Viper

37

Grand Hotel Parker's, Napoli Jack was tired but didn't go to bed after Sylvia had dropped him at the hotel. It was still too early, and anyway his jet-lagged mind was still buzzing like a wasp in a jam jar. Instead, he persuaded a receptionist to give him some privacy and unlimited access to their latest dual-processor computer. As he fired it up, he remembered an old Quantico lesson: 'How plus why equals who.'

He opened a search engine and a blank Word document. Then he opened his own stream of consciousness. A complete download of his thoughts. * How? – burning, chopping, moving, burying. * Why? – sex, sadism, control, power, inadequacy. * Who? – stranger, lover, family, friend. Slowly but surely he covered all the key factors – the type of weapon used, the killing scene, disposal site, offender's risks, likely methods of controlling the victims. He thought long and hard about the personality of the killer, the geography of the area, whether the crime indicated any kind of compulsive or impulsive behaviour – the fire was certainly indicative of the former. He considered the ritualistic aspects. Wondered whether the killer would have taken trophies, and what kind. But he dwelled the longest on the burning. The burning was linked to gratification and that made it the killer's behavioural signature.

The pages soon filled up. So did his mind. To the point of overload.

Jack stopped and sipped at some coffee that he'd ordered ages ago and had ignored when it eventually arrived. Now it was cold, but he drank it anyway.

He Googled Vesuvius. Much of it he knew. Some of it he didn't. * Known – major eruption in 79@C, still live and continuous eruptions this century. Last blew in 1944. Officially rated as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world. * Unknown – three million people live within close proximity of it. Thought by the Greeks and Romans to be sacred to Hercules, the son of Zeus, and named in his honour. He finished the last of the coffee and Googled Hercules. The guy came out as pure alpha male. Warrior, sex god, inspiration to warlords like Mark Antony. That he knew too. He read on. Death and sex ran throughout the storyline. Ran through the whole region. He spent some moments looking at a painting – Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra. He vaguely remembered the story. A snake with dozens of heads, and every time one was chopped off another one grew. From what he'd heard, it sounded like the Camorra. From what he knew, it also reminded him of the worst of the serial killers he'd hunted – always a fresh body, always a new horror.

Jack did another search.

Hercules triumphed over his enemy by the use of fire.

He burned the hydra to death. Then he buried it beneath rocks.

Burning and burial so close to a site held sacred to Hercules. Coincidence or connection? Rational or rubbish? He was almost too tired to tell.

Was someone killing their own demons by burning and burying people? Did the killer have a specific enemy that he'd declared a one-man war on?

Jack stretched and yawned. His eyes stung from jet lag and his body cried for sleep. But not yet. There were more questions to answer.

Did the insignificant and inadequate Creed see himself as some kind of Hercules? Or was Jack making connections that simply didn't exist? Sometimes people don't kill for deep psychological reasons; they do it just because they like it. Because it turns them on.

Tiredness kicked in and his thoughts wandered. Images of home. Nancy, Zack and Casa Strada in the rolling Tuscan countryside. Sunshine and laughter. Long hot days in the Val d'Orcia. Cool nights in the hotel gardens perfumed by lavender and roses. And then he thought of Nancy. Making slow love to her in the morning. Lying close together afterwards, her head on his chest. Her breathing making him sleepy.

Jack's eyelids grew heavy. The warm room and the toll of the day made him drowsy. Within seconds he was asleep at the computer. But there was no sweetness in his dreams. No room – or time – to think about the good things in life. Thoughts of serial murder seeped from his subconscious. Bubbled up like toxic waste from the barrels the Camorra dumped on the ocean's floor.

Relentless killings. Horrendous burnings. A cold-blooded killer on the loose and poised to strike again. It was a wonder he could sleep at all.

Jack's mind continued the struggle to make sense of it all. To understand the links between the murders, the legends of Hercules, the local crime gangs and the strange young man who'd crossed continents to get him involved in all this.

Deep down – way down among all that waste and poison – was the answer. And he knew he'd find it. Whatever it took. Whatever it cost him.