Viper

101

Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna The case conference continued at a slow, methodical pace. Nothing was to be missed. Every link scrupulously examined. A mistake now could prove fatal.

Sylvia was growing tired and short-tempered. 'I asked for checks on Celia Brabantia, the former manager of the Finelli sex centre. Is she dead or alive?'

Claudio Mancini hesitated. 'Alive. We think.'

'You think?' queried Sylvia. 'Alive is when you breathe, dead is when you don't. Which is it, Claudio?'

'One of the women said she'd quit and moved home to Sansepolcro. She gave us a number and we spoke to a woman who said she was her, but we haven't yet had a chance to physically ID her, so we think she is alive but can't be certain.'

'Okay, we get the picture, thanks.' Sylvia rubbed at her hair and paced while she thought. 'Susanna, update us on the body count and body IDs. Where do we stand? Who's linked to whom?'

Susanna Martinelli was a tall, thin confident woman in her late twenties with long black curly hair that shook from side to side as she walked to the front. She picked up the projector control and began with the slides of the dead cousins, Paolo Falconi and Franco Castellani. 'Their deaths now seem like a single planned suicide by the elder cousin, Franco, a heroin user, that went wrong and ended in a double tragedy. Onlookers say the younger cousin, Paolo, tried to stop him and was accidentally killed.'

Sylvia stepped across the conversation. 'We've been considering these two as suspects in our murder cases. It could be that Franco Castellani had planned to kill himself out of shame or guilt and he bungled the suicide and shot Paolo Falconi as well.'

Susanna continued her narrative. 'I've been asked to put up these slides as well.' She clicked on to several images of the cousins' bodies being examined by a well-built, middle-aged man in a grey suit.

'Salvatore Giacomo, aka Sal the Snake,' explained Lorenzo from the shadows of the room. 'Fredo Finelli's personal muscle. We want to know why he was there. What's his connection with the cousins? Had he been told to threaten them, abduct them or even kill them? We have information – which, unfortunately, I can't go into at this moment – that suggests there was bad blood between Sal's boss, Fredo Finelli, and their grandfather, Antonio Castellani. Was Sal following the cousins on Finelli's instructions?'

Jack's eyes were glued to the frame of Giacomo. This was a man who had slipped under their radar for most of the inquiry. No criminal record. Yet he was a career criminal who was certainly smart and efficient. He ticked a lot of boxes on Jack's profile. 'Lorenzo, is this Sal a local? Was he born and bred around here?'

Pisano didn't need any notes to help him. He knew the background on the Finelli Family as well as he knew the history of his own family. 'Giacomo is Neapolitan. As local as they come. Born and bred in Herculaneum. Lives alone in a one-bed in Napoli Capodichino. He's been there since we've been keeping tracks on him.'

Jack mentally reran the profile he'd drawn up. White male, knows how to control violence, probably aged thirties to fifties, single or divorced, born locally, has good local knowledge, holds driving licence, comfortable with a gun, perhaps a career criminal, a Camorrista with a history of violence. But what the hell was Giacomo's connection to Valsi? The two men seemed more enemies than friends. Sal the Snake was unlikely to kill on Valsi's orders. And there was no way Jack could imagine the two sharing some joint sexual pleasure in sadistically murdering women.

The slide show moved on. They reran the start of the sequence where Sal first appeared on the scene. He walked coolly into frame, checked the cousins' bodies for signs of life and then disappeared again. 'Can you flick through all those shots of him again, please? Maybe magnify by two and jog them back and forth?'

Susanna did as Jack asked. The quality dipped as the picture doubled in size. Sal moved in a near comical, jerky slow motion around the bodies, checking for pulses, wiping his hands.

'Okay, you can stop there.' Jack turned sideways to Professoressa Marianna Della Fratte. 'Ballistics say the same ammo was used in the murders of Rosa Novello, Filippo Valdrano, Kristen Petrov and Bernardo Sorrentino. Two different sites, the same ammo, correct?'

Marianna nodded. 'Yes, correct. Jacketed Hollow Point. And before you ask,' she glanced at Sylvia, 'yes, I'm absolutely certain that there were two separate guns. Both Glocks, both the same calibre, but the barrel markings and firing-pin impressions were entirely different. We double-checked.'

Jack held up a hand. 'Okay, can we run those last few slides again, please? I just want to see something, maybe it ties in with what the Professoressa just told us.'

Susanna repeated the shuffle and Jack moved close to the projector screen. Bright light caught his face and cast a giant shadow of his head on the screen before he backed off. 'As you can see, Sal is right-handed. Look here, when he checks Franco's neck for a pulse.' The slide moved on. 'Now, when he stoops to move Franco to check on Paolo – see the flash of leather strapping? That's because he's wearing a shoulder holster under his right arm. Not his left arm. This is so he can pull a gun left-handed. Probably means it's a twin holster rig and this is his back-up gun. Only rednecks and real pros carry two weapons. And as you don't have too many rednecks out here, we can assume this guy is a pro and knows how to use them both. Most likely – very likely – this guy's carrying twin handguns.'

'Ten minutes' break everyone,' shouted Sylvia. Jack didn't have to say what he was thinking. Everyone was on the same wavelength. Find Sal the Snake. Find out if his guns are Glocks and whether the bullets match the murders.

The room emptied, but Jack hung back and asked for ten minutes. He wanted some time on his own. Time to figure out the link between Sal and Valsi.

He could hear the overhead neon strip lights buzzing as he forced himself to focus.

Nothing came.

He looked again at the victims' names. Their lives reduced to black ink on white boards. He dismissed the male victims. Sex was usually the key. Usually the area where offenders left their clearest psychological clues. He switched to the board listing all the murdered and missing women. * Francesca Di Lauro (24) – dead (burned) * Gloria Pirandello (19) – dead (burned) * Patricia Calvi (19) – dead (burned) * Luisa Banotti (20) – dead (burned) * Kristen Petrov (24) – dead (burned) * Alberta Tortoricci (38) – dead (burned) * Donna Rizzi (19) – Missing, presumed dead No matter how hard Jack tried he couldn't see a connection to Salvatore Giacomo, or a reason for the burnings. And the only obvious connections to Valsi were Tortoricci, who'd testified against him, and Petrov, who worked for him and may well have had an affair with him. According to Lorenzo, Sal was fifty. It was unlikely he'd have moved in the same social circles as the women. But, of course, it was possible that Valsi would have done. Valsi was, what? Twenty-seven? At the time of their disappearances he could have been pretty much the same age.

There was another thing that couldn't be ignored. A gap of five years between the most recent murders – Tortoricci and Petrov – and the last victim, Francesca Di Lauro. That morning Sylvia had told him what Bernadetta Di Lauro had said about her daughter dating a married man. Was Valsi that man? A married man. The father of the unborn child she carried? There was no evidence to support it, but it was certainly possible. Sylvia said she could never have imagined Creed and Francesca together, but it wasn't so hard to picture the handsome Valsi with the beautiful Francesca. But why kill her? Jack was sure many Camorristi had bastard children all over the place. Hardly a killing matter.

And then it hit him.

The missing piece.

The mystery link that pulled it all together.