Viper

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.