Viper

Paolo shifted in his chair. 'No!'

'No?'

'Yes – no! How many times do I have to tell you? I don't even know who you're fucking talking about.'

'Hey, watch your filthy little mouth.'

Paolo backed up in his seat and looked away from the big lieutenant. He was staring straight off into space, right at Jack, but couldn't see him through the one-way glass.

The profiler studied him. Paolo was stressed to the hilt, anxious, aggressive and panicky under pressure. But was he really clever enough, mature enough and controlled enough to carry out a triple murder? Not on his own. Certainly not on his own. Did he have a killer instinct? They were about to find out.

Pietro undid his pistol from its holster and slid it across the table. 'Pick it up. Cock it. Aim it at me.'

'What?'

'You heard me. Do it! Now!'

Paolo fumbled with the Beretta. He picked it up and swapped it between hands. He ignored the safety and raised it. Pointed it, not at Pietro – but off into space, well wide of his left shoulder. His finger wasn't even inside the guard.

Jack had seen enough. The stunt with the gun – unloaded, of course – had been his idea. He could see that Paolo had no affinity with the weapon. He was cautious, clumsy and almost scared when he handled it. The real killer would be more than comfortable with a firearm. Even if he'd tried to disguise his familiarity with a gun, there would have been telltale traits in the lifting, levelling, sighting and gripping. Even the putting down of the weapon would have betrayed him.

Pietro holstered his gun and stared into Paolo's eyes. It was a look of controlled violence. A visual threat that stuck needles in the brain of anyone on the receiving end. 'A pair of girl's panties were found in your caravan. What were you doing with them?'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'You don't know what panties are?'

'Yes, of course I do. But I don't know about any in my van.'

'Well, they were found in there. Nice yellow ones, G-string type. You know, the type that Rosa would have looked really sexy in.'

Paolo looked angry. 'I told you – I don't know any Rosa and I don't know anything about her underwear!'

Pietro slammed a hand on the table and Paolo jumped back. 'Let me jog your memory. Rosa is the dead girl we found not far from your van. She's the pretty kid who was staying at your camp and whose brains were blown all over the inside of a car. The girl who, according to her mother, owned yellow panties, just like the ones we found in your caravan. So, I think you do know Rosa. And I think you'd better start talking to me now, before I charge you with her murder.'

Jack could see sweat rolling down Paolo's cheek. Seconds passed while Pietro's words sank in. Paolo rubbed away the salty drizzle from his forehead. 'Franco, my cousin. I think he must have had the panties.'

'Explain.'

Paolo sweated some more. Finally he gave up what he was holding back, 'I've seen him with women's underwear before.'

Pietro read his face – it was full of secrets. 'What else, Paolo? You're not telling me everything. What else about Franco?'

Paolo sucked in air. All the pressure in the world seemed to be on him. 'Look, he's my best friend. Franco and I are like brothers. I'm not saying anything else.'

'As you like. But then you both end up in jail. We will find him, Paolo. It's only a matter of time. You know that, don't you?'

Paolo looked away. Stared at the wall. Stared at his hands on the table. Looked anywhere in the room except into the face of the cop who looked like he wanted to tear his head off.

'Paolo, look at me. Pay attention. This is for your own good.'

He turned his head slowly towards the big policeman. Did his best to stare him down.

'From what I know, your cousin's not well. He's sick and he's in trouble. Unless you tell me what you're holding back, things are only going to get worse for him – and for you.'

Paolo held his silence. Looked into the dark-brown eyes that were boring into him.

'Paolo!' Pietro slammed his hand on the desk again. 'You want us to make a mistake? To chase after him and shoot him down in an alleyway? You want to risk all that?'

Paolo swallowed. Looked around. Fought the doubt in his mind. 'He's got a gun. My grandfather lets him use one of his guns to kill rats on the site. I looked yesterday, and it's missing.'

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.