Viper

by Unknown

  Jack laughed and thanked his small snitch for the inside info before asking for the phone to be given back to his mom.

  ‘So, how are you holding up?’ asked Nancy. ‘You sound tired.’

  You sound tired. His wife’s diplomatic way of delicately reminding him of the burn-out that had once almost killed him.

  ‘I’m okay, honey; just things are a bit more complicated than I thought.’

  ‘They always are, Jack,’ she replied tersely. ‘You going to make it back sometime soon?’

  He flinched. ‘Not so soon. I’m sorry. I think I’m going to have to be here a few more days yet.’

  Silence fell. Then she drew a deep breath and let fly. ‘Jack, you said four days tops. Please don’t mess us all around on this. I’ve got Christmas coming up, your son is bursting to see you, and my mom and dad were expecting to share a little time with you as well.’

  The telling-off lasted several more minutes before he invented a white lie that there was a car downstairs waiting for him and he had to go. ‘Love you, sweetheart. Kiss Zack for me.’

  ‘I will. We love you too.’ She meant it, but her voice was strained, not only with annoyance and disapproval but also with worry.

  Jack tried to banish the loneliness creeping up on him. Zack had sounded so beautiful. So young. So pure. Pure.

  The word cannoned around inside him. He’d become so obsessed with Vesuvius and Hercules and the geography of the place, he’d forgotten the deep importance of fire. It made things pure. In religious rites, pagan rites and all magical rites since time began, fire was always a way of cleansing impurity.

  But what impurity?

  What had the women done?

  What was their crime against the killer?

  45

  Bar Luca, Napoli

  They ate steaks and salads for Sal’s birthday lunch. From a distance it looked like they were all having a ball. But everyone around the table knew that soon – maybe sooner than even they thought – either Salvatore Giacomo would kill Bruno Valsi, or vice versa.

  As far as Pennestri and Farina were concerned, they would try to avoid picking sides right up until the very last moment. Fredo Finelli was their ultimate boss and for now it was far too early to bank on the ballsy young Bruno being able to topple the Don. If anything, they would bet against it. But the two men had been Camorristi long enough to know you should never say never.

  Bar Luca was a basement haunt in the city centre. Recently refurbished, it pumped out ice-cold air conditioning and the kind of atmosphere that made every minute feel like a Friday night. Sitting at a dark wood table, not far from a pole around which a half-naked girl posed and pouted, they’d finished their food and the drink was flowing.

  ‘Fifty years old – half a fucking century, Sal, it’s a wonder you have the strength to haul yourself out of bed in the morning. I salute you.’ Valsi raised another cold one to his lips.

  ‘Salute! Although, to be honest, I’ve never felt stronger or fitter than I do now.’ Sal raised his own glass of Cola Lite.

  ‘Maybe you should look for a new job, something softer, a bit easier on the old bones?’ chided Pennestri.

  Sal forced a smile. ‘You know, old bones or not, I’m stronger and tougher than anyone around this table. You’d all do well to remember it.’

  ‘Even your boss?’ said Valsi. There was a hint of steely challenge in his voice. ‘You think you’re stronger than me?’

  Sal smiled again, but this time he didn’t have to force it.

  ‘Bruno, I know I’m stronger than you.’

  ‘Okay, birthday boy.’ Valsi stripped off his jacket and rolled up a sleeve. ‘Arm wrestle me.’

  Pennestri and Farina exchanged glances. This was going to be good.

  Valsi had wrestled plenty in prison, and had never lost. ‘Guys, clear the table. Make room for me and Grandpa.’

  Looking across the table, now sticky with beer, he saw no fear in Salvatore Giacomo’s eyes. Pennestri and Farina moved plates and glasses from the surface.

  ‘Break a glass,’ insisted Valsi. ‘Put half of it on one side, half on the other.’ He grinned at Sal. ‘Let’s make it more interesting.’

  Pennestri rolled a beer glass in two napkins and dropped it on the floor. Sal watched with amusement as he sprinkled slivers and shards at opposite ends of the table. ‘I’m going for a piss, Bruno. While I’m away, take time to think about whether you really want to do this.’ He started to rise from his chair but Valsi grabbed him by the forearm. ‘You leave the table when I tell you, and you don’t piss until I tell you. Now wrestle.’

