Hunted

by Monty Marsden

  Hannibal relaxed his grip three minutes later, when the man’s heart had stopped beating and liquids had begun to come of out his mouth.

  “Yuck,” Hannibal said with disgust, then he released his hold and let the body drop to the ground.

  “Do you miss the smell of roses now? Help me put the body in the boot – we don’t have time to hide it. Let’s move, it’s five past seven already. Florence is seven miles away and we have a lot to do.”

  *

  Seven years earlier.

  Sensi showed Claps another bundle of photos.

  “Dorina Gjorka. Albanian. Twenty-four years old. Hooker. It wasn’t easy to find her profile. Maybe you read something in the papers, even if her death went a little unnoticed. She was found dead in a field somewhere near the southern outskirts, two weeks ago.”

  Claps tried, unsuccessfully, to remember if he had heard of this murder before.

  “She had multiple stab wounds…” Claps said eventually, after looking at some of the photos of Dorina’s naked body in the morgue.

  “Nineteen wounds,” Sensi nodded. “Only one fatal.”

  Dorina was blonde and small; so much so that she only looked about fifteen years old.

  “A stab in the stomach?” The dizziness, again.

  “Exactly the same cut that killed Laura Minz.” Sensi inhaled deeply. “We were thinking that Dorina died because she might have done something that the criminals who took her to Italy didn’t like. A murder that could warn all the other hookers. We were wrong, though, apparently.”

  Claps dropped the photo on the desk after a moment of silence. “Had she been missing for a while before they found her dead?”

  Sensi shrugged.

  “It’s amazing that we know her identity – they found her body naked and without any documents. Trying to find somebody who might have known her was a hopeless task. What I can tell you though is that the forensic investigation found that the murder occurred elsewhere. They left the body there when she was already dead.”

  “How did you eventually manage to identify her?”

  “Her fingerprints. We found an expulsion order from seven years ago.”

  Claps indicated the photos scattered on the desk. “It does look like the same type of homicide…”

  “And that’s not it – apart from the same way of killing, the murderer left traces of his DNA behind and it belongs to the same person in both cases.” Sensi remained silent for a while, then he looked straight into Claps’ eyes and concluded in a low voice. “We’re dealing with a serial killer who’s currently roaming free in the area. That’s why it was suggested that we should ask for the help of… a behavioural expert in serial killers.”

  “Was she sexually assaulted before being killed?”

  “It’s not so easy to say when you’re dealing with a hooker, but the results seem to suggest so. We found bruises, traces of chafing, all clear evidence of violent, unprotected sexual intercourse.”

  “The same type of sexual assault that Laura Minz underwent?”

  “The sperm that we used for the DNA test was found in the victim’s rectum.”

  Claps lowered his eyes to a photo which portrayed Dorina’s small body.

  “She looks younger than her age…” Claps said as he tried to control his horror.

  “It’s the first time for you, right?” Sensi had a little more empathy than before. “The first time dealing with a real murder, I mean.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not easy to deal with real death, especially violent death. It’s not easy for anyone. But we have work to do and we have to control our emotions.”

  “I’ll bear it in mind.”

  “Okay, then.” Sensi’s voice was warmer now. “Tell me your thoughts. Tell me something new, something we haven’t thought about, a glimpse that we haven’t had yet. Show me that our discussion wasn’t just a waste of time, that those who suggested seeking your help were right after all.”

  Claps inhaled deeply. He had arrived at Sensi’s office that morning thinking that he was about to do something that would be important in his future career… but he had completely forgotten that. Now, he just wanted to find the serial killer.

  For Laura. For Dorina.

  For himself.

  He closed his eyes, and then he began to speak. “Laura Minz was the very first victim, the one that the murderer must have got to know well before taking action. That’s the case that could give us more details to work on.”

  *

  Today.

  It had finally stopped raining – the sky was still cloudy and darkness had fallen now. The forensics had finished their work and Gottardi gave the order to move the bodies of the two nurses. Murderous rampages were something that, thankfully, he had rarely encountered. He walked out of the greenhouse with a knot in his stomach. He observed again the hole that had been made in the fence; the clippers that had cut through the fence were still there.

  “We have to stop our search,” Inspector Uggeri approached Gottardi. “We can’t see anything in the fields, it’s too dangerous.”

  Gottardi nodded wearily. “Don’t let any patrols leave – we have to keep the area under surveillance. The K-9 unit?”

  “They’ll be here in a moment.”

  “Very well, we’ll begin following traces straight away, even at night.”

  The director of the psychiatric hospital was pale, he stood away from everyone else and stared into the emptiness in front of him.

  Gottardi walked up to him, his eyes full of reprehension. “How was all this allowed to happen?”

  “He found the clippers and the shears in the tool shed.”

  “I meant something different – why did everyone allow him to handle those tools, which could so easily turn into weapons in the hands of a murderer?”

