'Don Fredo, no!' Mazerelli steepled his hands together, praying for a pause in the rising outburst. 'I did not take these photographs, nor did I commission them.'
Finelli felt apprehension corkscrew down his spine. 'So, where were they taken?' He feared the worst. 'Tell me it was in the east quarter. Or, at least, in one of our territories.'
Ricardo Mazerelli glanced at the carp swimming through his roof-garden pool. The water needed changing. He'd do it later. The calm and peace that he savoured were about to be ruined. His eyes returned to his boss. 'They were given to me by the consigliere of the Cicerone Family. They were taken on his Family's ground.'
The old man rubbed his face.
He wasn't prepared for this. Not at all.
His thoughts and planning had been on keeping peace within his own Family. The one thing he hadn't contemplated was a turf war. But it was going to happen.
There was going to be a blood feud.
50
Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna Luciano Creed had vanished.
Pietro barked into a walkie-talkie and marshalled police cars from the back of the barracks. With luck Creed wouldn't have got far.
'He'll take the autostrada,' Pietro motioned to Jack. 'There's a junction only a few kilometres from here, we must go now.'
Jack followed the tall lieutenant to an old Lancia parked across the road. The profiler's mind was more troubled about why Creed had turned up than whether they had a chance of catching him.
'Motherfucking bastard!' Raimondi swore softly as he sped away from the barracks with a squeal of car tyres.
Jack had guessed that the press conference would provoke a reaction. Maybe a letter from the killer. Maybe a tip-off from someone who'd been touched by Francesca's parents and thought they knew the killer. But he hadn't bargained on this.
The old car lurched round bends and accelerated down the autostrada slip road. Pietro opened it up and the exhaust rattled.
'There! There!' shouted Jack as they drew level with a Land Rover Freelander.
Passing sodium lights played on and off the wind-shields as the two cars drove in parallel at approaching 140kph.
Luciano Creed looked across and spotted Jack King peering back at him. He didn't seem frightened. He smiled a jagged yellow-toothed smile, lifted his right hand off the wheel and used his thumb and small finger to illustrate a phone.
'What's he doing?' asked Pietro, wondering whether the old Lancia was strong enough to force the Freelander to stop, or whether it would just get chewed up under the 4x4's big wheels.
'I'm not sure,' said Jack. 'He's making fun of us, I think.'
Suddenly the Freelander veered sharp right. It crossed on to the hard shoulder and careered down the banking.
'Fuck!' shouted Pietro. 'What happened? Has he crashed?'
Jack craned his neck and squinted out of the rear window while the Lancia squealed to a stop. 'I can't see anything.' His eyes scanned the darkness for any sign of flames or lights.
Nothing.
'Christ, where's he gone?' Pietro hit reverse and backed up. 'There was no turn-off there. You can't get off the autostrada for another five kilometres.'
Creed was nowhere to be seen.
They'd been within touching distance of him. Close enough for Jack to have almost pulled open the car door and slapped cuffs on him. Then the weird little punk had just disappeared.
They looped on and off the autostrada. Blue police lights criss-crossed bridges and slip roads above and below them as they searched high and low. Intense radio chatter filled the airwaves, but no one had news of Creed's whereabouts. After forty-five minutes Jack and Pietro headed back to the barracks.
Sylvia was in her office. A face like thunder. 'Well?'
Pietro threw his hands wide. 'Andato.' Gone.
Sylvia slapped her desk. 'He made us look like fools. Like stupid, damn idiots. I wish now we'd never held that press conference.'
'Hindsight is a wonderful thing,' said Jack, checking his cellphone, more out of the need for a distraction than any sense of urgency.
'Affanculo! ' swore Pietro. 'Now the motherfucker is gone and we'll never hear from him again.'
'I wouldn't bet on that.' Jack looked down at the phone in his hand. 'Remember that gesture he made as we passed him? Well, it seems the manipulative little creep was planning to contact us again.' He spun the phone round so they could see the display. 'I've just got a text message from Creed.'
Pietro and Sylvia squinted at it.
I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING BUT I DIDN'T DO IT. I'M INNOCENT. CREED.
'So, if he's innocent, why all this?' said Sylvia. 'What's all this about?'
Pietro shrugged sympathetically. 'He is messing with us again. He is lying now and was lying right from the start when he met Jack and said he was still working for us and the university.'
'And he lied about being involved with Francesca?' added Sylvia.
'Exactly,' said Pietro. 'Look at it this way. He books out of his hotel early in New York and then he comes back to Naples and won't talk to us. He turns up at the press conference tonight and then he runs away again. These are not the actions of an innocent man.'
'No, they're not,' agreed Sylvia, the message stoking her anger.
Jack wasn't so sure. To him the actions seemed like taunting. More a case of someone proving their point. 'The question that he asked at the press conference, when he listed the names of the missing girls -'
'What about it?' snapped Sylvia.
'If Creed is Francesca's killer, and maybe the murderer of more women, then it was a bold and crazy thing to do. An unnecessary risk. Why put himself so clearly in the frame and chance being caught?' Jack looked across at Pietro and Sylvia and made sure they were following him. 'The more I look at this case, the more I think we're hunting someone who is willing to cope with risk, but doesn't court it.'
'Evil can't always be explained,' said Raimondi.
Jack disagreed, he thought evil could always be explained. 'Let's look at the options. Creed was either egotistically trying to point the spotlight at himself as the killer – trying to enjoy the public horror and concern over the crimes he's committed – or else, he was being public-spirited and was attempting to focus attention on the missing girls and force you to put more resources into trying to find them. Angel or devil? Which is he?'
'Perhaps both?' said Pietro. 'Perhaps he is a Mr Jecky and Dr Hid?'
Sylvia laughed. 'I think you mean Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.' She patted him playfully on the shoulder. 'Good try, Pietro.'
'I mean half of him wants to kill and half of him wants to be stopped,' explained the big lieutenant, not amused at his own faux pas.
Split personality? It was something Jack hadn't thought about. But that didn't fit the profile either. 'There's one other possibility,' he said.
'I'm all ears.'
'What if Creed is doing all this as revenge?'
'Revenge? How so?' asked Sylvia.
Jack rolled out his latest thoughts. 'The carabinieri crushed his dream of becoming a psychological profiler. Stopped him being a hot-shot working high-profile police cases. The force ended his secondment and complained about him to his university, which also ruined his academic career. So, this could be his idea of payback. And I bet there's a lot worse to come.'
51
Casa di famiglia dei Valsi, Camaldoli By the time he got home, Bruno Valsi's hand was hurting even more than his damaged pride. That old thug had maybe broken two of his fingers. He went straight upstairs, showered and changed. If he'd had it his way he wouldn't even have acknowledged that his wife was in the house. But she followed him around, complaining that he was late for dinner and shouting at him. He'd eaten enough for the day and now he was going to go out and have some fun on his own.
Gina dogged him all the way to the hallway, where he finally stopped to adjust his tie in the mirror. 'I can't believe you're going out again. Since you've come out of jail, you've spent virtually every night away from me and Enzo.'