Viper

58

Crime scene 2, Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii Sylvia Tomms and Medical Examiner Boris Stern stood beside the burned corpse of the dead woman beneath a forensic tent in the centre of the pit. The sun, rarely spotted in Naples for the last week, had cruelly broken cover and was cooking the plastic ceiling above them, increasing the stench of burned flesh and decomposing rubbish.

Stern, a small, white-haired man with Einstein-like glasses and moustache, was Munich born and bred. At social gatherings Sylvia enjoyed speaking German with him and discussing places and events she'd shared with her father. Now, though, their common language was that of death and they spoke Italian for the benefit of those around them.

'She's been shot through the head.' Stern pointed at the blackened, fleshless skull. 'A very precise shot from the front, probably two metres away. The entry wound looks like a nine millimetre. That's the most likely cause of death.'

'Not the burning?' asked Sylvia.

'No, no. Absolutely not. Though she was burned – or, at least, partially burned – before she was shot.'

Sylvia grimaced. 'You're sure of that?' She glanced at the corpse. It was charred beyond recognition. Skin around the skull was missing. All her clothing destroyed. Only the fatty tissue around her thighs seemed to remain.

'No question about it. The burning is consistent with her being upright and fighting to get free from some wire around her wrists. You'll notice, as in all burnings, that the thinnest parts go first – the joints, elbows, knees. The fatty parts – the muscles and biceps – they hold out longer.'

Sylvia had seen floaters and frenzied knife killings, bullet-riddled bodies and strangulations, but never anything like this. It was grotesque.

'What chances of identification, Prof?'

'Oh, good. Very good.' He stretched out his foot in its rubber boot and carefully stepped on to a clear spot of earth. 'Look at her fingers.'

'You mean, what's left of them?' Sylvia gingerly followed his lead.

Stern put his double-gloved finger across the blackened remains of the woman's right hand. 'You can see that she's made a fist, like she's just about to punch someone. We call this Pugilistic Posture. It's happened because the fire caused contractions in her arm. But bend a little closer and look.'

Sylvia stooped so her eyes were barely six inches from the blackened hand.

'The skin around the inside of her middle two fingers on this hand is intact. The fire has blackened it and dried it considerably. We can rehydrate those areas and probably get prints. We've been lucky. The skin on the other hand is almost totally destroyed. The fire was probably hotter there.'

The Professore straightened up, put the back of his left hand against his spine and stretched. 'A touch of rheumatism, I think. Besides the fingerprints, there's plenty of bone left to get good DNA samples from. And there are enough teeth left for us to age her accurately, and maybe even identify her too.'

They stepped back and studied the burned remains. Their thoughts were in sync. Both wondered who the victim was? What awful twist of fate had led her to this dreadful end?

Sylvia put her hand on her old friend's shoulder and broke the silence. 'I need you to lie to me. Tell me that the gases from the fire will have knocked her out and she never felt a thing.'

Stern patted her hand. 'You know that's not true. I'm afraid this will have been a slow death until the moment he shot her.'

'How long?'

'I can't tell you that until I get her back to the mortuary and examine her more closely. It will certainly have taken minutes for all her skin to have burned off. After that, mercifully, she would have been pain free.'

'Why so? Because the brain blocks the agony?'

'No, not at all. Quite simply because all our nerve endings are in our skin. Once the skin has burned away, then there is no feeling.'

What an awful way to go. Sylvia wondered what kind of person would want to actually watch someone suffer like that.

Stern removed his glasses and used his arm to blot sweat from his brow. 'When your fire experts arrive they will be able to tell you much more about her last moments. But looking at the skeleton, and particularly the skull, I would say the murderer started the fire at the top of her body.'

'Why?'

Stern replaced his glasses. 'Come around this side. I'll try to explain.'

They picked their way into a position closer to the victim's head.

'See down there, around the tops of her legs?' He pointed out the area. 'While there is no skin left, there is still some tissue and burned muscle. Now look here; the upper skin that should be around her neck and skull is completely missing, front and back.'

Sylvia caught his drift. 'Fire rises; so if the blaze had been set at her feet then you'd expect most damage down there, rather than at the top of the body?'

'Absolutely right.'

'So you'd say he doused her in petrol and set her head alight?'

'That might be what you would say, my dear. I don't think so. I think your killer was a little more precise in his practices. Look at the skull. There is incredible damage around the mouth. I think he may have forced a rag, probably soaked in some accelerant, into her mouth, pushed it deep into the back of her throat, and then set it alight.'

Like a garden lamp, thought Sylvia. Her killer used a petrol-soaked rag like a wick in an outside lamp.

'There is also extensive burning on the chest. He probably threw accelerant over her once she was ablaze.' Stern lowered his mask so it was below his nose and sniffed. 'Paraffin, I think, not petrol; but I could be wrong. These days my nose is better suited to sniffing a good Barolo than anything else. Again, the fire team will know for certain.'

Sylvia had seen enough. 'Excuse me for a moment, Professore. I just need to go outside for a while. I'll leave you to get on with your work.'

He smiled knowingly at her. 'See you shortly.'

Sylvia was keen to escape from the charred corpse and get to the other side of the crime scene. She was desperate for a smoke. Jack and Pietro caught Sylvia as she ducked out of the forensic tent. A packet of cigarettes was already in her hand. Before the two men had reached her a voice stopped her in her tracks.

'Capitano!'

Sylvia turned to see a young male Exhibits Officer beside her. 'You need to come to the other side of the pit.'

'Why? What is it?'

'We've found some things in the far corner, in an old chest of drawers.'

'Things?'

Jack and Pietro followed, a pace behind.

'Underwear. Tissues used by women, smeared with make-up, old lipstick – those kinds of things.'

When they reached the corner of the pit, Jack stepped back and tuned out the fast-spoken Italian comments being exchanged. Old planks and plastic sheeting had been arranged to form a sort of shelter and forensic teams were now erecting their own protection around this area as well. A rusty oil drum lay on its side in the treacly mud and there were footprints everywhere. It looked like investigators had rushed into the scene and probably compromised it. There were some forensic walkways, but not enough. He was saddened to think of what might have been lost. A crime-scene photographer flashed his camera at something being shown to Sylvia. Jack was in no hurry to see it. He was still trying to decode the importance of what was in front of him.

The pit was at its deepest at this point. The place with the planks and the oil drum was most sheltered from the elements. It had been carefully chosen. This was his place to linger. He sat here to savour the blaze. Wanted to be alone with his thoughts. The drum was his seat. The drawers now being rifled by Forensics were his treasure chest. He was a regular – no, more than that, he was a routine visitor. Jack looked again at the makeshift shelter. It really wasn't very big, and certainly not sophisticated. Some old wooden doors – one a front door of a house with splintered panels that looked as though it had been staved in during a drugs raid – formed the sides of the shelter. A small trench, about six or eight inches deep, had been dug in the ground so the doors would slot in. Planks of wood – rough flooring timbers and pieces of cheap plywood – had been crudely layered on top and nailed down. Old plastic sheeting had been fed and trapped beneath them to form some kind of waterproof membrane. Whoever had done this wasn't tall; the height and poor design of the roof showed he'd struggled to arrange things with any real neatness or competence. More than anything there was a real sense, though, that he'd spent a lot of time here – he'd come with a spade and tools and had collected the right combination of wood and sheeting to make the shelter. This undoubtedly was his place.

'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.'