Alice pursed her lips together and twisted them to one side. ‘That’s a lame excuse, if I’ve ever heard one. Many cops are married.’
‘True, but a large number of them eventually get divorced due to the pressures that come with being a cop.’
‘But at least they tried, without hiding behind a pretty bad excuse. What happened to the old saying better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?
Hunter shrugged. ‘I never heard that expression.’
‘Bullshit.’
A ghost of a smile betrayed him.
‘How about Carlos?’ Alice said. ‘He is married. Are you saying that his wife will eventually leave him because of his job?’
‘Some people are very lucky, or at least lucky enough to find that one person in life they’re meant to be with. Carlos and Anna are one such example. I don’t think you’ll ever find a better-suited couple. No matter how hard you look.’
‘And you never met that person? The one you’re supposed to be with for the rest of your life?’
In a flash Hunter’s memory was inundated by images of one face . . . the sound of one name. He felt his heart warm in his chest, but as the memories progressed at hyper speed, it grew ice cold.
‘No.’ Hunter didn’t shy away from her stare. But he was sure that something in his eyes gave him away.
Alice did see it. First something tender, then something hard and arctic, something very painful, and in spite of her curiosity, she knew she had no right to ask any more questions.
‘I’m sorry.’ She broke eye contact and changed the subject before the silence became too awkward. ‘So you got nothing new from the second shadow image?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Tell me something, do you think we got the first one right? I mean, the interpretation of it – that the killer was telling us that, to him, Derek Nicholson was a betrayer, a liar.’ She lifted a hand to stop Hunter from answering too quickly. ‘I know that we’ll never know for sure until we catch the killer. But does it ring right to you?’
Hunter could already see where she was leading. ‘Yes.’
‘But still, you have doubts about our interpretation of the second shadow image.’
‘Yes.’
Alice sipped her wine slowly. ‘You, Carlos and I have spent countless hours studying that human sculpture and the shadow image it casts, trying to make some sense of its meaning. I don’t think there’s anything else there, other than what we’ve been seeing from the start. Even the captain agrees. Why do you think we’re wrong this time? Why can’t the killer be using the image to tell us that he’s going after two more victims?’
The waiter came over to clear their table. Hunter waited until he moved away, balancing all the dishes up his arms.
‘In my view, that interpretation is too much of a leap from the first one. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.’
Alice’s eyes widened. ‘Sense? What in this case makes sense, Robert? We have a maniac out on an ego trip, chopping people up and creating human-flesh sculptures so he can give us crazy clues to a jigsaw puzzle. Where the hell is the sense in all that?’
Hunter quickly scanned the surrounding tables to see if anyone else had heard Alice’s comment. Her voice had risen a few decibels with excitement. Everyone seemed much more interested in their own food and wine than in their conversation. His attention returned to Alice.
‘It doesn’t make sense to us because we haven’t figured it out yet. But to the killer, it makes perfect sense. That’s why he’s doing it.’
Alice measured those words in silence. ‘That’s what you’ve been trying to do, isn’t it? To think like the killer. To see the sense that only he can see.’
‘Well, it’s been exactly a week, and so far I’ve failed miserably.’
‘No you haven’t.’ She placed one hand on the table, and the tips of her fingers brushed against the back of Hunter’s hand. ‘So far you’ve done a better job than anyone would’ve expected. If it weren’t for you, we’d all still be looking at those sculptures, trying to figure out what they meant.’
Hunter paused and looked at Alice. ‘Was that you paying me a compliment?’
‘No, just stating the truth. But what did you mean when you said it was too much of a leap from our interpretation of the first one.’
‘Would you like to see the dessert menu?’ The waiter had come back to the table.
Alice didn’t even look at him, simply shaking her head. Hunter gave him a sympathetic smile.
‘I think we overdid it on the main course. We’ve got no space left for anything else, thank you.’
‘Prego,’ the waiter replied and went on his way.
‘What leap?’ Alice insisted.
‘If we’re right in our interpretation of the first shadow image, then the killer gave us his opinion of Derek Nicholson, right? He considered him a liar.’
Alice sat back on her chair, things starting to connect in her head.
‘But if we’re also right in our interpretation of the second image, then the killer didn’t give us his opinion of Andrew Nashorn.’
Alice saw his point. ‘If we’re right, he gave us his opinion of himself – an angry devil looking down at his victims.’
Hunter nodded. ‘Yes, and I can’t see a reason why he would do that. It seems wrong. This killer wants us to see something through his point of view. He wants us to understand why he’s doing what he’s doing. Why he’s killing these people. Telling us that he thought Nicholson was a liar, that he was maybe betrayed by him, makes sense.’
‘But telling us that he’s an angry devil out for revenge, doesn’t?’
‘Does it to you?’
Her eyebrows arched for a second. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘So you think he’s trying to tell us something about Nashorn with the second image?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Yeah, but what? That he considered Nashorn the devil? A man with horns? And how about the other four images, two figures standing and two down? What the hell do they mean?’
Hunter had no reply.
Seventy-Four
His eyelids fluttered like butterfly wings – very damaged butterfly wings. They felt as if they weighed a ton, and it took Nathan Littlewood several seconds and tremendous effort to half open them and keep them that way. Shards of light seemed to rip through his eyeballs. He took a deep breath and his lungs burned as if the air were sulfuric acid. Whatever drug was injected into his neck, it was now wearing off.
His chin slumped down to his chest, his head feeling too heavy for him to lift it back up. He stayed like that for several seconds. Only then he realized that he was naked, except for his sweat-soaked striped boxers clinging to his skin. It took him another moment to understand his position. He was sitting down on a comfortable leather office chair. His arms were pulled back behind him, around the chair’s backrest. His wrists were bound together by something hard and thin that was cutting into his flesh. His feet were also pulled back and tied together under the chair’s seat, about an inch or so from the floor. His whole body hurt as if he’d been at the receiving end of a massive beating, and the pain inside his head was eating away at his sanity.
Something was pulling against the corners of his mouth, and all of a sudden he was overwhelmed by a desperate gagging sensation. Coughing erupted from his chest with incredible force, but the air was half-blocked by the tight cloth gag in his mouth, and that served only to intensify his desire to retch. Littlewood tasted bile mixed with blood, and the coughs quickly escalated into a struggle not to choke to death.