Spider

'Forget the mushrooms, they're probably poisonous or at least hallucinogenic. Let's move on. Imagine something spooks you. You look around and there's an animal there, just a few paces away from you. What is it?'

'Orso!' she said quickly, then screwed up her eyes and struggled to find the right English word.'

'Orso grizzly, not orsacchiotto, not a teddy bear. It's a big slow black bear, its arms are open wide and it has a shiny snout and bright white teeth.'

'What do you do?' After his ordeal at the psychiatrist's earlier that day Jack found himself comforted by being back in control and on the right side of a Q and A session.

Orsetta licked her lips and concentrated. 'I move slowly. Very slowly. My eyes never leave the bear. If it takes a step nearer, then I'm going to pick up one of those small logs near the mushrooms and smash its leg, or maybe its face. Then I will run.' The thought of violence made her open her eyes. She blinked as she adjusted to the ugly lighting in the bedroom.

Jack started to regret what he was doing. He was only a fraction of the way through a mental scenario that had already told him more than he now felt he had a right to know.

'So?' said Orsetta, sensing his discomfort. 'What has the great Perceiver learned from his strange questions about woods and animals?'

If the wine hadn't clouded his judgement, he would have made small talk while they waited for their steak, but now hewas too relaxed tocensor himself. He went with the flow. 'You're an optimist and a romantic,' he said. It was a statement of fact, not a compliment.

She tilted her head quizzically in an attractive way. 'Why? How do you come to that conclusion?'

'Your trees were green – evergreen – you saw sunlight. If you'd described the forest as black and wintry, then it would have been more indicative of pessimism. Colours are often keys to our moods. And never forget, Mother Nature is a great undercover spy. Deploy her like I just did, send her on a mission deep into another person's imaginings and fantasies, and she will always return with their secrets.'

'Go on,' urged Orsetta, finding herself surprisingly excited by the revelations. It was almost as though he was a voyeur in her imagination, a secret traveller in her private inner world.

'You're very sensual,' Jack said, carefully and almost clinically. 'I suspect you're also intensely passionate -'

Orsetta reddened a little. 'Scusi?'

'I'm only telling you what I deduced from the descriptions you gave, the language you used.'

Orsetta still looked puzzled.

'Let me explain. I asked you what season it was, and you didn't just say "summer", you also told me what you saw, how you felt and what you heard. You described the effect on almost all of your senses. You mentioned how you could smell – the pines in the forest – what you could hear – the birds and the animals – and how you felt about the place – that it was lovely.'

He saw so much and yet I told him so little, Orsetta thought as he topped their glasses up. It felt as though with one flash of his profiling skills he'd x-rayed her entire personality. 'What did the water mean? I heard water but couldn't see it, what did that mean?'

Jack cleared his throat. 'Okay. The water you mentioned – well, water often represents our interest in sex. At the moment I don't think you're in a relationship as the water you talked of was out of sight. But you're seeking it, and it was loud enough to be heard even though you couldn't see it – that's indicative of the need for powerful, intense sexual closeness.'

Orsetta swallowed hard. She wished she hadn't asked. Her mind was picturing waterfalls and the pair of them having sex in the water. She tried to clear her head and stop herself from blushing. 'This isn't a standard test, no?' she joked. 'I'm sure you don't do it with most suspects.'

'No, not too standard,' said Jack. 'It's just something I do sometimes to open people up. Actually, it works well on suspects, throws them off guard and gives you an insight into them before you start asking offence-related questions.'

'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.