.’

  ‘Sal the Snake?’ checked Donatello, waggling his hand like a sidewinder.

  ‘Sì.’

  ‘Pheeeew!’ whistled Ivetta. ‘That’s some tough motherfucker –’

  ‘Well, who the fuck do you think he would send?’ interrupted Valsi. ‘Mary Poppins?’

  The three of them laughed, then Valsi added, ‘But the Don will not order the hit until he is sure he has everyone’s support. It is his style to want the guaglioni to know that the hit was necessary because of my dealings with the Cicerone crew. He’ll want it to look like I had put the whole Family in danger.’