Michael Morley - Viper

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.

Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii Franco wondered whether anyone would come. He hung back in the bushes. Cradled his grandfather's Glock. Wait. Part of him wanted to run. Part wanted to be with Rosa. Dead Rosa. Naked Rosa.

It was cold and he was shivering. Rain fell noisily through the trees and bushes. Spiky hawthorn branches dug into his face and neck as he hid among them.

Naked Rosa. The pull was too strong.

He opened the car door, barely looking at Filippo's corpse. The harsh interior light made Rosa's flesh look bleached white. Or was it death? Did death take your colour so quickly?

Franco didn't notice her blood and brains sprayed all around the interior. His eyes focused only on her nakedness. Her vagina was shaved, like ones he'd seen on the websites he'd visited. Fascinating. Exciting. He reached over Filippo, careful not to get his blood on his clothes, and touched her thighs.

Cold.

Cold, but also smooth. And beautiful.

He leaned further into the car so he could run his hand between her legs.

Warm. Still warm.

The intimacy exhilarated him. He stood mesmerized, his hand glued between her thighs. Afraid to let go. Afraid to end the experience.

Reluctantly, he withdrew. Tried not to touch anything as he left. He knew the dangers of doing that.

Poor Rosa.

Poor dead Rosa.

He stopped at the door of the car and looked back inside. A thought struck him. A way of keeping her with him alive forever. Paolo was asleep in his bunk when Franco got to the van. He was still excited by what he'd just done. Rosa had changed everything. Things were going to be different. He just knew it. His body was filled with mutant genes and he could feel them now, moving around inside him, distorting his DNA, making him do things he shouldn't. 'Paolo,' he called lightly, squinting into the darkness.

Unless he was mistaken his eyesight was going too. His doctors had warned him that would happen. Cataracts, they'd said.

'Paolo!' he called again, this time in a pitch somewhere between normal and shouting. His cousin was out for the count. That was good. Franco didn't want him to wake. He just wanted to be really sure that he was asleep.

He knelt down by his own bed. Not so he could pray, but so he could go to heaven. Tucked into the springs of the mattress he found what he was looking for. He unwrapped an old cotton flannel. Inside was a small sachet of heroin, the bottom of an old Coke can and a syringe that he'd found in a waste bin at the hospital where he went for his check-ups. He looked at the slightly bent and dirty needle and smiled. He knew the risks that went with second-hand spikes, but hell, compared to all the other shit in his life, why should he care?

He used the spike to suck fifty units of water from a bottle he had. He squirted it in the can and fired up his lighter to dissolve the heroin. He paused and checked that Paolo was still sleeping. Better than that. He was now snoring. He stabbed the spike into one of the blue veins in his left forearm. As he squeezed in the heroin he realized that he'd also pumped in about a quarter of an inch – ten units – of air. Others might have been worried. Franco didn't give a fuck. He thumbed in the rest of the H. Rolled back on to the bed. Waited for it to kick in.

It did.

First a little dizziness. Then nausea. Finally a warm mellowness. A gentle calm. A soft summer breeze flowing through his body.

His beautiful young body. The way it should be.

The way Rosa would have liked it.

Santa Lucia, Napoli The early morning sun burned gold on the balconies of the rich and famous along the Santa Lucia seafront. In a fit of pique, Bernardo Sorrentino slammed his morning newspaper on to the glass breakfast table. The exclusive he'd given Il Giornale di Napoli hadn't even made the front page. The days when murder had been a forty-eight-point bold-font lead in Naples were long gone. Worse than that, the photograph they'd used on page sixteen was terrible. He was bending in undergrowth and looked like he had a double chin and a fat stomach. What was the point of a hundred sit-ups a day, if the media made a fool of you like this?

He paced uncomfortably by the apartment window and stared east across the bay. Dark rain clouds gathered in the distance like a flotilla of grey ships readying themselves for battle with the weak winter sun. There would be only one winner. He returned to his paper and read the story again. Six paragraphs, that was all he'd got. And he suspected that if Francesca Di Lauro hadn't been pregnant then he might not have got any at all. Merda! He poured himself orange juice while his ego feasted on the few words that praised him – The scientific expert had reconstructed skull fragments to make up Francesca's lower jaw and enable identification from dental records. Sorrentino's painstaking labours are making him a law enforcement legend.

Legend. He liked that bit. Okay, so these days murder was no longer big news, but Il Grande Leone was a legend and still warranted newsprint. He was starting to feel much better when his gold-plated cellphone rang – a ringtone of music that he'd personally composed. He looked at the caller display and grimaced. 'Buon giorno, Capitano. I have been trying to call you.'

On the other end, Sylvia Tomms erupted. Her language would have shamed a Neapolitan docker.

Sorrentino protested the best he could. 'Sylvia, it wasn't me! It was a leak. Truly, a dreadful leak.'

Sylvia's swearing continued to scorch the phone and Sorrentino had to wait for the abuse to die down before adding, 'My assistant Ruben was responsible for it. I have fired him. He's cleared out his desk and gone back to his precious Catalan friends in Barcelona. Treacherous snake! I am so angry and so embarrassed. I tried to call you as soon as I found out but I was told you were unavailable. And as you know, you refused to give me your private cellphone number when I asked for it.'