by Unknown
‘Let’s play a little game of “Before and After”,’ says Spider, shuffling the photographs and then holding one out in front of Lu’s face. ‘This is “Before”,’ he says.
Lu focuses on a red-headed girl with sunglasses; she’s wearing a flowing floral green dress and strappy sandals. It’s taken in a shopping mall; the girl’s on a cell phone and in the background people are riding an elevator to an upper floor.
‘And “After”,’ says Spider, replacing it with another shot.
This time the woman’s naked-anddead. She’slying on her back, hands across her chest and her hair looks unnaturally red against her shockingly white skin.
Lu notices something else.
The dead girl is lying on the same type of table that she is tied to. Maybe the very same table!
Spider takes the photographs away and smiles. ‘Don’t be nervous, Sugar. I know what you’re thinking and you’re wrong, oh so very wrong. You’re not naked because I’m going to do anything sexual to you. There may be a time for intimacy. But not now. Not in this life.’
The words don’t compute in Lu Zagalsky’s brain. Not now – what did he mean? Not in this life. She’s heard every kind of wacko talk about every kind of crazy shit that turns them on. Piss on me, dress me in rubber, drag me around on a dog lead, but never anything like this. This shit just doesn’t happen.
Spider moves behind her. He combs his fingers through her tangled hair as it dangles off the edge of the bondage table. The moment reminds him of when he was a young boy waiting in the hairdresser’s salon while his mom had her hair washed leaning backwards over a sink, a strange man laughing all the time and soaping her hair so vigorously. More than anything he had wanted to play with the magical clouds of bubbles that tumbled on to the floor. But the strange man wouldn’t let him and kept brushing him away, telling him to sit down and let mommy have some time without being pestered by him.
Spider rubs the tips of his fingers into her hair, just like he’d seen the man do with his mom, then he smoothes the palms of his hands over her face and forehead to wipe away the bubbles. ‘You have nice hair, Sugar, but you should take better care of it. Maybe not use so many sprays, and get a slightly classier cut; I’m sure you can afford to indulge yourself every once in a while.’ He gently massages her temples and forehead and then moves back to the stool, so he can sit facing her once more. Dark thoughts cross his mind. Thoughts of how he would like to explore her body when she’s dead; relieve himself in the cool of her orifices and then hold her freshly limp corpse until all her energy has flowed into him.
He touches her face again. ‘Do you like flowers?’ he asks.
What the fuck? Do I like flowers?
He stares down on her again, his wild eyes boring into her, his crazy voice croaking out crazy words.
‘Have you ever seen Spider Lilies?’ he continues. ‘They’re so beautiful, so white and fragile.’
Lu’s never even seen normal lilies let alone these Spider things that Mr Crazy is babbling on about.
‘One day, I will lay them all over your body. I will cover you in them. And when others have forgotten you, I will always bring Spider Lilies to you.’
Spider spins around and walks away from her. He feels the urge rising within him, stimulating him, arousing him.
He wants her now.
He wants to feel the magic of owning her.
Possessing her.
Consuming her.
Killing her.
But Spider knows he mustn’t let the want overwhelm him, he mustn’t let the fire within him wreck all his plans.
He won’t give in to it.
He’s learned not to.
Spider knows how to control the current that’s surging through his veins and prevent it overpowering him in just one moment of blind, bloody passion.
Lu Zagalsky is in a cold sweat. With her head freed of the neck noose, she manages to turn her face for the first time, craning sideways towards the sick mudak who’s in the corner of the room, looking away from her. What she sees sends another ripple of panic through her. And, despite the futility of it all, she starts kicking, and straining at the ropes around her wrists.
It isn’t just the ceiling that’s covered in black plastic. Every inch of the whole room, all the walls and even the floor are covered in the stuff.
It’s as though she’s inside a giant bodybag.
And it’s about to be zipped up.
22
Florence, Tuscany
Jack waited until the train guard had checked his ticket and left the carriage before he settled down to work on Massimo Albonetti’s file.
