A Known Evil: A gripping debut serial killer thriller full of twists you won’t see coming. Aidan Conway

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       Seven

      With the third victim, the killer was set to acquire a nickname. The headlines in the following day’s Messenger would proclaim that ‘The Carpenter’, due to his apparent preference for a hammer and nails, had indeed killed again. They would not be publishing anything about the notes, however, for though there were now two to consider, Rossi had asked his contacts not to reveal that particular detail. Not yet. In return, he had promised to keep them informed and to give them what he could. He needed the press on his side and still had some people he hoped he could consider friends, though who was a friend in a murder investigation was anybody’s guess. There was meat on the menu and it was not going to be easy persuading hardened carnivores to pass up a meal.

      “And I thought we might have finished for the day,” said Carrara who had cut short his informal chat with Luzi to pick up Rossi. He was motoring towards the scene while Rossi, a sheaf of papers in one hand, had an ear cocked to the radio as the excited officer who’d been first on the scene recounted what he had found. The victim had been ambushed in an underground car park on the Via Tuscolana. Her face had been beaten to a pulp, so they’d have to wait for a positive ID, especially as they had no personal effects to go on, no keys, no handbag, no ring. Nothing.

      “OK, OK,” said Rossi. “We’ll be there in five.”

      When they arrived, only the preliminaries were already underway. No forensics yet. No magistrate had arrived, so had likely already been informed and had thus delegated the investigation directly to the RSCS in line with the usual but not exclusive practice.

      “Is it too much to ask that they not touch anything?” said Rossi, running an irritated hand through his hair and giving a protracted sigh.

      “Parking problems, sir,” said a hassled-looking traffic cop. “We’re getting all sorts of earache from them that’ve got their wheels in the car park and those that want to get theirs in. There’s the match later, you know?”

      Rossi turned his eyes heavenwards.

      “There’s a murder in their backyard and they want to see the match?”

      The officer looked down at his own shoes then sneaked a glimpse at his watch. Him too.

      “Let’s just hope they haven’t destroyed key evidence this time. Hasn’t anybody learned from Perugia?”

      It had been late afternoon or early evening as far as the young female pathologist, whom Rossi had never seen before, was prepared to venture. Like the health service, thought Rossi. Never get the same doctor twice. Was a bit of continuity out of the question too? The excited officer he had spoken to over the phone was now filling him in but in person. Once again, there had been no one else around. A suburban area without CCTV.

      “Personally, I dislike the ever brasher intrusions of Big Brother into daily life,” Rossi lamented, “but in cases like this we could have used it.” No. This wasn’t London where your every move was filmed. There was still something that resembled freedom here, strange as it was to hear himself saying it. Yes. Here you could quite easily get away with murder.

      By the time forensics had arrived, it was plain to see they had an identical situation. A woman, head smashed in, and now another note for them to ponder. The same enthusiastic-looking officer had handed it to Rossi in an evidence bag. He’ll be studying law in his spare time, thought Rossi. God help us if he becomes a magistrate. The note read: THE DARK MATTER.

      “An answer to our riddle, then?” proffered Rossi.

      “Could be,” Carrara replied, “but I wouldn’t count on it being that simple. Would you?”

      Rossi stared at the note and then looked up and took Carrara by the arm.

      “See those trails of blood, mixed in with the oil stains? Assuming nobody else has moved the body, what does it say?”

      “She wasn’t killed there.”

      “Maybe finished off, yes, but moved. Get them to work out which car she might have been in without compromising the integrity of the crime scene. If there’s a print, a footprint, or a fingerprint, I want it. Have we got the lights up and the ultraviolet? Who’s doing that? Who’s shadowing the forensics?” Rossi clapped his hands together to get the attention of a cluster of dozier-looking uniforms. “And run checks on all the cars within a twenty-five metre radius. Any warm engines, for example. Has anyone got on to the vehicles yet?” he shouted above Carrara’s head to everyone and no one in particular.

       Eight

      Rossi threw into the boot the remaining profiles of perverts, murderers, and violent stalkers released from prison in the last ten years, as well as those of similarly inclined suspects still walking the streets. Another day of paperwork, computer-screens, and head-scratching. And now this. The workload was doubling every 24 hours. And they were getting no nearer an answer. It was like a blank crossword staring back at him. After knocking the lads into shape on the crime scene he’d managed to carve out enough time to keep a planned appointment at the hospital of legal medicine to see what they could get on the second, more detailed autopsy on Paola Gentili. Nothing particularly useful had come out of the trip except the discovery that she’d had the beginnings of a particularly aggressive cancer in her right lung. And she didn’t even smoke.

      “Bitch of a life,” said Rossi as they left the building to be greeted by a blast of the now customary wintery air. Carrara was musing in his own world. The place had that effect on you. Leaving its confines wasn’t like leaving any normal hospital where you had that feeling of relief that you weren’t in there yourself mixed with lingering concern for the person who was. Here was different. This coldly modern, austere, imposing building concealed within its walls real-life horror stories and tragedies in equal measure. And then there was the final ignominy of being carved up by experience-hardened doctors-cum-butchers to see how you had been dispatched from this mortal coil. A necessary evil, Rossi managed to convince himself, if they were going to stop this beast. Yet another necessary evil.

      They decided to leave the car and take a stroll past the Verano cemetery. They ventured across the tramlines gleaming like blades that carved up the piazza and on which the number three passed then swept away into the dank concrete tube of the railway tunnel leading to San Lorenzo. ‘Red’ San Lorenzo, as it was known. Historically, solidly working-class and the cradle of Rome’s Communist and Anarchist communities, it was now becoming like another sort of Trastevere, a nascent mini Covent Garden with bistros, boutiques and wine bars sprouting on every corner.

      But Rossi wanted to think, and he thought best when he had eaten, but not in the police canteen or the other cop haunts within walking distance of the Questura, and away, too, from the usual press-frequented places in the centre.

      “Formula One?”

      “Sounds good to me,” replied Carrara appearing to perk up. Many’s the time Rossi had put everyday concerns aside there, as a child, with both his parents, and back in his Roman high-school days. All that before the Erasmus experience. Before, for better or for worse, everything had changed in his love life and in the professional direction he would finally choose to take in life.

      The pizzeria’s busy evening was almost coming to a close. Waiters dawdled with the look of men counting СКАЧАТЬ