Viper

Then another.

And another.

Valsi hung his head low. The pain was unbearable. He wanted to scream. Yell his head off like a teenage girl at a horror movie. He ground his teeth and ate up the agony. Swallowed the fear, and the shame that came with it. But he knew he didn't have much longer. Soon the bastard would break his hand. Crush his fingers like day-old breadsticks.

'We can stop whenever you want.' said Sal, in a humiliating matter-of-fact tone. 'Just say it.'

Valsi's eyes blazed. Defiance. One last effort.

But he didn't have anything to give.

Sal swung Valsi's crushed hand and drained arm up into the vertical, then, like a felled tree, down towards the spikes of shining glass.

Valsi shut his eyes. Readied himself for the pain. And the humiliation.

And it came. But not in the way he expected. Much worse.

Sal let go.

Just a centimetre from victory, the Snake opened his fingers and slipped his arm away. 'Enough,' he said, as though bored with a naughty child. 'I'm going to take that piss now.'

46

Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna In a grey anteroom to hell – a waiting room inside the carabinieri barracks – the parents of Francesca Di Lauro wept in each other's arms. It was the first time they'd touched since divorcing more than ten years ago.

The Di Lauros had thought they could never feel sadder than the moment when they'd learned of their daughter's murder. But the news that she'd also been pregnant had ratcheted them deeper into the depths of despair.

Bernadetta Di Lauro raised her head from her ex-husband's tear-soaked shoulder. She looked sadly into the eyes that she knew had once adored her. 'I'm sorry. I just can't make sense of this.'

He patted her hand gently. 'I know. I don't believe it either. It all seems so unreal.'

She found a handkerchief in her purse, next to a small photograph of Francesca graduating from university. She blew her nose and dabbed her eyes. Dreaded to think what she looked like.

Genarro Di Lauro blinked back the last of his own tears. He was still in shock. He'd never got over the trauma of learning that his daughter had gone missing. Now he could barely cope with the news that the police had identified the remains of her body. Remains. That's what they'd called them – remains – what an awful word. The leftovers. The discarded bits. The final dregs of life that couldn't be better hidden. The remains.

'Genarro!'

Bernadetta's raised voice made him realize that he'd been miles away. Lost again in the uniquely depressive fog that engulfs parents of murdered children. 'What?'

She smiled at him and nodded towards a young carabinieri officer. The policeman was about the same age as Francesca would have been. He looked smart in his full uniform. No doubt his parents' pride and joy. 'The Capitano is ready to see you now.' His voice was soft and respectful. His eyes suggested he understood their pain. But, of course, he didn't. Couldn't. Not until he was much older and a father himself.

Sylvia Tomms had met them before. She made them as comfortable as possible. Not in her broom cupboard of an office but in a special room reserved for breaking bad news. The furnishings were less harsh but still businesslike. Brown cotton sofas were grouped around a low wooden table littered with plastic cups of coffee left by previous grievers. She cursed the fact that they hadn't been cleared and hastily palmed them into a steel bin.

'Do you have any idea who may have been the father of my daughter's child?' asked Genarro.

Sylvia winced. 'I'd hoped that was something you or your wife might be able to help us with.'

'Ex-wife,' corrected Bernadetta and in the same breath wished she hadn't. She felt her husband – ex-husband – squeeze her hand and somehow the reassurance made her feel like crying again.

'Before she went missing, was she seeing anyone regularly?'

Francesca's parents looked at Sylvia and then at themselves. Predictably, it was her mother who tried to fill in the gaps. 'Francesca didn't say much to me about her love life. Sometimes there'd be a twinkle in her eye, occasionally she'd share a boy's name with me and mention where they were going, but in the main she was a very private person.'

Genarro was looking off into the distance. Francesca was five years old again. Her thick dark hair in plaits with yellow bows that she kept playing with. Her gorgeous eyes sparkled with innocence as he hid a coin up his sleeve and magically produced it out of her ear. He was lost in the mists of time – an age before womanhood, before pregnancy and long before murder.

'Anything?' pushed Sylvia, catching his attention. 'A remark, a name, a period where she seemed odd, behaved differently?'

'I only saw my daughter about once a month,' confessed Genarro. 'When she'd lived with Bernadetta, I'd seen more of her, but when she went to University and got her own apartment, then she had a new life, new friends and not so much time to see me.' His face showed all the regrets of a parent who wished he could turn back time.

'She loved you very much,' said Bernadetta, looking at him with the soft blue-green eyes that she'd passed down to her daughter. 'She was always saying Papa this, Papa that.'

'Mamma's girl,' he countered and then looked surprised that he'd said it rather than just thought it. 'She was just like you – looks and temperament. Just like you.'

Sad memories flowed between them. The moment sagged from the weight of emotion. Sylvia tried to give them space. Let them feel their way around their grief. Finally they looked across at her. Two thin smiles. A cue to continue. And she did, with the hardest questions of all. 'You've seen the newspapers today; you know they have now reported the fact that your daughter was pregnant?'

Francesca's parents nodded. They looked uncertain and uncomfortable about where the conversation was heading.

'I know this is awful for you, but we have to do everything we can to keep this story in the newspapers.' Her heart went out to them. 'Murder is now so common here in Campania that it is hard to get people to pay any attention, let alone come forward with information that might help us catch your daughter's killer.' She could see pain welling in their eyes. 'Your daughter's pregnancy gives us a chance to do that. It touches people and, as horrible as it sounds, we have to take advantage of that. We're holding a press conference tonight and I'd like you to be there, to say something about what Francesca was like as a person.'

Sylvia's statement was met with silence. They were in no-man's-land – their grief was private, their horror so great they didn't even want to face the daylight let alone the press – but they did want to do whatever they could to catch their daughter's killer.

Sylvia smiled a serious smile – an expertly crafted friendly but serious smile – the type that only police officers can manage when they want you to do the right thing no matter how painful it is for you. 'We've been advised by one of the world's top psychological profilers that it's vital we make the public understand Francesca was a person, not just a murder statistic. If we can get them to feel your loss, then maybe we can persuade someone who knows the killer to come forward. Would you appear at the news conference? Make that appeal for people to contact us with any information that they think might help?'

Genarro squeezed his ex-wife's hand and she squeezed back. In the split second before he answered he wondered if they should get back together again. Fall in love again. Help each other over this hole in their lives. 'Yes. Yes, if you think it will help, then we'll do that.'

'Good. Thank you.' Sylvia's relief was visible. 'I'm afraid I still have a few questions I need to ask you. Are you all right for me to do that now?'

They both said they were and Sylvia found herself momentarily disarmed by their dignity.

'Signora, in the last months before Francesca disappeared, did you have any unusual discussions with her?'

Bernadetta sighed but said nothing. She'd spent years cudgelling herself over questions like this. Had there been something she'd said or done that had upset her daughter? Or, maybe even something she hadn't said or done? She'd tortured herself but had come up with nothing.