One glance at the documents was enough to put him on edge.
There were two thick documents, the first in Italian, the second, he presumed, its English translation. He put the Italian version to one side and focused on the English one. It kicked off with a well-written executive summary, which he suspected had been penned by Massimo himself. It stated what Orsetta had already told him, that the Italian police believed they were investigating a serial killer who posed a seriously high risk to the public.
Jack scanned back to the top of the document and saw it was dated the last week of June; the case was certainly a live one. He realized he was reading a translation of a confidential memo that had been sent to the Italian Prime Minister’s private office. From this first page, Jack was aware that he was probably one of maybe only half a dozen people privileged enough to see the report.
A photograph of a victim was paper-clipped to the file. She was a beautiful young woman in her twenties with long, dark brown hair and even darker eyes. She was wearing inexpensive, slightly owlish glasses, but they suited her. The text named her as Cristina Barbuggiani, a 26-year-old librarian from Livorno, who kept herself to herself and was described as bright, shy and academic. Her age fitted BRK’s profile to a T. Cristina had been a history graduate and had spent much of her spare time travelling to Montelupo Fiorentino just outside Florence, to help on the archaeological excavation of some Roman ruins. Farms, villas and even early factories set up to produce wine, olive oil and corn had been unearthed in the area.
Jack wondered why serial killers always seemed randomly to select the most undeserving of victims. Why were international drug-runners, paedophiles and rapists never their victims?
The report’s top-line executive summary described another of the similarities with the BRK case that Orsetta had outlined to him over breakfast. Dismembered pieces of Cristina’s body had been found spread across kilometres of the western coastline. Each piece, and apparently there had been thirteen in total, had been found wrapped in black plastic bags and weighted down. This too fitted with BRK’s chosen method of disposal. Jack read on and learned that from where the body parts were recovered, it was deduced that they had been thrown in from the shore – from a beach, cliff or nearby rocks. No boat had been used. The feet, shins, thighs, trunk, lower and upper arms of the victim had been disposed of and found in entirely different places. Jack turned a page and the air in his lungs froze. All the body parts had been recovered, bagged and tagged, and had autopsy reference numbers. All, that is, except for the left hand. Jack understood the significance immediately. In his entire career, he’d only ever come across one offender who’d kept such a trophy. The Black River Killer. After four years, the silence was over, and BRK had returned.
23
Marine Park, Brooklyn, New York
Spider checks the gag and restraints, locks the basement door and heads upstairs to rest.
As he walks into his bedroom he glances up at the mirrored tiles that cover the ceiling. They’re there so that he can see himself perfectly as he lies on his specially adapted bed. He thinks of them as his ‘Window to Heaven’.
He empties his pockets on to the bedside table, opens up his clam-shell cell phone and thumbs through the Menu. Under Media Gallery he chooses View and flicks through the digital shots made by the phone’s two-mega-pixel lens. For two nights he�
��d covertly snapped Lu Zagalsky plying her trade across the streets of Brooklyn Beach, high-heeling her way alongside the cars that cruised Little Odessa. He’d got to know and photograph her every move as she grafted punter after punter, leaving them with empty balls and empty wallets. She was typical of all women: they took your money and left. Only difference was, this girl did it in twenty minutes rather than in twenty years. But the outcome was the same, in the end they all left.
Except in your world, Spider, isn’t that right? In Spider’s World, no one leaves. What is it you tell them? Even when your mortal flesh is gone, you will still live inside of me; you will still be part of me. Your soul and my soul will be together for ever.
Spider looks at the small digital picture of her and thinks how, like all the rest, there’s something about her that reminds him of his dead mother. The hair colour is almost identical, and the shape and colour of her eyes too. But that’s where the similarities end. This girl is a whore and a slut; someone almost unworthy of what he has in mind for her. For this will be no ordinary kill. This will be a unique murder, a killing that will make her more famous than any of his previous victims. Spider feels an ache of passion, a lustful gnawing inside him, as he thinks of how she’ll die and what her cool, dead body will be like when he’s finished with her. He strips off his clothes and goes to the en-suite bathroom to use the toilet, wash and clean his teeth. He brushes them three times a day, not twice. It’s something his mom used to make him do. Cleanliness is next to godliness. That was back in the happy days, the days before she left him.
