Viper

by Unknown

  Running smack and charlie through a pipeline of juveniles was smart practice. If the kids got caught, they landed tiny sentences, maybe even just court warnings. But if any of the adult clan members were arrested, then they were looking at lock-ups north of five, sometimes ten years.

  A waitress with blonde hair and dyed black ends cleared plates and handed out dessert cards to the boys. They were barely able to read the menus but the pictures lit up their eyes. They were still pointing and deciding when Ivetta suddenly snatched the cards from their hands and told them to get back to work.

  The kids made no complaints. They grabbed their Nike rucksacks and headed for the door. The youngest doubled back to take a final gulp of his cherry Coke.

  ‘You should have let them finish,’ said the tall, dark-haired man joining them. ‘I’m sure we all remember from prison that a well-fed workforce is much more willing.’

  The two henchmen, aware that they were merely older versions of the boys they’d just sent away, ordered more coffees and settled back to hear Bruno Valsi’s plans.

  33

  Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii

  Franco took Rosa’s sack to the pit.

  It was long and deep and located in a field at the back of the campsite, more than a kilometre away from the last of the caravans. Grandpa Toni had been rich once and had had big plans for the land. Plans which, like most things in Grandpa Toni’s life, had never materialized.

  Only Franco came to the pit. Paolo would help him tour the shops and restaurants, collecting the trash in their old white van. But back at the site, only Franco would drive through the fields, dump the bags and spend hours burning the garbage. He loved nothing more than his fires. The flames soothed him. They broke chains in his mind and let his thoughts fly free.

  Rosa’s bag in hand, he slithered down the steep banking, his feet skating in wet mud that had been scorched black. Birds and rats scuttled and flapped, loath to leave the scraps they were feeding on. He put the sack down for a moment and dug beneath his anorak for Grandpa’s pistol. The old man had several guns, including a hunting rifle, but the old Glock was perfect for the rats. A fat one spun towards the outside of the pit, running around the circumference like a furry grey ball on a clay roulette wheel. He watched it scarper anti-clockwise, took aim in front of it and squeezed. Boom! Perfetto! Franco felt a surge of adrenaline as blood and skin sprayed into the mud banking. But no sooner was the animal dead than it was forgotten. He’d not come to kill. Not this time.

  The centre of the pit was where he normally built his fires and the far left-hand corner was where he hid his trophies. He sat there now, perched on a giant wooden bobbin that had once been wound with heavy-duty cable. He plucked at the black skin of the bag until it came away. Milk cartons, cereal packaging and tea bags tumbled out. He put them to one side. A cigarette with lipstick on the filter, a teenage fashion magazine, cotton wool with make-up on – he made a separate pile for those. Gradually, he built up a stack of anything he thought might have come from Rosa. Things touched by Rosa. Having items she’d owned made him feel as though he was part of her life. Even if it was only part of what she didn’t want any more.

  He unfolded a tissue. It was lightly perfumed and bore the pink outline of her lipstick. He lifted it so the dull daylight illuminated the place where her lips had been. Then he put his mouth against the imprint and closed his eyes.

  Inhaled her perfume. Tasted her kiss. Slowly the tissue paper dissolved in his mouth. He ran his tongue over his teeth and swallowed. A trace of her inside him. Heavenly. Like Holy Communion. A micro-particle of the body and blood of Rosa Novello.

  Franco took more than an hour caressing and sorting Rosa’s garbage. He hid his trinkets in the bottom drawer of an old wooden bedside cabinet that he kept in a corner of the pit, beneath a makeshift shelter of boarding and clear plastic sheeting. His den. His sanctuary.

  Finally, he gathered the rest of the garbage from the sack and put it in the centre of the pit. He balled up the pages of an old newspaper and set them on fire. As the flames rose and the smoke spiralled skywards he put his finger to his lips and thought once more of Rosa and how sweet she must taste.

  34

  Grand Hotel Parker’s, Napoli

  Jack finished dinner in his hotel room and waited for Sylvia to collect him. He wanted to see the crime scene at night. See it in the same way he guessed the killer had visited it and left it.

