Viper

by Unknown

  104

  Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna

  The wall clock in the Interview Room made a deep bass clunk every time the minute hand moved on. It drummed several times before Gina Valsi gave up the name that everyone was waiting for.

  ‘Salvatore Giacomo.’

  There. She’d said it. It was over.

  Somehow she felt better. Maybe there was a way out after all. ‘He works for my father.’ Gina bit her lip and corrected herself. ‘Worked for my father.’

  ‘Tell me how.’ Jack’s voice was soft and sympathetic. ‘What did you say to him?’

  Gina looked left and right across the room, like she was about to cross a road. Her eyes seemed to be searching for some unseen danger that she sensed. ‘Like you said, Bruno was having affairs with these women.’ She gestured to them all but then pushed at the edge of Francesca’s photograph, flicked it away as though it was contaminated. ‘Bruno got the bitch pregnant.’ Her eyes flared. ‘And he’d done this so soon after I’d had our baby. Can you believe that?’ She pinched the end of her nose with her thumb and forefinger and sniffed. ‘He taunted me with it. Said it was good to have children everywhere. Lots of sons with lots of lovers, that’s what he said.’

  ‘And you turned to Salvatore?’

  Gina nodded. ‘He’s always been like an uncle to me. No kids himself. I called him Uncle Sal, worshipped him when I was a child, and he knew it.’ She sniffed again and looked embarrassed. ‘You got a tissue?’

  Mancini went to the back of the room and brought a box of Kleenex. She pulled one and took a minute sorting herself out. ‘I told Sal about her. Told him I couldn’t go to my father because it would cause trouble with Bruno. He asked me what I wanted him to do. Make her go away, I said. Just make the puttana go away.’

  Jack placed a hand on Kristen’s photograph. ‘And you did the same with this girl?’

  Gina nodded, then realized the full implication of her tiny body movement. ‘But I didn’t know how. I thought he’d just got her to leave Naples. Leave my husband alone and leave the city. That’s what I thought Sal had made them all do.’

  Jack wasn’t buying it. He was sure Gina hadn’t thought Sal had only carried the women’s bags to the train station.

  ‘Scusi,’ said Mancini, pointing to the door. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’ He slipped outside and both Jack and Gina knew why. The information on Sal would be relayed to Sylvia and the teams hunting him.

  ‘You had no idea any of these women had been killed?’ asked Jack as the door closed.

  Gina shook her head. ‘No, none at all.’ She looked as guilty as hell, but this wasn’t the moment to push her. That time would come. He was also sure she’d had no say in how the women had been killed. The use of fire had been Sal’s own invention. Purification, no doubt. In his sick mind he was probably using fire to cleanse them from the sin of adultery. And it undoubtedly turned him on as well. In the minds of sadists, morality and sexuality often got mixed up in the most monstrous of ways.

  ‘I want to see my son,’ said Gina. ‘You have no right to keep me away from my child.’

  Jack’s calmness almost cracked. ‘Hey, take a look down at the pictures of Francesca, Kristen and those other dead women in front of you, then tell me again about your rights.’ He paused to let the sharpness cut through her indignation. ‘Right, Gina, here’s how we’re going to play it. I’m going to get an Italian officer in here. You’re going to give full verbal and written statements. First about Francesca, and then Kristen. Then about each and every one of these other women. And then – and only then – do we even discuss you getting to see Enzo.’ He let the ultimatum sink in. ‘Your boy’s been on his own for quite a while now, Gina. You ready to get this done?’

  She nodded. She was ready. Ready as she would ever be.

  Sal was on a roll. Donatello, Ivetta and Valsi all dead. Shame about Mazerelli; he’d had him down as a good guy. Even bigger shame the Don hadn’t let him clean house earlier. He’d have been alive if he had.

  What now?

  He asked himself the question as he threw the Fiat through a labyrinth of backstreets. The cop car was still caught up in the gridlock. But it wasn’t too far away.

  Sal was running but he wasn’t sure where to. The Don was dead. The other Capi Zona were probably dead. And he was sure that the Cicerone clan had bodies on the street as well. He dialled Gina’s number. That was dead too. There were no obvious allies, no longer any Camorra safe houses that he could trust to hide him.