Left without even saying goodbye.
He’d come home from school and had been told that his mom had gone, that she was dead, but he shouldn’t worry or be sad because she was now in a ‘Better Place’, she was in heaven with the angels.
How could that be? How could Mom have gone somewhere so much better, and not taken him with her?
He was only nine years old when it happened. And while he was already smart enough not to trust everyone about everything, he did trust his mom and dad; as they had said, they were the only people in the world you really could rely on, the only people who would always tell you the truth and would always look after you.
Always. For ever and ever.
But it was all a lie, wasn’t it?
For weeks she’d been in hospital and he’d missed her. Missed her every day that he was away from her.
‘I can’t get to sleep, Daddy. When’s she coming home? When will Momma be back?’
They’d taken him to visit her in hospital during all those weeks, and every day she looked sadder, thinner and somehow paler. They said she was fighting what they called cancer and it looked to him like this cancer thing was winning but, oh no, they said, your momma’s a fighter, she’ll be okay, she’ll be fine in the end.
Liars. All of them, goddamn liars.
Even when there were those tubes sticking out all over her, his dad had hugged him and told him that he shouldn’t be frightened, that they were only there to help his momma get well again.
Well again! How he’d longed for that day.
Sometimes he’d climb on to the hard hospital bed because she was too weak to even sit up and put her arms around him. He’d lie down next to her and cry on her pillow. She’d lift her hand, now all bony and thin, with plasters and tubes sticking out of bruised veins, and stroke his face. Her voice was thin and weak, not the one that used to shout down the garden for him to come inside right now and get his dinner, and it was hard to hear her, but the words were always the same: ‘Don’t cry, baby, I’ll be better soon. Wipe away those tears, Momma will be home very soon now.’
And then, all of a sudden, she was gone. Gone to heaven. Gone to the Better Place without him.
Where are you, Momma? I’m waiting. Still waiting.
Given time, Spider might have recovered from the traumatic loss of his mother, but sometimes fate can be cruel, and sometimes that cruelty can have lifelong consequences. Within only weeks of his mother’s death, his father, Spider’s emotional anchor during this critical period of grieving, was knocked down and killed by a police patrol car turning out on a fake 911 call made by local kids who just wanted to see the cruisers zip by with their blues and reds flashing.
Spider’s pine bed is high-sided, like the one he had as a child. Only this one is coffin-shaped. He built it himself, using the tools of his dead father. The bottom of the bed contains a deep, space-saving, slide-out drawer. Inside, Spider keeps pictures of his parents, newspaper clippings about his father’s death and some other precious mementos – his trophies. Stripped of flesh and muscle, boiled and scrubbed squeaky-clean are the bony joints of victims’ fingers lying like a stack of stumpy chopsticks. He had no desire to retain their hands. He cut them off solely because it made it quicker and easier for him to get to the finger he wanted, the wedding finger. And when he did, he took care to slice off his precious trophy without damaging it. At the back of the drawer, wrapped in a handkerchief, is also a collection of cheap and expensive engagement and wedding rings.
Spider sits naked on the bed’s padded red mattress and out of habit plays with the gold chain around his neck. On it are his dead mother’s wedding and engagement rings. He raises them to his mouth and kisses them. He thinks of her for a moment and then lets go of the chain. From the side of the bed he picks up a plastic canister, twists the top and shakes its contents into the palm of a hand. Slowly, he spreads white talcum powder all over his body, until he’s white, entirely white.
White as a corpse.
As white as Momma’s face in the Chapel of Rest.
Spider lies down and looks up at his Window to Heaven. On the other side, he’s sure, really sure, he can see Momma in the Better Place, her dead white arms stretching out to embrace him.