  Sal laughed at him. ‘Don’t be such a child. I work for your father-in-law, not you. The Don told me to keep you out of trouble, not cut you up.’ He pulled his arm free.

  ‘Just wrestle, you fucking coward,’ insisted Valsi. ‘Don Fredo would expect you to be a man not a chicken.’

  Sal’s smile dropped. He’d been pushed too far. ‘Okay. Let’s do as you say.’ Jacket still on, he angled his elbow and opened his hand so Bruno could grip it.

  ‘You call it, Tonino,’ Valsi ordered. He moulded his fingers into Sal’s grip. Tried to gain the first advantage.

  Farina looked at the men’s faces, then counted a beat. ‘Go!’

  Valsi’s biceps tensed and bulged. Blue veins rippled down his arm. He powered all his superior weight into Sal’s arm.

  The Snake rocked for a moment. His opponent’s speed and sudden force made his whole body quake. His elbow slid and almost buckled. He felt his wrist being stretched and strained. Each opponent’s arm shook under the effort. Valsi slowly began to inch his way to victory. ‘Birthday, or no fucking birthday, I’m going to teach you a lesson, motherfucker.’

  Sal looked at the broken glass, ominously positioned exactly where his hand would be crushed back. His arm was now almost at a forty-five-degree angle, but his face still showed no fear. Slowly and very deliberately he began squeezing Valsi’s hand.

  It took Valsi several seconds to work out what was happening. Sal’s arm wasn’t going back any further. It wasn’t going down. But a vice-like grip was gradually crushing his fingers.

  Sal’s eyes registered no emotion. He carried on crushing. He could feel the bones in Valsi’s fingers grinding against each other. He kept squeezing.

  The pain started to show on Valsi’s face. Pennestri and Farina could see it too.

  Sal hunched forward a little. ‘Would you like to stop?’ he whispered across the table.

  Valsi said nothing. He tried to use the pain to summon a second surge of strength. He channelled all his efforts into ramming Sal’s hand down on to the jagged glass. But he couldn’t.

  The Snake’s iron grip tightened another notch.

  Then another.

  And another.

  Valsi hung his head low. The pain was unbearable. He wanted to scream. Yell his head off like a teenage girl at a horror movie. He ground his teeth and ate up the agony. Swallowed the fear, and the shame that came with it. But he knew he didn’t have much longer. Soon the bastard would break his hand. Crush his fingers like day-old breadsticks.

  ‘We can stop whenever you want.’ said Sal, in a humiliating matter-of-fact tone. ‘Just say it.’

  Valsi’s eyes blazed. Defiance. One last effort.

  But he didn’t have anything to give.

  Sal swung Valsi’s crushed hand and drained arm up into the vertical, then, like a felled tree, down towards the spikes of shining glass.

  Valsi shut his eyes. Readied himself for the pain. And the humiliation.

  And it came. But not in the way he expected. Much worse.

  Sal let go.

  Just a centimetre from victory, the Snake opened his fingers and slipped his arm away. ‘Enough,’ he said, as though bored with a naughty child. ‘I’m going to take that piss now.’

  46

  Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna

  In a grey anteroom to hell – a waiting room inside the carabinieri barracks �
�� the parents of Francesca Di Lauro wept in each other’s arms. It was the first time they’d touched since divorcing more than ten years ago.

  The Di Lauros had thought they could never feel sadder than the moment when they’d learned of their daughter’s murder. But the news that she’d also been pregnant had ratcheted them deeper into the depths of despair.

  Bernadetta Di Lauro raised her head from her ex-husband’s tear-soaked shoulder. She looked sadly into the eyes that she knew had once adored her. ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t make sense of this.’

  He patted her hand gently. ‘I know. I don’t believe it either. It all seems so unreal.’

  She found a handkerchief in her purse, next to a small photograph of Francesca graduating from university. She blew her nose and dabbed her eyes. Dreaded to think what she looked like.

