Viper

Marco shook his head.

Sylvia took in the room from the killer's perspective.

Walked it through. 'Sorrentino was made to stand here by the shooter. Then – well, then he literally had the shit frightened out of him before he was killed. He'd pressed himself against the wall, scared to move.' She pointed to the dead scientist. 'When you move him, you'll see he messed himself. Our ME should have seen that. And if he had been sober and not aching to run for his next drink, then maybe he would have done.' Something else was wrong. A shot from close up should have blown a bigger hole in the wall, not to mention a bigger hole in Sorrentino's head. 'Forget what the Prof said. Bernardo wasn't killed straight away. It wasn't that kind of killing.' Her eyes roamed across the room. 'Even more interesting is the question of where our shooter had been standing.'

Marco was still staring at the stains of blood, brains and shit. 'Why? Why does it matter that much where he was? Someone blew Sorrentino's brains out and dumped him on his bed.'

Sylvia wagged a finger. 'It certainly does matter. For a start it tells us the killer is a man, not a woman. Look at the carpet pile and the blood flow. There are no drag marks across the carpet. Someone picked up a six-foot-tall, dead man, carried him several metres and dumped him on the bed. Not many women can do that.'

'I've dated a couple,' he joked. 'Not that that's anything to brag about.'

'As may be, Romeo. But I doubt any of them could put a bullet in your brain from across the bedroom with one single shot.'

Marco started to get the picture. 'The killer was a pro?'

Sylvia wondered how Marco had made lieutenant. 'Another thing; given most of the blood is on and around the bed, leaking out towards the wall, our man may well have got himself covered in it. You can bet someone's burning old clothes tonight, if they haven't done so already.'

Marco V started making notes. He'd have street dumpsters, house garbage sacks, garden fires and local drains checked straight away.

Sylvia walked and talked from the doorway to the corpse. 'I think our killer was waiting in the dark. I'd say he stuck his gun to Sorrentino's head when the light came on. Then he moved him over here.' She stepped gingerly to the spot where the carpet was stained the heaviest. 'While Sorrentino stood here, the gun still on him, the shooter stepped back and made himself comfortable on the bed. I think for a minute or so he just sat there and enjoyed scaring the living crap out of him.'

'Forensics said they'd come back to the bed, they're still dusting other parts of the apartment.'

Sylvia moved back to the corpse and examined it once more. 'Then, after he'd had his moment of fun, he shot him. Just the once. Dead centre in the forehead from nearly three metres away. Hence the blood and brain sprayed up there on the wall and ceiling.'

'So, I'm right. It certainly sounds like a pro job.'

'You're an annoying little shit, but yes, you are right.' Sylvia pointed up at the wall in front of her. 'Now, when forensics dig the bullet out of that wall, I want to know its entire ballistic history and I want to know it in Ferrari-fast time. I'm betting that for once it's Sorrentino's work and not his play that got him into trouble. And I also bet that slug matches those from the victims at the Castellani campsite.'

Sylvia had seen enough. She stepped out of the crime scene and shuffled off her gloves and changed shoes. On the way to the car she checked her phone and picked up a message from Susanna Martinelli, a coordinator in the Incident Room. They finally had an ID on the second victim found buried near Vesuvius.

It was nineteen-year-old Gloria Pirandello.

She'd been missing for six years and was another one of the names on Creed's list.

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?