Viper - Michael Morley [98]
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.
71
Centro città, 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