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Chapter Sixty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventy (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventy-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventy-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
KEEP READING… (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PART I (#ufd7bab1d-879f-5e21-8538-614dc8d7356d)
One (#ufd7bab1d-879f-5e21-8538-614dc8d7356d)
They’d found the body in the entrance to their block of flats where, sometimes, bleary-eyed, they would avoid treading on the dog shit some neighbour couldn’t care less about cleaning up – teenagers on the way to school at eight in the morning. They’d been the first to leave the building, apparently, although it was now known the victim didn’t live in the same complex. Paola Gentili, mother of three, a cleaner, on her way to work. Multiple blows to the cranium. No sign of sexual assault. No attempt to appropriate money or valuables. No sign of a struggle.
So, it seemed she had been taken completely unawares. Better for her. Husband had been informed. Distraught. Had given them the few preliminary details they required without the need for any formal interview. That would have to wait until they got the go-ahead from the presiding magistrate. But the guy seemed clean enough going by the checks the new ‘privatized’ IT system had given them in record time. What social media access she had was regular and only moderately used. Meanwhile, they’d started looking into the other stuff. No particular leads. No affairs. No money issues. No links to known families in the organized sector. Worked in a ministry in the centre of the city. No unexplained calls. Just waiting now on the forensics guys to come up with something more concrete to work with.
Inspector Michael Rossi had only just driven through the gates in the Alfa Romeo. He had known immediately that something big was coming by the urgency of Carrara’s steps as he’d emerged from the baroque archway leading from the Questura’s offices to the car park. If Rossi had bothered to switch his phone on before it would have got him out of bed, what? Twenty minutes earlier? But that wouldn’t have saved anyone’s life. Now, the debris of takeaway espressos and sugar sachets violated the bare desk space separating them in his office. Their own cleaner had just been in, chatty as ever, oblivious as yet to the news.
“Other than that,” said Carrara, “we’re totally in the dark on this one. But it does look like there’s a possible pattern emerging.”
“You’ve been busy,” said Rossi.
The second such killing in as many weeks. The modus operandi and the victim profile bore distinct similarities but no one had dared yet to use the term. Serial? Was it possible? In Rome?
Detective Inspector Luigi Carrara. Five years Rossi’s junior, several years under his belt in anti-mafia, undercover, eco-crime, narcotics, now on the Rome Serious Crime Squad. Recently married, he had the air of one of those men who never seem to have overdone anything in their lives: hardly a wrinkle, haircut every month, bright, fluid in his movements. Just the man Rossi needed on a Monday morning like this one.
“How similar?” said Rossi, still struggling to form what he considered decent sentences, though his mind was already whirring into action. “The weapon, for instance?”
“Blunt instrument. Iron bar or hammer, probably.”
“Who’s on the scene?”
“A few boys from the local station. They got the magistrate there sharpish though. Hopefully they’ll have disturbed as little as possible. She was carrying ID, so we got to work with that straight off, once the news came in on the police channel.”
“Press know?”
“Not officially. But they will.”
“Silvestre?”
“Out of town, I think.”
“Good. Let’s go,” said Rossi grabbing his battered North Face from the coat stand, feeling more vigorous and even a little bit up for it. “I want to see this one for myself.”
Two (#ufd7bab1d-879f-5e21-8538-614dc8d7356d)
The press had got their picture. As usual, in the confusion between traffic police, municipal police, carabinieri, and the state police, someone had left the poor woman’s feet sticking out from under the blood-soaked tarp, like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. A final ignominy to grace some of the seedier papers’ inside spreads. They had only partially succeeded in keeping the crowds back and sealing off the street, but the citizenry was beginning to grow impatient. Close off a road in Rome and the already mad traffic goes berserk with all those narrow cobbled streets peppered with potholes, the ancient city walls’ archways forming designer bottlenecks, not to mention the one-way systems and the curse of double parking. It didn’t take much to tip the balance. So, the quicker you got everything back to normal the better for everyone.
“Remember, it all starts with good forensics guys,” said Rossi ambling onto the crime scene. The “guys” in white gave him minimal glances of assent from under their cagoule-like hoods while snapping and sampling and moving in to examine the body in greater detail. Rossi was the most senior officer on the scene and he and they knew it. He turned to Carrara, who was flicking through his mobile for news.
“Got anything more on her old man, officially or unofficially?”
