Viper

'Hasn't everyone?' He tapped the rap sheet. 'Gets even more interesting as he gets older. In his late teens, he wounded a guy. It was the father of a girl he was dating. Old man had had a few drinks and told Valsi he should stay away from his daughter, said she deserved better than drug-dealing scum like him. Valsi beat him senseless and then left him on a kitchen seat with a knife through his pants and a testicle pinned to the chair.'

Jack couldn't help but grimace.

'Sliced him up so bad that the guy had to have one of his balls removed.'

Jack flicked through the rest of the notes. There were police black and whites buried in there of Valsi as a kid and as a teenager. He looked young and innocent. No hint of the evil within. Jack had seen dozens of pictures of apple-fresh kids who their mothers worshipped. Perfect sons. They'd all grown up to become monsters far worse than Valsi.

'Have you got anything against him for attacks on women, or was it all macho shit?'

'Some of both.' Lorenzo drew breath as he recalled his next story. 'Same girl. When she did finally come to her senses and dumped him, was kidnapped and taken to an old school building. There, six of Valsi's goons sat on her arms, legs and chest while he personally sewed up her vagina.'

'Christ! And you couldn't put him away for that?'

Lorenzo shrugged. 'Wish we could've. Kid didn't even come to us. We heard it on the street. Local doctor who treated her even denied he'd seen her for as much as a cold. We guessed Valsi had threatened to do much worse to anyone who said anything.'

Jack looked down at the photographs again. Strong face, good teeth, most women would probably say he had nice eyes. All proof that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. 'How old was he at this time?'

'I think the coffee's about there.' Lorenzo headed back to the Gaggia. 'He was eighteen, maybe nineteen. Not long after that he hooked up with Gina Finelli.'

'Don Fredo's daughter?'

'The very same. Not that she had much of a calming influence on him. Sometimes marriage and babies settle a guy down. Not Bruno. His reputation for meanness and cruelty just kept growing. We all heaved a sigh of relief when we took him down. Now the bastard is back out there, the air is poisoned again. You want sugar?'

'No, thanks. Thick and black's fine.' Jack searched for more pictures. 'You got surveillance on him at the moment?'

'Best we can. But he's savvy. And we don't have unlimited funds. Plus, there aren't many officers keen for that kind of chore.'

Jack found a couple of long-range telephoto pics at the back of the briefing pack. They were all similar. Smart suit jacket dangling over his right shoulder, crisp expensive shirt partly opened, sunglasses on, head turned to the side. The guy sure took a good shot.

'Here you go.' Lorenzo handed over a small off-white espresso cup.

'Thanks.'

Thoughts as thick and dark as the coffee brewed inside the profiler's head. Bruno Valsi was clearly an egotist, confident and sure of his power. He was also a brutal sadist, devoid of emotion. Worse than all that, he was clever and charismatic enough to command others to follow him. The Tortoricci case was proof that he was the kind of man who could torture and kill a woman. The cold, efficient and breathtakingly arrogant murder of Sorrentino was also very much his style. All in all, he was a formidable package of trouble.

'You're thinking that you want to interview this guy?' asked Lorenzo.

Jack looked up from the photographs and sipped the espresso. It was hot, sharp and good. 'No, not at all. I'm thinking I want to interview his wife.'

'His wife?'

'Valsi won't tell us anything more than his records already do, or his father-in-law already did. But get me half an hour with his wife and I promise you we'll have everything we need on him.'

'Finish your coffee, and we'll fix it. I know exactly where she's going to be this morning.'

84

RIS, Raggruppamento Carabinieri per la Investigazioni Scientifiche, Napoli Sylvia couldn't believe what she'd heard. She pushed the files back across the table to her friend and looked dismayed.

'All results are progress. Think of the positives,' said Marianna Della Fratte.

Sylvia flipped open a notebook and rubbed the ballpoint up and down on the page to get it to write. 'Go through it again – the good news and bad news. Maybe second time around it comes out better.'

'Gladly. Which do you want first?'

'The good.'

'The ammunition in both the Sorrentino case and the Pompeii shootings is the same.'

Sylvia scribbled. 'Fine – same ammo, so maybe the same offender. The two cases are linked.'

'So it would seem.'

'Now it turns bad. Give me the small print again.'

'The slug dug out of the ceiling at Sorrentino's apartment is a Remington nine-millimetre JHP.'

'Jacketed Hollow Point, right? The nasty kind where the nose of the bullet flares out and makes a mess on penetration.'

'The very same. Ballistics think it came from a Glock. It matches the rounds that killed your couple in the car.'

Sylvia scribbled in silence for a moment, then asked, 'To be clear, this means it's the same shooter?'

Marianna's half-smile said it wasn't going to be that simple. 'This is where it loses shape. The bullets that killed the woman in the pit – and the two lovers, Novello and Valdrano – were the same ammunition that killed Sorrentino, but, and it's a big but, the bullet that killed Sorrentino was not fired from the same gun. The same type of gun, yes. But most definitely not the same gun.'

Sylvia put her pen down. 'So, same ammo at both crime scenes, but two entirely different guns?'

Marianna frowned. 'Not entirely different. Ballistics say all the bullets were fired from Glocks – they can tell from the rifling – but…'

'But different Glocks?'

'But different Glocks.'

Sylvia made some more notes. Then pushed on with her questions. 'How different? I mean, just what are we talking about here?'

'Same make. All the bullets came from a Glock 19 – or, to be precise, two 19s. You know the model?'

Sylvia nodded hesitantly. 'Enough to pick it out in a crowd, but I've never fired one. We're all Berettas.'

'They're standard issue in Israel and the US, particularly loved by the NYPD and Shabak. USAF is also fond of them. It's a serious piece of kit.'

'The attraction being?'

'Size. It may be the only time men brag about having something small. It's especially good for concealed use.'

'So it's a weapon of choice for an assassin as well as a cop?'

'You got it.'

Sylvia drummed her pen on her notebook. 'Right now, what you're telling me is pointing – no, let me correct myself – is jabbing a huge finger of accusation at Bruno Valsi, a sadistic young Camorrista who's blipped on to our radar.'

'That would make sense. Camorra links with the US are good, and they've always had a penchant for foreign weapons.'

'Okay, so let's go on to the DNA and trace-evidence reports.' Sylvia turned a fresh page and braced herself to hear the findings again.

Marianna shuffled files and spread out three separate sheets. 'Easy one first. Paolo Falconi. He comes up clean everywhere. No DNA or finger-print matches with any of the victims or crime scenes.'

Sylvia allowed herself a slight smile. It was good to at least eliminate someone.

Marianna picked up another sheet of her report. 'Now then, Franco Castellani. This is a different story. We got clear DNA profiles from his bed sheets. The things were so crawling with evidence they could have walked to the scopes themselves.'

Sylvia pretended to hurl.

'Franco's DNA is all over the car where Rosa Novello and Filippo Valdrano were killed, and all over the pit where the woman was burned. But there wasn't a trace of him at Sorrentino's apartment.'

Sylvia weighed up the two out of three strikes against Franco. On what she'd just heard, a court would probably convict him of the killings of Novello, Valdrano and the Jane Doe in the pit, but wouldn't entertain a case against him for Sorrentino. Yet she and Jack were both sure that whoever had killed the first three also killed Sorrentino. She was full of questions. 'Our profiler mentioned that he thought there might also be DNA on the door frame. He had some theory about the killer taunting Rosa while she was in the back of the car.'