Viper

by Unknown

  ‘Quiet!’ shouted Sylvia. ‘Male? You’re sure they’re male?’

  The look on Luella’s face said she was sure. ‘The sex is confirmed. One hundred per cent certain.’

  ‘And not in the circle,’ said Jack, more as an observation than a question.

  ‘No. As I said, they’re about twenty metres further away.’

  And the photographs on the board spelled it out. Two dark radar blobs, nowhere near the female graves, and not that near to each other either.

  ‘What made you dig there, out of pattern?’ asked Sylvia.

  There was a blink of sadness in Luella’s eyes. ‘Sorrentino had made notes saying where he thought there could be other bodies – outside the circle. I guess he was looking at the lie of the land and working on his own instincts rather than yours. Anyway, when I swept the GPRS over it, these sites looked hot.’

  ‘How long have the males been buried?’ pressed Sylvia.

  ‘Can’t yet tell you that. Years, not months. At least as old as the females. The lab says most likely older.’

  ‘Any ages?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Again, they’re working on it. The bones were those of fully grown, fully nourished adults. We can say at least mid twenties. Probably older.’

  Jack stared at the markings of where the two male graves were. They made no sense. Didn’t fit his clock-face pattern at all. They weren’t side by side, not aligned – just dumped, sort of randomly south of where the women had been found.

  Luella continued with the lecture but Jack didn’t really hear any more of it. He kept studying the seven sites, trying to work out their chronology and their relationships. As soon as the briefing finished he strode over to where Sylvia and Luella were standing.

  ‘I know,’ said Sylvia, ‘you want to go straight back to the site. Me too.’

  ‘Somehow I thought you might,’ said Luella, realizing instantly that her date with that Pinot Grigio had been put back even further.

  88

  Capo di Posillipo, La Baia di Napoli

  At home, waiting with Ricardo Mazerelli for Sal to arrive with the bag from Raimondi, Fredo Finelli nervously paced his office. ‘He should be here by now. He was, what? Only five to ten minutes behind you?’

  ‘The traffic was bad. Don’t worry. Whatever all of this is, we can deal with it.’

  The sound of tyres crunching on gravel and the burble of guards through the intercom told them the wait was over.

  ‘Ringrazi il Dio – thank God,’ said the Don. ‘As I grow older I become less patient. I like everything planned, Ricardo. Unplanned is unprofessional. Unprofessional is lethal in our business.’

  He poured brandies for himself and Mazerelli, and water for Sal. House guards opened up and ushered the Luogotenente through to the office.

  There were no courteous hellos; Finelli cut straight to the chase. ‘Have you looked what’s in the bag?’

  Sal looked offended. ‘No, Don Fredo. Signor Mazerelli told me not to, just to bring it straight here. That’s wha–’

  ‘Fine. Give it to me.’

  Sal placed the bag on the big wooden desk. Finelli snatched it and unzipped it. It seemed to contain nothing but wet trunks and a towel. The Don grabbed the towel and felt his heart pound. There was very obviously something inside. He lifted it out and placed it on the expensive desktop. He felt short of breath as he unfolded the cheap powder-blue towel. In the middle was a soil-stained, old white plastic carrier bag. Finelli ripped it open.

  An old Beretta 951 slid out on to the towel.

  The Don’s face registered shock. Without realizing it, he stepped back, away from the gun.

  ‘Wait!’ shouted Mazerelli. He held a finger to his lips. He looked around the outside of the bag, then the inside. He examined the side pockets, straps, logos, floor studs and lining. From his pocket he produced a slim electronic device the size of a credit card and swept it up and down the bag and then all over the gun. ‘It’s clean. No bugs.’ Despite the electronic sweep he still took the holdall outside and placed it further down the corridor.

  Don Fredo stood and stared. Twenty years ago he’d held the 9mm weapon. He hadn’t seen it since. ‘I told Pepe to get rid of the damned gun himself, but he insisted on using that old worm, Castellani. Said we owned his soul and was sure Castellani would dispose of it wisely.’

