Spider Read online

  ‘Was there anything else?’ asked Orsetta, waving a hand across her face to mask the redness. ‘Or can I relax now?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, unable to stop himself, ‘based on what you’ve told me, I’d guess you’re also obstinate, headstrong, self-centred, adventurous and very driven.’

  ‘I am what?’

  ‘You mentioned that there was a path in the woods – that path represents the route of your life, the one your parents, your upbringing and your education have laid out for you. But you deliberately chose not to take it – you said you were “wandering away”. This means you want things on your own terms, or not at all.’

  Orsetta felt completely exposed. Her Myers Briggs game had been meant as an ice-breaker, a bit of flirtatious fun, but this was something else. Her eyes fell on the book that Jack had bought and she saw it as a chance to gain respite from his scrutiny. ‘Aah, Dante,’ she said. ‘The Divine Comedy is one of my favourites.’

  ‘For my wife,’ he said, quickly and deliberately.

  Orsetta found herself blushing again. For a second she’d forgotten he was married.

  ‘It’s a good choice, I hope she likes it,’ she said, as pleasantly as she could manage.

  There was silence, agonizingly awkward for Orsetta if not for Jack, who found silences every bit as informative as most people’s conversations. Finally Orsetta cracked. ‘Okay, let’s finish it, she said; bravely. ‘Tell me, Jack, you have to tell me the rest of your analysis.’

  He looked across at her. The smart policewoman with the movie-star looks now seemed like a lost schoolgirl. All the sexual chemistry had drained from the room and the air was as unexcitingly stale as a deserted bar-room on a Monday morning.

  ‘Commitment,’ he said softly. ‘The bear in your story represents the man who hurt you, the problem that creeps up on you when you’re happy and you least expect it.’

  Orsetta looked down at her hands. So there it was, out in the open. She’d hidden it away, piled all kinds of stuff on top of it, and this stranger, this brilliant stranger, had found it without breaking sweat. ‘And I have to find another way of dealing with this, other than simply hitting it with a log?’ She looked up and managed a smile but Jack could see that the gesture alone had taken all her courage.

  ‘No. Using the log is fine. Beat away all you like; give the bear your best body-blows. But you’ve gotta learn not to run away afterwards. Staying there, looking the bear in the eyes and sorting out your terms of peace, that’s what commitment’s all about.’

  She nodded, and without even realizing it found herself squeezing his hand, comforting herself with his strength and his closeness.

  The knock on the door surprised both of them and broke the silence, a silence that this time felt far more intriguing than awkward.

  ‘Food!’ said Jack. ‘Great, I’m starving.’

  16

  FBI Field Office, New York

  Not since he’d discovered that his sister was a lesbian had Special Agent Howie Baumguard been so stunned and speechless.

  The air-con in his office had broken down – again – and it was now steam-room hot. He rubbed sweat from his creased brow with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand while he tried to work out what to do next.

  Howie clicked the mouse on his desk pad and dragged the image that had just been sent through to his flat screen. ‘God damn it! God damn it!’ he shouted to an empty office.

  He flipped the picture 180 degrees one way, and then rotated it back the other way. He changed the colour several times, examined it upside down and back to front. ‘Jesus H. Christ!’ he swore again at the empty room.

  Howie quarter-framed the image and docked it in the top left-hand corner of his screen, then maximized another two shrunken frames and started to examine them through a similar process of flipping, rotating and decolouring. The new 360-degree imaging kit he was using was so sharp and realistic that he felt he could almost pick objects up off the screen and toss them around in his hands like a baseball.

  ‘God damn it!’ he shouted, finally reaching the limit of his patience.

  Howie stood up and headed to the Men’s room. Not only because he’d drunk so much coffee that he desperately needed a leak, but also because he needed to buy himself a little more thinking time.

  He freshened up and returned painfully slowly to his desk, almost as though he was afraid of getting back there. Instead of sitting down, he chose to stand behind his swivel chair, his sausage-fingered hands drumming on the top curve of the seat, his eyes locked on his desk monitor.

  ‘God damn!’ Nothing had changed. It was still as disturbing as it had been the first time he’d seen it.

