Michael Morley - Viper

'Explain.'

Paolo sweated some more. Finally he gave up what he was holding back, 'I've seen him with women's underwear before.'

Pietro read his face – it was full of secrets. 'What else, Paolo? You're not telling me everything. What else about Franco?'

Paolo sucked in air. All the pressure in the world seemed to be on him. 'Look, he's my best friend. Franco and I are like brothers. I'm not saying anything else.'

'As you like. But then you both end up in jail. We will find him, Paolo. It's only a matter of time. You know that, don't you?'

Paolo looked away. Stared at the wall. Stared at his hands on the table. Looked anywhere in the room except into the face of the cop who looked like he wanted to tear his head off.

'Paolo, look at me. Pay attention. This is for your own good.'

He turned his head slowly towards the big policeman. Did his best to stare him down.

'From what I know, your cousin's not well. He's sick and he's in trouble. Unless you tell me what you're holding back, things are only going to get worse for him – and for you.'

Paolo held his silence. Looked into the dark-brown eyes that were boring into him.

'Paolo!' Pietro slammed his hand on the desk again. 'You want us to make a mistake? To chase after him and shoot him down in an alleyway? You want to risk all that?'

Paolo swallowed. Looked around. Fought the doubt in his mind. 'He's got a gun. My grandfather lets him use one of his guns to kill rats on the site. I looked yesterday, and it's missing.'

Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna Twenty minutes after Paolo's interview, the photograph of Franco that his grandfather kept in his wallet had been copied and wired to every carabinieri patrol in Naples.

Sylvia and Pietro sat with Jack and compared interview notes. Soon, life at the Castellani campsite became clearer. The two grandsons collected garbage and burned it in the pit. It was Franco's job to do the incineration, a job he guarded closely, one he liked so much he wouldn't let anyone else do it. Paolo merely helped drive the van and load up. Old man Castellani wasn't capable of even helping with the heavy garbage sacks, so they all agreed that he could safely be ruled out as a murder suspect. When it came to the night of the murders, Paolo had said he'd been asleep in his bunk – no real alibi. Nevertheless, it seemed to tally with his grandfather's version of events. What's more, none of the team felt Paolo alone had the potential to be a killer. He was too passive, too nervous. And then came the more obvious pointers. Franco was missing. What looked like Rosa's panties had been found beneath what was now established as his pillow. Other items of underwear and female 'trophies' had been discovered in the pit where only he went. On top of all that, his grandfather had admitted finding Franco using heroin. Finally, Paolo had confessed that his grandfather's old Glock was missing.

Pietro was convinced Franco was their man. Sylvia and Jack were more cautious. They could both see the clear links connecting Franco to the triple murders at the site, but struggled to see any connection between those three murders and the killing of Francesca Di Lauro. And what really troubled Jack was that he was sure the triple murders were linked to the Di Lauro case. He was certain because he couldn't believe that two separate killers would both choose to use fire as a means to murder a victim. Such an MO was highly uncommon. It was impossible to think that two such killers would spring up at the same time in the same area.

As Sylvia and Pietro went in for a team briefing, Jack sat alone and tried to make sense of it all. If what they were beginning to think was right, then Luciano Creed was entirely innocent. He could live with that. The guy was creepy as hell, but maybe that's all he was – creepy as hell. Whoever said the world of psychological profiling didn't have its fair share of sex-obsessed perverts?

So, what about Franco Castellani?

News was now in from search teams that shoes recovered from Franco's caravan looked as though they matched prints at the murder scene. Analysis of soil samples from clothing was already underway to further test the link. For Jack it was another so what? Given that Franco regularly went to the pit, they were bound to be able to forensically place him there. It was all a hell of a puzzle.

Jack looked down at the photograph of Franco. The kid's face was a mess. Beaked nose, horribly wrinkled skin. He looked like a shrivelled sparrow. Mother Nature sure had fucked up. Sylvia had said he was suffering from Werner Syndrome. Jack knew little of it. He hit Google on the office computer in front of him and soon got lost in a mass of medical extracts. The snippets he pulled were disturbing. It was an awful disease. It kicked in around puberty and aggressively got worse until you died at an all too young age. He noted the facts: * Cause – mutations of the WRN gene. Passed on by parents, each of them showing no symptoms but both having copies of the defective gene. * Frequency – higher incidents in Japan than USA and Europe. Medical estimates vary from a frequency of 1 in a million to as high as 1 in 200,000. * Life expectancy – death usually occurs between 30 and 50 through atherosclerosis or malignant tumours. Poor bastard.

Life could be awfully cruel and unfair.

The facts prompted Jack to think of a whole new batch of questions.

Had the disease stopped him having normal sexual relationships?

For sure it had.

Would it screw you up to the extent that you might torture women who are repulsed by you and reject you?

It certainly might.

Could rejection by a mother and father at an early age, and a hard underprivileged upbringing, worsen your feelings of alienation and unfairness?

Absolutely.

Jack felt sad and worried. The psychological motivations were all there. Had Franco Castellani been born normal, had he been blessed with healthy cells, then his whole life could have been amazingly different. But this kid? This kid had been damned from birth. Scrub that – it's even worse. He'd been damned before he'd even been born.

Bar Luca, Napoli Bar Luca had recently become Bruno Valsi's home from home. In the past few years the Camorra had steadily increased its stake in the business – 10, 25, 40 per cent – and it hadn't taken Bruno long to push it to 51. The two young owners, Giorgio and Marco, were smart enough to realize that 49 per cent of one of the city's hottest night spots was better than a shallow grave somewhere.

Valsi sat in their office, feet up on their desk, watching a bank of surveillance monitors that followed the action in the bar and pole-dancing areas. Sitting opposite him were his new trusted lieutenants, Romano Ivetta and Alberto Donatello. There was no longer any point hiding them.

Romano couldn't ever have been named anything other than Romano. His long broken nose, strong dark eyes and gladiatorial size made him look like he'd come straight from Hollywood casting. Donatello was totally different. Small and wiry with a shaven head, permanent five o'clock shadow and hollow cheekbones, he resembled an undernourished prisoner of war.

'The way I see it,' said Valsi, his eyes still watching the dancers on the screens, 'we face aggression on two fronts – the Cicerone and my own Family. The big question is…' he cued a finger at Donatello, 'do we wait for them to come for us? Or do we take them by surprise?'

'We take them by surprise,' answered the little man.

'Correct.' Valsi took his feet off the desk and peered at the monitor. One girl was upside down now. The pole gripped by one serpent-like leg curled around the shiny steel, the other spread out like the blade of opened scissors. 'Is it me, or is that the most fuckable woman in all of Italy?'