Viper

74

Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna The briefing that afternoon turned out to be one of the longest Jack had attended. During it, he literally found himself reading the writing on the wall.

Creed's picture had been removed from the Priority Board. He was no longer a suspect.

Franco Castellani's photograph was ringed in red marker – the search for him had drawn a blank but was ongoing. Surveillance was still on his cousin Paolo, and there were reports that someone fitting Franco's description had been seen boarding a train to Rome. Security cameras were being checked.

Sorrentino's famous face and crime-scene pictures from his apartment filled a new Evidence Board and a separate but linked team was working that line of inquiry and dealing with the press. Sorrentino was certainly going to make front-page news. Few people doubted that it was the handiwork of the man who had killed the missing women. Taking out Sorrentino would certainly slow down their progress on identifying victims at the dig.

The crimes at the Castellani campsite had their own board and Jack couldn't help but feel saddened by looking again at the young faces of Rosa Novello and Filippo Valdrano.

The Jane Doe burned in the pit still hadn't been identified. The body shots of her were so graphic that some of the team struggled to look at them.

Sylvia finished handing out the actions, then turned to what Jack found the most intriguing board of all. The one dedicated to the murder of Alberta Tortoricci. 'What I say to you all now is in confidence and doesn't leave this room. No gossip in the canteen, no chatting to your friends outside.' She pointed to a portrait shot of Alberta Tortoricci taken almost ten years ago, a time when her hair was much longer and her face was free of the worry of having met and testified against the mob. 'This thirty-eight-year-old woman was the prime witness in the trial of Bruno Valsi, the son-in-law of Camorra Capo Fredo Finelli. Here's the timeline – Valsi comes out of Poggioreale after a five stretch and within five days Alberta turns up dead. But this lady isn't just killed. She's tortured, mutilated and then, after death, her body is set on fire. I hope no one is struggling to see the connections.'

The room filled with mutterings. Sylvia let them die down before she continued. 'They found her body in Scampia, rolled in an old carpet and dumped in rubble near a disused factory. They'd electrocuted her. Broken more than twenty of her teeth, then sliced off thirteen centimetres of her tongue.'

The audience, hardened though they were, audibly registered their disgust.

'Finally, after all that, they'd doused her in paraffin and burned her to the bone.'

A small man near the front raised his hand, 'Was she alive when they set her on fire?'

'No. I met the ME – and earlier this morning I spoke briefly to Lorenzo Pisano, who's heading the inquiry. They tell me she died of "asphyxiation, caused by the cessation of breathing and heart activity ". Maybe some small mercy in that.'

There were more murmurings. Pisano was carabinieri top brass. One of the few public figures brave enough not only to spearhead the battle against the Camorra, but to be seen to spearhead it.

'At the end of this meeting, Major Pisano has prepared a special briefing and some of you will be asked to attend that. There is a possibility – nothing more, nothing less at this stage – that the Tortoricci death may be linked to our case.'

Questions and comments flew thick and fast. How could a mob revenge-killing be linked to their serial killer? Was there any significance in the fact that no women disappeared, or were tortured and burned, during Bruno Valsi's five years in prison? Opinions were divided. During that time frame there'd been several unsolved murders and missing women that they'd not even considered. Many saw the hand of the Camorra everywhere but nobody could point to anything amounting to forensic or circumstantial evidence to connect Valsi to any of the murders, except that of Tortoricci.

Jack was also in two minds. The use of torture on Alberta Tortoricci was consistent with his profile of a serial sadistic murderer, but the post-mortem burning of the corpse threatened to be a red herring. Then again – take it away, and would they even be connecting the cases?

Jack was still answering the question as he, Sylvia and two of her team made their way across the city to the briefing with anti-Camorra supremo, Major Lorenzo Pisano. Maybe he could answer the most worrying question of all. How do you hunt down a serial killer when he's surrounded by a mob of other killers?