  The computer showed three clear shots.

  Shot one was of a cardboard box.

  Shot two was of Sarah Kearney’s decapitated skull.

  But it was shot three that was making Howie curse out loud in an empty room. Full frame on the flat screen was the address on the box, the very thing that had made airport security scan the package and alert Howie’s office. In black felt pen were the words ‘Fragile. For the attention of Jack King, c/o the FBI.’

  PART TWO

  Monday, 2 July

  17

  Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York

  Cops always say that when it comes to hookers, a year on the street puts ten on the face. By that score, Ludmila Zagalsky is twenty-five going on one hundred and thirty. In truth, Lu’s bearing up slightly better than the maths predict; though two abortions and a drug problem that would shame even the wildest of rock stars don’t bode well for the future.

  Lu’s been out on the streets since she was fifteen. Her latest pimp is a Russian called Oleg, who has pretty much most of the Beach Avenue business to himself. Oleg’s a brute of a man, a mountain of lard with tattooed forearms the size of a bull’s back legs and a big round shaven head that’s as attractive as an overripe pumpkin. But he doesn’t beat her, not like her drunken mother used to, a grizzled Muscovite jealous of her daughter’s beauty. And he doesn’t come into her bed ‘to be close’ like her stepfather used to. It’s true that running away from Moscow and working for Oleg wasn’t the brightest move she ever made, but it sure as hell was better than the alternative. Lu had turned tricks to save for the airfare out of Russia and she’d been turning them ever since. She breakfasts every day on a couple of ‘E’s; chugging them back like most people do coffee and pastries. They keep her sane as she sets about the soul-destroying work of being violated and abused in return for rent money and little more. She starts around lunch and finishes whenever her last mudak – some sick, dumb asshole – has paid his cash, hauled himself off her and got out of her sorry life. Her first shift is Coney Island Avenue, down to 6th and 7th. At the end of that she meets up with Oleg around six p.m. and ‘cashes out’. Sometimes, if she’s earned more than her daily target take, he buys her a burger and beer before slapping her ass and sending her back to the street. Second shift sees her strutting her stuff down Beach Avenue, usually in red stilettos and not much else. If the cops from the 60th Precinct move her on, then she hits Riglemann Boardwalk down on the east side, heading out to Chambers Square.

  Right now, at just gone one a.m., she’s feeling blasted. Minutes after emptying her purse for Oleg and heading home, she gets a pull from some City dude cruising in a gold Lexus. She ends up jerking him off and keeping the cash for herself – man, it will cost the perv a fortune to clean that leather. Anyway, she’s got two fifties tucked away for just ten minutes’ trade and that’s damn near a record for Lu. Most of the working girls say she’s cheap, a shluha vokzalnaja – a train station whore – but lately Lu’s been rolling in the big tricks and feels she’s on the way up again. Lexus-man had told her how he liked to come back to the ‘hood’ that he’d been brought up in and bragged how he’d got out and made his fortune in Manhattan. What an asshole, what a swoloch! Lu had soaked up his bullshit and taken him to a spot she favoured at the back of the Brighton Fish Market and ha
d left him there as stinky as smoked mackerel when they were done. He didn’t look such a high-and-mighty tycoon with his pants down and his cum all over his stomach and that fancy leather interior. She was still smiling at the sweet nothings she’d whispered in his big waxy ear and how she’d turned him on. ‘U tebia ochen malenki hui, tolko pyat pat centimetrov?’ she’d purred as she’d started unzipping him. He might not have been so excited if he’d known she’d told him, ‘You have a very small dick, how big is it… only five centimetres?’ And there certainly wouldn’t have been a tip if he’d known that ‘U tebya rozha, kak obezyanya zhopa’ was not ‘Thank you very much’ but ‘Your mug looks like a monkey’s ass.’ She laughs and says ‘Mudak, mudak!’ as she strolls past Primorski’s restaurant, pausing to look through the window as cleaners stack chairs on tables and sweep floors. She’d rather sell her ass any day of the week than sweep someone’s floor.