  The director spread his arms, helplessly. We’re not a secure unit for the criminally insane, we’re just a psychiatric hospital. Supervisory measures are set to the lowest level here, we only take patients who are declared harmless – to themselves and to society.

  “How many patients do you have in your hospital?”

  “Just fifteen at the moment, we support each and every one of them with therapy and we introduce them to work in society. Riondino arrived here a year ago from Montelupo… and I must say that I have never met a more calm and inoffensive patient than him.”

  “Yeah…” Gottardi pointed to the body of one of the nurses, which was being loaded into the funeral van. “Inoffensive.”

  The director tried to justify himself again. “He had undergone scrupulous examinations before being accepted into our hospital. It’s not a straightforward matter to declare a patient harmless, especially when he has to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital.”

  Gottardi bit his lip.

  “Why was he in the tool shed?”

  “As I said, we try to introduce our guests to work, as well as supporting them psychiatrically. They’re both an integral part of our plan of rehabilitation. Some of them do carpentry, some mechanics and others farming. Riondino was being introduced to growing flowers, roses in particular.”

  “Had he chosen this job?”

  “Yes, they choose from a range of options.”

  “And he behaved himself for a whole year…”

  “Every day, twice a day, he would be taken to the greenhouse and the rose garden by two nurses. As you can see, these areas are about two hundred metres away from the hospital building. This month, the schedule was from ten to midday and from six to eight in the evening.”

  “Was he apparently calm and composed during the last few days? Nothing out of the ordinary?”

  The director shook his head. “There was nothing to cause us concern.”

  “Did he keep in touch with anyone from outside?”

  “No – he didn’t receive a visit from any friend or family member during his time here.”

  “Any phone calls?”

  “Our guests don’t have mobi
le phones – when they make or receive calls, they do so with our own hospital telephone; there is always someone with them when they use it. Riondino has never made or received any calls.”

  “Computer?”

  “You mean over the Internet? We only have one computer which is in my office and is not available to our guests; I’m the only one who knows the login password.”

  ‘No contact with the outside world,’ Gottardi thought. That meant that he didn’t have anyone to help him to escape and leave the area. Riondino couldn’t be that far away.

  Had he acted instinctively, on a killing spree, or had he planned everything carefully in advance?

  “Does he know the area?”

  “He’s been out a couple of times to buy bulbs, escorted by our nurses of course.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s a farm about three miles away from here – they have a garden centre.”

  “He never went anywhere else?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any maps at the hospital? Maps of this area?”

  The director thought for a while before replying. “We don’t have any maps of the area, no, but the small library that our guests can use must have an atlas. In fact, Riondino spent a lot of time in the library.”

  Inspector Uggeri joined them. “The K-9 unit are here.”

  “Okay, let’s get them to work straight away – I’m sure he’s still around. Let’s send a patrol to the farm where he bought the bulbs – that’s likely to be the only place in the area that he knows.”

  Gottardi felt adrenalin rush through his body. “Let’s go and find him. Let’s catch him before morning light.”

  3

  Seven years earlier.

  “What are you saying… the first victim? Dorina Gjorka was killed two weeks earlier!”

  “Dorina was only a test.”

  “A test? What do you mean? How do you know?”

  Claps ignored Sensi. “The killer works methodically. Laura Minz was lured to the murderer. I doubt that she was taken by violence. The time between seven and eight in the morning was the only time when she was likely to be on her own, but nothing happened until eleven at night. There are two straightforward deductions from the behaviour of the man that you’re looking for – he must have observed the victim for a long time before acting and he must have had somewhere to keep her hidden away all that time. But why did he not touch her during those hours? The answer is that the murderer couldn’t be with her until late at night – work, or other regular life commitments. He had to keep to his normal routine.”

  “You mean that he kidnapped the girl, then he went to work like he did every day and then he went back to his victim after work?”

  “Something like that, yes. That’s what usually happens in most cases where somebody gets kidnapped and then tortured to death. The kidnapper doesn’t act compulsively and instinctively – they plan everything carefully. They want the victim at their disposal for all the time that they need to unleash their obscene emotions. Sometimes people are kidnapped for days, or even weeks, before they are eventually killed. Sometimes instead, like in this case, everything ends relatively quickly within a few hours. The framework is the same and the murderer is often a ‘normal’ person for the whole time, be it long or short.” Claps inhaled deeply. “You’ll have to look for a man who was in touch with Laura Minz, not necessarily a friend or an acquaintance… for example – and it’s only an example – a patient from the dental centre. Somebody who might have been close to her a few times, perhaps not even talking to her much. A man between thirty and forty years old, not tall, not athletic, with an apparently weak, submissive character. Single, lives alone, has at least a brother or a sister, has had a difficult, unhappy childhood with a contentious relationship with one of his parents; most likely the father. He has a mediocre job, which he does methodically. He’s quite trustworthy at work.”

  Sensi didn’t realise that his mouth had fallen open in shock.

