Viper

by Unknown

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Mark it urgent. I’ll call him as soon as he gets in. Get round to this woman’s apartment and strip the place bare. I want calendars off walls, diaries out of drawers, unwashed underwear, receipts; absolutely everything that can tell us anything about who she is, who she knows and who she’s ever slept with. Got it?’

  ‘Got it,’ said Mancini.

  The phone went dead and the young officer realized just how short the straw was. His night shift was about to go on for a whole lot longer than he’d expected.

  6.30 a.m.

  Casa di famiglia dei Valsi, Camaldoli

  The angel-faced lap dancer from Luca’s Bar was proving a much better fuck than Bruno Valsi had dared imagine she would be. In his mind, beautiful women usually turned out to be a big disappointment between the sheets. The plain ones usually tried harder. But this babe, well she was an exception. Just how exceptional, Valsi would never know.

  Stephanie Muller was a lesbian. She’d slept with him several times and worked hard to pleasure him all night because she needed the money. Especially the big money he was offering for the job she’d do for him later today.

  Most of Stephanie’s recent life had been a fake. She just switched off and sailed through whatever shit life had thrown at her. The first dollop of brown stuff came her way when she was a stripper in Hamburg. While working the city’s Sinful Mile, the infamous Reeperbahn, she fell head-over-heels in love with an Italian businesswoman. She trusted her heart rather than her brain and moved to Naples. Predictably her new Latin lover turned out to have several other Latin lovers and Steph got dumped within the month. Life was a bitch. Penniless and hungry she’d done anything she had to in order to feed herself. And the latest offer that Valsi had made her would keep her fed for a long time.

  ‘I gotta go,’ said the twenty-six-year-old, wriggling out from beneath his muscled arm.

  ‘Not yet. I’m not finished with you.’

  Steph glanced at the plastic Swatch on her wrist. ‘It’s six thirty; you know everything I have to do today.’ She sat up on the edge of the bed and felt raw and sore. The sheets were marked with blood from the rough anal sex that he’d made her endure. She felt too dizzy to stand. In a second she’d be okay. She looked across the room to find where her clothes had been thrown.

  Valsi grabbed a clump of the thick black hair that hung in little-girl curls down her slim pale back and pulled her towards him.

  ‘Ow! Hey!’

  ‘You got time.’ He forced her head towards his groin.

  There was no point complaining. No point inviting a beating. Steph switched off. Let her attention drift as she did his bidding. The room was pink and green with the kind of carpets, bedding and curtains that she knew she could never afford. The furniture looked antique. Chairs with curved backs and big dark wood wardrobes with matching chests of drawers. A dressing table full of perfumes and a matching full-length mirror. She had no idea what it was worth but she’d love to have stuff like that.

  Valsi finished grunting and rolled away from her. ‘Okay, get the fuck out of here.’

  Steph struggled painfully to her feet. She walked naked to the bathroom and spat his semen in the sink. He’d told her not to use his toothbrush, or his wife’s or child’s. Both still stood unashamedly in a glass on a shelf, like two abandoned soldiers. She squirted toothpaste on her finger and scrubbed as best she could.

  ‘There’s money on the dresser,’ Valsi shouted from the bed as she appeared from the shower, recovered her clothes and dressed.

  Steph took the five hundred euros he’d placed next to a photograph of two people she guessed were the owners of the untouchable toothbrushes. With any luck this would be the last time she’d be brutalized by him. He’d promised her ten thousand euros for the job she’d do in two hours’ time. Ten grand for a morning’s work. Not a fortune, but enough to change your life. Rome, Milan or even Florence were good places to start over if you had that kind of cushion in your purse.

  She let herself out without saying goodbye. Lit a cigarette as she walked along the driveway to the iron gates that protected Valsi’s house. Usually a man emerged from a wooden security hut to flirt with her and let her through, but today no one came.

  ‘Hello!’ she shouted, craning her neck around some large laurels that hid the small hut. ‘Hello, could someone let me out, please?’

  Steph was about to knock on the window but stopped with her hand in mid-air. ‘Madonna Santa! Oh, my sweet God!’