  They met in reception and he saw how, despite her naturally pretty face, the strain of the inquiry was starting to show.

  She came straight to the point. ‘The ME’s notes are in. You were right. The burning was ante-mortem. Francesca was set on fire while she was alive.’

  Jack soaked it up. ‘It takes a special type of monster to kill someone like that.’

  ‘Special? Is that what you call them?’ Sylvia led the way to the garage at the back of the hotel. It was hewn out of a giant hillside, high above the city.

  Jack saw her point. ‘I should have said the worst kind of monster. Organized. Sadistic. Relentless.’

  She knew what he meant. ‘The kind that doesn’t stop unless they’re caught. The kind that’s probably killed before.’

  ‘That’s exactly the kind.’

  Sylvia lit a cigarette as they waited for the valet to find her car. ‘You’re not a smoker, I can tell. I’m afraid I’m an addict. I know it’s bad. And the more people tell me to stop, the more I have to continue.’

  ‘Says a lot about your personality.’

  She smiled. ‘All Neapolitans are like that.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Grazie mille,’ she tipped the valet as they got into her Alfa. ‘We don’t like being told what to do.’ She stubbed the cigarette out in the tray on the dashboard and sparked up the engine. ‘Take seat belts, for example. Hardly anyone in Naples wears one. Even though it’s illegal not to. When it became law, the best-selling fashion accessory was a white T-shirt with a fastened seat belt painted on it. When you wore it, it looked like you had your belt on, even when you hadn’t. People who had been fastening seat belts for years stopped doing so when it became law.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you know better? Set a good example?’ asked Jack, lightly.

  ‘I do know better. And I’ll never wear a seat belt again. Two carabinieri friends of mine were shot dead in their cars by the Camorra. They still had their belts on. The restriction probably stopped them even drawing their weapons.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

  ‘One of them almost lived. The ambulance turned up really quickly – in fact, too quickly. The killer must have seen the paramedics set to work as they stretchered him away. After one block of lights the ambulance was ambushed. The assassin climbed into the back and finished the job.’

  Jack noticed she’d jammed her army issue Beretta between her legs. Clearly she wouldn’t be caught off-guard in an ambush. ‘Creed mentioned the Camorra. You think they could be involved in all this?’

  ‘Could be. They’re like water. They’re invisible, spread everywhere and hard to avoid.’ The Alfa didn’t so much join the traffic flow in front of the hotel as rocket into it. Horns blared and moped riders swerved, but Sylvia was unfazed.

  Jack put a hand on the dashboard to brace himself. ‘Man, I thought New York was dangerous, but it’s Disneyland compared to here.’

  Sylvia smiled. ‘The secret of driving in Naples is not to care about what others are doing.’ A moped zipped in front of their bumper. ‘If you show any weakness or hesitation, then they will take advantage of you. Drive as though you are the only person on the road and you will be fine.’

  From the city they took the A3 autostrada out towards Salerno. Jack continued to ask about the Camorra. ‘If the mob are into everything, then how does that affect the way you investigate murders and missing persons?’

  ‘It’s a wall of silence,’ explained Sylvia. ‘If a Camorrista is involved then none of the clan will talk. Worse than that, if someone from th
e System is involved then you can bet no one in the city will talk either.’

  After fifteen minutes of congestion-free traffic they began a steep spiralling climb. ‘Not far from here, over at Sant’Anastasia, one of the biggest Camorra arms caches was discovered. They’d hidden everything from Uzis to AKs, enough to equip a small army. In fact several armies. The System imports weapons for use here in Campania and also to supply much of the rest of the world.’

  ‘You have regular contact with your anti-mob squads?’

  ‘Of course. And we’ll reach out to them about this case – when the time is right. They’re very busy right now and very difficult to deal with. We need to have more to go on before we knock on their door.’ Sylvia spun the wheel expertly into sharp left- and right-hand bends that zigzagged towards the top of Vesuvius. ‘During the day tourist coaches rule these roads. When they descend, everyone scatters so they don’t get crushed by them.’