  ‘Seems he did,’ observed Mazerelli. ‘Wisely for him.’

  Finelli slugged back one of the brandies and poured himself another. ‘So, we must take what this carabinieri lieutenant says seriously?’

  Mazerelli nodded. ‘He’s made quite a demand. Two million euros, in return for all the documents, records and…’ he pointed towards the Beretta, ‘other memorabilia.’

  Sal caught their attention. ‘I can have him and the old man dead and buried by daylight tomorrow.’

  ‘He’s thought of that,’ countered Mazerelli. ‘This cop might be greedy; but he’s no fool. He has videotaped testimony from the old man. On top of that, he very clearly knows where other weapons are.’

  There was silence. Don Fredo bit at a thumbnail and tried to think.

  ‘There’s another demand too,’ added Mazerelli. ‘He says he wants the eviction order to be lifted on old man Castellani. He and his family are to be allowed to live at the site without any more pressure or threats.’

  The Don stopped biting. ‘Eviction notice? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Presumably Bruno is intent on forcing them out,’ explained the lawyer.

  ‘Christ give me strength.’ Finelli looked towards Sal. ‘We really are going to have to deal with my son-in-law sooner rather than later.’ He turned back to Mazerelli. ‘But what about this weasel cop? What can we do about him?’

  The consigliere picked up his brandy and swirled the liquid in the crystal glass while he pondered. ‘Two million is a joke. An opening negotiation. I think we can pay him much less. Maybe two hundred thousand. He will argue for more but he’ll take the money. We need to secretly record the handover – this is easy enough to do – then we shift the balance of power. He can keep the 200k and we tell him there may be more. But only if he agrees to work for us when we need him, or else we expose him as a bent cop.’

  Finelli wasn’t convinced. ‘And what if he decides 200k is not enough? Or, what if he takes it and still turns everything over to his bosses and then disappears with our money?’

  ‘Point taken,’ conceded Mazerelli. ‘Then we promise him more money, but in defined stage payments. One million spread over five years in instalments of 200k. He can be a millionaire within half a decade. That is worth hanging around and keeping your mouth shut for.’

  Finelli liked it. ‘Also buys us time. Time to intimidate the old man. Time to get at the cop from another direction.’ He turned again to Sal. ‘Find out who both Raimondi and the old man care most about in their sorry little lives – family, girlfriends, boyfriends, I don’t care – and then let me know how soon you could make them disappear.’

  89

  Parco Nazionale del Vesuvio

  It was no longer a colourful clearing in the woods. No longer a wildlife habitat overgrown with trees, bushes and endangered plants.

  It was a graveyard.

  And it was as silent as a graveyard too.

  Exhumations were underway and on the rare occasions when people did speak, they did so in depressingly quiet and reverential tones.

  Luella showed Jack and Sylvia where the male graves had been found. They were exactly as shown on the photographs, radar printouts and sketches, but somehow the real thing seemed different. Bleaker. Even more out-of-pattern. The partial circle of female graves was orderly and deliberate. No doubt about that. This had been done with thought. But the other two, the male graves, well, they looked like bodies had simply been dropped out of a helicopter and had landed randomly. Jack mentally completed the circle. One of the men would be inside the female victim circle, the other would be outside. That made even less sense.

  Small p
ortable bridges between the graves had been built, with boardwalks carrying excavation and forensic teams from one grave to another. The walks spread outwardly towards the mobile Incident Room vans that stood near the circumference of the circle. Sylvia sloped off and slipped inside the main control van to see some of her team. Luella tagged behind Jack, guessing his thoughts. She’d never worked murders before. Maybe never would again. She wondered how the hell he’d done it all his life and how it hadn’t screwed him up.

  The whole taped-off area was now about fifty metres in radius, a hundred in diameter. Jack took it all in as he walked to a spot near the centre of the circle. It was about fifteen metres away from one male victim and forty metres away from the other. ‘Luella, can you explain the geology for me? What went on with the lava flow around here?’

