Michael Morley - Viper

'And if you're wrong?' asked Sylvia.

Jack smiled. 'Well, if there's nothing there – or if it's a female body – then theory-wise, I'm blown, and everything I've just said is bullshit.'

Centro citta, Napoli Camorra Capo Carmine 'The Dog' Cicerone was a cube of a man with the face of a bulldog. He also had the business brain of a stockbroker. Every day he went to morning Mass and left a soul-saving fifty euros in the wooden collection bowl of the Santa Maria Eliana church. Every night he ate a dinner at Ristorante Corte dei Leoni that was large enough to feed Africa. In between, he consulted an astrologist, had a personal daily horoscope compiled for him and carried out his own numerological calculations. Carmine was forty-five, single and obsessively superstitious. Friday the thirteenth was avoided at all costs, as were black cats, walking under ladders and being in the company of lesbians. Lesbians, in Carmine's mind, were devils and witches. Satan had sent them to earth in the form of women and, if you slept with them, then they stole your soul. People had been badly hurt trying to explain the many flaws in his crazy theory, starting with the simple fact that lesbians didn't sleep with men, but Carmine was not open to argument. He knew their tricks. He just prayed that his Church contributions and nightly rosary would protect him.

Carmine would probably have been a laughing stock rather than a crime lord, if he hadn't been a financial genius. He ran legitimate property and investment portfolios through established legal companies and was a millionaire long before he crossed the line into criminality. Legitimate business was what he called the light side of his life. While on the dark side, he was Capo of one of Italy's most powerful crime Families. The Dog was clever enough to realize that to stay rich in Naples, you either had to pay the Camorra, or be the Camorra. He'd chosen the latter. He'd infiltrated their world with the same guile and cunning that most businessmen would use to build a global empire. Furthermore, he enjoyed it. Loved it. It was where he got his kicks. There, and in the company of a few select women who, he was absolutely certain, were not lesbians.

In his office, just windows away from the carabinieri's city-centre headquarters, Cicerone held one of his more unusual Management Meetings. In this case it was a grand name for the weekly get-together of the ragged circle of villains who ran his criminal undertakings.

'Profits up and problems down, that's what I want to hear today, gentlemen.' He sounded jovial as he took his position at the top of the table.

The Cicerone crew put up with his eccentricities because year after year Carmine the Dog made them all richer. Privately, Vito Ambrossio summed up their loyalty in one perfect phrase: 'We all like putting our snouts in Dog's bowl because Carmine still has the biggest bowl in town.'

Ambrossio was the Family's main triggerman. When everyone else's nerves snapped and people ran for the hills, he was the guy who would step forward and do the dirty work. He killed a priest in Scampia after the Father publicly spoke out against the Family's drugs activities. And he pulled out a politician's tongue, then chewed off his fingers with bolt cutters after the fool went on television calling for a clampdown on local authority corruption.

Around a long rectangular table of polished mahogany, Ambrossio and five unsmiling men in their late thirties listened to their crime boss and his plans for expansion. Few spoke during the hour-long meeting, and none took notes, mainly because most of them couldn't read or write. But as they disbanded, they all fully understood what the Dog had meant. Unless an accommodation could be reached with the Finelli clan, they would be going to the mattresses. The first turf war in years. And Ambrossio for one couldn't wait for it to happen.

Cicerone beckoned Vito to follow him back into his office. They settled around an opulent glass and metal desk in front of a giant picture window overlooking the city's newest skyscrapers.

'What's the latest on the consiglieri? Have Emile and the Finelli man met?'

Ambrossio said they had. He'd spoken to their own lawyer, Emile Courbit, just before the meeting. 'It's taken place. Emile has met him. The photographs have been delivered and Mazerelli said he would come back to Emile within a matter of days. I suspect the bomb has already gone off within their clan.'

Cicerone savoured the thought. 'This is sure to have Valsi and Finelli at each other's throats. Hopefully sooner rather than later.'

'It will be sooner. My information is that Valsi and Finelli are no longer even on speaking terms. The Don has made it known to Valsi that he is not welcome in his house any more.'

'Indeed?' Cicerone's jowly face glowed with pleasure. 'And Valsi's wife and child?'

'Gina and the young boy, Enzo, have moved back in with her father. Meanwhile, Valsi fucks anything female with a pulse.'

The Dog smirked. 'And the men on the ground, what's their mood?'

'As you guessed, they are nervous and are starting to split.'

Cicerone corrected him. 'I didn't guess. I saw it in the stars. An eclipse of Mars; the timing is perfect.'

Ambrossio bit back the urge to tell the Dog that he was barking mad. 'The white hairs are with Finelli, they think he is in control and knows how to play Valsi.'

'And the young and hungry ones are with Valsi,' grinned Cicerone. 'It is always the way. Brutal ambition is forever in the blood of the young and the bold.'

Ambrossio nodded. It was true. And no one was bolder and more brutal than he was.

Parco Nazionale del Vesuvio The clay was stained and smelled like the sweat of a skunk in summer. After ninety minutes of rock shifting and another sixty of digging, Luella's team called her over. They'd shovelled out a big trench and had found something.

Jack and Sylvia stood way beyond the excavation, outside the crime-scene area, in the safe zone. She could see them talking intensely. Serious faces, sombre moods moulded by death. It was something she still had to get used to. She sent one of the carabinieri soldiers over to get them. They needed to see this.

Luella clambered into the trench and stood at the end of it. Her team had cleared the ground around something bulky, bound in grey-black plastic sheeting. She tried to imagine it was anything other than what it obviously was. A body wrapped and buried in plastic sheeting. A crime-scene photographer hovered above her. He'd already snapped twenty minutes' worth of frames. The pale light dimmed further as Sylvia and Jack appeared at the edge of the dig and peered down. Their faces were full of expectancy and sadness.

'I'm just about to open it,' she said.

Sylvia nodded. Luella dipped her head and hands to the earthy plastic and heard the camera click. It took a while to find the edge of the sheeting. It had been wrapped several times around whatever was in it. 'I'm going to need help. Can you call one of my assistants over?'

Sylvia shouted to the rest of the team. A well-muscled guy called Gelsone slipped into the hole and helped Luella. She directed his hands beneath the sheeted lump and he took the weight as she carefully unfolded the wrapping. It was an awkward job, like getting a king-sized quilt into its cover, only here you couldn't shake anything.

Luella stopped. 'Get a photographer down here.'

The snapper slid into the pit.

'Careful!' shouted Sylvia.

Luella finished pulling back the sheeting. The camera clicked again. The image of the rotted skull burned into everyone's mind.

Body Number One, Jack was sure of it. Numero Uno.

But which sex?

And then another revelation rocked them.

The bones were dark, creamy yellow. Unburned.