“Still in shock, but according to the ‘reports’ he’s clean. No apparent motives. Family man. Besides, he was still in bed. His own bed. And alone. Shift-worker apparently. And no strange cash movements, no dodgy mates we know of. Nothing, as yet.”
“No links with the Colombo case? Anything in common? Friends, work, family, schools, anything?”
Carrara shook his head.
“Nothing. Just similar methods, married woman but different workplace.”
“And the kids?” said Rossi, finally allowing a dark sliver of the human reality to sink in.
“With their grandparents. We’ve got counselling on to that too.”
Rossi tried to put it to the back of his mind. Remain objective. He was a policeman. This was his job. Find the evidence. Find the killer. Stop the murders. Limit the murders. More than this he couldn’t do, and God knows that was what it was all about. But it didn’t get any easier. So much for an experience-hardened cop.
He glimpsed that one of the white-hooded moon-men, as if in contemplative genuflection next to the victim, had changed rhythm and was getting to his feet.
“What is it?” said Rossi, sensing its importance.
“Paper, sir. Note or list by the looks of it. Nailed to the sternum.”
“Not shopping, I trust.”
Blood-soaked but legible and left visible enough inside her blouse to be discovered quickly, it was in block capitals and written in English.
LOOK INTO THE BLACK HOLE FOR WHAT YOU WANT.
Was he growing in confidence? Already? Toying with them maybe? Now I do, now I don’t. Work it out. Want another clue? You’ll have to wait. And there’s only one way you’re going to get it. Special delivery. They might be able to find what model of printer or machine had been used, the make of paper, but more than that? It was hardly going to narrow the field. There’d be no prints.
Rossi looked at Carrara. “Any good at riddles, Gigi? Or are you still more of a sudoku man?”
“Looks like your area, Mick,” replied Carrara. “A late Christmas present.”
Rossi looked up to where the magistrate Cannavaro was skirting around the crime scene.
“And how would you say our magistrate’s doing?” said Rossi. “Ready to refer all this to the professionals now?”
Three (#ufd7bab1d-879f-5e21-8538-614dc8d7356d)
Yana Shulyayev slipped her long, lean body into the steaming bath. She wasn’t going to move a muscle for anyone now. It had been a busy one. The pensioners in the morning then the children. Then off to the accountant to sort out more interminable paperwork, not to mention trying to get across the city during a transport strike. And the cold was like something she had never experienced in Italy. So, she’d ended up walking, in the wrong shoes, most of the way and after a day spent on her feet, dancing and stretching and standing in queues, she was exhausted.
The phone rang. Shit! She’d left it in her coat! No. She wasn’t answering. She was out! They could call back. And if it was important? The accountant needing yet more papers before the office closed? She couldn’t afford to risk it, not with the threat of repatriation always being dangled in front of her. She hauled herself out and skipped wetly into the hall. It had stopped. Shit again. She checked the missed calls. Might have known. She thrust the mobile back into the coat pocket and swore again, and again for good measure, in Russian. It was Michael.
But she wasn’t in the mood to listen to his story. Not yet. Not today. Sometimes she liked to hear his accounts: his frustrations, his occasional victories, his funny anecdotes about the absurdities of the Italian police and legal system. The screw-ups with evidence, the Public Prosecutors in search of glory sending them, the cops, on wild-goose chases because they wanted to nail such-and-such for whatever reason, real or imagined. If only it was like in Britain, he’d say, instead of all these judges and magistrates and officials getting in the way. Over there, a crime’s reported, cops go to establish the facts, they evaluate the likelihood of an offence having been committed, they investigate, they make an arrest, interrogate, then they charge a suspect, and he goes to court. She’d heard it so many times that it had become a mantra.
He also liked to remind her how it wasn’t like in the films, but for her it seemed pretty close, at least in terms of its frequent effects on their relationship. “You should get a cat,” she’d tell him. “It won’t give a shit what time you get home, you won’t wake it up, and you won’t need to take it out anywhere.”
As she lay in the bath, the phone gave a last vain trill but this time she didn’t stir. She was somewhere else now. Somewhere where no one could reach her. She negotiated a little more hot water with her toe and heard a message coming in. That would be him. So he’d be on the case and when he was on a case she didn’t exist. So, cancelling tonight, no doubt. She tried to re-establish the pleasant world she had slipped into before the call. But try as she might, against her will, she was drawn away from where she’d been, where nothing else mattered except the warm water and dreams.