  ‘Is this route used only by tourists?’ Jack peered through the darkness at signs advertising cheap restaurants and hotels.

  ‘No, not exclusively. There are houses, bars and businesses that locals frequent. Some of the workers in the park, or in the restaurants and snack bars, live around here.’

  ‘Workers on Vesuvius?’

  ‘Yes, on the volcano. Also in the national park where Francesca’s remains were found. And further down in Pompeii and Herculaneum too. Work is hard to find and good housing even harder. If you get either, then you stick with it as long as you can. Nothing lasts forever. In Naples, nothing lasts very long.’

  It took five more minutes for them to reach a lay-by where Sylvia pulled over. They got out and she produced two high-powered military flashlights from the trunk. Jack had expected a big entrance to the park but instead they took a worn path that wound uphill through a cluster of trees.

  ‘Is this the main way in?’

  ‘There are several routes, but this is the closest one you can take if you come here by car. This is the way that the man who found Francesca had taken.’

  ‘The guy with the dog?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it’s not necessarily the killer’s route?’

  ‘No, not necessarily.’

  They walked in silence for a while, both wondering exactly who they were hunting. Jack thought of Creed. Had he been here with Francesca? Had he followed her out here? Perhaps approached her and been rebuffed? Had he killed her and returned her bones to the place where she’d rejected him? Or was Creed what he claimed to be – public-spirited and the only person so far to spot that a missing person was a murder victim? Had he not been so obnoxious – so sexually obsessed and twisted – it would have been easier to have believed him. Maybe one of the workers Sylvia had just mentioned was the killer? A tourist guide, bus driver or restaurant worker? They had local knowledge and, given how remote this place was, local knowledge was obviously a factor. Or could there be more than just an organic link to the Camorra, the evil and untouchable shadow that seemingly fell over everyone and everything in Campania?

  ‘Here we are!’ Sylvia’s flashlight picked out an area still fenced and taped off but unguarded. ‘When I first heard of the bones, I didn’t think it would be murder.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well, recently we’ve had a spate of discoveries. Bones have been found, not around here but across other parts of Naples.’

  Jack looked confused.

  ‘The city’s cemeteries are as overcrowded as its slums. To make way for new burials – and the cash that accompanies them – the Camorra exhume graves then re-bury the bones in the countryside. Eventually the dearly departed work their way to the surface. Over at Santa Maria Capua Vetere so many bones were coming through in the fields that locals would cross themselves as they walked past.’

  ‘Is nothing sacred any more?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem so. Some of my colleagues in public health discovered that the kids over there were pulling skulls out of the earth, cleaning them up and selling them in street markets.’

  ‘So you thought that might have been the case here? Another field of Golgotha?’

  ‘Right up until we confirmed the burning and breaking of the bones. That changed things a little.’

  Sylvia waved her torch at the crime scene. ‘This isn’t the kind of place many people would come at night. I don’t see our guy killing his victims out here, do you?’

  Jack shook his head. It was really off the beaten track. Secluded. Miles from anywhere. ‘I agree. This isn’t the kind of place you can build a pyre, tie someone to a stake and set them alight. Too risky. Too open.’

  ‘And anyway, I guess it’d be too awkward to bring her up here, control her and kill her in that kind of way?’

  ‘Absolutely. He had somewhere else. Somewhere private. Some place no one could see the fire. Or if anyone did see it, then they would never think anything sinister was happening.’

  Jack pictured Francesca being burned alive. Imagined her killer standing back and watching her die. Was he smiling? Laughing? Masturbating? He turned slowly. The bleached white beam of his flashlight played over the bushes and into the trees. If he killed her some place else, then why bury her here? Why not drop the bones down some distant drains? Scatter them in far-off garbage sites. Dump them in the nearby bay. What was the significance of this place? ‘We seem to have stopped climbing. Am I right?’ Jack queried.

