Viper - Michael Morley [130]
She was awake now. Wide awake. ‘Who the hell is she? Does she have any connections to our suspects?’
Mancini glanced across at a whiteboard. ‘She worked as a call handler in a sex centre that the Finelli clan has run for the past decade. You know, they advertise on late-night TV, you can telephone and…’
‘I know what phone sex is, Mancini. Un momento…’ Sylvia used her phone-free hand to rub an itch from her eyes. ‘Get this information to Lorenzo Pisano’s office – you know who he is?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Mark it urgent. I’ll call him as soon as he gets in. Get round to this woman’s apartment and strip the place bare. I want calendars off walls, diaries out of drawers, unwashed underwear, receipts; absolutely everything that can tell us anything about who she is, who she knows and who she’s ever slept with. Got it?’
‘Got it,’ said Mancini.
The phone went dead and the young officer realized just how short the straw was. His night shift was about to go on for a whole lot longer than he’d expected.
6.30 a.m.
Casa di famiglia dei Valsi, Camaldoli
The angel-faced lap dancer from Luca’s Bar was proving a much better fuck than Bruno Valsi had dared imagine she would be. In his mind, beautiful women usually turned out to be a big disappointment between the sheets. The plain ones usually tried harder. But this babe, well she was an exception. Just how exceptional, Valsi would never know.
Stephanie Muller was a lesbian. She’d slept with him several times and worked hard to pleasure him all night because she needed the money. Especially the big money he was offering for the job she’d do for him later today.
Most of Stephanie’s recent life had been a fake. She just switched off and sailed through whatever shit life had thrown at her. The first dollop of brown stuff came her way when she was a stripper in Hamburg. While working the city’s Sinful Mile, the infamous Reeperbahn, she fell head-over-heels in love with an Italian businesswoman. She trusted her heart rather than her brain and moved to Naples. Predictably her new Latin lover turned out to have several other Latin lovers and Steph got dumped within the month. Life was a bitch. Penniless and hungry she’d done anything she had to in order to feed herself. And the latest offer that Valsi had made her would keep her fed for a long time.
‘I gotta go,’ said the twenty-six-year-old, wriggling out from beneath his muscled arm.
‘Not yet. I’m not finished with you.’
Steph glanced at the plastic Swatch on her wrist. ‘It’s six thirty; you know everything I have to do today.’ She sat up on the edge of the bed and felt raw and sore. The sheets were marked with blood from the rough anal sex that he’d made her endure. She felt too dizzy to stand. In a second she’d be okay. She looked across the room to find where her clothes had been thrown.
Valsi grabbed a clump of the thick black hair that hung in little-girl curls down her slim pale back and pulled her towards him.
‘Ow! Hey!’
‘You got time.’ He forced her head towards his groin.
There was no point complaining. No point inviting a beating. Steph switched off. Let her attention drift as she did his bidding. The room was pink and green with the kind of carpets, bedding and curtains that she knew she could never afford. The furniture looked antique. Chairs with curved backs and big dark wood wardrobes with matching chests of drawers. A dressing table full of perfumes and a matching full-length mirror. She had no idea what it was worth but she’d love to have stuff like that.
Valsi finished grunting and rolled away from her. ‘Okay, get the fuck out of here.’
Steph struggled painfully to her feet. She walked naked to the bathroom and spat his semen in the sink. He’d told her not to use his toothbrush, or his wife’s or child’s. Both still stood unashamedly in a glass on a shelf, like two abandoned soldiers. She squirted toothpaste on her finger and scrubbed as best she could.
‘There’s money on the dresser,’ Valsi shouted from the bed as she appeared from the shower, recovered her clothes and dressed.
Steph took the five hundred