Viper

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.