  She catches sight of a young waiter she knows called Ramzan and he waves at her but is too busy helping clear up to come to the door. Just last week he caught her eye down at a new bar off Ocean Parkway but by the time she’d shaken off the attention of an unwelcome punter he’d vanished. Her friend Grazyna says she should stay away from Ramzan, says he’s a Chechen and she’d do well to remember how much Oleg hates Chechens. But Lu doesn’t give a shit; Oleg can go fuck himself. Ramzan is tall, thin and handsome with kind eyes. He looks like the type of guy who would take care of her, maybe change her life for ever and get her out of this hellhole. Nose pressed to the glass, she watches Ramzan help one of the cleaning women move a table so that she can wipe beneath it and she feels a stab of jealousy. Fuck him, then. Lu Zagalsky waits for no one. She fishes in her purse and pulls out some crystal amphet; it’ll help take the pain away. As she gears up, her punter-radar alerts her to a guy about to use the ATM next to Primorski’s.

  ‘It’s broken,’ she calls to him.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘It’s broken,’ she repeats, with no trace of her native Russian. ‘It’s always broken.’

  ‘Oh damn!’ He takes off his glasses and returns a gold credit card to his wallet. ‘Do you know where the next one is?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. East end of the Avenue,’bout three blocks down,’ says Lu, scenting an easy final trick of the night. She puts her hands on her hips. ‘I can show you if you promise to spend some of it on me.’

  The man seems shocked and embarrassed. He glances up and down the street, looking as though he wants to, but doesn’t really know what to say or do. ‘Well – errm – I don’t know. I mean, I-I’ve never done anything like that before. I’m not certain, I m-mean…’

  Lu moves closer to him. First-timers are always an easy hit. Get them over the initial flushes of nerves and later on they’ll show their gratitude with a big handout – in more ways than one. ‘Don’t worry, mister, I’ll look after you,’ she says, moving closer to him. ‘You got a car?’

  He takes a step back and answers nervously, ‘Yes, yes I have. There.’ He points vaguely to some boring four-door Hyundai that no one under ninety would be seen dead in. Poor schmuck probably hasn’t had exciting sex with his wife in twenty years. Lu almost feels sorry for him. ‘Twenty dollars hand relief, fifty dollars oral, a hundred dollars for the lot,’ she says, as though waitressing in a diner and reading out the specials.

  ‘But, but…’ he stammers, ‘I don’t have any money. I j-just told you that.’

  ‘Hey, don’t sweat. I know that,’ she says, running her fingers down the lapel of his old blue suit jacket. ‘Look, you give me a ride and I’ll show you to the ATM, then you can give me another ride – you get my meaning?’

  ‘Y-yes. I understand,’ he says, fumbling for his car keys, almost dropping them. They walk in silence to the car and he pops the doors open with the automatic zapper. They climb in. He fires up the engine, pulls on his seat belt and turns to her. ‘I’m a l-little afraid of accidents. Would you please put on your seat belt, miss?’ he says, leaning over and pulling the strap out for her. ‘First rule of the road, better safe than sorry, always buckle up.’

  18

  Sofitel Hotel, Florence, Tuscany

  From the moment Jack awoke, he was chasing time.

  He stumbled to the bathroom, nursing the mother of all hangovers. He’d badly overslept and had less than two hours in which to meet Orsetta, find out about the case she wanted help with and then catch a train back to Siena. It was going to be tight.

  Showering and shaving took fifteen minutes and he arrived in the restaurant with his skin still stinging from aftershave. Orsetta was sitting in a corner, sipping a cappuccino and reading a newspaper.

  ‘Morning. Anything good in there?’ he said, taking a seat opposite her.

  ‘Buon giorno,’ she replied, without looking up. ‘Unfortunately there is never anything good in Italian newspapers.’

  Jack knew what she meant. He used to read the crime-packed American papers solely as a means of keeping track of ‘the enemy’.

  A waiter appeared and he ordered black coffee, juice and some chopped fruit and yoghurt. It wasn’t what he wanted, but he knew that he’d reached the age when he could no longer eat a cooked breakfast and not expect it to show up somewhere on his waistline.

  Orsetta folded her newspaper and was putting it down when she noticed printing ink on her fingers. ‘Looks like I’m being processed,’ she joked, holding up her hands.

