by Aidan Conway
A Known Evil
AIDAN CONWAY
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Copyright
KillerReads
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Aidan Conway 2018
Cover design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com
Passage from I Sette Messaggeri © Eredi Dino Buzzati
Published by arrangement with The Italian Literary Agency.
Courtesy of the heirs.
Aidan Conway asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and
incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities
is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008281168
Version: 2018-01-25
For Graziella
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PART I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
PART II
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Part III
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Epilogue
KEEP READING…
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
PART I
One
They’d found the body in the entrance to their block of flats where, sometimes, bleary-eyed, they would avoid treading on the dog shit some neighbour couldn’t care less about cleaning up – teenagers on the way to school at eight in the morning. They’d been the first to leave the building, apparently, although it was now known the victim didn’t live in the same complex. Paola Gentili, mother of three, a cleaner, on her way to work. Multiple blows to the cranium. No sign of sexual assault. No attempt to appropriate money or valuables. No sign of a struggle.
So, it seemed she had been taken completely unawares. Better for her. Husband had been informed. Distraught. Had given them the few preliminary details they required without the need for any formal interview. That would have to wait until they got the go-ahead from the presiding magistrate. But the guy seemed clean enough going by the checks the new ‘privatized’ IT system had given them in record time. What social media access she had was regular and only moderately used. Meanwhile, they’d started looking into the other stuff. No particular leads. No affairs. No money issues. No links to known families in the organized sector. Worked in a ministry in the centre of the city. No unexplained calls. Just waiting now on the forensics guys to come up with something more concrete to work with.
Inspector Michael Rossi had only just driven through the gates in the Alfa Romeo. He had known immediately that something big was coming by the urgency of Carrara’s steps as he’d emerged from the baroque archway leading from the Questura’s offices to the car park. If Rossi had bothered to switch his phone on before it would have got him out of bed, what? Twenty minutes earlier? But that wouldn’t have saved anyone’s life. Now, the debris of takeaway espressos and sugar sachets violated the bare desk space separating them in his office. Their own cleaner had just been in, chatty as ever, oblivious as yet to the news.
“Other than that,” said Carrara, “we’re totally in the dark on this one. But it does look like there’s a possible pattern emerging.”
“You’ve been busy,” said Rossi.
The second such killing in as many weeks. The modus operandi and the victim profile bore distinct similarities but no one had dared yet to use the term. Serial? Was it possible? In Rome?
Detective Inspector Luigi Carrara. Five years Rossi’s junior, several years under his belt in anti-mafia, undercover, eco-crime, narcotics, now on the Rome Serious Crime Squad. Recently married, he had the air of one of those men who never seem to have overdone anything in their lives: hardly a wrinkle, haircut every month, bright, fluid in his movements. Just the man Rossi needed on a Monday morning like this one.
“How similar?” said Rossi, still struggling to form what he considered decent sentences, though his mind was already whirring into action. “The weapon, for instance?”
“Blunt instrument. Iron bar or hammer, probably.”
“Who’s on the scene?”
“A few boys from the local station. They got the magistrate there sharpish though. Hopefully they’ll have disturbed as little as possible. She was carrying ID, so we got to work with that straight off, once the news came in on the police channel.”
“Press know?�
��
“Not officially. But they will.”
“Silvestre?”
“Out of town, I think.”
“Good. Let’s go,” said Rossi grabbing his battered North Face from the coat stand, feeling more vigorous and even a little bit up for it. “I want to see this one for myself.”
Two
The press had got their picture. As usual, in the confusion between traffic police, municipal police, carabinieri, and the state police, someone had left the poor woman’s feet sticking out from under the blood-soaked tarp, like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. A final ignominy to grace some of the seedier papers’ inside spreads. They had only partially succeeded in keeping the crowds back and sealing off the street, but the citizenry was beginning to grow impatient. Close off a road in Rome and the already mad traffic goes berserk with all those narrow cobbled streets peppered with potholes, the ancient city walls’ archways forming designer bottlenecks, not to mention the one-way systems and the curse of double parking. It didn’t take much to tip the balance. So, the quicker you got everything back to normal the better for everyone.
“Remember, it all starts with good forensics guys,” said Rossi ambling onto the crime scene. The “guys” in white gave him minimal glances of assent from under their cagoule-like hoods while snapping and sampling and moving in to examine the body in greater detail. Rossi was the most senior officer on the scene and he and they knew it. He turned to Carrara, who was flicking through his mobile for news.
“Got anything more on her old man, officially or unofficially?”
“Still in shock, but according to the ‘reports’ he’s clean. No apparent motives. Family man. Besides, he was still in bed. His own bed. And alone. Shift-worker apparently. And no strange cash movements, no dodgy mates we know of. Nothing, as yet.”
“No links with the Colombo case? Anything in common? Friends, work, family, schools, anything?”
Carrara shook his head.
“Nothing. Just similar methods, married woman but different workplace.”
“And the kids?” said Rossi, finally allowing a dark sliver of the human reality to sink in.
“With their grandparents. We’ve got counselling on to that too.”
Rossi tried to put it to the back of his mind. Remain objective. He was a policeman. This was his job. Find the evidence. Find the killer. Stop the murders. Limit the murders. More than this he couldn’t do, and God knows that was what it was all about. But it didn’t get any easier. So much for an experience-hardened cop.
He glimpsed that one of the white-hooded moon-men, as if in contemplative genuflection next to the victim, had changed rhythm and was getting to his feet.
“What is it?” said Rossi, sensing its importance.
“Paper, sir. Note or list by the looks of it. Nailed to the sternum.”
