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

“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?”

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.