  The question surprised her, but she did her best. ‘We’re on lower ground, nestled between two small hills. The summit of Vesuvius is north and above us.’ She picked areas out with her hands. ‘This part here wasn’t where the densest flow or fall of lava was. That hillside and this part of the park won’t have caught nearly as much of the main pyroclastic flow as Herculaneum and Pompeii did, but you can still see some dense settlements of lava.’ She moved closer to where Jack was. ‘Remember that when Vesuvius erupted, the air was filled with lava. The spattering was like a huge arterial blood spurt. Some flows were formed when the spatters landed, others came in rivers that oozed in cascades from the brim of the volcano.’

  ‘So you think these were from the spatters?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. Why do you ask?’

  Jack put his foot up on the bottom of a mound of volcanic rock. It was virtually at the centre of their gridded-off area. ‘This big hill of rocks, for example, was formed by spattering?’

  Luella sized it up. ‘Not all of it. Some of that lava will have been there since seconds after the eruption. Other lumps, the smaller ones, have come later. I suspect they probably rolled off the eroding hillside to the side of us. No doubt came down as the ground shifted and subsided over the centuries.’

  Jack felt drawn to the rocky area and he couldn’t quite work out why. Maybe it was because it was the closest to the male bodies? He forced himself to forget the female sites. Imagine he was dealing only with the two male deaths. Now the rock mound started to make sense. One male body was east of it, one west of it. Not quite equidistant, but it certainly looked as though the killer may have used it to get his bearings. A male graveyard and a female one? Could be. Especially if the male graves were older. If he’d made his bones killing men, then later on found his fun in killing women. That would make some kind of sense. It would also explain why the female burials were special and the male ones just functional. He hadn’t cared much about where he’d concealed the first corpses, but the others – well, the others meant something to him.

  ‘Jack!’ The look on Sylvia’s face said she’d been talking to him and he’d been ignoring her. In fact, he hadn’t even noticed that she’d rejoined them.

  ‘I’m sorry. Give me a minute.’

  ‘Sure.’ She fingered her wind-blown fringe from her face and waited patiently. She could see him working out all the pieces of the puzzle, wondering which fitted where.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve been too obsessed with thinking about what’s beneath the ground and haven’t given enough attention to what’s above it.’ He crouched down so he could put both his hands around one of the big chunks of lava. ‘This is the only place where several big, broken pieces of the lava are gathered together. All around us we see patches of the stuff, but they are singular patches, with perhaps a crack or two in them. But these little beauties here, well they’ve been put here. Someone’s gathered them from around this clearing and deliberately put them here.’

  Luella joined him in a crouch and examined the chunks of rock. ‘Looking at this, yes, I would say you’re right. These pieces of lava don’t come from the same single piece, they are all jagged, and different shapes.’

  Sylvia sized up the position of the rocky mound in relation to the circle of female graves. ‘This is the centre of his circle of death, isn’t it? The middle of his burial clock, maybe even his starting point.’

  Jack nodded. ‘Yes, I think it is. This is the point that he got all his bearings from. Every time he returned he would look for this centre and then work out his burial lines. The position of the trees – his marks around the circle – I think they only relate to the female victims. Again, it was his way of differentiating.’

  Sylvia pointed outside the arc to the other male grave. ‘But what about that other male body? Why is it over there?’

  Jack looked at her – he knew that if he gave her a second she’d come up with the answer herself.

  ‘Because it didn’t matter?’ she suggested. ‘Because it meant nothing to him. It was just something he had to do, rather than something of any significance.’

  ‘You’ve got it.’ He turned now to Luella and pointed again at the rocky mound. ‘Have your people dig beneath here. If what comes up is a male body, then I’m right and we’ll discover a crucial link between our killer and his first victim, Numero Uno, his earliest kill.’

  ‘And if you’re wrong?’ asked Sylvia.

  Jack smiled. ‘Well, if there’s nothing there – or if it’s a female body – then theory-wise, I’m blown, and everything I’ve just said is bullshit.’

