Viper - Michael Morley [33]
Jack liked her. She seemed smart and didn’t let shit get her down. A good way to get through life.
Sylvia pulled papers from beneath a thick teetering stack. ‘An old man walking his dog in Mount Vesuvius National Park discovered what he suspected might be a human bone. He was right. We recovered more than a hundred smashed and fragmented bones from the site.’
Jack made a mental note of the severity of the destruction. The multiplicity of broken bones indicated a high level of rage and an urgent need for gratification.
Sylvia ploughed on. ‘Local anthropologists managed to piece together the outline of a human skeleton. Here, look at this.’ She handed over a series of glossies showing a partially reconstructed skeleton.
Jack was impressed. He’d seen experts back in the States struggle with similar cases. ‘It’s a good job. I’m amazed they got so much done so quickly.’
Sylvia looked pleased at the compliment. ‘They are among the best in the country, maybe the best in the world. From the jawbone we have managed to get a conclusive match with dental X-rays. Our skeleton is that of Francesca Di Lauro, a twenty-four-year-old woman from Casavatore, last seen about five years ago.’
Jack scanned the shots again. ‘The bones are black
– I take it that’s from some kind of burning?’ ‘Total burning. We don’t know how or where or when, but all the bones were like that.’
‘Anything from Tox?’
‘Not much. Seems a regular accelerant was used to burn her. Paraffin.’
‘What kind?’
Sylvia looked puzzled. ‘Paraffin is paraffin, no?’
‘That’s what I used to think. Have them dig deeper. I worked a case in New York and found there are dozens of types of paraffin. Some comes as wax, some is cheap and imported from places like India. I guess there’s locally produced stuff as well.’
‘Italian factories use paraffin a good deal,’ added Massimo. ‘Industrial paraffin, chlorinated paraffin oil, that type of chemical. There will be records, health and safety documents, batch numbers.’
Sylvia scribbled a note to herself and Massimo wondered if she’d ever find it again amid the mess. Jack turned back to the photographs, fanned them out and looked for a close-up of the bone fragments. ‘You got any better blow-ups? Ones of the end of the bones, the splintered parts?’
Sylvia slid Jack a BCU – a Big Close-Up – of a shattered hip.
‘What are you looking for?’ asked Massimo.
‘I’m trying to work out when our killer set his fire. Looking at this shot, the hip is blackened, though there are traces of cream bone at the edge, where it’s been bludgeoned, chopped with something. If it had been chopped first, then none of the cream of the bone would be showing; the splintered end would be as blackened as the rest.’
Massimo followed his train of thought. ‘So Francesca’s corpse was dismembered after it was burned? That seems unusual. I would expect a killer to try to dispose of a body, and any evidence attached to it, by dismembering it first, then burning it and all the clothing and anything else that he’d come into contact with.’
Sylvia Tomms had worked gangland shootings, a rape murder, and numerous messy domestics, but this was new ground. ‘Go slow for the lady police officer,’ she said. ‘Let me get this right. You’re suggesting someone killed Francesca, doused her in paraffin, burned the corpse, then chopped it up and buried it?’
‘Maybe,’ said Jack carefully. ‘But even that doesn’t quite make sense to me. Your ME should be able to set things right.’
‘What? What am I missing?’ asked Sylvia.
Jack turned to Massimo. ‘You’ve got a dead body – what do you do with it?’
‘Dump it,’ suggested Mass, ‘in the woods or in the sea. Chop it up, bury it in a forest, or on some land that you own.’
Jack wagged a finger. ‘Okay. So what’s with the burning?’
‘Like Mass just said, to get rid of forensic evidence, in case the body or part of the body is discovered,’ suggested Sylvia.