It was staring at him. Creeping slowly down the wall, a thread unspooling behind it from the ceiling, as if it was abseiling. It was level with his face now. No more than a foot from his face.
Breaking into a cold sweat, he moved back as far as he could, his head pressing against the wall behind him, looking frantically for a weapon. Was there a toilet plunger?
All he could spot was the toilet-roll holder.
He could see bristles on the creature’s abdomen. And its eyes. Eight black, shiny beads staring at him, fearless, hungry, angry.
He moved a hand to his right, towards the toilet roll.
Rivulets of perspiration ran down his body. He tried to call to Jodie for help. But no sound came out.
He tried again.
But his voice was paralysed by fear.
He stared into the eyes. His hand touched the toilet roll. Tried to free it but it wouldn’t move. The spider crawled down another few inches. Instinctively he covered his penis and testicles with his left hand, and yanked hard on the toilet roll. Suddenly, with a loud clatter, it came free and dropped down between the wall and the toilet seat.
Then, like an acrobat, the spider swung on its thread away from the wall and straight at him, its hairy, spiky legs clamping onto his face.
He screamed. Shook in terror. Screamed again. Again. Again. Shook. Shook. Trying to shake the bloody thing off. A thousand pinpricks stabbed his skin simultaneously.
‘HELP ME! HELP ME!’
Suddenly, all he could see was a weak green glow.
The dial of the clock. 4.07 a.m.
He lay back in the bed, the sheets sodden with his perspiration, gulping air. And bursting to have a pee.
For some moments he fought it off, still filled with stark terror from the nightmare. He reached out his hand, found the bedside lamp cable, then switched it on. Instantly the room flooded with light. He stared fearfully up at the ceiling and the walls. At a framed oil painting of a rainy Parisian street scene. At another framed painting of a Provençal village.
He slipped out of bed and crossed over to the bathroom, pulled the door open warily, found the light switch and turned it on. He peered around before entering, then, even more warily, pushed open the loo door. He took a step in, snapping on the light and looking up at the ceiling and around at the walls and the floor.
There was nothing in there.
All the same, he was as fast as he could be, then went back out, shutting the door firmly, before rinsing his hands and going back into the bedroom, shutting that door firmly, too.
He climbed back into bed, wide awake and too scared to go back to sleep.
It seemed only moments later that his alarm was beeping and the room was flooded with daylight.
He was too relieved to notice his head pounding from all the Armagnac he had drunk the previous night.
114
Saturday 14 March
After a sleepless night, fretting about DS Norman Potting, Jodie Carmichael finally gave up on trying to get any rest, and went into her bathroom.
Standing under the jets of the shower, she was trying hard to think everything through. She was reasonably satisfied she’d said nothing to Detective Sergeant Potting that the police could use against her. What exactly was his game plan?
To try to take a look around her house for evidence? Good luck with that one! The only thing she had here that she could, in theory, be arrested for was the memory stick, and the stash of dollars she’d taken in New York. It made her smile that the dollars were sewn inside the mattress that he had spent the night sleeping on. She doubted very much that the owner of the memory stick and cash would have made a complaint to the police.
She thought about seeing the detective studying the landing wall last night. If he brought in a search team they would find the reptile room. And then?
So her first husband, Christopher Bentley, a reptile expert, had died from a snake bite. So had Rowley Carmichael — in India — from a bite from a snake that killed 158 people a day in that country.
So she kept saw-scaled vipers among other pets in her home.
So she didn’t have a licence for them, here in Brighton. But she had inherited most of them from her late husband, Christopher Bentley, and still kept up a valid licence for them under his name, at the address of her London bolthole, a small flat in South Kensington. The police might rumble and bust her little secret Brighton address, her bedsit flat near the Seven Dials. But they’d find nothing there. She would always be one step ahead of them.
Were they going to try to show that she’d taken a snake with her in her luggage on the cruise?
No way, José.
Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer.
Shrewd, she thought. For a few hours at least, with luck, she would have the jump on that fat oaf detective. Maybe if she was smart, and gave nothing away, she could glean information from him. Men were weak creatures. If his prostate problem was his cover — his lie — for not sleeping with her, then maybe if she could seduce him once, and record it, she’d have a hold over him. Men didn’t reject her advances, they found her irresistible.
A plan began to formulate in her mind.
A couple of minutes later she stepped out of the shower, dried herself, brushed her teeth and sprayed on some perfume. She put on her dressing gown, activated her phone’s voice recorder and slipped it into her pocket, then went out onto the landing, rapped once, softly, and opened the guest-bedroom door, ready to slip into bed with her guest, smother him with kisses and work him into a frenzy.
To her dismay he was standing up, fully dressed.
‘Good morning!’ she said breezily, recovering the situation. ‘Just wanted to see what you would like for breakfast — as you forgot to leave your order hanging on the door!’
‘So I did!’ He laughed, then shrugged. ‘Well, I guess I’ll go along with whatever you’re having.’
‘Bacon and eggs, black pudding, fried bread, tomatoes and mushrooms? Would that hit the spot?’
‘A full English? How could I resist? But I have a really important conference call booked to my suite at the hotel for nine a.m., which I have to be there for. So what I’ll do is call a cab, go back to the hotel, take the call, shower and change while I’m there, and pick up a newspaper on the way — I normally get the Saturday Financial Times mailed to me every week in the US. Then perhaps we could have that breakfast when I’m back.’
‘It’ll be on the table, all ready. Oh, if you’re getting papers, could you pick up a Mail, Times and an Argus newspaper for me?’
‘Sure.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I could be back here in — say — an hour and a half?’
She walked up to him, placed her hands lightly on his shoulders and, looking into his eyes, said, ‘That’s too long, I’ll miss you. I really enjoy your company. Try to make it sooner.’
He placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘I’ll do what I can to be as quick as possible.’ She detected a faint change in his expression. ‘The other option is we have breakfast back at my hotel. How would that sound? Save you the trouble of cooking?’
Why was he suggesting that? she wondered. Had he been making calls during the night? Testing him, she said, ‘Hotel dining rooms are so impersonal. I think breakfast should be a very private occasion, don’t you?’
‘I’ve never thought about that.’
‘It can be the most romantic of all meals — if you’re with the right person. And best of all naked in bed.’ She cocked her head and then gave him a light kiss on the forehead. ‘You know how you can tell the difference in a hotel between lovers and old married couples?’
‘No, how?’
‘Lovers are the ones there talking to each other. The married couples are the ones sitting in silence reading newspapers while they eat!’