  The guard had been shot dead. His blood and brains were sprayed up the wooden back panel of the shed. The man was still seated, his automatic rifle cradled in the crook of his left arm.

  Steph froze with fright.

  Should she run back to the house and tell Bruno? Or should she just get the fuck out of there as quickly as possible?

  She chose the latter.

  Shaking. Close to tears. Careful not to look again at the near headless body, she slowly snaked her hand inside the wooden hut and pressed the button that electronically opened the iron gates.

  They clanked into life.

  She was through them just as soon as the gap was wide enough.

  Gone long before they’d finished opening.

  7.30 a.m.

  Casa di famiglia dei Valsi, Camaldoli

  Bruno Valsi was still in bed when two armed men crept cautiously into his house.

  He’d heard them at the front door.

  Listened to their hushed voices and creaking feet on the staircase.

  Known what to expect.

  He grabbed the gun from beneath his pillow, rolled off the far side of the mattress and opened fire.

  ‘Boss, boss! It’s us!’ The shout came from one of two men who’d just turned up for security duty and found their colleague dead in his hut. ‘It’s Alfonso and Gerardo.’

  Valsi had blasted holes in the bedroom door. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he shouted as they cowered outside the room. ‘Get the fuck in here!’

  Alfonso, thirty-two years old, entered first; he was white-faced from shock. Gerardo, a young man of just twenty, followed, even more afraid.

  Valsi was naked. Kneeling behind the bed. His arms were stretched across the mattress and he gripped a pistol in a shooting stance. ‘Put your hands up. Let me see them.’

  Their hands went up.

  ‘Walk to the centre of the room.’

  They knew the drill. Knew they should never have entered the house without permission.

  ‘So, what the fuck is this about?’ he demanded.

  ‘Beppe’s dead,’ explained Alfonso. ‘Someone shot him in his hut and the house intercom is dead as well.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bullet in the face. His head is spread everywhere.’

  Alfonso looked towards Gerardo. ‘Tell Signor Valsi what you found.’

  Gerardo was so scared he had trouble speaking. ‘L-like Alfonso said, he was dead. He is d-d-dead, Signor Valsi.’

  ‘Calm down.’ Valsi waved his gun at the other man. ‘Alfonso, throw me those trousers, by the chair.’ They looked away as he pulled them on. ‘Let’s go.’ Valsi whipped a used white shirt off the back of the chair, walked barefoot downstairs, through the house and out to the guard hut.

  He didn’t even blink when he saw Beppe Basso’s bloody body. Beppe the Short – that was his nickname – now he really was short.

  To be precise, he was about four inches shorter than he used to be.

  Valsi bent down inside the hut and found the missing inches, spread across the inside of the roof and the back panel of the guard shelter. ‘Fuck and damn!’ He banged his fist against the door frame.

  He jammed the pistol into the waistband of his pants and turned to Alfonso. ‘Call Pennestri and Farina for me. I want them here as soon as possible.’

  Valsi headed back to the house. The war was on. This was just the start of it.

  He avoided the landline and used an untraceable cellphone to call the Family c
onsigliere.

  Ricardo Mazerelli picked up after two rings. ‘Pronto.’

  ‘It’s Bruno. I have a dead guard here. Shot in his hut. The cops are going to be all over the joint in minutes.’

  Valsi listened closely to Mazerelli’s reply. Tried to judge from the tone of his voice how shocked he was. ‘Okay, I’ll get people round. Have you touched anything?’ The lawyer sounded unfazed.

  ‘Not the body, but the hut. Alfonso and some kid were here too. They’ve trampled the fuck out of the place, probably got their prints and hairs all over the stiff.’

  Mazerelli noted that Valsi hadn’t even had the decency to give the dead guard a name. The guy was a monster. Nobody mattered but himself. ‘Have you called the police, or had anyone ring them?’

  ‘No. Not yet. You want that I do that?’

  ‘No. I’ll do it. Put the phone down now and get in a taxi and come straight over to my apartment. Bring with you any clothes you were wearing when you went near the guard. Don’t speak to anyone else.’