She’d heard about the murder at work. Terrible business but the police had no idea what or who was behind it. The girls in the gym were sure it was the work of an immigrant. A rapist probably. Never an Italian. Italy was going through another deeply unpleasant period and especially Rome. Politicians were playing the race card and the feeling was spreading, or being spread, that crime was on the rise and the only culprits were the foreigners. Every day on the TV news there would be a hit-and-run, a robbery, a mugging and the usual nationality tag stuck onto the suspect. She’d felt so awkward about the whole thing that she’d practically agreed with them. After all, they didn’t even think of her as an outsider anymore, and not just because she was their boss. But sometimes even she felt happier laying the blame at the door of some generalized alien monster. The Romanians, the Serbs, the Ukrainians, the North Africans. The fucking Italians! But she always kept the last one on the list to herself. Now, where was I? she thought, manoeuvring herself back into her own world, the safest one she knew. Then she began to turn over the possibilities available to her without necessarily ruling out the option of a quiet night in. Or even a night out, without Michael.
In the warm water, her hand strayed down along her body. She felt the firm abdominal muscles her students aspired to and which some envied too. Though the deep beach tan was gone, many Italian summers had left her skin an almost permanent honey colour. Her fingers then felt and found the faint line of the scar. Yes, it was still there but hidden to all but the most prying of eyes, the most forensic or curious of observers as her bikini line was old style. No drastic depilation for her. She wondered if Michael was one of those observers, if his cop’s curiosity had noted it. He had never mentioned it, had never asked and she had not divulged the secret. To what extent it might be considered a secret was debatable too. That she had had a child when still effectively only a child herself was a part of her personal life but had very little to do with Yana the person, her personality.
She didn’t feel anything like regret, even though, at times like this – perhaps because of the killings, like in wartime – some instinct in her was pricked, some part of her conscience maybe. Elena had a good life, went to a good school and had been lucky in so many ways. Her effective mother, Yana’s youngest aunt, in Kiev, had been only too willing to take on the responsibility having lost the chance of starting a family of her own after Chernobyl. She had survived cancer but been left infertile and Yana’s tragedy had become her treasure. The letters came regularly from both of them, in Russian and in Ukrainian, and she was glad that she had learned both tongues so well. She would need them in the future, she was sure. Yana’s visits, though rare, were something they all looked forward to, living as they did like a happy family, something Yana had never had.
One day, perhaps, she would tell Michael too but, in the beginning, she had not even thought of burdening him with the news. He had done enough for her and even if she had known in her heart that it would never have driven him away – the idea that she might have been seeking some insurance policy for both her and her daughter’s futures – she had chosen to conceal it. She provided for Elena, working hard, and sending all she could to give her the best start in life. Besides, at that time, even before she had met Michael, it was already a matter that had been closed. Back then, Yana’s own life, in contrast, had spiralled out of control as her stubborn-willed plans had foundered on realities nothing could have prepared her for. She shuddered despite the warm water enveloping her whole body. The memories of being imprisoned against her will and forced into virtual slavery would never leave her but that was long over now. Gone. She had moved on become successful and free. She was never going back.
Four (#ufd7bab1d-879f-5e21-8538-614dc8d7356d)
He had been surprised, at first, at Maroni’s eagerness to let him head up the investigation, bemused even, but, all in all, happy enough. Once the scene-of-crime magistrate, Cannavaro, had established the facts, he hadn’t delayed in assigning investigative duties to Maroni and the RSCS – when someone’s had their head smashed in there’s clearly a case to answer. Cannavaro was old school at heart and despite some memorable forays on a few cases, he tended to keep his nose out of investigative affairs. Maroni had given Rossi some spiel first about how he himself was far too tied up with any number of other investigations that seemed infinitely more intricate and sensitive. But there were other reasons. There were always other reasons.
“So, I’m giving this one to you, Rossi, and the Colombo job. I’ve had to move Silvestre off, for operational reasons.”
“‘Operational reasons’?” said Rossi.
“Yes, operational,” Maroni replied then glancing up at the unmoved Rossi and sensing his perennial need for detail added, “for ClearTech. They need secondments from all divisions. First I knew about it, and Silvestre’s name went forward.”
“Ah,” said Rossi. “So that’s all going ahead as planned.”
“It’s a miraculous system, Rossi. Saves us time, manpower, resources, you name it.”
“But it’s privatizing investigations.”
“It’s just a holding, Rossi, within the Interior Ministry. It’s not for profit. It makes perfect sense. Let the eggheads get on with it, I say. They’re just crunching the numbers anyway.”