“Not shopping, I trust.”
Blood-soaked but legible and left visible enough inside her blouse to be discovered quickly, it was in block capitals and written in English.
LOOK INTO THE BLACK HOLE FOR WHAT YOU WANT.
Was he growing in confidence? Already? Toying with them maybe? Now I do, now I don’t. Work it out. Want another clue? You’ll have to wait. And there’s only one way you’re going to get it. Special delivery. They might be able to find what model of printer or machine had been used, the make of paper, but more than that? It was hardly going to narrow the field. There’d be no prints.
Rossi looked at Carrara. “Any good at riddles, Gigi? Or are you still more of a sudoku man?”
“Looks like your area, Mick,” replied Carrara. “A late Christmas present.”
Rossi looked up to where the magistrate Cannavaro was skirting around the crime scene.
“And how would you say our magistrate’s doing?” said Rossi. “Ready to refer all this to the professionals now?”
Three
Yana Shulyayev slipped her long, lean body into the steaming bath. She wasn’t going to move a muscle for anyone now. It had been a busy one. The pensioners in the morning then the children. Then off to the accountant to sort out more interminable paperwork, not to mention trying to get across the city during a transport strike. And the cold was like something she had never experienced in Italy. So, she’d ended up walking, in the wrong shoes, most of the way and after a day spent on her feet, dancing and stretching and standing in queues, she was exhausted.
The phone rang. Shit! She’d left it in her coat! No. She wasn’t answering. She was out! They could call back. And if it was important? The accountant needing yet more papers before the office closed? She couldn’t afford to risk it, not with the threat of repatriation always being dangled in front of her. She hauled herself out and skipped wetly into the hall. It had stopped. Shit again. She checked the missed calls. Might have known. She thrust the mobile back into the coat pocket and swore again, and again for good measure, in Russian. It was Michael.
But she wasn’t in the mood to listen to his story. Not yet. Not today. Sometimes she liked to hear his accounts: his frustrations, his occasional victories, his funny anecdotes about the absurdities of the Italian police and legal system. The screw-ups with evidence, the Public Prosecutors in search of glory sending them, the cops, on wild-goose chases because they wanted to nail such-and-such for whatever reason, real or imagined. If only it was like in Britain, he’d say, instead of all these judges and magistrates and officials getting in the way. Over there, a crime’s reported, cops go to establish the facts, they evaluate the likelihood of an offence having been committed, they investigate, they make an arrest, interrogate, then they charge a suspect, and he goes to court. She’d heard it so many times that it had become a mantra.
He also liked to remind her how it wasn’t like in the films, but for her it seemed pretty close, at least in terms of its frequent effects on their relationship. “You should get a cat,” she’d tell him. “It won’t give a shit what time you get home, you won’t wake it up, and you won’t need to take it out anywhere.”
As she lay in the bath, the phone gave a last vain trill but this time she didn’t stir. She was somewhere else now. Somewhere where no one could reach her. She negotiated a little more hot water with her toe and heard a message coming in. That would be him. So he’d be on the case and when he was on a case she didn’t exist. So, cancelling tonight, no doubt. She tried to re-establish the pleasant world she had slipped into before the call. But try as she might, against her will, she was drawn away from where she’d been, where nothing else mattered except the warm water and dreams.
She’d heard about the murder at work. Terrible business but the police had no idea what or who was behind it. The girls in the gym were sure it was the work of an immigrant. A rapist probably. Never an Italian. Italy was going through another deeply unpleasant period and especially Rome. Politicians were playing the race card and the feeling was spreading, or being spread, that crime was on the rise and the only culprits were the foreigners. Every day on the TV news there would be a hit-and-run, a robbery, a mugging and the usual nationality tag stuck onto the suspect. She’d felt so awkward about the whole thing that she’d practically agreed with them. After all, they didn’t even think of her as an outsider anymore, and not just because she was their boss. But sometimes even she felt happier laying the blame at the door of some generalized alien monster. The Romanians, the Serbs, the Ukrainians, the North Africans. The fucking Italians! But she always kept the last one on the list to herself. Now, where was I? she thought, manoeuvring herself back into her own world, the safest one she knew. Then she began to turn over the possibilities available to her without necessarily ruling out the option of a quiet night in. Or even a night out, without Michael.
In the warm water, her hand strayed down along her body. She felt the firm abdominal muscles her students aspired to and which some envied too. Though the deep beach tan was gone, many Italian summers had left her skin an almost permanent honey colour. Her fingers then felt and found the faint line of the scar. Yes
, it was still there but hidden to all but the most prying of eyes, the most forensic or curious of observers as her bikini line was old style. No drastic depilation for her. She wondered if Michael was one of those observers, if his cop’s curiosity had noted it. He had never mentioned it, had never asked and she had not divulged the secret. To what extent it might be considered a secret was debatable too. That she had had a child when still effectively only a child herself was a part of her personal life but had very little to do with Yana the person, her personality.
She didn’t feel anything like regret, even though, at times like this – perhaps because of the killings, like in wartime – some instinct in her was pricked, some part of her conscience maybe. Elena had a good life, went to a good school and had been lucky in so many ways. Her effective mother, Yana’s youngest aunt, in Kiev, had been only too willing to take on the responsibility having lost the chance of starting a family of her own after Chernobyl. She had survived cancer but been left infertile and Yana’s tragedy had become her treasure. The letters came regularly from both of them, in Russian and in Ukrainian, and she was glad that she had learned both tongues so well. She would need them in the future, she was sure. Yana’s visits, though rare, were something they all looked forward to, living as they did like a happy family, something Yana had never had.