Michael Morley - Viper

Ivetta and Donatello laughed.

The Capo grabbed the phone and hit an internal speed dial. 'Giorgio, it's Bruno. The girl on pole two, she has the face of a sainted angel. She looks like she was sent from heaven just for me to fuck. Tell her to stay behind when she's finished. And make sure I don't have any trouble getting what I want.' He dropped the phone back on its cradle. 'So, we move first. You both agree?'

'Absolutely. No question,' said Ivetta, 'but who first? Which one do you want us to tackle?'

'Good question. And I've been thinking about it. My father-in-law is planning to kill me. I'm certain of that. And I'm fairly sure that he's already told Salvatore to take care of it.'

'Sal the Snake?' checked Donatello, waggling his hand like a sidewinder.

'Si.'

'Pheeeew!' whistled Ivetta. 'That's some tough motherfucker -'

'Well, who the fuck do you think he would send?' interrupted Valsi. 'Mary Poppins?'

The three of them laughed, then Valsi added, 'But the Don will not order the hit until he is sure he has everyone's support. It is his style to want the guaglioni to know that the hit was necessary because of my dealings with the Cicerone crew. He'll want it to look like I had put the whole Family in danger.'

Ivetta and Donatello could see where the conversation was leading. 'So, we hit the Cicerone boys first,' said Ivetta. 'We hurt them bad, and then we kill Don Fredo.'

Valsi waved a headmasterly finger at them. 'Too fast. You're going too quickly. We wipe out the Cicerone leadership. Then, we pause a little. We let the Finelli diehards see our strength. If we are vicious enough, then the ambitious ones among them will weed out the weak.'

'Brilliant,' said Donatello. 'The young bucks will kill the old guard for us.'

Valsi winked at him. 'Now you're learning. What we need, though, is a plan to hit at the heart of the Cicerone. It may be bloody. How many men, good men, can you put on the streets?'

'If the price is right?' Ivetta held his hands open.

'Of course.'

'However many we need. One, two dozen – maybe more.'

'Wait,' said Valsi, a thin smile bisecting his handsome face. 'I have an idea that may require fewer men. In fact, only one man and one very beautiful woman.' He turned to the club monitors. 'One with the face of a sainted angel.'

Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna By nightfall, Jack, Sylvia and Pietro were consumed with the werewolf hunger that hits most murder squads at the end of a high-adrenaline shift. The antidote was a case of cold beer along with several boxes of locally made pizzas.

Sylvia shook a warm strand of dangling mozzarella from her fingers. 'We've let old man Castellani go home. He's no value to us here and he was worrying himself sick about his campsite business.'

'And worrying about his grandsons?' asked Jack.

'Especially Franco,' said Pietro, his mouth full. 'He didn't say much about Paolo, except that he's a good boy and we should treat him properly.'

'Then Franco's not a good boy? Is that his implication?' Jack took a wedge of garlic bread.

'Franco's probably a murdering little bastard,' added Pietro. 'But all his grandfather will say is that life has been unkind to him and we shouldn't misjudge him.'

'An understatement.' The garlic bread made Jack's stomach growl. 'Life has been wickedly cruel to young Franco. Has he got any form?'

Sylvia nodded and hurriedly tried to finish chewing. 'Violence. A suspended sentence about five years ago for a very bad beating he gave someone stupid enough to make fun of him.'

'How bad?'

'Put the guy in hospital.'

Jack wiped his fingers and sipped a beer. 'Nothing connected to arson, or involving fire?'

'Not that we can find. We're rerunning our checks and seeing if there are any psych reports as well.'

'And Paolo – anything on him?'

'Nothing.' Sylvia thought for a minute. 'I'm just trying to remember what Paolo said. He told us Franco wasn't there when he went to sleep, then when he woke he was crashed out in bed. There's heroin and a spike on the floor. The old man sees it, goes pazzo and then slaps him about.'

Jack sealed his fate with another garlic-loaded slice. 'You mean Paolo has no alibi, and we're ignoring his potential role in all this because the forensics are pointing the big finger at Franco?'

'Just a thought.'

'And a good one.'

Jack put the bread back. 'Franco and Paolo, I was just wondering how they compared to Bianchi and Buono.'

Pietro was lost. 'Scusi?'

'Ken Bianchi and Angelo Buono. They were both cousins, grew up together, hung out together, played games of rape and murder together.'

Sylvia took the bread Jack had put back. 'The Hillside Strangler case?'

'The same. California, late seventies. Ten-plus victims. Cops had it down as the work of one guy. The press dubbed the perp the Hillside Strangler. Anyway, turned out the killings were done by two cousins.'

'They even sound Italian,' noted Pietro.

'Half of America does,' joked Jack. 'And probably the good half.'

Sylvia took one final bite and dropped the bread. She scrunched her napkin into a ball and dumped it on the paper plate. 'My eyes are bigger than my belly. You think maybe Paolo and Franco might be the same? Like Bianchi and Buono? Maybe Paolo's as guilty as hell but is now trying to shift all the blame on to his cousin?'

'That's possible,' said Jack. 'These cousins are – what? Twenty-four, twenty-five?'

Pietro searched his memory. 'Both twenty-four. Franco is twenty-five in a couple of months.'

Jack took another slug of cold beer. 'Agewise they're on the edge of the profile that I'm thinking of. If these missing women are all connected, they stretch back eight years or so, which puts these cousins around sixteen. It's kind of tender for this sort of sadism, but not unheard of.'

Sylvia was following his drift. 'I get what you mean. The sexual component in this case puts the offenders north of the puberty line. But what about the element of control used? Surely the offender, even back in the days of his first clumsy kills, must be much older than sixteen?'

'Agreed,' said Jack, 'but two offenders working together can distort things. They cover for each other, make fewer mistakes. A combination of two young offenders can give the impression of one more mature single perpetrator.'

Glumness hung in the air as they all pictured the possibility of the two cousins working in concert, picking off the women together, maybe one providing a distraction, the other delivering a disabling blow from behind. 'To be truthful,' said Jack, 'I think we're at that stage where we can't rule anything out. It's worth keeping in mind, though, that Bianchi and Buono were not a one-off. The eighties threw up Dave Gore and Fred Waterfield. When the curtain came down they pinned six rape murders on Gore and two on Waterfield. Though some old-timers say they might have killed as many as fifty. And, in fact, the first real recorded case of serial murder was the Harpe case.'

Sylvia uncapped another bottle of Peroni. 'Harpe? We didn't do that at the academy. How long we going back?'

Jack played with his beer. 'Way, way back, to the eighteenth century – late 1700s, I think. Micajah and Wiley Harpe were wild kids, rode with outlaws and renegade Indians. Murdered some men and boys, but it's thought they killed about forty women between them. Maybe more. They kidnapped, raped and murdered their way across frontierland. Used to ride into farms, rustle livestock, rape the women and then burn down the buildings and leave them to die inside. The crimes bound them together.'

'Burned them to death?' asked Pietro.

'So the reports say. Fire has been an age-old method of covering tracks. And sociopaths who kill for fun and profit are not a modern-day phenomenon.'