Centralized Liaison Electronic Analysis and Reports. CLEAR. Being in English, of course, gave it a little something extra, didn’t it? That was the system, and though he’d dozed through the seminars this much at least he had remembered. But he knew what he thought it meant. Another layer of management bureaucracy and cut-price solutions to complex and important problems, making someone else a buck along the line. Not to mention the rest. The other reasons.
“Anyway, be a more straightforward job for you,” Maroni went on. “What do you think? Given your recent record, that is.”
Record, thought Rossi. Nice euphemism.
“Well, I’d better get down to work, hadn’t I?”
It was just after midnight when Rossi left the Questura, deciding to leave the car and walk. It would help him to think, he told himself. He pulled his collar up against the bitterly chill wind now blowing from the North and his footsteps beat their rhythm on the cobblestones as he turned over the day’s findings.
The initial autopsy and forensics had revealed nothing particularly noteworthy other than the confirmation that the murder weapon had been heavy, probably a large hammer, and that several blows had been delivered to the victim’s head by a male of around 5’10”. The nail had punctured the victim’s left atrium, although cardiac failure due to trauma and blood loss had likely already occurred. There were no DNA traces to follow up on as yet, except to exclude those of family members and pets. There were no closed-circuit cameras in the area and no reliable witnesses, only the usual freaks who had been plaguing the understaffed switchboard with hoax calls.
Rossi had put available officers on door-to-door enquiries, to see if any of the early-bird shopkeepers might have seen passers-by acting suspiciously. But the area was largely residential and it had soon become clear that there was little hope of any useful leads emerging. Given the apparent absence of any sentimental motive, he doubted the killer was going to be the type to give himself away easily. He would have followed at a safe distance, hooded, probably, in easily disposable clothes. He would have made sure he was alone, knowing that, in winter, balconies were not frequented except for quick or furtive cigarettes. Then he would have struck and dragged the poor woman through the open gate and into the doorway, where he finished his work. She wouldn’t have even had time to scream.
There would have been blood on his hands, and he’d have had to wash, perhaps at one of the fountains that so usefully and civilly featured on Roman street corners. Check fountains for DNA? A long shot and it had rained too since then. So, until something else came in, they had only the note to go on and any similarities between this case and the last one. He’d got Bianco looking into the work side of things but, again, there was no office gossip to go on, no particular career jealousies, no career. Just a regular working lady. So, they would have to be lucky or wait and see if he would strike again.
His thoughts turned for a moment to Maroni. He annoyed Rossi, it was true, but he wasn’t a bad man, certainly not the worst, and to his credit he hadn’t given him anymore bullshit than was necessary when they’d met. As it was nothing to do with anything organized, nothing to do with narcos or vice rackets, Maroni and his superiors probably thought it would keep Rossi out of their hair. Not that they were all involved but somebody always knew somebody who got the nod from someone else and all the filth trickled down. Favours were owed and the people that had got to where they now were, often with minimal effort, were always put there at a price. Then those same favours got called in, sooner or later, by those who had granted them, and someone would be picking up the phone and giving it, “what the fuck’s your man doing down there? Do you know who he’s messing with. Does he know? Get him off our backs or there’ll be hell to pay!”
So many times he had got close to the big boys, the guys who never got their hands dirty, i mandanti. The shadowy figures behind the scenes, “those who sent” others to do their bidding but who, blood-sucking vampires that they were, never emerged into the daylight. He rolled the word around in his head as he walked. Then there was the note: LOOK INTO THE BLACK HOLE. He had been thinking in Italian but he sometimes did his best thinking in English. Now it was looking like he might have to.
Of course, the reasons for transferring him or relieving him of his duties were always dressed up as something quite innocuous or easily explained away. There was the ubiquitous issue of stress, brought up as a kind of panacea for all their concerns. “You need a break. We’re giving you a week to get yourself together.” Or they felt his cover was weak. They’d had tip-offs suggesting it would be safer to try a change of tack. Or they needed his expertise to crack a stubborn cold case. Either that or they’d feed him red herrings for as long as was necessary for their own man to cover his tracks or evaporate completely. That was an exact science in Italy, not taught at Police Academy but which was widely and well-practised. Depistaggio. Sending you off the trail, off-piste, if you like, if skiing was your thing, which, for Rossi, it wasn’t.
