Viper - Michael Morley [19]
There were sweet wrappers, empty Coke and beer cans, a half-empty plastic bottle of hotel body lotion, numerous tissues that looked stiff from semen, several pages from magazines that had been ripped out and then torn into small pieces. Some hotel paper that had been written or drawn on had also been torn up into pieces no bigger than a postage stamp. Anything ripped this small had to be of significance.
Jack was desperate to examine the pieces of paper and magazine but had no evidence gloves. He returned to the bathroom and found what he was looking for – a shower cap. He opened it up, put his hands inside and used it like clumsy mittens.
Working through the cap, it took him almost an hour to assemble just one largish section of the hotel paper and a single page of the magazine. But what he saw was enough to convince him that Luciano Creed could indeed be everything he feared.
By the time he left the hotel, salt and grit had chewed like rats through the city’s blanket of white snow. The sun was high and dazzlingly bright as traffic crawled back to normal – or as normal as New York City ever gets.
Jack holed up for a while in a nearby deli. Black coffee and a skinny blueberry muffin quelled his hunger and fed his thoughts.
‘You want a refill?’ The question came from a surly sumo wrestler masquerading as a waitress.
‘Thanks.’ Jack proffered his mug.
She walked away and he speed-dialled the cellphone of Massimo Albonetti, Direttore of Italy’s Violent Crime Analysis Unit.
‘Pronto, parla Albonetti,’ said a deep, Roman voice. He sounded distracted, maybe even annoyed at being interrupted.
‘Ciao, Direttore. Come stai?’
There was a brief pause, then an eruption of laughter. ‘Jack, my friend, you speak little Italian and the few words you have learned, you murder with your horrible American tongue. How are you?’
‘Vaffanculo, buddy. I’m fine.’
More Italian laughter. ‘Aah, the bad words you can pronounce properly. Fuck you too! You are like a small boy, using such language. Still, it is good to hear you.’
‘Thanks, but you might not think so in a minute. I’m in New York, been speaking at a crime seminar, and came across someone from your neck of the woods. Guy called Creed, Luciano Creed.’
Albonetti was on his way into a community meeting. He’d been forced by his boss to address a holy order of brothers about the changing face of criminality in modern Italy. ‘This name, it rings no bells.’
‘Didn’t expect it to. He’s from Naples. Says he’s a psychologist attached to the carabinieri. Been digging into some Missing Persons files and reckons he’s detected a series of murders.’
‘Murders in Naples?’ Massimo faked surprise as he scribbled Creed’s name on the front of a stack of files he was carrying. ‘Now, that’s a real shock.’
‘Yeah. I know they have more killings than Iraq. The local force apparently has them down as MPs but Creed’s done some low-level profiling on them and it all comes up looking like a serial murder file.’
‘You think so?’ Massimo sounded more serious now. He nodded politely at one of the brothers entering the conference room for the planned meeting.
‘It’s more a perhaps at this stage. But I’ve seen enough to make me think there’s a good chance we’re not just looking at runaways. Can I give you some names?’
‘Sure, shoot.’
Jack peered at the notepaper that Creed had forced on him. ‘Luisa Banotti, Patricia Calvi, Donna Rizzi, Gloria Pirandello and Francesca Di Lauro.’
Massimo read them back to make sure there were no mistakes.
‘Do you think you could have a little dig around and check out Creed as well?’
Massimo spelled out his name. ‘C-R-E-E-D, and first name, Luciano?’
‘You got it.’
‘Okay. I am this second starting a meeting