Viper

by Unknown

  ‘Ciao, Jack. Sylvia, she is down at the other scene.’ They shook hands and Pietro motioned them forwards. ‘Sorry we have to walk, but the forensic teams they are still examining the grass for vehicle marks.’

  ‘No problem, I need the exercise. Sylvia said the polizia were first on the scene. Is there a jurisdiction problem?’

  ‘No. The parents of the teenagers they called the polizia, but we cooperate very well and they say we can run the case.’

  They trudged briskly into a gathering wind and were slightly breathless by the time they reached the crime scene.

  The pit itself resembled a crater that had been made by the impact of a giant meteorite. Inside it, everyone wore white Tyvek coveralls with protective masks and gloves. They looked like spacemen. Jack paused to take it all in. The excavation was deep at the centre, maybe as much as two metres. The pit was more rectangle than square. In its centre was a patch of heavily blackened ground, with mounds of burned rubbish and a white forensic tent.

  ‘What was this used for?’

  Pietro shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Looks like a building excavation. I think a house was going to be made. My uncle was a builder and he had digs like this.’

  ‘But there’s crap everywhere.’ Jack pointed to old, burned cans and shrivelled plastic lying between the duckboards that the forensic teams had put down.

  ‘They’ve been burning trash here. We have a problem with garbage in Naples. The authorities don’t collect properly, so many people with land make money burning garbage, or burying it.’

  The top of the pit was marked off with crime-scene tape and guarded by officers logging in anyone with authority to access the area. Pietro pointed to it. ‘Sylvia is down there, with the ME. You want to join them?’

  ‘In a minute.’ Jack’s gaze moved on to another tented area. It was obviously where the car was being examined. Where the young couple had been murdered.

  ‘That shooting looks routine, they are almost done there.’ Pietro pointed to the middle of the pit. ‘The other site is – how you say? Far more complex.’

  In Jack’s mind there was no such thing as a routine shooting. Every killing had its own peculiarities – the signature marks of the murderer. He walked across the boards to the tent and came out at the driver’s side of the car. The vehicle’s metalwork had already been dusted with fingerprint powder. ‘Pietro, can you talk me through what went on here?’

  ‘Sure. The boyfriend was in the driver’s seat when he was shot. We know this from the blood and angle of the bullet. The girl, she was in the back and –’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Scusi?’

  ‘Why was the boyfriend in the front while she was in the back?’

  Pietro smiled. ‘He was naked except for his socks. She – she was naked too. So I think he had been in the back, kneeling or sitting. It is possible that they heard or saw something that frightened them, so he got in the driver’s seat and drove off.’

  ‘Towards the pit?’

  ‘We think so.’

  ‘So he drove towards where the other woman was killed?’

  ‘Sì.’

  Jack puzzled it out. The couple must have been killed after the woman in the pit. Perhaps they heard her scream and thought they could help. Poor kids. They obviously hadn’t recognized the true nature of what was happening or they’d have driven in the opposite direction. Unless, of course, it had been so dark that they hadn’t really known in which direction they were travelling. Or, so close that they’d had to drive this way to be able to turn the vehicle around.

  Pietro seemed to read his thoughts. ‘They were parked not far from here. If you look where I’m pointing, there are tyre marks over there. Seems they skidded when they tried to turn round and ended up here.’

  ‘And we think here is where they were shot?’

  ‘Sì.’

  ‘Angle of gunfire?’

  Pietro made a pistol out of two fingers and crouched at window level. ‘About this height. Scusi…’ he shuffled Jack to one side, ‘and about from here.’

  Jack’s mind turned to the killer. He would have been in the pit with the burning girl. After she screamed, he would have shot her. Then no doubt he heard the car start up and thought he was going to be discovered. He’d have rushed out of the pit, seen the headlights of the vehicle, then moved in to wipe out any witnesses. Jack pointed to the pit. ‘At the edge – the one nearest to where we are now – you may find finger indentations, trace evidence, footprints, marks from the front of the killer’s footwear. There’ll be elbow marks on the clay banking – all that evidence could have been left as he climbed out in a hurry.’