  He headed north towards Palazzo Reale, then east along the Tangenziale di Napoli towards Poggioreale. He cut off the A56 and wove back and forth through the backstreets, buying time, trying to think.

  He lost his concentration round a corner off the Via della Stadera. The rear end drifted and slammed into a mountain of rubbish. Sacks and bottles crashed on to the trunk. He held it in third and threw a tight right on to the Autostrada del Sole, forcing a young couple on a scooter to bang into a barrier. In short, he was barely in control.

  He’d outrun the carabinieri patrol car but he knew they’d be tracking the Fiat by now, relaying information to central control, young women peering into computer monitors in the dark, passing route info to other squad cars.

  Sal hammered the horn as the Fiat redlined and screamed its guts out. Traffic moved over. He was doing close to 200kph as he flew past the signs for Ponticelli.

  The fog that had haunted Naples for most of the day soon thickened again in the darkening evening sky. Off in the distance he thought he could hear horns and sirens, perhaps even the thud and thwack of helicopter blades. If the police had a chopper up it wouldn’t last long. For once the bad weather would be a blessing. Minutes later the if was over. Nightsun searchlights blazed from a carabinieri helicopter. A pool of wobbling white light flooded black hillsides and roadsides.

  They’d have thermal cameras too.

  The bird in the sky was either the Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale, or maybe even the heavyweight Gruppo Intervento Speciale. It didn’t matter which. Both were probably eight-man teams. Trained and eager to shoot to kill. Well, so was he.

  And he was willing to bet he’d killed a lot more than any of them had.

  105

  Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna

  Six-year-old Enzo Valsi ran down the grey carabinieri corridor and clung like a rugby player to his mother’s legs. Clara Sofri, the social worker who’d been caring for him, looked disinterested at the emotional mother-and-child reunion. She’d seen it all before. Dozens of times. Young woman comes off the rails, commits a serious crime and her family life is suddenly shattered. The kid will be better off in care.

  Gina cried as she held her son. Hugged and squeezed him tighter than she’d ever done.

  ‘Ti voglio bene, tesoro – Mamma really loves you.’ She kissed his face and his head. His skin soft against hers. It smelled warm. Tender. She’d miss it. Miss it so much, it would almost kill her.

  Gina had been as careful as she could with her statement about Francesca and Kristen, but she knew there was enough there for them to hold her and charge her. Then they’d come back and pick her story to pieces. After that they’d make her talk about the other bitches that Bruno had fucked and taunted her with.

  One question haunted her. Spooked her as much as it did most of the cops on the case. Why hadn’t she killed Valsi? He was at the root of the problem. He was the guy causing all the humiliation and pain. So, why hadn’t she killed him, or had him killed?

  The answer was a complex one.

  She’d loved him. She hated him, but she loved him too. Really, really loved him. And all she’d ever wanted was to be his wife and raise his children.

  A cell-block guard pulled at her shoulder. ‘Signora, we must go now.’

  Her world fell apart. She had to be dragged away. Enzo tried to struggle out of the grip of the social worker. Gina felt her heart break. Until her dying day she knew she’d never forg
et the look in her child’s eyes as she left him in that corridor.

  ROS Quartiere Generale

  (Anti-Camorra Unit), Napoli

  Jack stood in the shaded background of the carabinieri central control room as Lorenzo Pisano’s eyes flicked from monitor to monitor as he directed the helicopter unit and regular ground patrols.

  ‘The GIS unit will get him,’ said Sylvia. ‘They’re the best in the country. There’s no escape.’

  Jack’s attention was glued to the live pictures of the blue Fiat, picked out by a white spotlight from the helicopter. ‘They’re a front-line anti-terrorist command unit as well, aren’t they?’

  ‘Sì,’ said Sylvia, watching the same feed. ‘They’re based in Tuscany but Lorenzo pulled them into a local barracks as soon as he heard of the hit on Finelli. He’d have used the local ROS unit but everyone’s already deployed. So today we get the big boys.’

  They listened while Lorenzo re-angled the metal coiled flex of a desk mic and ordered two pursuit cars to get in front of the Fiat.

