Michael Morley - Viper

The two henchmen, aware that they were merely older versions of the boys they'd just sent away, ordered more coffees and settled back to hear Bruno Valsi's plans.

Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii Franco took Rosa's sack to the pit.

It was long and deep and located in a field at the back of the campsite, more than a kilometre away from the last of the caravans. Grandpa Toni had been rich once and had had big plans for the land. Plans which, like most things in Grandpa Toni's life, had never materialized.

Only Franco came to the pit. Paolo would help him tour the shops and restaurants, collecting the trash in their old white van. But back at the site, only Franco would drive through the fields, dump the bags and spend hours burning the garbage. He loved nothing more than his fires. The flames soothed him. They broke chains in his mind and let his thoughts fly free.

Rosa's bag in hand, he slithered down the steep banking, his feet skating in wet mud that had been scorched black. Birds and rats scuttled and flapped, loath to leave the scraps they were feeding on. He put the sack down for a moment and dug beneath his anorak for Grandpa's pistol. The old man had several guns, including a hunting rifle, but the old Glock was perfect for the rats. A fat one spun towards the outside of the pit, running around the circumference like a furry grey ball on a clay roulette wheel. He watched it scarper anti-clockwise, took aim in front of it and squeezed. Boom! Perfetto! Franco felt a surge of adrenaline as blood and skin sprayed into the mud banking. But no sooner was the animal dead than it was forgotten. He'd not come to kill. Not this time.

The centre of the pit was where he normally built his fires and the far left-hand corner was where he hid his trophies. He sat there now, perched on a giant wooden bobbin that had once been wound with heavy-duty cable. He plucked at the black skin of the bag until it came away. Milk cartons, cereal packaging and tea bags tumbled out. He put them to one side. A cigarette with lipstick on the filter, a teenage fashion magazine, cotton wool with make-up on – he made a separate pile for those. Gradually, he built up a stack of anything he thought might have come from Rosa. Things touched by Rosa. Having items she'd owned made him feel as though he was part of her life. Even if it was only part of what she didn't want any more.

He unfolded a tissue. It was lightly perfumed and bore the pink outline of her lipstick. He lifted it so the dull daylight illuminated the place where her lips had been. Then he put his mouth against the imprint and closed his eyes.

Inhaled her perfume. Tasted her kiss. Slowly the tissue paper dissolved in his mouth. He ran his tongue over his teeth and swallowed. A trace of her inside him. Heavenly. Like Holy Communion. A micro-particle of the body and blood of Rosa Novello.

Franco took more than an hour caressing and sorting Rosa's garbage. He hid his trinkets in the bottom drawer of an old wooden bedside cabinet that he kept in a corner of the pit, beneath a makeshift shelter of boarding and clear plastic sheeting. His den. His sanctuary.

Finally, he gathered the rest of the garbage from the sack and put it in the centre of the pit. He balled up the pages of an old newspaper and set them on fire. As the flames rose and the smoke spiralled skywards he put his finger to his lips and thought once more of Rosa and how sweet she must taste.

Grand Hotel Parker's, Napoli Jack finished dinner in his hotel room and waited for Sylvia to collect him. He wanted to see the crime scene at night. See it in the same way he guessed the killer had visited it and left it.

They met in reception and he saw how, despite her naturally pretty face, the strain of the inquiry was starting to show.

She came straight to the point. 'The ME's notes are in. You were right. The burning was ante-mortem. Francesca was set on fire while she was alive.'

Jack soaked it up. 'It takes a special type of monster to kill someone like that.'

'Special? Is that what you call them?' Sylvia led the way to the garage at the back of the hotel. It was hewn out of a giant hillside, high above the city.

Jack saw her point. 'I should have said the worst kind of monster. Organized. Sadistic. Relentless.'

She knew what he meant. 'The kind that doesn't stop unless they're caught. The kind that's probably killed before.'

'That's exactly the kind.'

Sylvia lit a cigarette as they waited for the valet to find her car. 'You're not a smoker, I can tell. I'm afraid I'm an addict. I know it's bad. And the more people tell me to stop, the more I have to continue.'

'Says a lot about your personality.'

She smiled. 'All Neapolitans are like that.'

'How so?'

'Grazie mille,' she tipped the valet as they got into her Alfa. 'We don't like being told what to do.' She stubbed the cigarette out in the tray on the dashboard and sparked up the engine. 'Take seat belts, for example. Hardly anyone in Naples wears one. Even though it's illegal not to. When it became law, the best-selling fashion accessory was a white T-shirt with a fastened seat belt painted on it. When you wore it, it looked like you had your belt on, even when you hadn't. People who had been fastening seat belts for years stopped doing so when it became law.'

'Shouldn't you know better? Set a good example?' asked Jack, lightly.

'I do know better. And I'll never wear a seat belt again. Two carabinieri friends of mine were shot dead in their cars by the Camorra. They still had their belts on. The restriction probably stopped them even drawing their weapons.'

'I'm sorry to hear it.'

'One of them almost lived. The ambulance turned up really quickly – in fact, too quickly. The killer must have seen the paramedics set to work as they stretchered him away. After one block of lights the ambulance was ambushed. The assassin climbed into the back and finished the job.'

Jack noticed she'd jammed her army issue Beretta between her legs. Clearly she wouldn't be caught off-guard in an ambush. 'Creed mentioned the Camorra. You think they could be involved in all this?'

'Could be. They're like water. They're invisible, spread everywhere and hard to avoid.' The Alfa didn't so much join the traffic flow in front of the hotel as rocket into it. Horns blared and moped riders swerved, but Sylvia was unfazed.

Jack put a hand on the dashboard to brace himself. 'Man, I thought New York was dangerous, but it's Disneyland compared to here.'

Sylvia smiled. 'The secret of driving in Naples is not to care about what others are doing.' A moped zipped in front of their bumper. 'If you show any weakness or hesitation, then they will take advantage of you. Drive as though you are the only person on the road and you will be fine.'

From the city they took the A3 autostrada out towards Salerno. Jack continued to ask about the Camorra. 'If the mob are into everything, then how does that affect the way you investigate murders and missing persons?'

'It's a wall of silence,' explained Sylvia. 'If a Camorrista is involved then none of the clan will talk. Worse than that, if someone from the System is involved then you can bet no one in the city will talk either.'

After fifteen minutes of congestion-free traffic they began a steep spiralling climb. 'Not far from here, over at Sant'Anastasia, one of the biggest Camorra arms caches was discovered. They'd hidden everything from Uzis to AKs, enough to equip a small army. In fact several armies. The System imports weapons for use here in Campania and also to supply much of the rest of the world.'

'You have regular contact with your anti-mob squads?'

'Of course. And we'll reach out to them about this case – when the time is right. They're very busy right now and very difficult to deal with. We need to have more to go on before we knock on their door.' Sylvia spun the wheel expertly into sharp left- and right-hand bends that zigzagged towards the top of Vesuvius. 'During the day tourist coaches rule these roads. When they descend, everyone scatters so they don't get crushed by them.'