Michael Morley - Viper

Jack cut him off again. 'What were you doing on the VA website?'

'You mean the Virtual Academy?'

'Aha.'

'Learning. That's what it's for, isn't it? I was being tutored. Check my grades. Check the hours I logged in. I bet there are not many global students who put in as much time as I did and got scores as good as mine. You and me, Jack, we can be a team.'

Jack had already checked. Creed had made the top ten per cent of students, even though he'd had no right to be there in the first place.

'You shouldn't have been on the site, Luciano,' said Sylvia. 'You told them you were employed full-time by us as a law enforcement officer. You faked references and you routed material through our servers so it would look authentic.'

'So, arrest me for it.'

Sylvia was tempted. Instead, she closed the interview. She and Jack took a break outside while coffee was sent in for Creed. They stood together in the corridor and Sylvia searched for her cigarettes.

'What a creep. I'm really itching to charge him, but what good would it do?'

'Paperwork – and bad publicity. It would create lots of both.'

'Exactly.' She shook the last cigarette out of her packet.

'So, you think he's of any value to your inquiry team?'

'Only dead. I can't, Jack. I know he knows the cases, but I just can't stomach the idea of him being anywhere near me.'

'Then you'll have to let him go.'

'I know.' She lit up and inhaled deeply.

Jack waved away the smoke. 'And warn him.'

'Sorry. I'm going to kick this damned habit when all this is over. To stay away, you mean?'

'Absolutely. This guy crossed a continent to get me involved in this case, and now that I am, he wants to ride shotgun and share the glory. That's what this is all about. He's inadequate and insignificant. Being seen as a champion has made him feel important. He's not going to give that up without a fight.'

Sylvia thought about it as she finished the cigarette and walked back to the room. 'I just want him out of here, Jack. I couldn't integrate him into our inquiry team, you know that. Right now I just want that stinking sonofabitch off my suspect list and out of my interview room.'

Minutes later it was done. Luciano Creed told them they were making a big mistake. And he'd prove it to them. He'd humiliated them once when they'd ignored him, and he was determined to humiliate them again.

He stomped across the courtyard of the police headquarters out into the narrow streets of the small town of Castello di Cisterna. That stupid female Capitano had looked at him like he was dirt and then had virtually thrown him out, rather than accept his offer of help. Crazy bitch. Like she knew what she was doing.

It was no wonder they couldn't solve this case. Fucking amateurs. They couldn't catch a cold, let alone a killer. And King, well, what a disappointment he was turning out to be. Emasculated and impotent. He just went along with whatever that dumb cow of a Capitano wanted. Maybe he was fucking her? Yeah, that would be it. That was the only decent explanation why someone with his kind of pedigree could have lost his senses. Call himself a profiler? A joke. That's what he should call himself. A big fucking joke.

Creed kicked a stone as hard as he could and turned down a rough back street that led towards the town centre. He was without transport. It was late and he was starving hungry. The slops they'd offered him in there hadn't been fit to fatten pigs. He would find an all-night bar in town and eat. First thing in the morning he'd call his contact at the newspaper and then they'd set to work.

With or without carabinieri permission he was going to be involved in this inquiry. They'd been foolish – damned foolish – to choose without.

Centro citta, Napoli Romano Ivetta and Alberto Donatello had been drinking all night. They started at Bar Luca and, after Valsi disappeared with some unfortunate woman, they spent an hour at a casino before ending up in a two-bit club not far from the prison they'd recently called home.

'You sure we're doing the right thing. Absolutely sure?' asked Donatello, easily the more drunk of the two of them.

'Second thoughts, Alberto?' Ivetta picked peanuts from a bowl on the small high table they were at. He didn't want them but took them anyway. That was his nature.

'I don't think so. But maybe last-minute nerves.' Donatello clinked his bottle against his friend's. 'Guess it's natural?'

'It's natural,' Ivetta reassured him.

The booze helped fog Donatello's worries. Small of stature and poor of pocket he'd had to use his fists, and sometimes a knife, for most of his life. Bully or be bullied, that was the choice you were forced to make on the streets of Naples. But he'd never fired a gun and had never been shot at. Just the thought of it turned his bowels to water. 'You think maybe this can be settled without a firefight?'

'No.' Ivetta smiled and signalled to the barman to bring more beers. Everyone else got served at the counter but he'd been coming here since he was too young to drink and his Camorra connections meant he got special treatment, including never paying. 'Alberto, grow some balls. There's going to be bloodshed. Be brave or be blown away.' He pinched his small friend's shoulder with his giant fingers. 'We have the advantage, my friend. We will strike first. First and fast. It is always the best way.'

The beers came and went. So did Donatello's fears. An hour later the two men slapped backs on the pavement outside, then went their separate ways in the cold drizzle of the early hours.

By the time Alberto Donatello got back to his rented studio apartment in the Spanish Quarter he'd grown the balls that Ivetta had demanded of him. He would do his bit. He would not be found wanting. He was so drunk he struggled to put his key into the lock of the front door. Fuck, he was pissed.

Really pissed. Finally the key slid into the lock. He'd made it. Home sweet home.

He didn't see the figure in the shadows by the basement steps.

Didn't hear the steely swish of the metal chain.

Didn't feel much at all, as Sal the Snake slowly strangled the life out of him.

Parco Nazionale del Vesuvio At first light, under the supervision of the carabinieri – most of whom were more interested in her than the task she was about to undertake – anthropologist Luella Grazzioli and her team shipped in the latest Ground Penetrating Radar System.

Under pressure, Sorrentino had finally decided that it was worth giving GPRS a go and had given strict instructions for every inch of the gridded area to be meticulously swept. 'Go over it like you are brushing your beautiful teeth. Then when I arrive you can show me something that will make my smile as wonderful as yours,' he'd told her. Typical Sorrentino.

Luella walked the safe corridor that had been established to protect evidence gained from the old excavation site and headed into a new section of the grid. Carabinieri officer Dino Gallo, two of his colleagues and two of hers followed. They brought with them the GPR system and also a set of state-of-the-art airspades.

'Last year, I dug up a body near Ischia,' Gallo confided as they walked. He was thin and suntanned; Luella thought he'd look better if he put on a little weight.

'Complicated?' she asked, happy to make small talk.

'No. We had all the right equipment, all the things you requested today, but we never needed it.'

'Sounds like you were lucky.'

'In some ways yes, in some ways no. The body was buried in a shallow grave.' Dino Gallo was keen to make an impression on the pretty anthropologist. 'As you probably know, in cases when the corpse is only about eighteen inches below the surface, you can usually start smelling the body after around seventeen days.'