  ‘We know,’ said Pietro. ‘We are not the FBI, but these things we know to look for.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Jack. ‘I was just thinking out loud.’ Both bodies had just been removed from the scene. He’d want to see the photographs later. Hopefully they’d been stripped of the few remaining clothes before being bagged. The reason was simple. Inside the zipped bag, they would bleed through their wounds as soon as they were moved. By the time they got to the morgue, any clothes left on them would be soaked in blood. Any fibre, skin or hair evidence left by the offender would be lost in the blood flow.

  ‘The dead teenagers. There’s no way you’re looking at them for the murder in the pit?’ Jack couldn’t see how, but he wanted to check anyway.

  ‘No, we are not thinking so. The families are decent families. It looks like the boy and the girl they were just out having some fun.’

  ‘May I look inside?’

  Pietro spoke to a technician who was squatting in a tiny protected space in the vehicle, and he climbed out. Jack asked for gloves. He snapped them on and was careful not to brush against anything as he leaned inside.

  The vehicle stank of blood, forensic swabs and a new pine air freshener that was still hanging from the cigarette lighter beneath the plastic dashboard. ‘The girl was in the back, her head on the right side, behind the passenger seat?’

  ‘Sì, that is right.’

  Jack ran sequences through his head. He shoots the boyfriend, blowing out the window, then opens the door and leans into the vehicle. The girl’s frightened so she moves as far away as she can from him. It’s a two-door, so there’s no exit from the back. He has to have got his face inside to see her, maybe even talk to her. Then he shoots her. ‘Have Ballistics already been all over the vehicle?’

  Pietro nodded. ‘Been and gone. That’s what you say, yes?’

  Jack smiled. ‘Yep, that’s what we say. There’ll be gunshot residue all over this car. Massive amounts of it. And, of course, all over our killer’s hand and clothing.’

  ‘They have taken the GSR tests.’

  ‘Good. You find the cartridges?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘I guess one was outside, near the back of the front tyre, that would be the first shot. The other, the second – well, the second one would be inside, in the footwell beneath the driver’s seat?’

  Pietro looked surprised. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘All handguns – well, at least, all the handguns I’ve ever heard of – eject cartridges only to the right. So given where the bodies were, the discovery sites are pretty obvious.’

  Pietro made a mental note to remember this.

  Jack’s head was once more inside the car. His mind was back at the moment of the murders. ‘Our shooter will have pushed the dead boyfriend out of the way and the girl would have been screaming or pleading for her life. If the girl screamed, then he probably shot her immediately. If she pleaded for her life, then he would have dragged it out. Enjoyed it more. A man who likes to see women burn to death doesn’t like to kill quickly, unless he has to. So, let’s guess that he tried to calm her down. He would have made her believe she could live – he’d have liked that – then he’d have killed her.’

  ‘Ritardato! ’

  Jack ignored the obscenity. He slowly reversed out of the vehicle, sucking in fresh air to clear his lungs
and his head. He’d have tried to calm her down. The thought stuck to him like hot tar.

  ‘Shall we go down to the other scene now?’ asked Pietro.

  Made her believe she could live, then killed her. ‘I think our killer may have made a critical mistake. Right here. And it may tell us exactly who he is.’

  Pietro frowned. ‘Where?’

  Jack leaned into the car again. ‘He’ll have been very careful when he shoved the boy out of the way, anxious not to snag a cuff or leave fibres. The victims’ bodies will be clean of any trace of him. But I bet he’s missed something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Somewhere here.’ Jack pointed around the back of the driver’s seat and the window area. ‘This is where you’ll find it. Test all around here. The fabric of the roof lining, the plastic back of the seat, even the inside of the window, and you’ll find it.’

  Pietro was still confused. ‘What? What will we find?’

  ‘DNA,’ said Jack. ‘That old Gene Jeanie might just do his magic for us. Our killer will have spoken to the girl. Maybe even shouted at her to control her. When you speak, even though you can’t see it, you spray saliva. Not huge amounts, just a small mist, invisible to the naked eye. But it’ll be there. A microscopic dot will be there.’ Jack pointed closely to the metal frame of the car door and window. ‘Good scientists will find DNA, replicate it, and they’ll get this guy’s genetic fingerprint. And you never know, our boy just might have a criminal record to match it to.’