  ‘Okay.’ Valsi clicked off his phone and smiled. He knew Mazerelli would call the cops and make sure there were no loose ends when they came asking questions. Cleaning up was part of his job. After that, he would call his father-in-law and the old man would presume the hit had come from a Cicerone triggerman. The last thing he would suspect was that in the dead of night Valsi had sat laughing and joking with one of his own guards and had then shot him dead. What a turn-on that kill had been. No wonder the little lap dancer could barely walk this morning.

  The game had begun. And like he’d told Mazerelli, he wouldn’t be playing by any rules.

  7.58 a.m.

  San Giorgio a Cremano, La Baia di Napoli

  After the call from Mancini, Sylvia Tomms had fallen into a heavy sleep and missed the alarm. Once more she found herself being woken by the bedside phone.

  ‘Pronto.’ She was alert within a second. It was Pietro Raimondi. Had he not talked so fast, she would have torn him off a strip for taking to his sick bed when so much was happening. Instead, she listened intently as he filled her in on the call he’d just received. There’d been a shooting at Bruno Valsi’s home. A security guard had been killed in his gate hut. His lawyer had phoned to report the murder.

  ‘Where’s Valsi now?’ she asked.

  ‘On his way to the station house, with his lawyer, Mazerelli.’

  ‘Cazzo! ’ Sylvia scrambled to the bathroom. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. Maybe half an hour, forty minutes. Depends on the traffic.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m only five minutes away. I’m told Major Pisano is en route as well.’

  She dropped the phone and ran the shower. Thank God Pietro was back. One thing annoyed her, though. How had he known about Valsi before she had? And how come he knew that Pisano was already on his way?

  8.15 a.m.

  Centro città, Napoli

  Thunder boomed and rolled. Forked lightning cracked the grey sky and darted across the darkened bay. It looked more like late evening than early morning as Mazerelli’s Lexus emerged from a maze of cobbled backstreets and parked at a nightclub the Family owned near the carabinieri’s central HQ.

  At the front desk, Mazerelli introduced himself in a very deliberate manner. ‘I am Ricardo Mazerelli, legal representative of Bruno Valsi. A short time ago I telephoned this station and reported a murder at Signor Valsi’s home in Camaldoli. It is now a little after eight fifteen a.m. and, as promised during my call, my client and I are here to assist you in any way we can.’

  ‘Who did you talk to?’ asked the male desk officer, sounding bored as he ran a chubby finger down a ledger for times and notes.

  ‘Lieutenant Pietro Raimondi.’

  The desk jockey scanned a list of extensions pinned to the top of his desk. ‘Raimondi is not stationed here.’

  ‘I know,’ snapped Mazerelli. ‘I called your switchboard and they put me through to him. He’ll be arriving here shortly.’

  ‘Then take a seat, over there.’

  ‘First, please make a note of the time of our arrival.’ Mazerelli turned his wrist and ostentatiously tapped his watch. ‘Eight eighteen.’

  The officer glared at the lawyer. ‘Your time of arrival is noted. Now, please take a seat.’

  ‘In a moment.’ Mazerelli leaned forward over the desk to check the time had been entered in the ledger. ‘Fine. Thank you.’ He touched Valsi on the shoulder and they settled in some black plastic chairs by a window. Valsi grabbed a magazine from a wobbly-legged table piled high with old reads.

  ‘Raimondi will be here shortly,’ said the lawyer. ‘With a little luck we’ll have all the formalities done within the hour. Then we’ll be out of here.’

  ‘No rush,’ said Valsi. ‘They can take as long as they like.’ And for once, he meant it.

  Right now, there was nowhere else he’d rather be than in the company of the carabinieri.

  8.20 a.m.

  Capo di Posillipo, La Baia di Napoli

  Gina Valsi’s hair was still a little wet. She and her son Enzo had been swimming in her father’s indoor pool when Don Fredo had been told of the guard’s murder. Not surprisingly, the Don had chosen not to say anything to his daughter as he breakfasted with her and his grandson in the conservatory.

  ‘You look tense, Papà,’ observed Gina. ‘Work is giving you problems already?’

  He laughed dismissively. ‘Work is always giving me problems.’ He poured coffee from a silver pot. ‘You want some more?’

