Viper

84

RIS, Raggruppamento Carabinieri per la Investigazioni Scientifiche, Napoli Sylvia couldn't believe what she'd heard. She pushed the files back across the table to her friend and looked dismayed.

'All results are progress. Think of the positives,' said Marianna Della Fratte.

Sylvia flipped open a notebook and rubbed the ballpoint up and down on the page to get it to write. 'Go through it again – the good news and bad news. Maybe second time around it comes out better.'

'Gladly. Which do you want first?'

'The good.'

'The ammunition in both the Sorrentino case and the Pompeii shootings is the same.'

Sylvia scribbled. 'Fine – same ammo, so maybe the same offender. The two cases are linked.'

'So it would seem.'

'Now it turns bad. Give me the small print again.'

'The slug dug out of the ceiling at Sorrentino's apartment is a Remington nine-millimetre JHP.'

'Jacketed Hollow Point, right? The nasty kind where the nose of the bullet flares out and makes a mess on penetration.'

'The very same. Ballistics think it came from a Glock. It matches the rounds that killed your couple in the car.'

Sylvia scribbled in silence for a moment, then asked, 'To be clear, this means it's the same shooter?'

Marianna's half-smile said it wasn't going to be that simple. 'This is where it loses shape. The bullets that killed the woman in the pit – and the two lovers, Novello and Valdrano – were the same ammunition that killed Sorrentino, but, and it's a big but, the bullet that killed Sorrentino was not fired from the same gun. The same type of gun, yes. But most definitely not the same gun.'

Sylvia put her pen down. 'So, same ammo at both crime scenes, but two entirely different guns?'

Marianna frowned. 'Not entirely different. Ballistics say all the bullets were fired from Glocks – they can tell from the rifling – but…'

'But different Glocks?'

'But different Glocks.'

Sylvia made some more notes. Then pushed on with her questions. 'How different? I mean, just what are we talking about here?'

'Same make. All the bullets came from a Glock 19 – or, to be precise, two 19s. You know the model?'

Sylvia nodded hesitantly. 'Enough to pick it out in a crowd, but I've never fired one. We're all Berettas.'

'They're standard issue in Israel and the US, particularly loved by the NYPD and Shabak. USAF is also fond of them. It's a serious piece of kit.'

'The attraction being?'

'Size. It may be the only time men brag about having something small. It's especially good for concealed use.'

'So it's a weapon of choice for an assassin as well as a cop?'

'You got it.'

Sylvia drummed her pen on her notebook. 'Right now, what you're telling me is pointing – no, let me correct myself – is jabbing a huge finger of accusation at Bruno Valsi, a sadistic young Camorrista who's blipped on to our radar.'

'That would make sense. Camorra links with the US are good, and they've always had a penchant for foreign weapons.'

'Okay, so let's go on to the DNA and trace-evidence reports.' Sylvia turned a fresh page and braced herself to hear the findings again.

Marianna shuffled files and spread out three separate sheets. 'Easy one first. Paolo Falconi. He comes up clean everywhere. No DNA or finger-print matches with any of the victims or crime scenes.'

Sylvia allowed herself a slight smile. It was good to at least eliminate someone.

Marianna picked up another sheet of her report. 'Now then, Franco Castellani. This is a different story. We got clear DNA profiles from his bed sheets. The things were so crawling with evidence they could have walked to the scopes themselves.'

Sylvia pretended to hurl.

'Franco's DNA is all over the car where Rosa Novello and Filippo Valdrano were killed, and all over the pit where the woman was burned. But there wasn't a trace of him at Sorrentino's apartment.'

Sylvia weighed up the two out of three strikes against Franco. On what she'd just heard, a court would probably convict him of the killings of Novello, Valdrano and the Jane Doe in the pit, but wouldn't entertain a case against him for Sorrentino. Yet she and Jack were both sure that whoever had killed the first three also killed Sorrentino. She was full of questions. 'Our profiler mentioned that he thought there might also be DNA on the door frame. He had some theory about the killer taunting Rosa while she was in the back of the car.'

'I don't know about the taunting, but he was certainly right about the DNA.' Marianna ran a finger down the columns and paragraphs. 'We found genomic DNA on the window and door frame in dried saliva spittle. It was fresh enough to obtain a good amplified profile.'

'And?'

Marianna read Sylvia's mind. 'It's not Franco Castellani's DNA. And so far, our databases have drawn a blank on any match with a convicted offender.'

Sylvia scraped her fingers through her hair. That cut was certainly long overdue. 'So Franco was in that car – beyond a doubt?'

'Beyond a shadow of a doubt.'

'But someone else was also at the car. Someone who stood exactly where the profiler said the killer must have stood, precisely at the point from where the fatal gunshot was fired?'

Marianna nodded. 'Spot on. Exactly the same point. I'd say whoever left the geno is your man.'

'And that DNA doesn't match any convicted felons?'

'Not one.'

'Not even Bruno Valsi – you're sure of that?'

Marianna pressed her lips into a thin smile. 'We're sure of it. Lorenzo Pisano asked the same question. We've double-checked. It's not a match.'

Sylvia sat in silence and tried to unpick the tangle of clues and knockbacks. Forensics didn't seem to be able to put any of her prime suspects at the right scene with the right evidence. Franco Castellani had one gun – his grandfather's Glock – but not two. She'd have to check whether the old man had forgotten there had been two. Franco was undoubtedly connected to all the murders at the pit, but not to Sorrentino. Two killers? Could there really be two killers? Franco and Valsi? An impossible pairing? Nothing was impossible, but this was very close. Then again, there seemed absolutely no forensic evidence to link Valsi to anything. 'Can we get a cross-check between all our DNA samples and the Tortoricci woman?'

Marianna shook her head. 'Again, already done.'

'Lorenzo?' That man always seemed to be a step ahead of her.

'Aha. There's no match there either. To be truthful, the trace evidence from the Tortoricci kill was incredibly poor quality and seemed to come from dozens of different sources, no doubt going back years. We found some hair and flaked skin particles, but it's going to take us centuries to clean it up, replicate it and check the databases.'

Sylvia needed space and time to work it all out. A cold, impossible thought hit her.

Creed.

They had no DNA sample on Creed. He had been their only other suspect. Had they been wrong to write him off?

She rubbed her tired face with both hands. She was grasping at straws and she knew it. 'God, Marianna, I really need a break here. You think I'm hunting one killer with two guns? Or two killers with two separate but similar guns who work together? Or two completely separate killers with almost identical weapons? Or – most likely option of all – do you think I'm just going stark raving mad?'

Marianna laughed. 'No doubt about it – last on your list – you are going mad.' She tapped a big stack of files in front of her. 'Now, I need you to take your madness away. I've got my own piling up in front of me.'