Viper - Michael Morley [124]
‘Jack!’ The look on Sylvia’s face said she’d been talking to him and he’d been ignoring her. In fact, he hadn’t even noticed that she’d rejoined them.
‘I’m sorry. Give me a minute.’
‘Sure.’ She fingered her wind-blown fringe from her face and waited patiently. She could see him working out all the pieces of the puzzle, wondering which fitted where.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve been too obsessed with thinking about what’s beneath the ground and haven’t given enough attention to what’s above it.’ He crouched down so he could put both his hands around one of the big chunks of lava. ‘This is the only place where several big, broken pieces of the lava are gathered together. All around us we see patches of the stuff, but they are singular patches, with perhaps a crack or two in them. But these little beauties here, well they’ve been put here. Someone’s gathered them from around this clearing and deliberately put them here.’
Luella joined him in a crouch and examined the chunks of rock. ‘Looking at this, yes, I would say you’re right. These pieces of lava don’t come from the same single piece, they are all jagged, and different shapes.’
Sylvia sized up the position of the rocky mound in relation to the circle of female graves. ‘This is the centre of his circle of death, isn’t it? The middle of his burial clock, maybe even his starting point.’
Jack nodded. ‘Yes, I think it is. This is the point that he got all his bearings from. Every time he returned he would look for this centre and then work out his burial lines. The position of the trees – his marks around the circle – I think they only relate to the female victims. Again, it was his way of differentiating.’
Sylvia pointed outside the arc to the other male grave. ‘But what about that other male body? Why is it over there?’
Jack looked at her – he knew that if he gave her a second she’d come up with the answer herself.
‘Because it didn’t matter?’ she suggested. ‘Because it meant nothing to him. It was just something he had to do, rather than something of any significance.’
‘You’ve got it.’ He turned now to Luella and pointed again at the rocky mound. ‘Have your people dig beneath here. If what comes up is a male body, then I’m right and we’ll discover a crucial link between our killer and his first victim, Numero Uno, his earliest kill.’
‘And if you’re wrong?’ asked Sylvia.
Jack smiled. ‘Well, if there’s nothing there – or if it’s a female body – then theory-wise, I’m blown, and everything I’ve just said is bullshit.’
90
Centro città, Napoli
Camorra Capo Carmine ‘The Dog’ Cicerone was a cube of a man with the face of a bulldog. He also had the business brain of a stockbroker. Every day he went to morning Mass and left a soul-saving fifty euros in the wooden collection bowl of the Santa Maria Eliana church. Every night he ate a dinner at Ristorante Corte dei Leoni that was large enough to feed Africa. In between, he consulted an astrologist, had a personal daily horoscope compiled for him and carried out his own numerological calculations. Carmine was forty-five, single and obsessively superstitious. Friday the thirteenth was avoided at all costs, as were black cats, walking under ladders and being in the company of lesbians. Lesbians, in Carmine’s mind, were devils and witches. Satan had sent them to earth in the form of women and, if you slept with them, then they stole your soul. People had been badly hurt trying to explain the many flaws in his crazy theory, starting with the simple fact that lesbians didn’t sleep with men, but Carmine was not open to argument. He knew their tricks. He just prayed that his Church contributions and nightly rosary would protect him.
Carmine would probably have been a laughing stock rather than a crime lord, if he hadn’t been a financial genius. He ran legitimate property and investment portfolios through established legal companies and was a millionaire long before he crossed the line into criminality. Legitimate business was what he called the light side of his life. While on the dark side, he was Capo of