24
West Village, SoHo, New York
There were two reasons Howie Baumguard couldn’t sleep – one was food and the other was homicide. Right now, he reckoned his plate was filled with far too much of one and far too little of the other. Bare-chested and bare-footed, with his grumbling stomach rolling over some string-tied blue cotton pyjama bottoms, he tiptoed downstairs, trying not to wake the rest of the family. For some time he’d managed to fool himself that he resembled Tony Soprano. Maybe thinning too much up top and certainly thickening too much around the middle, but still a force to be reckoned with. A good shave, a splash of cologne and a jazzy shirt and he always felt great. Great, that was, until his stick-insect wife told him he looked more like the Doughboy monster in Ghostbusters than James Gandolfini, who even she conceded was so big he was as sexy as hell. So last night, at the end of a gruelling day, he’d come home to a shrink-wrapped shrimp salad and zero-fat milk for his dinner. Man, is there no fun left in life? Well, screw her and screw the calories, now is munch time.
‘Look out, Fridge, Howie’s coming in!’ he said as he pulled open the double doors of the larder. His face lit up as brightly as the interior light. He grabbed a foil-wrapped cold chicken and waltzed it to the kitchen table, along with a jar of cranberry jelly. The rollover stainless-steel bread bin yielded more treasure: great slabs of white bread and a jelly-doughnut (left by Howie Jnr, who already seemed to have eaten three out of the four-pack).
For good measure Howie popped a can of beer and took a long slug before settling down in the cool of the kitchen. He ripped off a leg of chicken and gnawed away at the delicious meat. A heavy sprinkle of bad-for-your-heart salt turned it from good into fantastic. He knew he was eating for comfort – and, boy, it was working. Another deep hit of beer and he felt a thousand times better than he had done for the last two sleepless hours, sloped on his side feeling hungry and worrying about the call that he was about to make.
Howie unplugged his cell phone from the charger on the kitchen worktop and hit the speed dial for Jack King. It took an age to connect. Finally an Italian ring tone kicked in and a woman’s voice answered.
‘Buon giorno, hello, La Casa Strada.
I am Maria, how may I help you?’
Howie immediately thought of a couple of ways in which a girl with a voice as sexy as hers could help him, both of which would instantly get him on the path to divorce, so instead he stuck to his main reason for calling. ‘Hi there, I’m ringing from America and I’m trying to get hold of Jack King. Could you please put me through to him?’
He felt bad because good old Jack was no doubt enjoying a fine Tuscan morning and now his old buddy Howie was about to turn all that into a ball of elephant crap.
‘I am sorry, Signore King he is not here at the moment. Would you like to be speaking with Signora King?’
Given the option, Howie would rather shave his own eyeballs than risk a dressing-down from Nitric Nancy.
‘Yeah, put me through please,’ he said, wincing while he waited. Man, Nancy had really scorched him a few times in the past. Fact was, she and Howie had never really hit it off. In the early days, he was sure she’d resented how much time he and Jack had spent together. Then at the end, well, even though she’d never said it, he knew she partly blamed him for Jack’s breakdown.
‘Hello, Howie?’ said Nancy, a hint of incredulity in her voice. ‘What are you doing calling at this time?’
Hell, that kind of put him on the spot. What could he say now? Well, Nancy, someone’s mailed the severed head of the victim of a twenty-year-old murder to your husband and I was just wondering when he could swing by and pick it up? Nope, that didn’t seem a runner.
Howie went for a safer option. ‘Hi, Nancy, I’m up out of bed raiding the fridge, but I need to speak to Jack, we need to chat about some stuff.’
‘What stuff?’ said Nancy, quicker than a New Jersey switchblade.
‘Just an old case. Some new evidence has kinda cropped up. Any idea when I can get him?’
Nancy knew she was being blanked, knew it as surely as when that female Italian detective refused to tell her why she’d called. And she also knew there was no point asking Jack’s old buddy if there was any connection or not.