  ‘Well, if you’d have come in daylight,’ she teased, ‘then yes, you would instantly have noticed that this area is flat – or, at least, flatter than most of the land.’ She pointed her beam of light into the distance and it flashed like a Star Wars light sabre. ‘The ground climbs just a little over there. I wish you could see clearly because there’s a wonderful view of Vesuvius from here – in the daylight, that is.’

  Jack looked troubled. ‘The volcano, this parkland, they have a special meaning for the killer, or his victims. Do any of the women have any ties to this area, any links that I should know of?’

  Sylvia shook her head. ‘None that we know of. We’ve only just started looking at the cases, but certainly Francesca didn’t have any real links to this place.’

  ‘Then it’s the killer. The place holds some special significance for him.’

  Sylvia turned in the dark towards the black peak of Vesuvius. ‘What significance? I guess it’s too early to hope you have any idea?’

  Jack gazed into the distance. Tried to fish a connection out of the darkness. ‘That’s the mystery we have to solve. And we have to do it quickly. Like we said, this is the worst kind of killer. And the worst kind not only kills again, it always happens sooner than you expect.’

  35

  Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii

  Rosa Novello snuggled up to her boyfriend’s arm as Filippo Valdrano drove his father’s barely roadworthy old Fiat to the back of the campsite. He had the perfect spot in mind. A place where they could be alone. Away from the prying eyes of their parents.

  The two families had been holidaying together for years, and since he and Rosa had become engaged their parents’ attention had been suffocating. It was a relief to be on their own.

  ‘Here’s okay. Don’t you think?’ He drew to a halt and pulled up the handbrake. ‘It’s near the woods we walked in the other day.’

  ‘It’s just fine.’ She leaned over and kissed him as he turned the engine off.

  Filippo swooned, slipped down the straps of her pink top and nuzzled her neck.

  ‘Wait!’ she said playfully. ‘Let’s at least put the radio on. Get romantic. We don’t have to rush.’

  ‘Oh, baby. You don’t know how wrong you are. I need to rush. I really need to rush!’

  She pushed him away and twirled the dial, her heartbeat as loud as the crackling FM static.

  Filippo pulled his T-shirt over his head and she instantly gave up on the music. God, he was hot! Muscled shoulders, rippling abs, not a pinch of flab. She pushed her mouth against his again and felt her breath e
scaping.

  He pulled away. ‘Wait! Hold on, wait!’ He was teasing now, pulling away from her.

  She stared at him. ‘Oh, you really want to wait, do you?’

  He tried to look disinterested as she slowly peeled off her top and then slowly released her pale-yellow, front-fastening bra.

  All his coolness disappeared.

  He lunged forward to put his mouth to her breasts.

  ‘Oh, no, no, no!’ She pressed the flat of her palm against his forehead and held him back. ‘You said wait, so you can wait.’

  Christ, he wanted her, ached for her. ‘Let’s push these seats forward and get in the back.’

  ‘Now, that’s the best idea you’ve had,’ grinned Rosa. She kicked off her gold pumps, unzipped her white jeans and wriggled out of them. She arched her back to slip off her pale-yellow panties and, as she did, he kissed the flat of her stomach. She smelled of coconut body lotion. He cupped her buttocks with his hands and kissed and licked the inside of her thighs.

  Rosa wriggled free, laughing as she climbed into the back. Filippo tugged off his shoes and pants. The heat from their bodies was already steaming up the car. ‘I’ll open the window a little,’ he said. He rolled down the passenger side and felt her hand gently rubbing his balls. Her fingers slipped inside his Calvin’s and he gasped as she held him.

  ‘Jesus, let me get back there!’ Filippo caught a foot on the handbrake as he climbed over but he was beyond feeling pain. Right now there was nothing in the world that could keep him from his woman’s body. Or so he thought.

  36

  Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii

  A shrill scream scythed through the woods. It flew, unseen, like a bat in the blackness of the winter night. Then it thudded to its death against the misted windows of Filippo’s father’s car.