Viper

93

Parco Nazionale del Vesuvio The bones were almost entirely intact. The hands seemed to be the only parts that had been dismembered. And to make matters even easier, the victim had been buried in his suit and shoes. No doubt about it, stiff number eight was male. And by the cut of his clothes, he'd been buried several fashion generations ago.

Luella Grazzioli hadn't even needed to go back to the laboratory to make a skeletal assembly. The plastic sheeting that he'd been buried in had been lifted out of the grave and laid alongside the mound of lava rocks. Jack and Sylvia watched the scene, illuminated by arc lights, as Luella unpeeled the full horror of the sheet's contents. All manner of creatures had fed on the flesh, fat and ligaments but the plastic had preserved much of the clothing. Jack thought it ironic that many years ago the sheeting had probably been used to prevent evidence being left at the murder scene, and now here it was, hopefully presenting them with their clearest clues to date.

The skull was a little broken up, but still held together. There was a glaring hole in the right cheekbone and another through the forehead. Everyone guessed they were bullet wounds. The skull showed bigger but corresponding holes in the temporal and occipital bones. The rotted remains of a grey jacket and a shirt were opened up.

The guy's ribcage had been caved in.

'Is that the work of the ground, or his killer?' asked Jack.

'Most likely the ground,' said Luella. 'He wasn't lying flat in the hole. He was all scrunched up. Almost foetal. I expect the weight of the earth and rocks heaped on top of him would have broken his ribcage.'

'What about that?' Sylvia pointed at the left side of the chest, close to the heart. 'Is that rounded nick at the bottom of that rib consistent with a bullet wound?'

Luella looked up from her work. 'I'm sorry, you know that I'm really new to this. I helped Bernardo with the archaeology and the assembly, not the forensics. I'm really not qualified to tell you that kind of thing.'

'But it could be?' Sylvia pressed.

Luella let out a light sigh. She repositioned the skeleton and pulled up the tail of the tattered grey jacket. She looked closely at the back of the ribcage. 'I can't exactly line them up, but there's corresponding damage at the back.'

'The bullet's exit point?' asked Jack.

Luella smiled. 'I'm really, really not qualified to -'

'Don't worry, you're not in court and we won't quote you,' said Sylvia.

Luella hesitated. 'Okay. Yes, it looks like an exit wound.'

It all added up for Jack. This was most definitely Numero Uno. The first kill. Not nearly as professional as the later ones. He walked around the skeleton. The chest wound would have come from the killer's first shot. Probably aimed for the heart and missed. The victim would have just looked stunned, dropped to his knees, mouth open, hands to his wound. The killer would have panicked and rushed to finish him off. Hence the second shot to the cheekbone. Also not good. Finally the trigger-man would have got his shit together. Probably walked up close and finished the job with a bullet to the brain. Determined but messy. The work of a beginner.

The crime team didn't rush anything. Numerous photographs were taken. Dozens of items were bagged and tagged. Most were mundane and useless. Some were pure treasure. The hands had been hacked off, an old-fashioned way of stopping fingerprint identification, but the skull was good enough to get a very accurate facial reconstruction from. They'd get DNA as well.

There had been nothing in the pockets of the jacket or trousers but there was a label in the waistband, naming the tailor as Tombolini, Napoli.

Luella said she'd send bone samples to specialists in Rome for isotopic examination. It would take more than a month to get the results but she was confident they'd confirm her suspicion that the body had been buried for at least ten to fifteen years.

Aside from the forensic clues, there was a big psychological one too. The body hadn't been violated. It hadn't been stripped, let alone burned. It was almost as though there had been respect between killer and victim.

Respect.

Jack hung on to the word.

Maybe the kind of respect the Camorra would show to someone?