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

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you, Inspector,” said Spinelli.

      As Rossi headed for the door, leaving Spinelli in Carrara’s capable hands, a thought occurred to him. He turned towards the now ex-suspect, as far as he was concerned.

      “Do you think there could have been other reasons why they, or whoever it was, wanted to kill Maria? Did she have anything in her possession, did anything go missing that you might be aware of?”

      “She had a laptop, of course, disks, memory sticks with a lot of our data on. You know, the court cases, the legal actions against us. The work we were doing on constitutional reform. The prison reform. You didn’t find anything, presumably.”

      “Nothing. Her bag was ransacked and subtracted from the scene.”

      “Well, our new lawyer is going to have some work to do. But not to worry. Starting from scratch is what we’re good at. Or perhaps I should say climbing the mountain. Yes, mountaineers. That’s what we are. Well-prepared, with clear objectives, and a tough lot.”

      Not Kremlin mountaineers, I hope, Rossi thought but decided to save it for himself. You can’t expect everyone to be into Mandelstam, he conceded, but the comparisons being drawn between Stalinist control freakery and the power structures within the movement were maybe not so far off the mark.

      “Like Sisyphus?” he said, compromising.

      “Maybe,” said Spinelli, “or maybe that’s how you see things, but I like to think we’re actually getting somewhere, Inspector, that it’s not all quite so futile. And I think we’ve got a lot of people in high places more than a little scared. You see, solving Italy’s problems is not difficult, despite what they say. What’s difficult is getting the privileged to give up their cosy little arrangements. They cost us billions, the Church too, with all its privileges. But when the people begin to understand, we’ll put our plan into practice. We’ll remove the Church from every part of civic society. No more secret banking. The Lateran Treaties guaranteeing the cosy coexistence of the Vatican within the Italian state and all their fascist inheritance will be torn up.”

      “But the treaties are part of the constitution,” cut in Carrara.

      “Exactly,” he said, his eyes burning red now, from grief, anger, and exhaustion, “and when there’s enough support we’ll change the constitution and Italy will be a real Republic. Not this hobbled pseudo-democracy taking orders from the cardinals, multinationals, and old-money fascists. Then we’ll be free. And Maria will be a hero. She won’t have died in vain.”

      “Well,” said Rossi, enjoying the speech and the little game that had sprung up between them, “just remember, that when you do get near the top of this mountain you’re climbing it’s merciless, it’s lonely, progress is painfully slow, and you’ll need to carry all your own oxygen.”

      “The oxygen of the truth, Inspector, or just the plain old stuff that keeps you breathing?”

      “Oh,” said Rossi, “I’d say you’d do well to have them both, and in abundance.”

       Eighteen

      “I tried not to,” said Bianco to Rossi, who had just slipped back into the office to be greeted by a grim, conspiratorial silence. “He was, shall we say, insistent. Very insistent.”

      Maroni had been going berserk. In Rossi’s absence, the whole team had incurred his wrath and, homing in on the weakest link, Maroni had managed to squeeze at least some information out of Bianco.

      “He’s got a lot of people on his back,” Rossi countered, having grasped where it was all leading and beginning to soliloquize.

      “Oh, and he said he wants to see you ‘physically in person,’” Bianco added, “about Spinelli but before the press conference.”

      “And they’ll be pushing for an arrest,” a newly bored Rossi continued, slumping into a vacant chair, “just to keep things quiet and to keep the hacks happy. Give the dogs a bone. Then he’ll go to trial and he’ll probably be convicted, on circumstantial evidence. Then there’ll be an appeal and after about four years they’ll all realize what idiots the judge and, of course, the police had been the first time round and he’ll be out again, and the news, the talk shows, and the afternoon trash TV will be talking of nothing else. Sound familiar?” Bianco just hung his head.

      “No? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s called what often passes for Italian justice!”

      “He threatened me with a transfer. Well, not exactly threatened, but you knew what he was getting at.”

      Rossi nodded. He knew both Maroni’s methods and that it was always only a matter of time before he would have things moving in the direction he wanted. But while Rossi had time on his side and was still ahead, he could at least try to make hay.

      “C’mon then. What did you give him?”

      “I told him about the e-mails but,” he said, slipping back into his usual chatty tone, “but the funny thing is that he asked me if there were any.”

      “He asked you if there were any e-mails?”

      “Yes, he said there’d been an anonymous tip-off and he needed to know if it could be trusted. Said it could be life or death.”

      Rossi dismissed Bianco, who seemed at least relieved to have got the whole thing off his chest. Then he sat down, took up a pencil and began to run through the possibilities. He took a deep breath.

      Scenario one: Maria Marini’s killer had given the tip-off about the e-mails to throw them off the scent. So either he had known about the e-mail correspondence or he knocked them out himself, if the Rohypnol theory held up. Which meant he’d wanted to get Maria out of the way, leave the MPD with a serious PR headache, and have Spinelli and his party fighting for their political survival.

      But if somebody just happens to tip-off the police, didn’t that actually presuppose that Spinelli was likely innocent and being framed? How could anyone have innocently come by the information. A casual comment from Maria’s ex? A worried friend? But it would still be way too shaky in a court of law.

      Scenario two: Volpini, Marini’s ex. After all, he was the aggrieved party in primis, the cuckold. The e-mails had given him the perfect opportunity to lay the blame at his love rival’s door. But from what Carrara had told him he didn’t seem jealous enough, at least emotively. And if it emerged that Spinelli really had been drugged? Could Volpini have organized that little caper too? Again, unlikely, as Spinelli would have recognized him. And he was in Milan, unless he had hired help to get the drugs into Spinelli, gain access to his apartment and then write an incriminating final e-mail. But that was real professional stuff, way too far off the scale.

      Third scenario, thought Rossi, his pencil blunting fast. What if it was all a ruse by Spinelli, first to set himself up in order to later get himself off the hook? It would work like this, Rossi said to his junior detective alter ego: make sure the e-mails get found via an anonymous tip-off and it looks like it’s game over. There’s a strong sentimental motive, circumstantial evidence to support it, no cast-iron alibi, and no witnesses to his going to sleep early rather than to the usual bar. Sooner or later the investigators would check his e-mails, but Spinelli goes belt and braces and points the finger at himself with his own poison pen. Then the Rohypnol theory kicks in and throws enough doubt into the equation to theoretically save him.

      What if we cops hadn’t come up with it? Well, that would be Spinelli’s ace in his sleeve, his alibi. He could have given himself a dose of the stuff, holding off but planning at the last minute to say “hey, look guys, I felt terrible the other night, what if I was drugged and while I was zonked out on the floor someone got into my computer and set me up?” And maybe he’d even left the bar with some MPD groupie, saluting all and sundry to make sure it looked like he hadn’t left alone, thus furnishing a nice suspect for the cops to run around after. It was

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