  *

  Today.

  The car – with the corpse in the boot – had quickly reached Florence. The driver was unaware that he had avoided a roadblock by only a couple of minutes. He parked in an isolated little road on the outskirts. The Fox typed the number of his unwitting assistant into the dead man’s mobile phone. The Fox was lucky once again – he answered after three rings.

  “Hello?”

  “Matteo?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “You don’t know my voice but we’ve met a few times – almost every night on the web… we talked a lot yesterday.”

  “Liberty! Is it you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me… you have a beautiful voice, just as I imagined it in my dreams.”

  “Liberty! You shouldn’t have given me your phone number!”

  “The web was our world, Matteo.”

  “I can’t believe that I’m hearing your voice now… and I have your phone number. Liberty, this is amazing! I’m feeling emotional… now I can give a voice to whenever you write ‘I’m going to fall asleep in your arms, cherished by your breathing’.”

  “Matteo, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to call you… or maybe it’s fate, but…”

  “What?”

  “I need your help. Remember when I said that I was travelling for work?”

  “Of course, you told me that you were writing from a hotel in Rome the other night.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been travelling further up north tonight, but my car broke down. I’m here in Florence, Matteo. They won’t fix it until tomorrow.”

  “That’s great… you’re not going to spend the rest of the night all alone in a hotel, right?”

  “I don’t know if we should… things have gone really well between us so far, in our online world.”

  “We love each other – don’t you remember? Think about it – your car breaks down here, in Florence. It’s raining outside. It’s destiny.”

  “Matteo…”

  “Didn’t you tell me that you need help?”

  “Yeah… it’s been an unlucky day – I forgot to lock my car when I pulled up at the service station, and I lost everything. Suitcase, laptop, the cigarettes that I had left on the dashboard. I’m on the road now, my car is in a garage. I’m soaked and I don’t have any spare clothes.”

  “Oh, good grief – where are you now? I’ll hop in my car and pick you up.”

  The Fox gave Matteo the address where he was waiting and then hung up. A moment later, the Fox had lost his effete voice. “Was that good?”

  “Yeah, very good. We have another half an hour to go and then we’ll be safe. We should make it. We have to get rid of the phone while we wait for our lovely guest.”

  “Right now?”

  “Now. Immediately!”

  “What if Matteo calls again?”

  “He knows where to go, and if he does call again you can tell him that your battery died. Destroy the SIM card and throw the phone away.”

  *

  “Fuck!” Gottardi cursed yet another time that night. The sniffer dogs had found the scent almost immediately in the fields. They had stopped by the road and had suddenly lost the trail. They were howling, confused and milling about.

  “There’s no point trying again, the trail ends here.” One of the K-9 policemen said.

  Gottardi looked at his trousers which were soaked with mud up to the knees. His shoes were also covered in mud. “Fuck!” he repeated.

  Had Riondino found somebody to give him a lift?

  Maybe somebody had waited for him by the side of the road. Gottardi discarded this hypothesis almost immediately, because it was impossible for Riondino to have been in touch with anyone from outside. He couldn’t have had an accomplice.

  “Where does the road lead?”

  “It’s one or two miles long at most and then it leads onto the main road to Florence.”

  “What about at the other end?”

  “The motorway. Only a few villages before that; it’s eight mi
les at most.”

  The trail ended there – Riondino had somehow found a vehicle. Gottardi struggled to control his cursing again. The roadblocks had closed any connections, that was true, but not until 7.30 p.m.… if Riondino had escaped at 6.30 p.m., he would have had time to find a vehicle and drive away before any patrols arrived.

  Had somebody given him a lift?

  Had he stopped a car and killed the driver?

  Gottardi looked around once again – the darkness had covered everything. “Carry on trying to find any traces, use your torches… anything. I’m done here.” he added and then he looked down at his muddy shoes. “somebody call a car to pick me up, I don’t want to walk across the field again.”

  *

  Seven years earlier.

  Sensi was shocked. “Can you give explanations for your assumptions?” he said without worrying too much about sounding sceptical.

  “Regarding age, the range between thirty and forty is the average in cases like these… but that’s not it. The well planned behaviour, the torturing, the way that the wounds were inflicted, being careful not to kill the victim too soon so as to prolong the pleasure… everything leads me to think that the killer is mature, if that makes sense.”

  “What about his body type? Why can he not be tall and athletic?”

  “Look at the victims – they’re both small. As well as being sure that he could gain the upper hand in a fight, he also wanted to dominate them physically. He wanted to appear threatening. He chose small targets because he is also small and unathletic.

  “These things are pretty straightforward… and I understand your point about his troubled childhood and a contentious relationship in his family… they’re fairly stereotypical qualities in criminology… but what about his supposed brother? How can you explain that?”

  “Look at the wounds on the two corpses. The non-fatal ones. Nearly all of them are scattered randomly, they don’t match between the two victims. But one does.”