  Genarro Di Lauro blinked back the last of his own tears. He was still in shock. He’d never got over the trauma of learning that his daughter had gone missing. Now he could barely cope with the news that the police had identified the remains of her body. Remains. That’s what they’d called them – remains – what an awful word. The leftovers. The discarded bits. The final dregs of life that couldn’t be better hidden. The remains.

  ‘Genarro!’

  Bernadetta’s raised voice made him realize that he’d been miles away. Lost again in the uniquely depressive fog that engulfs parents of murdered children. ‘What?’

  She smiled at him and nodded towards a young carabinieri officer. The policeman was about the same age as Francesca would have been. He looked smart in his full uniform. No doubt his parents’ pride and joy. ‘The Capitano is ready to see you now.’ His voice was soft and respectful. His eyes suggested he understood their pain. But, of course, he didn’t. Couldn’t. Not until he was much older and a father himself.

  Sylvia Tomms had met them before. She made them as comfortable as possible. Not in her broom cupboard of an office but in a special room reserved for breaking bad news. The furnishings were less harsh but still businesslike. Brown cotton sofas were grouped around a low wooden table littered with plastic cups of coffee left by previous grievers. She cursed the fact that they hadn’t been cleared and hastily palmed them into a steel bin.

  ‘Do you have any idea who may have been the father of my daughter’s child?’ asked Genarro.

  Sylvia winced. ‘I’d hoped that was something you or your wife might be able to help us with.’

  ‘Ex-wife,’ corrected Bernadetta and in the same breath wished she hadn’t. She felt her husband – ex-husband – squeeze her hand and somehow the reassurance made her feel like crying again.

  ‘Before she went missing, was she seeing anyone regularly?’

  Francesca’s parents looked at Sylvia and then at themselves. Predictably, it was her mother who tried to fill in the gaps. ‘Francesca didn’t say much to me about her love life. Sometimes there’d be a twinkle in her eye, occasionally she’d share a boy’s name with me and mention where they were going, but in the main she was a very private person.’

  Genarro was looking off into the distance. Francesca was five years old again. Her thick dark hair in plaits with yellow bows that she kept playing with. Her gorgeous eyes sparkled with innocence as he hid a coin up his sleeve and magically produced it out of her ear. He was lost in the mists of time – an age before womanhood, before pregnancy and long before murder.

  ‘Anything?’ pushed Sylvia, catching his attention. ‘A remark, a name, a period where she seemed odd, behaved differently?’

  ‘I only saw my daughter about once a month,’ confessed Genarro. ‘When she’d lived with Bernadetta, I’d seen more of her, but when she went to University and got her own apartment, then she had a new life, new friends and not so much time to see me.’ His face showed all the regrets of a parent who wished he could turn back time.

  ‘She loved you very much,’ said Bernadetta, looking at him with the soft blue-green eyes that she’d passed down to her daughter. ‘She was always saying Papà this, Papà that.’

  ‘Mamma’s girl,’ he countered and then looked surprised that he’d said it rather than just thought it. ‘She was just like you – looks and temperament. Just like you.’

  Sad memories flowed between them. The moment sagged from the weight of emotion. Sylvia tried to give them space. Let them feel their way around their grief. Finally they looked across at her. Two thin smiles. A cue to continue. And she did, with the hardest questions of all. ‘You’ve seen the newspapers today; you know they have now reported the fact that your daughter was pregnant?’

  Francesca’s parents nodded. They looked uncertain and uncomfortable about where the conversation was heading.

  ‘I know this is awful for you, but we have to do everything we can to keep this story in the newspapers.’ Her heart went out to them. ‘Murder is now so common here in Campania that it is hard to get people to pay any attention, let alone come forward with information that might help us catch your daughter’s killer.’ She could see pain welling in their eyes. ‘Your daughter’s pregnancy gives us a chance to do that. It touches people and, as horrible as it sounds, we have to take advantage of that. We’re holding a press conference tonight and I’d like you to be there, to say something about what Francesca was like as a person.’

  Sylvia’s statement was met with silence. They were in no-man’s-land – their grief was private, their horror so great they didn’t even want to face the daylight let alone the press – but they did want to do whatever they could to catch their daughter’s killer.

