Viper - Michael Morley [44]
The centre of the pit was where he normally built his fires and the far left-hand corner was where he hid his trophies. He sat there now, perched on a giant wooden bobbin that had once been wound with heavy-duty cable. He plucked at the black skin of the bag until it came away. Milk cartons, cereal packaging and tea bags tumbled out. He put them to one side. A cigarette with lipstick on the filter, a teenage fashion magazine, cotton wool with make-up on – he made a separate pile for those. Gradually, he built up a stack of anything he thought might have come from Rosa. Things touched by Rosa. Having items she’d owned made him feel as though he was part of her life. Even if it was only part of what she didn’t want any more.
He unfolded a tissue. It was lightly perfumed and bore the pink outline of her lipstick. He lifted it so the dull daylight illuminated the place where her lips had been. Then he put his mouth against the imprint and closed his eyes.
Inhaled her perfume. Tasted her kiss. Slowly the tissue paper dissolved in his mouth. He ran his tongue over his teeth and swallowed. A trace of her inside him. Heavenly. Like Holy Communion. A micro-particle of the body and blood of Rosa Novello.
Franco took more than an hour caressing and sorting Rosa’s garbage. He hid his trinkets in the bottom drawer of an old wooden bedside cabinet that he kept in a corner of the pit, beneath a makeshift shelter of boarding and clear plastic sheeting. His den. His sanctuary.
Finally, he gathered the rest of the garbage from the sack and put it in the centre of the pit. He balled up the pages of an old newspaper and set them on fire. As the flames rose and the smoke spiralled skywards he put his finger to his lips and thought once more of Rosa and how sweet she must taste.
34
Grand Hotel Parker’s, Napoli
Jack finished dinner in his hotel room and waited for Sylvia to collect him. He wanted to see the crime scene at night. See it in the same way he guessed the killer had visited it and left it.
They met in reception and he saw how, despite her naturally pretty face, the strain of the inquiry was starting to show.
She came straight to the point. ‘The ME’s notes are in. You were right. The burning was ante-mortem. Francesca was set on fire while she was alive.’
Jack soaked it up. ‘It takes a special type of monster to kill someone like that.’
‘Special? Is that what you call them?’ Sylvia led the way to the garage at the back of the hotel. It was hewn out of a giant hillside, high above the city.
Jack saw her point. ‘I should have said the worst kind of monster. Organized. Sadistic. Relentless.’
She knew what he meant. ‘The kind that doesn’t stop unless they’re caught. The kind that’s probably killed before.’
‘That’s exactly the kind.’
Sylvia lit a cigarette as they waited for the valet to find her car. ‘You’re not a smoker, I can tell. I’m afraid I’m an addict. I know it’s bad. And the more people tell me to stop, the more I have to continue.’
‘Says a lot about your personality.’
She smiled. ‘All Neapolitans are like that.’
‘How so?’
‘Grazie mille,’ she tipped the valet as they got into her Alfa. ‘We don’t like being told what to do.’ She stubbed the cigarette out in the tray on the dashboard and sparked up the engine. ‘Take seat belts, for example. Hardly anyone in Naples wears one. Even though it’s illegal not to. When it became law, the best-selling fashion accessory was a white T-shirt with a fastened seat belt painted on it. When you wore it, it looked like you had your belt on, even when you hadn’t. People who had been