  90

  Centro città, Napoli

  Camorra Capo Carmine ‘The Dog’ Cicerone was a cube of a man with the face of a bulldog. He also had the business brain of a stockbroker. Every day he went to morning Mass and left a soul-saving fifty euros in the wooden collection bowl of the Santa Maria Eliana church. Every night he ate a dinner at Ristorante Corte dei Leoni that was large enough to feed Africa. In between, he consulted an astrologist, had a personal daily horoscope compiled for him and carried out his own numerological calculations. Carmine was forty-five, single and obsessively superstitious. Friday the thirteenth was avoided at all costs, as were black cats, walking under ladders and being in the company of lesbians. Lesbians, in Carmine’s mind, were devils and witches. Satan had sent them to earth in the form of women and, if you slept with them, then they stole your soul. People had been badly hurt trying to explain the many flaws in his crazy theory, starting with the simple fact that lesbians didn’t sleep with men, but Carmine was not open to argument. He knew their tricks. He just prayed that his Church contributions and nightly rosary would protect him.

  Carmine would probably have been a laughing stock rather than a crime lord, if he hadn’t been a financial genius. He ran legitimate property and investment portfolios through established legal companies and was a millionaire long before he crossed the line into criminality. Legitimate business was what he called the light side of his life. While on the dark side, he was Capo of one of Italy’s most powerful crime Families. The Dog was clever enough to realize that to stay rich in Naples, you either had to pay the Camorra, or be the Camorra. He’d chosen the latter. He’d infiltrated their world with the same guile and cunning that most businessmen would use to build a global empire. Furthermore, he enjoyed it. Loved it. It was where he got his kicks. There, and in the company of a few select women who, he was absolutely certain, were not lesbians.

  In his office, just windows away from the carabinieri’s city-centre headquarters, Cicerone held one of his more unusual Management Meetings. In this case it was a grand name for the weekly get-together of the ragged circle of villains who ran his criminal undertakings.

  ‘Profits up and problems down, that’s what I want to hear today, gentlemen.’ He sounded jovial as he took his position at the top of the table.

  The Cicerone crew put up with his eccentricities because year after year Carmine the Dog made them all richer. Privately, Vito Ambrossio summed up their loyalty in one perfect phrase: ‘We all like putting our snouts in Dog’s bowl because Carmine still has the biggest bowl in town.’

  Ambr
ossio was the Family’s main triggerman. When everyone else’s nerves snapped and people ran for the hills, he was the guy who would step forward and do the dirty work. He killed a priest in Scampia after the Father publicly spoke out against the Family’s drugs activities. And he pulled out a politician’s tongue, then chewed off his fingers with bolt cutters after the fool went on television calling for a clampdown on local authority corruption.

  Around a long rectangular table of polished mahogany, Ambrossio and five unsmiling men in their late thirties listened to their crime boss and his plans for expansion. Few spoke during the hour-long meeting, and none took notes, mainly because most of them couldn’t read or write. But as they disbanded, they all fully understood what the Dog had meant. Unless an accommodation could be reached with the Finelli clan, they would be going to the mattresses. The first turf war in years. And Ambrossio for one couldn’t wait for it to happen.

  Cicerone beckoned Vito to follow him back into his office. They settled around an opulent glass and metal desk in front of a giant picture window overlooking the city’s newest skyscrapers.

  ‘What’s the latest on the consiglieri? Have Emile and the Finelli man met?’

  Ambrossio said they had. He’d spoken to their own lawyer, Emile Courbit, just before the meeting. ‘It’s taken place. Emile has met him. The photographs have been delivered and Mazerelli said he would come back to Emile within a matter of days. I suspect the bomb has already gone off within their clan.’

  Cicerone savoured the thought. ‘This is sure to have Valsi and Finelli at each other’s throats. Hopefully sooner rather than later.’

  ‘It will be sooner. My information is that Valsi and Finelli are no longer even on speaking terms. The Don has made it known to Valsi that he is not welcome in his house any more.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Cicerone’s jowly face glowed with pleasure. ‘And Valsi’s wife and child?’