  ‘No, grazie. I have to get Enzo ready for the child-minder.’ She ruffled the boy’s hair as he dabbed a jammy fingertip into a plate full of croissant crumbs. ‘Go scrub your teeth. And make sure you do them properly.’ She bared her gums and waggled a finger up and down as he escaped to the bathroom. Gina turned back to her father. The top of his head was now all that was visible above a wall of newspaper. ‘I’m going to have Leonardo bring my car round. Papà, do you want me to call your driver too?’

  Finelli didn’t hear his daughter; his mind was elsewhere, and not on the newspaper. Cicerone had some balls whacking his son-in-law’s guard. If they’d waited twenty-four hours then they’d have got their money in full. A generous amount as well. A pre-emptive strike like this was meant as a warning. Or a challenge. When Mazerelli was finished with Valsi, then he’d call him in. After that he’d ring Cicerone himself and see where they stood. He doubted Carmine the Dog wanted a war. But if he did, then he’d certainly give him one. A war to end all wars. Perhaps the killing was a way of hiking the settlement price up and showing his own clan that he wouldn’t be publicly disrespected. If that was the case, he could live with it.

  ‘Papà, do you want your car? You’re supposed to be at the doctor’s in thirty minutes.’

  The paper wall crumbled. ‘Merda! I’d forgotten.’ Finelli sprang to his feet. ‘Grazie. I’ll be there in a minute. God, the traffic will be awful now. I should have left ten minutes ago.’

  Gina smiled. Her father was growing increasingly forgetful. She and Enzo had lived with him for only a short time, but already it felt as if she were looking after two children. Yesterday he’d forgotten she was cooking dinner and he’d eaten before coming home. And now today he’d almost missed his monthly check-up and blood tests. His cholesterol had shot up over the past year and the doctor said he was now borderline for type 2 diabetes, hence the checks.

  Enzo reappeared, toothpaste all around his mouth. Gina couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Come here. At least I can see you scrubbed.’ She picked up a napkin from the table and he wriggled while she wiped away his white moustache. ‘My sweet baby, you’re growing up just fine, aren’t you?’ She straightened his jumper, tucked in his shirt and kissed his head.

  Then he hit her with it.

  Straight out of the blue.

  ‘Mamma, why doesn’t Papà live with us any more? I miss Papà being with us.’

  Gina caught her breath. What could she say to her beautiful baby-faced child? How could she exp
lain that when his father wasn’t playing soccer with him in the garden he was torturing people and raping his mother? ‘He’s busy, Enzo. You’ll see him again, soon.’

  Busy – what a great word to cover his father’s multitude of sins. The boy took it at face value and looked disappointed. For a second Gina felt sad that the next time Enzo would see his father would be in a box at a funeral parlour.

  But only for a second.

  8.30 a.m.

  Pompeii

  The Visitors’ Centre opened daily at eight thirty, but in winter the coach parties seldom arrived before ten. Franco had been sitting for hours with his back against a wall of the ancient amphitheatre. Cradled in his hands was his grandfather’s Glock. Simmering in his mind was the thought of how he’d use it.

  After Paolo had gone he’d roamed the ruins. Imagined he was the sole survivor of the eruption of Vesuvius. The strongest of them all. The ruler of all he surveyed. Now the darkness was gone and so was his dream.

  The grey light of another drizzly morning brought with it the harsh reality of the impending crowds. Those who would come to stop and stare. Well, today he’d give them something to gawp at.

  Franco got to his feet. His bones ached. Blood rushed to his head and pounded hard in his temples. He was short of breath and it took him several minutes of walking before he felt okay.

  He could hear voices from a long way off. Workers moving down Via dell’Abbondanza, the long cobbled road that stretches past the Stabian Baths. They were heading into the Forum and then the Basilica and Temple of Apollo.

  Soon they would be around him. Their eyes on him. Scorching his skin with scowls and prejudice.

  For a moment the December sun dodged a rain cloud and painted the cobbled streets and stone walls in shimmering gold.

  Franco hoped Paolo and his grandfather would forgive him. Not only for what he’d done – but, most of all, for what he was about to do.

  He put his hand in his pocket. One more shot of heroin. Two more magazines of bullets.