Viper jk-2

by Michael Morley

  '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 escaping.

  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.

  'Ma che cazzo e? What the fuck was that?' Rosa pushed Filippo away.

  They froze. Stared silently at each other. Afraid to move. Then another chilling cry ripped the night apart.

  'It's a woman screa-'

  Filippo never finished. The next noise was even more distinct and terrifying.

  It was a bullet.

  Gunfire.

  Filippo slid naked into the driver's seat and turned on the engine and the lights. Whatever was going down was happening close, real close. Too close.

  The car's wheels spun on the soft wet grass. There was no traction. Mud sprayed as the old Fiat lurched forward. The wheels wallowed in the earth as he tried to make a full U-turn. Tried desperately to head back the way they'd come. The car carried on drifting. He straightened her up and turned the beams on full.

  Right ahead he could see something. A light of some sort. Safety!

  Another gunshot rang out.

  A God-awful loud bark. So loud it seemed to bite a lump out of the sky.

  It had come from near the light, now less than twenty metres ahead of them.

  Filippo slammed on the brakes. The car went into an uncontrollable slide.

  'Fuuck! ' shouted Rosa as she was thrown against the back of the driver's seat.

  He wanted to reach out and help, but he couldn't. The car was skidding towards a deep dip in the field. Sliding into a pit filled with fire.

  Filippo jerked the handbrake up as hard as
he could. Rosa crashed into a rear window. He twisted the steering wheel as far as it would go. The skid seemed to last an eternity.

  Finally, the old car rocked to a stop. They were less than a metre from the edge of the pit.

  'You okay?' He put his hand on his girlfriend's naked shoulder.

  Rosa rubbed her head. She'd have an ugly lump there in the morning. 'Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Let's get out of here. I'm scared.'

  Filippo nodded. The car had stalled. He jammed it into neutral and quickly turned the key. The engine chugged but didn't catch. 'Flooded. I'll try again.' Clutch in, foot flat on the accelerator. He did everything he'd seen his father do. Turned the key again and prayed.

  The roar was loud. Rosa thought the engine had exploded. Must have been a backfire.

  Then she saw the blood. Filippo's blood. All over the passenger seat and the window.

  And then she saw him.

  His face in the broken window.

  The gun in his hand.

  That look in his eyes.

  And he saw her too. Saw her beauty and her vulnerability.

  Rosa was terrified.

  She felt transparent, like a puddle that someone was about to stamp in.

  'Buon sonno,' he said politely.

  'Don't hurt me. Please, don't hurt me.' She covered her naked breasts with her arms and pressed her knees together.

  His eyes vacuumed her skin. Hurt. A wonderful word. So short, yet covering a multitude of possibilities.

  Rosa saw his teeth flash. He was smiling.

  She could see the gun even more clearly now. See it and even smell it. It had the acrid stink of death. Filippo's. She glanced at his slumped body, blood pouring down his side, half of his beautiful face torn away by the bullet.

  Fear choked her as she tried to speak again.

  She started to cry. 'Please, don't. Oh, God no, please, don't.' She pulled her knees up in a foetal position.

  He watched her for a second, thrilled by her growing fear, excited by her suffering. Then he levelled his gun at her forehead.

  'Oh, God. No, no, no!'

  'BANG!' he shouted.

  Rosa screamed.

  He laughed. 'BANG! BANG!'

  This time she didn't move. The warped trick no longer worked.

  She stared straight into his eyes.

  Cold.

  Cold as ice.

  He pulled the trigger.

  He knew what the shot would do. Knew it would spread her face and brains all over the inside of the car. He didn't want to be covered in the mess. He stepped back just before the hammer fell.

  Live and learn, he told himself. Less mess means less trouble.

  He looked back into the car.

  The windows were streaked in a fatty grey and cherry red.

  The top of the girl's skull was gone.

  There was no need for a second bullet.

  37

  Grand Hotel Parker's, Napoli Jack was tired but didn't go to bed after Sylvia had dropped him at the hotel. It was still too early, and anyway his jet-lagged mind was still buzzing like a wasp in a jam jar. Instead, he persuaded a receptionist to give him some privacy and unlimited access to their latest dual-processor computer. As he fired it up, he remembered an old Quantico lesson: 'How plus why equals who.'

  He opened a search engine and a blank Word document. Then he opened his own stream of consciousness. A complete download of his thoughts. * How? – burning, chopping, moving, burying. * Why? – sex, sadism, control, power, inadequacy. * Who? – stranger, lover, family, friend. Slowly but surely he covered all the key factors – the type of weapon used, the killing scene, disposal site, offender's risks, likely methods of controlling the victims. He thought long and hard about the personality of the killer, the geography of the area, whether the crime indicated any kind of compulsive or impulsive behaviour – the fire was certainly indicative of the former. He considered the ritualistic aspects. Wondered whether the killer would have taken trophies, and what kind. But he dwelled the longest on the burning. The burning was linked to gratification and that made it the killer's behavioural signature.