  ‘Always good to have a set of dabs on file,’ said Jack.

  Orsetta rubbed her hands on a napkin, then dipped into a black calfskin document bag at her feet. She produced a weighty A4-sized Jiffy bag and then folded her arms over the top of it and looked intently across the table.

  ‘What?’ asked Jack, sensing her hesitation.

  ‘Yesterday, you said you might need persuading to help us. Do you still feel that way?’

  Jack was dry-mouthed and when he spoke his voice was as rough as gravel. The booze had left him dehydrated and he hoped the juice and coffee would come quickly. ‘And yesterday you admitted you were checking me out to see that I wasn’t a “cabbage case”. Do you still think I might be?’

  The word ‘cabbage’ made her laugh again. ‘Touche,’ she said and slid the package across the white linen tablecloth.

  ‘Heavy,’ he said, weighing it in one hand. ‘Okay if I read this on the train and call you later?’

  You need to call Massimo,’ she answered. ‘He’s put a personal letter in there for you. As I said last night, he really wanted to come in person, but is out of the country.’

  Jack’s coffee, juice, fruit and yoghurt arrived. Within seconds he’d drained half the orange, letting the waiter move away before picking up the conversation. ‘BRK’s victims are always women on their own. Their typical age is mid-twenties and his MO is always to be “subtle” rather than “snatch”. Believe me, this guy probably has charm. We’ve never had sightings of him abducting his victims, or trying to abduct them. We presume he grooms the women, maybe even seduces them. We suspect he lures them into an area where they feel safe with him, and then he strikes.’

  ‘Premeditated and organized.’

  Precisely. He’s an organized killer, a planner, never taking unnecessary risks, never making foolish mistakes. He’s the kind of guy that measures twice before cutting wood. Probably measures three times before cutting flesh.’

  Orsetta drank her cappuccino, noting the seamless way he’d lapsed into the lexicon of murder, while mundanely mixing plain yoghurt into his chopped fruit. ‘We only have one victim, a young woman from Livorno, a town on the western shoreline of the Tyrrhenian Sea. In this case there is also no evidence of the victim being forcefully abducted. We also believe our offender falls into the organized category, but it is too early in the investigation for us to say that he has not made mistakes or left clues. I hope in this respect our offender is different from yours.’

  Jack finished chewing, then added, ‘BRK dismembered all his later victims and scattered pieces of them in
the sea, like a kid throwing bread to gulls. By the time we’d discovered what the fish hadn’t eaten there was nothing for Forensics to go over, they couldn’t come up with anything other than rock salt and barnacles.’

  ‘I’m really glad I’ve already eaten,’ said Orsetta, grimacing. She glanced at her wristwatch. ‘I am afraid I am due back in Rome. In fact, I am overdue back in Rome. I hadn’t planned on staying last night so I really must go.’

  Jack wasn’t buying her need to rush off. He suspected she was anxious to avoid any potential awkwardness between them.

  ‘Hey, if last night I opened up doors to places you didn’t want to go, then I’m sorry. Maybe we both should have known better than to play such games, eh?’

  Orsetta managed a thin smile. ‘Indeed we should. You know, what you said – well, it was right. I am avoiding commitment. But right now, I need to.’

  Jack put his hands up to let her know that she didn’t need to explain herself, but he could tell that she wanted to anyway.

  ‘I was in a relationship for four years. I thought I was in heaven. I thought he was the great love of my life. Well, it turns out that he was the love of another woman’s life as well, and had been for nearly ten years. Probably more than one other woman, if truth be told.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Please forgive me for bringing all that up; I’m sure it was painful.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Orsetta. ‘You’re completely forgiven, providing, that is, that you are going to agree to help us.’

  ‘I am,’ said Jack. He tapped his hand on the case notes she’d passed to him. ‘I’ll read these this morning and I’ll call Mass and tell him he’ll have my preliminary profile within a few days.’

  Orsetta folded a ten-euro tip in with the money she’d left to settle the breakfast bill. ‘You have to promise me one thing, then,’ she said, standing up and gathering her things.