  As Jack finished his sentence he realized it was a long shot. Many serial killers didn’t have previous convictions. But if they did find DNA, at least it was a beginning, something to build on. A match waiting to be made.

  Jack hung back while Pietro thanked the technician and passed on orders for the DNA testing. There was another thought that he kept to himself. One too alarming to share.

  The killer had been disturbed.

  He’d been forced to abandon his fire – and abandon his prize.

  That meant he was dissatisfied.

  Tense. Angry. Pent-up.

  It also meant he’d need to kill again.

  And he’d need to do it very soon.

  58

  Crime scene 2, Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii

  Sylvia Tomms and Medical Examiner Boris Stern stood beside the burned corpse of the dead woman beneath a forensic tent in the centre of the pit. The sun, rarely spotted in Naples for the last week, had cruelly broken cover and was cooking the plastic ceiling above them, increasing the stench of burned flesh and decomposing rubbish.

  Stern, a small, white-haired man with Einstein-like glasses and moustache, was Munich born and bred. At social gatherings Sylvia enjoyed speaking German with him and discussing places and events she’d shared with her father. Now, though, their common language was that of death and they spoke Italian for the benefit of those around them.

  ‘She’s been shot through the head.’ Stern pointed at the blackened, fleshless skull. ‘A very precise shot from the front, probably two metres away. The entry wound looks like a nine millimetre. That’s the most likely cause of death.’

  ‘Not the burning?’ asked Sylvia.

  ‘No, no. Absolutely not. Though she was burned – or, at least, partially burned – before she was shot.’

  Sylvia grimaced. ‘You’re sure of that?’ She glanced at the corpse. It was charred beyond recognition. Skin around the skull was missing. All her clothing destroyed. Only the fatty tissue around her thighs seemed to remain.

  ‘No question about it. The burning is consistent with her being upright and fighting to get free from some wire around her wrists. You’ll notice, as in all burnings, that the thinnest parts go first – the joints, elbows, knees. The fatty parts – the muscles and biceps – they hold out longer.’

  Sylvia had seen floaters and frenzied knife killings, bullet-riddled bodies and strangulations, but never anything like this. It was grotesque.

  ‘What chances of identification, Prof?’

  ‘Oh, good. Very good.’ He stretched out his foot in its rubber boot and carefully stepped on to a clear spot of earth. ‘Look at her fingers.’

  ‘You mean, what’s left of them?’ Sylvia gingerly followed his lead.

  Stern put his double-gloved finger across the blackened remains of the woman’s right hand. ‘You can see that she’s made a fist, like she’s just about to punch someone. We call this Pugilistic Posture. It’s happened because the fire caused contractions in her arm. But bend a little closer and look.’

  Sylvia stooped so her eyes were barely six inches from the blackened hand.

  ‘The skin around the inside of her middle two fingers on this hand is intact. The fire has blackened it and dried it considerably. We can rehydrate those areas and probably get prints. We’ve been lucky. The skin on the other hand is almost totally destroyed. The fire was probably hotter there.’

  The Professore straightened up, put the back of his left hand against his spine and stretched. ‘A touch of rheumatism, I think. Besides the fingerprints, there’s plenty of bone left to get good DNA samples from. And there are enough teeth left for us to age her accurately, and maybe even identify her too.’

  They stepped back and studied the burned remains. Their thoughts were in sync. Both wondered who the victim was? What awful twist of fate had led her to this dreadful end?

  Sylvia put her hand on her old friend’s shoulder and broke the silence. ‘I need you to lie to me. Tell me that the gases from the fire will have knocked her out and she never felt a thing.’

  Stern patted her hand. ‘You know that’s not true. I’m afraid this will have been a slow death until the moment he shot her.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that until I get her back to the mortuary and examine her more closely. It will certainly have taken minutes for all her skin to have burned off. After that, mercifully, she would have been pain free.’

  ‘Why so? Because the brain blocks the agony?’

  ‘No, not at all. Quite simply because all our nerve endings are in our skin. Once the skin has burned away, then there is no feeling.’

  What an awful way to go. Sylvia wondered what kind of person would want to actually watch someone suffer like that.