  ‘Rolling block?’ asked Jack.

  ‘I think so,’ said Sylvia. ‘If we can get two, maybe three cars in front of the Fiat, that will slow him down. Then we can feed another couple behind and alongside and force him to a stop.’

  ‘Giacomo will shoot his way out,’ said Jack. ‘I’d hate to be in the front cars.’

  ‘They’re special ops vehicles. Bulletproofed. Not like the tin cans the rest of us drive.’

  Lorenzo had headphones on. He slipped off the left cup and turned to face Sylvia and Jack. ‘Word from the street teams, Valsi and Mazerelli are both confirmed dead. Crime Unit medic says it looks like JHP slugs in both bodies.’

  Autostrada del Sole

  Whatever happened, surrender was not an option. Salvatore Giacomo was not going to lie down and whimper like a dog. He glanced left and right in the wing mirrors. Through the fog he could see the full beams of the approaching carabinieri cars.

  They would try to get past him. Try to block him in. And he knew he couldn’t stop them all.

  He glanced ahead and spotted an upcoming slip road, an exit just west of Trecasse.

  The lights behind him glowed brighter. Engines roared closer.

  He was going too fast to make it.

  But he did.

  The Fiat shed 20,000 kilometres’ worth of rubber as he veered out of the grey haze of fog and headlight glare and off the autostrada.

  He couldn’t tell whether any of the pursuit cars had made it after him. He guessed not.

  The Fiat clipped a barrier on the winding exit road. Spun sideways off the autostrada. Squealed to a stalled halt in an unlit street.

  Sal started her up, found second gear and burned his way east, still parallel to the E45.

  The helicopter’s Nightsun was struggling to find him. It glowed in the fuzzy sky like a cobwebbed old light bulb in a vast dark cellar.

  He pulled a left into Via Alessandro Manzoni. In his rear-view he could see two white dots in the far distance.

  They were still on him.

  Still.

  But not close enough.

  Oncoming headlights reflected in the road spray. It was raining now as well as foggy. He glanced up, squinted out of the driver’s side window. The white belly of the GIS chopper was illuminated for a second, then vanished. They were breathing down his neck.

  Sal pulled a hard right, then an even tighter left.

  He was on Via Canarde San Pietro, heading north towards the darkness of the Mount Vesuvius National Park.

  Soon they would be on his ground.

  His sacred ground.

  His killing ground.

  106

  ROS Quartiere Generale

  (Anti-Camorra Unit), Napoli

  Lorenzo Pisano drove his fist into the surface of the control-room desk, ‘Porco Dio! ’ The mild-mannered Major was in full rage. ‘Porca miseria! Porca puttana! Porca Madonna! ’

  He turned and glared at Jack and Sylvia, as though it were their fault that the pursuit team had just found the Fiat abandoned after forking right at the end of Via Marsiglia.

  Salvatore Giacomo was gone.

  ‘The fog is so damn bad out there. I’m going to have to bring the chopper down. Fuck it!’ He hit the desk again. ‘The ground teams can barely see their own hands, let alone find this bastard.’

  Lorenzo wheeled away from them and barked orders into desk mics. Slowly his voice settled down and he found his normal level of calmness. A bank of control-room monitors showed a live feed from the helicopter as it landed close to San Sebastiano. Traffic cameras were almost blacked out, picking up only occasional bursts of headlights. Foggy pictures swirled in from the armoured pursuit cars, now parked and awaiting instructions.

  On a lower screen a real-time satellite map showed in vivid colours the whole area in which the chase had taken place. And the dead end where Sal had vanished. The dark-green vastness of the Mount Vesuvius National Park dominated the north of the picture. The orange ribbon of the A3/E45 ran west to east. The pale blue of the endless Bay of Naples sagged across the south.

  Sylvia pointed to the map. ‘There’s a railway stop just there. Giacomo could be on a train by now – going in either direction.’

  Lorenzo threw up his hands. ‘Or on a motorway – or down any of a dozen other minor roads. Or who-knows-fucking-where. We’ve lost him!’ The major dropped his head between his hands. Cover of fog, cover of darkness, cover of the Camorra – it was as though every element of evil had conspired against him.

