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

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Copyright

KillerReads

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Aidan Conway 2018

Cover design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

Passage from I Sette Messaggeri © Eredi Dino Buzzati

Published by arrangement with The Italian Literary Agency.

Courtesy of the heirs.

Aidan Conway asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and

incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities

is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008281168

Version: 2018-01-25

For Graziella

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PART I

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

PART II

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Part III

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Seventy-One

Chapter Seventy-Two

Epilogue

KEEP READING…

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

One

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

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

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

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.