  The pages soon filled up. So did his mind. To the point of overload.

  Jack stopped and sipped at some coffee that he'd ordered ages ago and had ignored when it eventually arrived. Now it was cold, but he drank it anyway.

  He Googled Vesuvius. Much of it he knew. Some of it he didn't. * Known – major eruption in 79@C, still live and continuous eruptions this century. Last blew in 1944. Officially rated as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world. * Unknown – three million people live within close proximity of it. Thought by the Greeks and Romans to be sacred to Hercules, the son of Zeus, and named in his honour. He finished the last of the coffee and Googled Hercules. The guy came out as pure alpha male. Warrior, sex god, inspiration to warlords like Mark Antony. That he knew too. He read on. Death and sex ran throughout the storyline. Ran through the whole region. He spent some moments looking at a painting – Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra. He vaguely remembered the story. A snake with dozens of heads, and every time one was chopped off another one grew. From what he'd heard, it sounded like the Camorra. From what he knew, it also reminded him of the worst of the serial killers he'd hunted – always a fresh body, always a new horror.

  Jack did another search.

  Hercules triumphed over his enemy by the use of fire.

  He burned the hydra to death. Then he buried it beneath rocks.

  Burning and burial so close to a site held sacred to Hercules. Coincidence or connection? Rational or rubbish? He was almost too tired to tell.

  Was someone killing their own demons by burning and burying people? Did the killer have a specific enemy that he'd declared a one-man war on?

  Jack stretched and yawned. His eyes stung from jet lag and his body cried for sleep. But not yet. There were more questions to answer.

  Did the insignificant and inadequate Creed see himself as some kind of Hercules? Or was Jack making connections that simply didn't exist? Sometimes people don't kill for deep psychological reasons; they do it just because they like it. Because it turns them on.

  Tiredness kicked in and his thoughts wandered. Images of home. Nancy, Zack and Casa Strada in the rolling Tuscan countryside. Sunshine and laughter. Long hot days in the Val d'Orcia. Cool nights in the hotel gardens perfumed by lavender and roses. And then he thought of Nancy. Making slow love to her in the morning. Lying close together afterwards, her head on his chest. Her breathing making him sleepy.

  Jack's eyelids grew heavy. The warm room and the toll of the day made him drowsy. Within seconds he was asleep at the computer. But there was no sweetness in his dreams. No room – or time – to think about the good things in life. Thoughts of serial murder seeped from his subconscious. Bubbled up like toxic waste from the barrels the Camorra dumped on the ocean's floor.

  Relentless killings. Horrendous burnings. A cold-blooded killer on the loose and poised to strike again. It was a wonder he could sleep at all.

  Jack's mind continued the struggle to make sense of it all. To understand the links between the murders, the legends of Hercules, the local crime gangs and the strange young man who'd crossed continents to get him involved in all this.

  Deep down – way down among all that waste and poison – was the answer. And he knew he'd find it. Whatever it took. Whatever it cost him.

  38

  Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii Franco wondered whether anyone would come. He hung back in the bushes. Cradled his grandfather's Glock. Wait. Part of him wanted to run. Part wanted to be with Rosa. Dead Rosa. Naked Rosa.

  It was cold and he was shivering. Rain fell noisily through the trees and bushes. Spiky hawthorn branches dug into his face and neck as he hid among them.

  Naked Rosa. The pull was too strong.

  He opened the car door, barely looking at Filippo's corpse. The harsh interior light made Rosa's flesh look bleached white. Or was it death? Did death take your colour so quickly? />
  Franco didn't notice her blood and brains sprayed all around the interior. His eyes focused only on her nakedness. Her vagina was shaved, like ones he'd seen on the websites he'd visited. Fascinating. Exciting. He reached over Filippo, careful not to get his blood on his clothes, and touched her thighs.

  Cold.

  Cold, but also smooth. And beautiful.

  He leaned further into the car so he could run his hand between her legs.

  Warm. Still warm.

  The intimacy exhilarated him. He stood mesmerized, his hand glued between her thighs. Afraid to let go. Afraid to end the experience.

  Reluctantly, he withdrew. Tried not to touch anything as he left. He knew the dangers of doing that.

  Poor Rosa.

  Poor dead Rosa.

  He stopped at the door of the car and looked back inside. A thought struck him. A way of keeping her with him alive forever. Paolo was asleep in his bunk when Franco got to the van. He was still excited by what he'd just done. Rosa had changed everything. Things were going to be different. He just knew it. His body was filled with mutant genes and he could feel them now, moving around inside him, distorting his DNA, making him do things he shouldn't. 'Paolo,' he called lightly, squinting into the darkness.

  Unless he was mistaken his eyesight was going too. His doctors had warned him that would happen. Cataracts, they'd said.