  Jack moved towards the monitors. ‘He’ll head north-east.’

  ‘What?’ Lorenzo looked up. ‘Why? Why do you say that? North-east will run him round Vesuvius and out towards Ottaviano.’

  ‘This guy is going where he feels comfortable. Believe me, you bury bodies somewhere for five or ten years you get pretty comfortable around that area.’

  Lorenzo was unsure. He knew he had only one more throw of the dice before Sal was really gone. Not just gone for now. Gone forever. He scratched his head. He could muster barely a hundred men, maybe ten to fifteen sets of cars from five different barracks. Time was ticking away. ‘Why wouldn’t he double back, do as Sylvia says, and catch the train? He could be up in Rome in a couple of hours.’ Another thought hit Lorenzo. ‘Worse still, if he rides the tracks fully east he could be in Sicily by the morning.’

  ‘It’s your call,’ said Jack. ‘But believe me, our boy is right here.’ He ran his finger along the Parco Nazionale del Vesuvio. ‘Get me out there and we’ve still got a good chance of finding him.’

  The Nightsun was gone.

  Salvatore Giacomo had watched it drop to earth like a dying firefly.

  He guessed how much distance he had on his pursuers. A kilometre. Maybe two or three at the most. Better than that, though, they wouldn’t have a clue in which direction he was heading. Three kilometres in one direction meant their search circle had to be six in diameter. He couldn’t remember the exact formula for pi, but he knew that it meant the cops would have to set a dragnet perimeter more than eighteen kilometres long. And they’d have to do it lightning fast. Not a chance. Not at this time of night. Not in this weather. And with every further kilometre he gained, then it became less and less likely.

  Without the dull thwack-thwack of the helicopter blades he could hear himself panting as he ran through the foothills of the parkland. The darkness of the hills swallowed him. He ran hard. Ran until he was breathless. Then he ran some more.

  Finally he stopped. Not because he wanted to, but because he had to. His lungs were on fire. His heart rate was more than three times its resting beat. He had pains in his chest.

  Twigs and branches cracked beneath his feet as he ground to a halt. One minute. One minute’s rest, then he’d run again.

  As his breathing slowed he noticed that his legs, arms and face had been ripped by brambles and branches. In the morning, trackers would be able to see traces. They’d pick him up easy. But not now. Ri
ght now they’d find nothing.

  His minute was up.

  He ran again.

  Lorenzo rolled the dice and took his chance on Jack.

  To be sure, though, he spread his bets. He sent search teams to the central train and metro station in Naples. He mobilized all the support he could from local carabinieri barracks. And he called in favours from the polizia, both state and municipal.

  Four GIS members – the ones from the helicopter – continued tracking Sal from where he’d abandoned the Fiat. They fanned out in the thickening fog. Helmet and torch lights flickered on the sodden hillsides. Radio crackle broke the humid silence as they struggled to establish search patterns in the dense darkness.

  Four more GIS members headed east with Jack and Sylvia. Two drove in the car with them, two rode on their own.

  Neither of the GIS men had a name. Neither spoke unless spoken to. They’d been briefed to do whatever Jack and Sylvia wanted and beyond that they retained their normal high levels of security. Everyone had live radio links back to Lorenzo who still held ultimate operational command.

  The faces of the GIS men were covered by full balaclavas and Jack used their eye colours to name them Blue and Brown. Blue was driving; he was taller and older, his baby blues sat on creases and bags that put him in his late forties. Brown squashed in the back with Jack and helped him into a GIS combat suit, complete with the unit insignia of an open parachute and vertical sword.

  ‘Serial killers of this guy’s calibre have approach and escape routes from their burial scenes,’ explained Jack, as Blue hurtled them at a frighteningly high speed through the fog. ‘And I mean routes, not route.’

  Sylvia shut her eyes as the passenger-side mirror slapped that of a passing car. ‘So this is all still a game of chance?’ She clutched a grab handle as the Alfa zigzagged into the outer lane of the autostrada. Its siren wailed again and its blue roof lights flashed incessantly.