Maria was on the phone to some potential guests so Nancy had to wait to hand over the e-mail print-offs. She glanced down at a copy of La Nazione. The front-page headline screamed 'Omicidio!' and carried a photo of a pretty dark-haired young woman called Cristina Barbuggiani. Nancy had also seen the girl's picture on TV bulletins and had heard staff talking about how her body had been chopped up and thrown in the sea. She turned away, letting out a long sigh, sad to realize that even here, in the most beautiful place she had ever lived, there was no escape from murder.
8
Florence, Tuscany Jack stepped from the silence of the empty train into the noise and swelter of midday Florence, a broiling city of bustling bodies and blaring traffic. His mind was still clogged with the dregs of his nightmare when he reached the office of Dottoressa Elisabetta Fenella. The building stood just off Piazza San Lorenzo in the city's most famous market district and was overlooked by the majestic stone presence of the Basilica di San Lorenzo, a frontless fourth-century church, rebuilt by the Medicis.
Jack slipped from the scorching sunlight of the street into the cool shade of the building's entrance-way. He took a cramped, old-fashioned, iron-gated lift to the third floor and was ushered by a demure receptionist into a marble-floored, high-ceilinged consultation room. Overhead, two fans that probably predated Florence itself spun gracefully but pointlessly, batting currents of hot air from one side of the room to the other but doing nothing to cool the place. An antique oak desk squatted in a far corner, overlooked by a crucifix on the far wall and weighed down by papers and silver-framed photographs of a large extended family. Jack picked one up and studied a glamorous dark-haired woman in her late thirties, shoulder to elegant shoulder with a much older man.
The door behind him opened and the woman in the picture frame looked startled to find him at her desk.
'Signore King?' she asked, her voice betraying her disapproval of his nosiness.
'Yes,' answered Jack, embarrassed at being caught snooping. 'Forgive me, old police habits die hard.'
'Please.' She gestured towards two creamy cotton settees arranged either side of a square glass-topped coffee table.
'Thanks for seeing me at such short notice, I appreciate it.' Jack offered his hand and as she shook it he noticed a gold and diamond wedding ring that would cost an FBI field officer three months' salary.
'You're welcome. I'm afraid it was either today, or I wouldn't have been able to fit you in for several months.' Elisabetta Fenella put a brown file down on the coffee table and Jack noticed his name. He was on file.
No doubt the FBI had shipped it to her, FedExed her all the gory details about his burnout, his failure to cope with the pressure of his workload, and she'd had it waiting there, gathering years of dust but ever ready for the moment he inevitably cracked up and came calling.
The thought slapped the wind out of him.
Dottoressa Fenella cut to the chase. 'Your office called me, what – something like two years ago? So, why did you choose now to ask to see me?'
It was a good question. And he wanted to give a good answer, wanted to come right out and say that he needed her intervention, needed her skills to hold back the evil that drowned him every night. But he couldn't. The words simply wouldn't come.
'Let me help you, Jack.' She saw his eyes fall on the file again. 'Read it if you like.' She pushed it towards him. 'I'm sure there's nothing in there that you don't already know.'
Jack stared at the file but didn't touch it. It was a test of strength and trust. She would hold nothing back, providing he was strong enough to do the same.
But was he?
A white flash went off in his head, as white as the tiles of the morgue, as white as the drained skin of more than a dozen dead women.
'Okay,' said Jack. 'Let's get on with this. I've wasted enough of your time already.'
9
Days Inn Grand Strand, South Carolina Once Spider had taken what he wanted from the cemetery, he'd headed straight back to his rented room at the Days Inn Grand Strand, only minutes from Myrtle Beach International.
The act of grave-robbing had not given him a sleepless night. Far from it. It had exhilarated and exhausted him as much as any imaginable sexual marathon, and afterwards he'd slipped effortlessly into a full night's sleep.
Spider stirs now in his hotel bed and looks around the room to get his bearings. He wonders how the crummy joint managed to get one star, let alone two. Outside he can hear kids shouting and laughing as they jump in the pool and he longs for them to be quiet. He needs food, drink and much more rest, but such comforts will have to wait. Escape is now the only priority.
Although he is more than thirty miles from the desecrated grave, for him it's still too close for comfort. Despite the incredible desire to stay around, to mix with the locals and listen to them talk about what has happened, he knows he must leave. By now the cops are certain to be crawling all over the cemetery, and that in turn means that the story might be on every radio and television station. He's been scrupulously careful, and he will be even more careful before leaving the room, but despite all his precautions he's aware that there's always a chance that someone will see him, even if he hasn't seen them.
Spider uses the toilet and then takes a long, hot shower. There are two white bath towels. He takes one, partly dries himself and sits on the bed, wrapping it around him.
He notices that he's breathing hard and his hands are shaking. Even after all these years, after all the killings, he still gets 'the day-after shakes'. He knows it is only anxiety, the start of a panic attack. This is the time when the fear of being caught is at its most extreme, and experience has taught him that the further away from the crime scene he gets, the quicker the anxiety disappears.
When he feels a little better he goes back to the bed and sits down, flicking through the TV stations with a remote, zapping channels for any news from Georgetown. WTMA is finishing a warning about tropical depressions and hurricanes and WCSC is in the middle of a report on a Mount Pleasant woman who drowned while boating off Sullivan's Island. He flicks over to WCBD and instantly recognizes the video footage of the cemetery. After a few seconds a Hispanic-looking reporter appears on screen, talking to a news anchor back in the main studio: 'Here in this close-knit community of Georgetown there is widespread shock and outrage today, at what most locals regard as not just an unholy act but one of monstrous repulsiveness. Camera crews and journalists have been kept outside the cemetery, but as you'll have seen from our pictures, shot from the public highway, the desecration seems to be frenzied and extreme. There's speculation here that it could be the work of sick trophy-hunters or else of a highly disturbed individual who has some kind of mental illness that draws him to the graves of murder victims. The office of Georgetown's chief of police has today categorically stated that at this stage they see no reason to connect the incident with the so-called Black River Killer, the serial murderer believed to have been responsible for the death of Sarah Elizabeth Kearney.'
Spider is both amused and irritated. Does the press really believe such nonsense? Don't they have the intelligence to realize what is really going on? He doubts that the police are so stupid. Surely they won't misunderstand the significance of what has been done?
He lies back on the bed, his hair wet on the pillow. Next to him is the other bath towel, wrapped delicately around the object of his affection. The decapitated skull of Sarah Kearney. Spider turns on his left side and with his right hand gently strokes his fingers backwards and forwards across the smooth bone. Has it really been twenty years? Twenty years since he shared the intimacy of her death, and the secret comforts of her cool body?