Viper

He frowned at her. 'You think I'm finocchio.'

'So, you have a girlfriend?'

He didn't answer.

'I said, do you have a girlfriend?'

'I heard what you said. No, I don't – but that doesn't make me anything. I just don't have a girl.'

Sylvia pushed all three photographs nearer to him. 'I'm not bothered if you're straight, or if you're gay. I'm bothered whether you – and your runaway cousin – had a motive to kill any of these people.'

He glared at her.

'Well? Did you?'

'You're crazy. You're all fucking crazy. I told that lieutenant yesterday everything I knew.'

'What about the panties, Paolo? The yellow panties?'

'I told him about them too.'

'You told him nothing. Just that sometimes you'd seen Franco with women's underwear.'

Paolo scowled at her. 'That's it. That's all I know. I told that big guy.'

Sylvia stood up and sighed. 'Va bene. You want to be stupid. Fine. We've got other leads to chase up. I have a job to do, and I have to do it before anyone else gets hurt. You think I give a damn whether you rot in here for another month?'

They stared at each other.

Paolo scratched the back of his head.

Sylvia gave him a make-your-mind-up look.

He let out a sigh and looked down at the floor. 'Franco sometimes stole underwear and stuff from the campers' vans.'

'Go on.' She stayed standing.

'He'd see a young girl walking around and he'd talk about wanting to fuck her. But he knew that was never going to happen.'

'Because of the way he looks?'

'What do you think?'

Sylvia sat back down. 'So, he would steal their things – the girls' things – then what?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know?'

Paolo looked embarrassed. 'He did things in the dark, or in the bathroom with them – on his own.'

'So how did you know he had them?'

'Sometimes he'd show me. He'd point out a girl, then show me her panties. It was like he was somehow connected to her. I told him it was sick.'

'And what did he say to that?'

'Told me to fuck off. He used to keep their stuff in the van – our van. He'd hold them, sort of cuddle them and sleep with them. But after I told him it was sick he stopped doing it, or he kept them somewhere else.'

'Like the pit.'

'Guess so.'

Sylvia picked up Rosa's picture and held the dead girl's face in front of his. 'So you're telling me that he stole this girl's underwear from her on the very night that she got murdered? Hell of a coincidence, isn't it?'

Paolo shrugged. 'Coincidences happen.'

'Did he ever approach the girls – do anything to them?'

'You're joking. He was too chicken-shit scared to approach them. He'd shout things if I was with him, but he was frightened to death of women. He wanted one – wanted one really bad – but he was terrified of being alone with them. Scared of them saying anything about how he looked.'

'Did that happen?'

'Sometimes. A while ago – before he looked anything near as bad as he does now – he tried to hit on some girls, but they were horrible to him.'

'Like how?'

'They'd put their fingers in their throats to show he made them feel like throwing up.'

Sylvia felt a pang of sympathy for Franco. But at the same time she knew that such humiliation could easily engender thoughts of murder. The interview lasted another hour. By the end she was as sure as she could be that he'd been telling her the truth. 'Do you know where he is, Paolo? He's not well, and we have to find him. We have to help him and we have to make sure he hasn't got anything to do with these deaths.'

Paolo didn't hesitate. 'He didn't. I know Franco better than anyone and I know he didn't kill anybody.'

'You might be right. But we have to talk to him ourselves. You know we have to do that. Where could he be, Paolo?'

There was a long silence, then he shifted awkwardly on the hard interview chair. 'I don't know. I'd tell you if I did, but I really don't know.'

Paolo shut his eyes and covered his face with his hands. He wanted to go home. Wanted to check his grandfather was okay. Wanted this nightmare to end. But more than anything, he wanted to clear his mind of the images of where Franco might be and what he might do with his grandfather's Glock.

65

Grand Hotel Parker's, Napoli A few too many beers and far too little sleep conspired to give Jack an early morning headache. He'd been hoping for a gentle start to the day. A little low-volume news on the TV, then a longer than normal soak under a hot shower. But after being awake for less than ten minutes he was already compelled to run yesterday's events through his head. What was still bugging him was the link between the killings at the pit and the murder of Francesca Di Lauro. He was still far from certain any of them were the work of the runaway Franco Castellani.

Jack used the bathroom, then padded over to the desk in the corner of his room and emptied out his thoughts. In that blurry moment when the killer at the pit had been disturbed, he'd shown that instinctively his weapon of choice was not fire, but a firearm. Fire was his fantasy, his pleasure, his turn-on. But when it came to split-second survival, then it was a gun that he turned to.

A shooter.

That's what he was.

When the chips were down and he had to react rather than plan, when he had to get down to business rather than indulge his fantasy, he was a shooter.

And shooters were cold and deadly. Remote, unemotional and detached.

They had to focus their hunt on finding a man who regularly handled a gun. Someone who was a proficient shot, felt confident and comfortable enough to kill strangers without hesitation.

Was that really Franco Castellani? Could you get that sort of proficiency from shooting rats in a pit?

Sadly, today's video game generation was proving to be among the world's deadliest and youngest shooters. Pennsylvania State, Columbine, Iowa, Omaha, Virginia Tech, Dawson, the list went on and on. Stats showed that around a dozen kids a day died in the States from gunshot wounds – kids these days were made to leave their innocence at the school gates.

Maybe psychology was going to have to bow to forensics. If the Castellani kid was guilty, then his DNA would be inside the young couple's car. His fingerprints would be on the bodywork and his trace evidence would be somewhere on the girl or on her clothing. Forensics could make an impressive prosecution case and Jack knew it would take more than his niggling doubts to dismantle it.

He took a pen and paper from the desk and totted up the ten major things that he believed he now knew about the offender. 1. He kills his victims and – with the exception of the murders at the pit, where he was disturbed – disposes of them in separate places. 2. He uses a gun to control his victims and take them to where he wants. 3. He is turned on by power and control. That turn-on is of a sadistic nature. More than anything he enjoys witnessing the suffering. 4. He has a vehicle, something big enough in which to conceal and move a victim, no doubt bound and gagged. 5. He has excellent local knowledge and the burial site is so well known to him it probably has a significant memory for him. 6. He is fit and strong enough to climb mountain paths and get in and out of deep pits in a hurry. 7. He is sexually active but is probably not in a relationship, so he is sexually frustrated. 8. He is noticeably cruel, perhaps even violent, and is probably known to be dangerous. 9. He is able to come and go of his own free will. He is not accountable to a close partner or scrupulous boss who might question his movements at odd times. 10. The use of fire is indicative of massive internal stress and frustration, which is only relieved when the flames roar and someone else suffers. Suffers externally like he suffers internally – could that be it? This last thought hovered in his mind.