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

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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

      “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.

      “Tucked away, isn’t it? Easy to miss, wouldn’t you say?”

      A sloping slip road led up to the smallish car park, which, in turn, gave onto grass and play areas that formed part of the long extension of the Caffarella Valley Park, a precious green lung in the midst of south-east Rome. It was empty and unremarkable. Broken glass, cigarette packets, and in the corner where the vehicle and the body had been found, the usual discarded tissues, wet wipes, and prophylactic paraphernalia could be seen.

      “A lovers’ lane then,” Rossi concluded. “Not much lighting at night. Ideal for trysts.” He shuffled through the scene-of-crime photos showing the victim sprawled next to the front wheel on the passenger’s side. Blood was smeared across the bonnet.

      “Do we have the car still?”

      “Dunno,” said Carrara.

      “Well, it’s clear enough she was outside the vehicle when he hit her, isn’t it? And no lovers? Nothing?”

      Carrara checked the notes.

      “Luzi’s statement says he was training for a marathon – and he does actually run marathons – while she was at a yoga class.”

      “Any phone calls? Any calls to men?”

      “The care worker looking after Anna Luzi’s mother – lives, lived with them – got a call from her but her phone wasn’t found at the scene. Could be important, if someone didn’t want it to be found.”

      Rossi let out a sigh.

      “We’ll have to get onto the telephone company to get transcripts. Can you do that? All her calls. We’ll have to check everything. Or does that have to go through ClearTech too? Was there an address book, by chance? I know no one uses them anymore but …”

      Carrara shook his head. “Not as far as I know.”

      “OK,” said Rossi.

      “Shall I pencil in another chat with Mr Luzi?”

      “Yes, you could pay him a visit,” said Rossi. “And check his movements again. See if you can find a witness for that running story. A flower seller, a petrol-pump attendant or something. And see if his wife really went to the yoga class, what time it was, and what time he went running and for how long. See if he wears one of those armband thingies, for measuring his calorific output. They all have them, don’t they?”

      “You think he might have done it?”

      “Why not? Husbands kill wives. How many times have we seen it?”

      “He just doesn’t seem the type. Very Christian and all. You know he’s treasurer of The Speranza Foundation?”

      “Perfect cover.”

      “Sure you don’t want to come?”

      Rossi shook his head.

      “Where shall I drop you?”

      “The bloody Questura,” said Rossi, “may as well keep working through the case files. See what comes up.”

       Six

      An array of stacked leaflets and promotional material for The Speranza Foundation – bringing hope to the hopeless and light where darkness rules – were the most striking feature of Luzi’s fourth floor executive’s office in Italian State Railways. Carrara had gone back to the beginning and, so far, could find nothing suggesting obvious foul play on the part of the slim, fit blue-suited man he now had before him. His sportsman’s physique did little to hide that he was now a shell of a man. Dark rings were scored under his eyes. In his vacant, defeated face Carrara detected some shadow of the departed – the confident manager Luzi had once been, just like the others shuttling between high-power meetings, phones glued to their ears, dispatching secretaries with alpha-male authority. That was all gone. He still went through the motions, which was enough, for the time being, at least, but bereavement by vicious unexplained murder had left him in the darkest of places.

      Carrara had put his sympathies to one side and was looking for any sign of guilt in that void Luzi now occupied. Perhaps it was still the effects of shock or some ingrained sense of duty and propriety, but he answered all Carrara’s questions with remarkable steadiness. Not once did his emotions overcome him. Carrara could only conclude that it had to be a defence mechanism. He had to be postponing the reaction, only deferring collapse. Luzi couldn’t come up with any hard, fast witness for his own 20k run that evening, he was able to provide the name of the gym where his wife had been, as every week, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. for her class.

      “I would normally go for my run around 8.30 p.m. and finish about 10 p.m., depending how long it was. It’s late but it’s a quieter time for traffic. She would usually meet up with a friend after her class and we’d see each other at home before going to bed. I’d have my training meal and watch TV or deal with correspondence for the foundation until she returned. Except, that night, well, she didn’t, did she?”

      Carrara had seen other men break down at points like this. Luzi’s mouth twitched slightly, at the corner. Nothing more.

      Carrara’s impression was that they had been as happily married as any other young middle-aged couple could have been. No affairs on her part – though he did admit to having had what he called “an infatuation” with a colleague, which was long over. “I did my time for that,” he tried to joke, “and we’d been back on track, for years. We had a good balance, with our own interests and jobs. And then. Just like that. Gone. You never expect it. You can’t plan for it.”

      “Do you know why she might have been there?” Carrara asked. Luzi shook his head but glanced downwards for a fraction of a second before resetting his attention on Carrara.

      “Perhaps just to make a phone call, to check on her mother – she’s got Alzheimer’s. She always pulled over to call – never at the wheel. Or maybe

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