  Sylvia smiled a serious smile – an expertly crafted friendly but serious smile – the type that only police officers can manage when they want you to do the right thing no matter how painful it is for you. ‘We’ve been advised by one of the world’s top psychological profilers that it’s vital we make the public understand Francesca was a person, not just a murder statistic. If we can get them to feel your loss, then maybe we can persuade someone who knows the killer to come forward. Would you appear at the news conference? Make that appeal for people to contact us with any information that they think might help?’

  Genarro squeezed his ex-wife’s hand and she squeezed back. In the split second before he answered he wondered if they should get back together again. Fall in love again. Help each other over this hole in their lives. ‘Yes. Yes, if you think it will help, then we’ll do that.’

  ‘Good. Thank you.’ Sylvia’s relief was visible. ‘I’m afraid I still have a few questions I need to ask you. Are you all right for me to do that now?’

  They both said they were and Sylvia found herself momentarily disarmed by their dignity.

  ‘Signora, in the last months before Francesca disappeared, did you have any unusual discussions with her?’

  Bernadetta sighed but said nothing. She’d spent years cudgelling herself over questions like this. Had there been something she’d said or done that had upset her daughter? Or, maybe even something she hadn’t said or done? She’d tortured herself but had come up with nothing.

  Sylvia pressed for an answer. ‘Maybe a particular argument? Something that surprised you and caused you to fall out?’

  Bernadetta finally shook her head.

  ‘No mother–daughter talk about something awkward? Perhaps men, marriage? Anything like that?’

  Bernadetta’s mind felt like it was bound with razor wire. It hurt to think. But then something stirred.

  At the centre of the ball of grief there was an ugly five-year-old memory struggling to get out. She put her fingers to her temples and closed her eyes. The pain was too great.

  There was something. What? What was it?

  Bernadetta shook her head. ‘No. There is nothing special I can remember.’

  And then she looked away and hoped the police-woman couldn’t tell she was lying, couldn’t guess the dark secret she was hiding.

  47

  Parco Nazionale del Vesuvio

  The forest was sodden and smelled of rotting leaves a
nd swampy earth. Franco Castellani didn’t mind. Not one bit. Lying flat on his growling, hungry stomach he steadied his outstretched arms and then, with all the patience of a trained assassin, gently squeezed the trigger of the old Glock.

  Fifty metres away a small red deer jolted backwards. It crumpled on its spindly legs and collapsed beside the spidery lower branches of a giant fir. Franco was up and running before the gunshot had finished rolling off the distant hillsides.

  The headshot was perfect.

  The fawn, along with twenty other deer, had only been introduced into the park in the summer as part of a new wildlife expansion programme. He stood over it. It looked like it had three little black eyes instead of two. It twitched and went into spasm as he touched its head. Franco considered shooting it again, but didn’t want to risk any further noise, and he wanted to save the bullets for what he had planned for later. He slipped out his hunting knife, the one he used for fishing, carving and odd jobs at the campsite. He lifted its chin, exposing the soft fur and thin flesh at the neck.

  One of the fawn’s back legs kicked again. He wondered how long the animal would take to die if he just left it. Its eyes were glazed and vacant. Blood started to trickle from its mouth and nose, but amazingly it still seemed to cling to life. He lowered the chin and rested its head on his knee. Shuffled round so his back was against the giant trunk of a spruce. Settled back to watch it die.

  It took several minutes for the animal to stop breathing and, when it did, Franco felt dis appointed. Not sad, most definitely not sad, but disappointed.

  Even though the fawn was quite small, he found it was too big for him to carry. He picked up the knife again and began the bloody task of cutting meat. He wished he had one of his axes. With one of those he’d glide through the bone. Whoomph, and it would be in pieces. But the knife was too small to sever the head. He sliced skin away, then tried to break the neck bone over the top of a rock. He stomped hard. But everything was wrong. The head got in the way – the ground was too soft – the bone slipped off the rock. Franco found himself just standing there, dribbling sweat and staring at the young dead animal’s head.