  Stern removed his glasses and used his arm to blot sweat from his brow. ‘When your fire experts arrive they will be able to tell you much more about her last moments. But looking at the skeleton, and particularly the skull, I would say the murderer started the fire at the top of her body.’

  ‘Why?’

  Stern replaced his glasses. ‘Come around this side. I’ll try to explain.’

  They picked their way into a position closer to the victim’s head.

  ‘See down there, around the tops of her legs?’ He pointed out the area. ‘While there is no skin left, there is still some tissue and burned muscle. Now look here; the upper skin that should be around her neck and skull is completely missing, front and back.’

  Sylvia caught his drift. ‘Fire rises; so if the blaze had been set at her feet then you’d expect most damage down there, rather than at the top of the body?’

  ‘Absolutely right.’

  ‘So you’d say he doused her in petrol and set her head alight?’

  ‘That might be what you would say, my dear. I don’t think so. I think your killer was a little more precise in his practices. Look at the skull. There is incredible damage around the mouth. I think he may have forced a rag, probably soaked in some accelerant, into her mouth, pushed it deep into the back of her throat, and then set it alight.’

  Like a garden lamp, thought Sylvia. Her killer used a petrol-soaked rag like a wick in an outside lamp.

  ‘There is also extensive burning on the chest. He probably threw accelerant over her once she was ablaze.’ Stern lowered his mask so it was below his nose and sniffed. ‘Paraffin, I think, not petrol; but I could be wrong. These days my nose is better suited to sniffing a good Barolo than anything else. Again,
the fire team will know for certain.’

  Sylvia had seen enough. ‘Excuse me for a moment, Professore. I just need to go outside for a while. I’ll leave you to get on with your work.’

  He smiled knowingly at her. ‘See you shortly.’

  Sylvia was keen to escape from the charred corpse and get to the other side of the crime scene. She was desperate for a smoke.

  Jack and Pietro caught Sylvia as she ducked out of the forensic tent. A packet of cigarettes was already in her hand. Before the two men had reached her a voice stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘Capitano!’

  Sylvia turned to see a young male Exhibits Officer beside her. ‘You need to come to the other side of the pit.’

  ‘Why? What is it?’

  ‘We’ve found some things in the far corner, in an old chest of drawers.’

  ‘Things?’

  Jack and Pietro followed, a pace behind.

  ‘Underwear. Tissues used by women, smeared with make-up, old lipstick – those kinds of things.’

  When they reached the corner of the pit, Jack stepped back and tuned out the fast-spoken Italian comments being exchanged. Old planks and plastic sheeting had been arranged to form a sort of shelter and forensic teams were now erecting their own protection around this area as well. A rusty oil drum lay on its side in the treacly mud and there were footprints everywhere. It looked like investigators had rushed into the scene and probably compromised it. There were some forensic walkways, but not enough. He was saddened to think of what might have been lost. A crime-scene photographer flashed his camera at something being shown to Sylvia. Jack was in no hurry to see it. He was still trying to decode the importance of what was in front of him.

  The pit was at its deepest at this point. The place with the planks and the oil drum was most sheltered from the elements. It had been carefully chosen. This was his place to linger. He sat here to savour the blaze. Wanted to be alone with his thoughts. The drum was his seat. The drawers now being rifled by Forensics were his treasure chest. He was a regular – no, more than that, he was a routine visitor. Jack looked again at the makeshift shelter. It really wasn’t very big, and certainly not sophisticated. Some old wooden doors – one a front door of a house with splintered panels that looked as though it had been staved in during a drugs raid – formed the sides of the shelter. A small trench, about six or eight inches deep, had been dug in the ground so the doors would slot in. Planks of wood – rough flooring timbers and pieces of cheap plywood – had been crudely layered on top and nailed down. Old plastic sheeting had been fed and trapped beneath them to form some kind of waterproof membrane. Whoever had done this wasn’t tall; the height and poor design of the roof showed he’d struggled to arrange things with any real neatness or competence. More than anything there was a real sense, though, that he’d spent a lot of time here – he’d come with a spade and tools and had collected the right combination of wood and sheeting to make the shelter. This undoubtedly was his place.