Georgetown, South Carolina Fifteen-year-old Gerry Blake and his younger cousin Tommy Heinz couldn't believe what they were seeing. Day or night, they regularly cut through the graveyard. The old tombstones and creepy church had never held any fears for them.
Until now.
Today, they were in a rush to get to their friend Chuck's and go fishing with his dad in his boat out on the Black River. They both skidded to a halt on the rough shale path halfway through the churchyard; Tommy stumbled to his knees.
'Muuutherfucker!' screeched Gerry, drawing out the obscenity as he'd heard rappers do on MTV.
Tommy was already on his feet, panting like a dog, ready to run for the hills. He'd be out of there just as soon as Gerry came to his senses and got his ass into gear. For a second though, both boys instinctively huddled shoulder-to-shoulder and simply stared. What they saw was already branded into their memories for the rest of their lives.
The grave in front of them had been dug up.
A cheap pine coffin was splintered open and the skeleton of a young woman in a soil-stained dress was upright, resting against the headstone. Blackened bony arms and legs dangled from the filthy cloth. But the image that would haunt the teenagers until their own dying days was that of the head. Or rather, the space where the head should have been.
6
Florence, Tuscany The psychiatrist in Florence had been as good as her word. Jack had rung her cell phone and, despite being surprised by the call, Dottoressa Elisabetta Fenella had agreed to see him later that very day. The power of the FBI really did cross continents. Jack suspected the big bucks that the Bureau had no doubt promised to pay probably also had some sway.
The ninety-minute rail journey to Florence went quickly, mainly because of the beauty of the countryside that rolled past the dusty window of the airless, rundown and overcrowded carriage. He found himself mesmerized by the vineyards and olive plantations that battled for the best terraces across steep hillsides, drawn to the sunlight but scratching for patches of precious shade. In some places, the sun had scorched the ploughed fields into slabs, making the earth look as if it had been fashioned out of hunks of grey stone. In wetter valleys, golden stone cottages rose from fertile fields like farmhouse bread baking in an oven.
And Tuscany certainly was an oven.
Jack found himself bathed in sweat as the train started to slow down into Florence. He blamed the lack of air-con, but he knew it was something else. Second thoughts.
Second thoughts about facing up to whatever was inside him, whatever memories were powerful and dark enough to scare him even when he was asleep.
The facts, the cold hard facts, came tumbling into his head. The Black River Killings had broken him.
Those weren't just his words, it was what every crime reporter in America had written after his collapse at JFK.
He'd failed to catch a man who'd murdered at least sixteen young women, and who would murder more. He'd failed.
They'd written that too. Written it so many times that it had stopped hurting. Or so he told everyone.
Maybe it was best if he stayed broken. Broken didn't mean completely unworkable or totally destroyed, it just meant he wasn't as good as he once was. Maybe seeing a shrink would only make things worse.
His head filled with static, a sort of tinnitus, a hissing noise, and then it became clearer, not hissing, cutting. The noises were back; slashing noises. Steel on skin. He covered his ears and closed his eyes.
The sounds slowly slipped away. Had he heard them, or imagined them? Maybe the train pulling into the station, the wheels on the track?
He took his hands away and opened his eyes.
Silence.
The train had stopped and the carriages were empty.
It was decision time.
7
San Quirico D'Orcia, Tuscany San Quirico D'Orcia nestles in a stunning valley east of Montalcino, a third of the way along the breathtakingly beautiful route most tourists take to Montepulciano. A kilometre in the opposite direction, on the rising, winding road from San Quirico to Pienza, is the dramatic cypress-lined hillside that Ridley Scott used for the poignant scenes of the wife and child waiting for the return of Maximus in the film Gladiator.
The town's historic walls are broken and have lost much of their beauty. Behind them though stand buildings made of a glorious golden stone, reminding Nancy of the rough chunks of sweet honeycomb that she craved when she was a kid.
La Casa Strada lies on the very edge of the town walls and was once an olive oil business. That was until the mid-seventies, when a blisteringly hot summer brought the locusts of bankruptcy to many farms in the valleys of Tuscany. The owners, Laura and Sylvio Martinelli, gave up and moved in with family in Cortona. Sixty-year-old Sylvio got a job driving taxis, while sixty-five-year-old Laura turned her hand to baking Torta della Nonna for a local shop. Since then, their former home and work buildings had been modernized and extended beyond recognition; only the magnificent view over the rolling hills of Val D'Orcia remained unaltered and unalterable.
Nancy was winding herself slowly into her working day. She'd dropped Zack at a friend's house for a play day and was about to go through her planning routines for the week and coming month. She was relieved that the three-year-old had finally settled into his daily routine. A year earlier she used to endure terrible scenes at the International nursery in Pienza with him refusing to be left. Zack would cry and scream, clutching on to her shoulders or dress to prevent her putting him down. Worst of all, when she walked outside, she would see his tear-streaked face pressed against the window, begging her not to leave him. Nowadays though, Zack was 'a big boy', a 'good boy', and he understood that mommy and daddy needed to work during the day.
Nancy stuck her head through the kitchen door where the chefs were finishing the last of the breakfasts and shouted 'Good morning, everyone!', then waited for the replying chorus of 'Buon giorno' before letting the door flap shut again.
She noticed that their local handyman, Guido, was in there fixing a troublesome ventilator hood that served Paolo's gas-fired eight-burner oven. For some time, their temperamental chef had been pressing Nancy for a new range, like the one his second cousin in Rome had. But Paolo would have to wait, cash was tight at the moment and she'd told him that until the summer's takings were in, he'd have to make do with the 'bargains' they might pick up from local catering auctions. Nancy smiled to herself. In truth, Guido had now fixed so many of the appliances that neither she nor Jack could really regard them as bargains any more.
There were other things that needed fixing too. Months back, part of the far end of the garden terrace had dramatically slipped away and created a sharp fall on to the next terrace and an intriguing hole in the hillside. Carlo reckoned there could be an old water well in there, while Paolo conjured up more exotic possibilities by pointing out that the area used to be a fortified Medici stronghold. Whatever it was, it was an eyesore, a nuisance and maybe even a danger. Any day soon, one of Carlo's friends was coming to do what he promised would be an inexpensive job of landscaping over it.
'Morning, Maria,' said Nancy, as their twenty-year-old receptionist finally arrived at her desk.
'Good morning, Mrs King,' said Maria Fazing. Her grumpy American owner had banned her from using her native Italian. Nancy insisted that as foreign tourists were their main target customers, she should always begin conversations in English. Maria put up with it because one day she would enter Miss Italia, then Miss World, and would eventually be grateful to have been forced to learn English. Or at least that's what she told herself.
Nancy checked the computer, then the answer-phone, and updated the list of room bookings. She also added four more people to that evening's dinner reservations and then checked their own website for e-mail enquiries. There were some requests for menus, a couple of letters in Italian that Nancy printed off for Maria to reply to, and someone wanting a quote for a fifth-wedding-anniversary dinner.