And then there was disciplinary action. Some character would come in spouting accusations about foul play, being roughed up. There’d be talk about his having flouted the usual procedures or taken a bribe. Hard to prove, hard to disprove. Mud sticks, doesn’t it? And he’d be “encouraged” to take the easy way out, though, of course, everyone knew he was innocent. Exemplary officer. Blah, blah, blah.
Still, despite all that, the way it was going and the way it looked so far, at least, for now, he felt he’d have a pretty free hand. Be thankful for small mercies? The public were shocked, afraid even. They hadn’t stopped talking about this one and the Colombo killing in the bars over their cappuccinos and morning cornetti. It even seemed to be supplanting the political chatter, giving them a break from all the election talk, the stunning emergence of the Movement for People’s Democracy, the MPD, which was rocking the establishment, maybe even to the foundations.
This was not one of the drugs-war killings that sometimes stunned the seedier parts of the city. Neither was it any vendetta. The feeling was growing that he – and a he it surely was – could well strike again. The press would love it, and Rossi knew he’d be shoved into the public eye, under pressure, and then it would all come to a head and that’s when he’d be expected to deliver the goods. Hah! Rossi laughed to himself. Of course, that’s why he was being gifted the case. Sure, if he got his man, great! And there’d be slaps on the back all round and everyone basking in his reflected glory. But if he didn’t, it was his fault. Tough shit, Michael. That’s what the people pay you for. You’re on your own. Bye, bye. Ciao, bello, ciao!
He crossed Via Labicana and came to Via Tasso. It would bring him to San Giovanni Square avoiding the busier roads. On his right, the shining tramlines led away towards the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. This, though, was a humble, anonymous street that saw little of the usual tourist crowds. Yet, it was somewhere he would often stop to reflect, for it was here, during the Nazi occupation, that the Gestapo had set up its headquarters and its interrogation centre. In this very building the Bosch had had its torture chambers and, within those walls, many patriots had given their lives for what they believed in: a better, free Italy, without dictatorship, without hatred and division. Could that be the black hole? he wondered, with a spurt of unexpected enthusiasm. The black-shirted fascists who’d aided the Nazis in their massacres and whose modern-day heirs were getting a new lease of life of late? Their graffiti seemed to greet him on every other whitewashed wall these days. Forza Nuova. Italia per gli Italiani. Italy for the Italians. And they’d never really let go, had they? Indeed, that was their very motto, that the flame still burned.
But it could be anything. And nothing. A distraction to tease them with while the killer got his sick kicks. Or perhaps it was a financial reference, but again he reminded himself the victim had no apparent links with the banks or big institutions. She was a cleaner, even though the ministry where she worked was the Treasury. But how many Romans worked in ministries? Thousands. He could put someone on to it in the morning, just in case, but he didn’t place much store in it as a real lead. Tomorrow they would have to get to work on the note.
He put a hand to his jacket pocket. It was nearly one o’clock and in the sudden quiet of the side street he realized his phone was buzzing. He had forgotten to turn the ringtone back on and had accumulated a message and four unanswered calls.
WHY DO YOU NEVER ANSWER YOUR F******G PHONE? GONE TO BED. GOODNIGHT.
One too many asterisks there, he noted. It wasn’t signed. No need. There were no kisses. It was Yana.
Five (#ulink_5e1911e0-af21-5021-82de-4bf6847d6359)
“C’mon,” said Rossi, glancing at his watch as they strolled back to the car. “Talk about a wasted day but I reckon we’ve still got time to get over to the Colombo scene before dark and run some office checks before we go to the mortuary. Let’s see what Silvestre failed to pick up on there.”
The best part of a day spent trawling through past cases and suspects vaguely fitting a broad possible profile had produced nothing of note and had succeeded only in giving Rossi a thumping headache and more lower-back pain.
“Have you got the case notes?”
“There,” said Carrara as he opened the driver’s door and jerked his head to indicate a thin folder on the back seat.
Rossi got in and turned to look at the meagre offering.
“Been busy has he then, Silvestre? Lazy sod. Have to do that one from scratch, won’t we?”
“It’s actually off the Colombo,” said Rossi, leafing again through the scant inherited offering. A modest car park by a school on Via Grotta Perfetta. Road of the perfect cave. This certainly had given it a twist of the grotesque too. But in Rome, sordid murder locations were soon enough forgotten when the media coverage dried up. They were rubbed out by the eraser of the daily city grind and few victims got epitaphs. Serial or no serial. Carrara turned left off the Via Cristoforo Colombo’s zipping dual carriageway, driving slowly then until Rossi had picked out the turning.
