Mancini went to the back of the room and brought a box of Kleenex. She pulled one and took a minute sorting herself out. 'I told Sal about her. Told him I couldn't go to my father because it would cause trouble with Bruno. He asked me what I wanted him to do. Make her go away, I said. Just make the puttana go away.'
Jack placed a hand on Kristen's photograph. 'And you did the same with this girl?'
Gina nodded, then realized the full implication of her tiny body movement. 'But I didn't know how. I thought he'd just got her to leave Naples. Leave my husband alone and leave the city. That's what I thought Sal had made them all do.'
Jack wasn't buying it. He was sure Gina hadn't thought Sal had only carried the women's bags to the train station.
'Scusi,' said Mancini, pointing to the door. 'I'll be back in a moment.' He slipped outside and both Jack and Gina knew why. The information on Sal would be relayed to Sylvia and the teams hunting him.
'You had no idea any of these women had been killed?' asked Jack as the door closed.
Gina shook her head. 'No, none at all.' She looked as guilty as hell, but this wasn't the moment to push her. That time would come. He was also sure she'd had no say in how the women had been killed. The use of fire had been Sal's own invention. Purification, no doubt. In his sick mind he was probably using fire to cleanse them from the sin of adultery. And it undoubtedly turned him on as well. In the minds of sadists, morality and sexuality often got mixed up in the most monstrous of ways.
'I want to see my son,' said Gina. 'You have no right to keep me away from my child.'
Jack's calmness almost cracked. 'Hey, take a look down at the pictures of Francesca, Kristen and those other dead women in front of you, then tell me again about your rights.' He paused to let the sharpness cut through her indignation. 'Right, Gina, here's how we're going to play it. I'm going to get an Italian officer in here. You're going to give full verbal and written statements. First about Francesca, and then Kristen. Then about each and every one of these other women. And then – and only then – do we even discuss you getting to see Enzo.' He let the ultimatum sink in. 'Your boy's been on his own for quite a while now, Gina. You ready to get this done?'
She nodded. She was ready. Ready as she would ever be. Sal was on a roll. Donatello, Ivetta and Valsi all dead. Shame about Mazerelli; he'd had him down as a good guy. Even bigger shame the Don hadn't let him clean house earlier. He'd have been alive if he had.
What now?
He asked himself the question as he threw the Fiat through a labyrinth of backstreets. The cop car was still caught up in the gridlock. But it wasn't too far away.
Sal was running but he wasn't sure where to. The Don was dead. The other Capi Zona were probably dead. And he was sure that the Cicerone clan had bodies on the street as well. He dialled Gina's number. That was dead too. There were no obvious allies, no longer any Camorra safe houses that he could trust to hide him.
He headed north towards Palazzo Reale, then east along the Tangenziale di Napoli towards Poggioreale. He cut off the A56 and wove back and forth through the backstreets, buying time, trying to think.
He lost his concentration round a corner off the Via della Stadera. The rear end drifted and slammed into a mountain of rubbish. Sacks and bottles crashed on to the trunk. He held it in third and threw a tight right on to the Autostrada del Sole, forcing a young couple on a scooter to bang into a barrier. In short, he was barely in control.
He'd outrun the carabinieri patrol car but he knew they'd be tracking the Fiat by now, relaying information to central control, young women peering into computer monitors in the dark, passing route info to other squad cars.
Sal hammered the horn as the Fiat redlined and screamed its guts out. Traffic moved over. He was doing close to 200kph as he flew past the signs for Ponticelli.
The fog that had haunted Naples for most of the day soon thickened again in the darkening evening sky. Off in the distance he thought he could hear horns and sirens, perhaps even the thud and thwack of helicopter blades. If the police had a chopper up it wouldn't last long. For once the bad weather would be a blessing. Minutes later the if was over. Nightsun searchlights blazed from a carabinieri helicopter. A pool of wobbling white light flooded black hillsides and roadsides.
They'd have thermal cameras too.
The bird in the sky was either the Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale, or maybe even the heavyweight Gruppo Intervento Speciale. It didn't matter which. Both were probably eight-man teams. Trained and eager to shoot to kill. Well, so was he.
And he was willing to bet he'd killed a lot more than any of them had.
105
Stazione dei carabinieri, Castello di Cisterna Six-year-old Enzo Valsi ran down the grey carabinieri corridor and clung like a rugby player to his mother's legs. Clara Sofri, the social worker who'd been caring for him, looked disinterested at the emotional mother-and-child reunion. She'd seen it all before. Dozens of times. Young woman comes off the rails, commits a serious crime and her family life is suddenly shattered. The kid will be better off in care.
Gina cried as she held her son. Hugged and squeezed him tighter than she'd ever done.
'Ti voglio bene, tesoro – Mamma really loves you.' She kissed his face and his head. His skin soft against hers. It smelled warm. Tender. She'd miss it. Miss it so much, it would almost kill her.
Gina had been as careful as she could with her statement about Francesca and Kristen, but she knew there was enough there for them to hold her and charge her. Then they'd come back and pick her story to pieces. After that they'd make her talk about the other bitches that Bruno had fucked and taunted her with.
One question haunted her. Spooked her as much as it did most of the cops on the case. Why hadn't she killed Valsi? He was at the root of the problem. He was the guy causing all the humiliation and pain. So, why hadn't she killed him, or had him killed?
The answer was a complex one.
She'd loved him. She hated him, but she loved him too. Really, really loved him. And all she'd ever wanted was to be his wife and raise his children.
A cell-block guard pulled at her shoulder. 'Signora, we must go now.'
Her world fell apart. She had to be dragged away. Enzo tried to struggle out of the grip of the social worker. Gina felt her heart break. Until her dying day she knew she'd never forget the look in her child's eyes as she left him in that corridor. ROS Quartiere Generale (Anti-Camorra Unit), Napoli Jack stood in the shaded background of the carabinieri central control room as Lorenzo Pisano's eyes flicked from monitor to monitor as he directed the helicopter unit and regular ground patrols.
'The GIS unit will get him,' said Sylvia. 'They're the best in the country. There's no escape.'
Jack's attention was glued to the live pictures of the blue Fiat, picked out by a white spotlight from the helicopter. 'They're a front-line anti-terrorist command unit as well, aren't they?'
'Si,' said Sylvia, watching the same feed. 'They're based in Tuscany but Lorenzo pulled them into a local barracks as soon as he heard of the hit on Finelli. He'd have used the local ROS unit but everyone's already deployed. So today we get the big boys.'
They listened while Lorenzo re-angled the metal coiled flex of a desk mic and ordered two pursuit cars to get in front of the Fiat.
'Rolling block?' asked Jack.
'I think so,' said Sylvia. 'If we can get two, maybe three cars in front of the Fiat, that will slow him down. Then we can feed another couple behind and alongside and force him to a stop.'
'Giacomo will shoot his way out,' said Jack. 'I'd hate to be in the front cars.'
'They're special ops vehicles. Bulletproofed. Not like the tin cans the rest of us drive.'
Lorenzo had headphones on. He slipped off the left cup and turned to face Sylvia and Jack. 'Word from the street teams, Valsi and Mazerelli are both confirmed dead. Crime Unit medic says it looks like JHP slugs in both bodies.' Autostrada del Sole Whatever happened, surrender was not an option. Salvatore Giacomo was not going to lie down and whimper like a dog. He glanced left and right in the wing mirrors. Through the fog he could see the full beams of the approaching carabinieri cars.