Viper - Michael Morley [92]
‘How do you mean?’ She sounded surprised.
‘Given all the details on these missing girls, and what we’ve recently discovered, then maybe someone should get a roasting for ignoring Creed’s earlier claims that the cases warranted looking at.’
‘I’ve asked about that. It’s not quite the way Creed told you. Seems he did inform several people about the links, but he refused to share all his data unless he was given a full-time job. He was holding info back in order to serve his own ends.’
‘That would figure.’
Despite Sorrentino’s remark about enough photographs and records having been done, Sylvia still called a crime-scene snapper to take more shots. He arrived wet and cold. She directed him to the new dig. Kristoff Sibilski, a soil analysis expert from the carabinieri’s science labs, and Luella Grazzioli, Sorrentino’s new Number Two, had rolled up and were now at work as well. Their expert fingers dug in the wet mud and grit. They pulled out stones, filled buckets, sifted soil through metal meshes and removed twigs and glass. Finally, they tagged and bagged samples that meant nothing to either Jack or Sylvia but seemed attractive to Sorrentino. ‘Trowel!’ he shouted to Luella, akin to the way a surgeon calls for a scalpel.
She slapped it into the palm of Sorrentino’s rubber-gloved hand and within seconds he was back on his knees, operating at close quarters, making incisive cuts at precision speed.
Jack watched the rain pour over his long, matted black hair and found himself admiring the man’s passion and skill.
Without speaking, Sorrentino delicately lifted something from the earth. He rose slowly to his feet, one hand cupped beneath the trowel, and turned to face them.
Everyone stared at what he held.
‘Bone,’ he said decisively. ‘Human bone.’
In a patch two metres west of the last grave, in a near perfect arc, they’d found Victim Number Four.
69
Parco Nazionale del Vesuvio
A fourth victim.
Was it a setback or a breakthrough? Sylvia rang her superiors from the site and they were in no doubt – it was una catastrofe, un disastro, una tragedia – and they told her so in ways that made it seem as though it was her fault. News about a serial killer was not good for tourism. Not good for the city’s image. And certainly not good for votes. Sorrentino, meanwhile – well, he was as happy as a pig in shit. He could barely wait to get back to his laboratory and get the newly discovered bones under his microscope.
Sylvia made several calls as she drove away from Vesuvius. She spoke to Pietro, who said he’d drawn a blank with old man Castellani and was going home early because he thought he had the start of flu. Then she spoke to another of her lieutenants who’d re-interviewed Paolo Falconi and had also come up with nothing new. How she needed a break! She ordered Paolo’s release and asked for surveillance to be put on him, in case he contacted Franco.
Jack had gone back to the hotel to change his soaked clothes. She’d promised to ring him after her trip to the labs to see how the forensic evidence was progressing.
The carabinieri’s Raggruppamento Investigazioni Scientifiche was housed in a building that Sylvia thought belonged more in Rome than in Naples. The grand five-storey terraced building was salmon pink with dark-green shutters. Potted rose trees stood sentry either side of a lavish slab of marble doorstep.
On the third floor she pushed open the doors to the lab of Marianna Della Fratte and found her old friend, white-coated and hunched over a stack of paperwork. Marianna was thirty-five, single and had the smart and easy sense of humour that made Sylvia wish they both had enough free time to become even closer than they were.
‘Can you search your stack and see if you’ve got a one-pager that solves my case so I can go on a long, long holiday?’
Marianna took off her stylish black square-framed reading glasses and smiled. ‘Ciao, Sylvia. I would if I could. But I’m pretty sure if that was possible, I’d have sent it already. How are you?’
‘Sto bene. I’d be better if I could have two weeks on a beach – with