Viper - Michael Morley [138]
96
9.50 a.m.
Pompeii
Luciano Creed was playing a waiting game. Something that irritated the hell out of freelance journalist Cassandra Morrietti. ‘I have deadlines and I have bills,’ she glared at him over the bad espresso she’d bought from a tourist bar near the Castellani campsite.
‘Patience, Cassandra. Patience.’
Creed was backing a hunch. When he and the hack had posed as cops, old man Castellani had told them that his grandson Franco was missing. He was certain he knew why. Franco was the kidnapper and murderer they were all hunting. The photograph he’d been given by the doting grandfather showed the kid to be hideously deformed. Freaks like that don’t get sex. What they do get is the urge to abduct pretty women, fuck them and then kill them because they can’t risk letting them go. It was simple stuff and he was amazed King, Tomms and the rest of the carabinieri hadn’t been clued up to it. Actually, he wasn’t that amazed. They were all a bunch of fools and not bright enough to realize that sometimes the most obvious things were overlooked. Well, that wasn’t a mistake he was going to make.
‘Trust me,’ he told the journalist. ‘We follow the freak’s cousin and he will lead us straight to the freak killer. Then all your waiting will have been worthwhile.’
Cassandra was about to argue the point, when she had to swallow both her words and the last of her espresso. ‘There’s our boy!’ Creed nodded across the road. Paolo Falconi was heading straight towards them.
9.50 a.m.
Santa Maria Eliana, centro città, Napoli
The sun seemed to bless Carmine Cicerone as nine a.m. Mass finished and he emerged from the heady smell of burning candles and the calming cool of the church. It was almost as though God had lifted the fog for a moment to show his personal approval of the Dog’s decision to choose words rather than war.
God – and a truly great Tarot reading.
According to his daily Internet subscription, Gemini’s moon was in conjunction with assertive Mars. A bountiful Sun–Jupiter square was in the offing, as was an imbalanced Venus–Uranus quincunx. Now was plainly not the time for rash and foolish actions.
Halfway down the double flight of stone steps that grandly spread east and west on to the pavement, he narrowly avoided bumping into two preoccupied nuns. They were in a line, hurrying in for the next service. It was one of those awkward encounters when one person moves left and so does the other, then everyone swings in the other direction at exactly the same time. ‘Scusi,’ he smiled politely, then stood still so they could choose whichever direction they wished.
‘Grazie,’ replied the smaller of the sisters at the front. Then she smiled at him. She had a lovely face. Even seemed flirtatious. Carmine had a sinful thought. He chastised himself. Seconds out of church and he was needing confession already.
The pretty nun was still staring at him when the holy sister just behind her stepped forward and shot him. The silenced bullet fizzed from beneath the Bible in her hands. Hands so big they were now clearly not female. The cough of the 45 was swallowed in the jackhammer noise of rush-hour traffic. Not a single head turned on the nearby pavement.
Carmine went down on his knees, like an opera singer centre stage in the final act. He clutched his heart and opened his mouth wide to hit the top note. The death note. His two men, waiting metres away in his limo, would have sprung to his aid, only they were both dead as well.
The holy sisters disappeared down the side of the steps and headed towards the back of the church. Twenty metres further on they slid into the shade of an alleyway, slipped off their grey habits and heavy wooden rosaries. Sister Vito Ambrossio folded everything into two white supermarket shopping bags and handed the gun to Sister Steph Muller. She pushed it deep into the front of her patched jeans and covered it with her shirt and thick jumper.
Stupid idiot, thought Vito, it was good to be finally rid of him. Valsi had promised him his own territory, half the Cicerone