Viper

50

Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna Luciano Creed had vanished.

Pietro barked into a walkie-talkie and marshalled police cars from the back of the barracks. With luck Creed wouldn't have got far.

'He'll take the autostrada,' Pietro motioned to Jack. 'There's a junction only a few kilometres from here, we must go now.'

Jack followed the tall lieutenant to an old Lancia parked across the road. The profiler's mind was more troubled about why Creed had turned up than whether they had a chance of catching him.

'Motherfucking bastard!' Raimondi swore softly as he sped away from the barracks with a squeal of car tyres.

Jack had guessed that the press conference would provoke a reaction. Maybe a letter from the killer. Maybe a tip-off from someone who'd been touched by Francesca's parents and thought they knew the killer. But he hadn't bargained on this.

The old car lurched round bends and accelerated down the autostrada slip road. Pietro opened it up and the exhaust rattled.

'There! There!' shouted Jack as they drew level with a Land Rover Freelander.

Passing sodium lights played on and off the wind-shields as the two cars drove in parallel at approaching 140kph.

Luciano Creed looked across and spotted Jack King peering back at him. He didn't seem frightened. He smiled a jagged yellow-toothed smile, lifted his right hand off the wheel and used his thumb and small finger to illustrate a phone.

'What's he doing?' asked Pietro, wondering whether the old Lancia was strong enough to force the Freelander to stop, or whether it would just get chewed up under the 4x4's big wheels.

'I'm not sure,' said Jack. 'He's making fun of us, I think.'

Suddenly the Freelander veered sharp right. It crossed on to the hard shoulder and careered down the banking.

'Fuck!' shouted Pietro. 'What happened? Has he crashed?'

Jack craned his neck and squinted out of the rear window while the Lancia squealed to a stop. 'I can't see anything.' His eyes scanned the darkness for any sign of flames or lights.

Nothing.

'Christ, where's he gone?' Pietro hit reverse and backed up. 'There was no turn-off there. You can't get off the autostrada for another five kilometres.'

Creed was nowhere to be seen.

They'd been within touching distance of him. Close enough for Jack to have almost pulled open the car door and slapped cuffs on him. Then the weird little punk had just disappeared.

They looped on and off the autostrada. Blue police lights criss-crossed bridges and slip roads above and below them as they searched high and low. Intense radio chatter filled the airwaves, but no one had news of Creed's whereabouts. After forty-five minutes Jack and Pietro headed back to the barracks.

Sylvia was in her office. A face like thunder. 'Well?'

Pietro threw his hands wide. 'Andato.' Gone.

Sylvia slapped her desk. 'He made us look like fools. Like stupid, damn idiots. I wish now we'd never held that press conference.'

'Hindsight is a wonderful thing,' said Jack, checking his cellphone, more out of the need for a distraction than any sense of urgency.

'Affanculo! ' swore Pietro. 'Now the motherfucker is gone and we'll never hear from him again.'

'I wouldn't bet on that.' Jack looked down at the phone in his hand. 'Remember that gesture he made as we passed him? Well, it seems the manipulative little creep was planning to contact us again.' He spun the phone round so they could see the display. 'I've just got a text message from Creed.'

Pietro and Sylvia squinted at it.