Viper - Michael Morley [126]
Jack and Sylvia stood way beyond the excavation, outside the crime-scene area, in the safe zone. She could see them talking intensely. Serious faces, sombre moods moulded by death. It was something she still had to get used to. She sent one of the carabinieri soldiers over to get them. They needed to see this.
Luella clambered into the trench and stood at the end of it. Her team had cleared the ground around something bulky, bound in grey-black plastic sheeting. She tried to imagine it was anything other than what it obviously was. A body wrapped and buried in plastic sheeting. A crime-scene photographer hovered above her. He’d already snapped twenty minutes’ worth of frames. The pale light dimmed further as Sylvia and Jack appeared at the edge of the dig and peered down. Their faces were full of expectancy and sadness.
‘I’m just about to open it,’ she said.
Sylvia nodded. Luella dipped her head and hands to the earthy plastic and heard the camera click. It took a while to find the edge of the sheeting. It had been wrapped several times around whatever was in it. ‘I’m going to need help. Can you call one of my assistants over?’
Sylvia shouted to the rest of the team. A well-muscled guy called Gelsone slipped into the hole and helped Luella. She directed his hands beneath the sheeted lump and he took the weight as she carefully unfolded the wrapping. It was an awkward job, like getting a king-sized quilt into its cover, only here you couldn’t shake anything.
Luella stopped. ‘Get a photographer down here.’
The snapper slid into the pit.
‘Careful!’ shouted Sylvia.
Luella finished pulling back the sheeting. The camera clicked again. The image of the rotted skull burned into everyone’s mind.
Body Number One, Jack was sure of it. Numero Uno.
But which sex?
And then another revelation rocked them.
The bones were dark, creamy yellow. Unburned.
92
Pompeii
Paolo Falconi searched in vain. He’d been as far north as Sant’Anastasia, as far east as San Giovanni a Teduccio, as far west as Monterusciello and as far southeast as Santa Maria la Carità. He’d figured Franco would follow the train lines circling the Parco Nazionale, stealing rides in mail wagons, thieving snacks from shops and scavenging slops from restaurant bins. Everyone he’d spoken to knew his cousin was a wanted man. No one had expressed anything that would remotely pass as sympathy. In a town dependent on tourism, Franco wasn’t popular.
Paolo drove the family’s old white van back to his grandfather’s campsite, fully aware of the carabinieri tail that followed him. The old green Skoda Octavia usually stayed three, maybe four, cars back, but sometimes it got confused or careless and ended up just a car behind. Then he would slow down and let a few vehicles pass to give himself cover. That killed Paolo. Only one type of vehicle in Naples wanted to get overtaken, so he might as well have strapped a flashing neon sign to the roof saying Carabinieri Sorveglianza – Police Surveillance.
Back at the campsite Paolo checked on his grandfather. Antonio was asleep in his chair, looking older and more vulnerable than he’d ever seen him. He kissed his mottled head, grabbed a chunk of bread off a wooden chopping board and went out again.
The Skoda was parked in Via Plinio, cop noses pointing towards the west of the city. Paolo dropped back inside the camp and worked his way east along the fencing for more than a kilometre. He climbed back on to the road just where it met the railway line and Plinio became Viale Giuseppe Mazzini.
The street was wet and dark. Tourists were either gone or were heading back to their hotels for hot pasta and red wine. Paolo felt sure he was unwatched as he zigzagged across Via Colle San Bartolomeo. He skirted round the hospital, Casa di Cura Maria Rosario, then slipped into the southern part of the Pompeii ruins.
Unlike Franco, Paolo hated the place after dark. It gave him the creeps. And tonight, the biting December wind and pale moonlight did nothing