Viper - Michael Morley [81]
Pietro was convinced Franco was their man. Sylvia and Jack were more cautious. They could both see the clear links connecting Franco to the triple murders at the site, but struggled to see any connection between those three murders and the killing of Francesca Di Lauro. And what really troubled Jack was that he was sure the triple murders were linked to the Di Lauro case. He was certain because he couldn’t believe that two separate killers would both choose to use fire as a means to murder a victim. Such an MO was highly uncommon. It was impossible to think that two such killers would spring up at the same time in the same area.
As Sylvia and Pietro went in for a team briefing, Jack sat alone and tried to make sense of it all. If what they were beginning to think was right, then Luciano Creed was entirely innocent. He could live with that. The guy was creepy as hell, but maybe that’s all he was – creepy as hell. Whoever said the world of psychological profiling didn’t have its fair share of sex-obsessed perverts?
So, what about Franco Castellani?
News was now in from search teams that shoes recovered from Franco’s caravan looked as though they matched prints at the murder scene. Analysis of soil samples from clothing was already underway to further test the link. For Jack it was another so what? Given that Franco regularly went to the pit, they were bound to be able to forensically place him there. It was all a hell of a puzzle.
Jack looked down at the photograph of Franco. The kid’s face was a mess. Beaked nose, horribly wrinkled skin. He looked like a shrivelled sparrow. Mother Nature sure had fucked up. Sylvia had said he was suffering from Werner Syndrome. Jack knew little of it. He hit Google on the office computer in front of him and soon got lost in a mass of medical extracts. The snippets he pulled were disturbing. It was an awful disease. It kicked in around puberty and aggressively got worse until you died at an all too young age. He noted the facts:
Cause – mutations of the WRN gene. Passed on by parents, each of them showing no symptoms but both having copies of the defective gene.
Frequency – higher incidents in Japan than USA and Europe. Medical estimates vary from a frequency of 1 in a million to as high as 1 in 200,000.
Life expectancy – death usually occurs between 30 and 50 through atherosclerosis or malignant tumours.
Poor bastard.
Life could be awfully cruel and unfair.
The facts prompted Jack to think of a whole new batch of questions.
Had the disease stopped him having normal sexual relationships?
For sure it had.
Would it screw you up to the extent that you might torture women who are repulsed by you and reject you?
It certainly might.
Could rejection by a mother and father at an early age, and a hard underprivileged upbringing, worsen your feelings of alienation and unfairness?
Absolutely.
Jack felt sad and worried. The psychological motivations were all there. Had Franco Castellani been born normal, had he been blessed with healthy cells, then his whole life could have been amazingly different. But this kid? This kid had been damned from birth. Scrub that – it’s even worse. He’d been damned before he’d even been born.
62
Bar Luca, Napoli
Bar Luca had recently become Bruno Valsi’s home from home. In the past few years the Camorra had steadily increased its stake in the business – 10, 25, 40 per cent – and it hadn’t taken Bruno long to push it to 51. The two young owners, Giorgio and Marco, were smart enough to realize that 49 per cent of one of the city’s hottest night spots was better than a shallow grave somewhere.
Valsi sat in their office, feet up on their desk, watching a bank of surveillance monitors that followed the action in the bar and pole-dancing areas. Sitting opposite him were his new trusted lieutenants,