Viper - Michael Morley [74]
‘What was this used for?’
Pietro shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Looks like a building excavation. I think a house was going to be made. My uncle was a builder and he had digs like this.’
‘But there’s crap everywhere.’ Jack pointed to old, burned cans and shrivelled plastic lying between the duckboards that the forensic teams had put down.
‘They’ve been burning trash here. We have a problem with garbage in Naples. The authorities don’t collect properly, so many people with land make money burning garbage, or burying it.’
The top of the pit was marked off with crime-scene tape and guarded by officers logging in anyone with authority to access the area. Pietro pointed to it. ‘Sylvia is down there, with the ME. You want to join them?’
‘In a minute.’ Jack’s gaze moved on to another tented area. It was obviously where the car was being examined. Where the young couple had been murdered.
‘That shooting looks routine, they are almost done there.’ Pietro pointed to the middle of the pit. ‘The other site is – how you say? Far more complex.’
In Jack’s mind there was no such thing as a routine shooting. Every killing had its own peculiarities – the signature marks of the murderer. He walked across the boards to the tent and came out at the driver’s side of the car. The vehicle’s metalwork had already been dusted with fingerprint powder. ‘Pietro, can you talk me through what went on here?’
‘Sure. The boyfriend was in the driver’s seat when he was shot. We know this from the blood and angle of the bullet. The girl, she was in the back and –’
‘Why?’
‘Scusi?’
‘Why was the boyfriend in the front while she was in the back?’
Pietro smiled. ‘He was naked except for his socks. She – she was naked too. So I think he had been in the back, kneeling or sitting. It is possible that they heard or saw something that frightened them, so he got in the driver’s seat and drove off.’
‘Towards the pit?’
‘We think so.’
‘So he drove towards where the other woman was killed?’
‘Sì.’
Jack puzzled it out. The couple must have been killed after the woman in the pit. Perhaps they heard her scream and thought they could help. Poor kids. They obviously hadn’t recognized the true nature of what was happening or they’d have driven in the opposite direction. Unless, of course, it had been so dark that they hadn’t really known in which direction they were travelling. Or, so close that they’d had to drive this way to be able to turn the vehicle around.
Pietro seemed to read his thoughts. ‘They were parked not far from here. If you look where I’m pointing, there are tyre marks over there. Seems they skidded when they tried to turn round and ended up here.’
‘And we think here is where they were shot?’
‘Sì.’
‘Angle of gunfire?’
Pietro made a pistol out of two fingers and crouched at window level. ‘About this height. Scusi…’ he shuffled Jack to one side, ‘and about from here.’
Jack’s mind turned to the killer. He would have been in the pit with the burning girl. After she screamed, he would have shot her. Then no doubt he heard the car start up and thought he was going to be discovered. He’d have rushed out of the pit, seen the headlights of the vehicle, then moved in to wipe out any witnesses. Jack pointed to the pit. ‘At the edge – the one nearest to where we are now – you may find finger indentations, trace evidence, footprints, marks from the front of the killer’s footwear. There’ll be elbow marks on the clay banking – all that evidence could have been left as he climbed out in a hurry.’
‘We know,’ said Pietro. ‘We are not the FBI, but these things we know to look for.’
‘Sorry,’ said Jack. ‘I was just thinking out loud.’ Both bodies had just been removed from