Viper - Michael Morley [1]
Thanks to everyone at Penguin, particularly: my editor Bev Cousins, who made so many great observations that I lost count, and to Alex Clark, Tom Chicken, Shan Morley Jones and Ellie Smith, who all added their own special polish. Thanks also to Julia Bauer in Germany for her many ideas and as always to Jack Barclay for his invaluable advice.
I’m blessed with having Luigi Bonomi as my agent and literary guru, and in the international field there’s no one better than Nicki Kennedy and Sam Eden-borough at ILA. A big, fully interactive thank you to Ronald Goes for decoding the mysteries of the web, helping me set up www.michaelmorleybooks.com, and providing more than one or two laughs along the way.
Finally, my wife Donna and son Billy deserve a special mention for their support, especially during that bizarre moment when I got arrested by the carabinieri in Castello di Cisterna while taking research photographs of their barracks. The phrase ‘Daddy has been arrested again’ still causes us amusement.
La Baia di Napoli (Bay of Naples)
Prologue
La Baia di Napoli
Francesca Di Lauro had the kind of eyes you never forgot. Hypnotic, almost translucent. An indefinable shade between blue and green. More hologram than optic.
They were fixed on the man in front of her. Fixed very firmly on him as he watched her naked body. Francesca’s faultless skin and tumbling black hair were backlit by the golden flicker of a newly lit fire. The two of them were alone. Outside, in the pine-smelling woodland. No one to disturb them. Perfect privacy.
Only this was no romantic encounter. This was the worst moment of her life. The flames around Francesca’s feet crawled up the metal stake she’d been tied to. Wind tugged her hair and suddenly the jaws of an orange dragon were chewing her flesh. Francesca twisted hopelessly, the agonizing heat searing her paraffin-soaked skin.
He stood a few metres away, mesmerized by the slow murder, stroking himself pleasurably. His eyes fixed on the curtain of flames. This would take time. A deliciously long time.
Francesca had been tied with coils of wire around her feet, hands and neck. He’d learned from past mistakes.
Rope burned, then they tried to get away. He didn’t want any more messiness. No mistakes this time.
Bricks were stacked waist-high, all around her. A kiln to funnel heat up her body. Rags stuffed in her mouth and then bound around her face to choke off any screams. Though sometimes he liked to hear them. Liked to hear the air leave their lungs for one last time.
Francesca’s head slumped limply on her chest. She was a quiet one. Flames ate her hair. The smell of burning flesh, sweet and greasy like a hog roast, carried in the cold night air. He sucked it in. Savoured it. Fed on it.
Amid the crackle of the fire he waited. Listened now for the moment when he heard her skull crack and sizzle. Popping chestnuts! How he just loved to peel away those crisp, burned outer shells.
He’d removed all her jewellery and, while he watched, he played with it in his pocket, turning the trophies in his hand like beads on a rosary.
The blaze illuminated the pit that he stood in. It was almost three metres deep, seven metres wide and fifteen metres long. It had been dug by the landowner as foundations for a house that never got built. Dead dreams. These days it was more commonly used to burn some of the overflowing stinking rubbish that clogged the city’s vermin-infested streets.
He stayed until darkness had faded seamlessly into the dawn, then he raised a gleaming stainless-steel spade and began softly singing. He sang in English, complete with a near-comical Dean Martin accent.
When the stars make you drool joost-a like pasta fazool, that’s amore;
He scraped Francesca’s bones from the blackened wood, grey ash and red embers. Slammed the blade of his spade across the snake of her spine.
When you dance down the street with a cloud at your feet, you’re in love;
The metal sliced through