Massimo frowned. 'Jack King?'
Orsetta struggled to build on her suggestion. 'I'm not saying King is the reason BRK may be killing in Italy, I'm just saying that he appears to be the only link.'
Benito curled his beard between his fingers. 'I agree. It's the only link that I can see as well.'
Massimo thought they were getting nowhere. 'Then we are in trouble. If the only connection we can come up with is Jack King, the man I invited to help us, then indeed we have nothing to go on. I want a bottom-up evaluation of all our statements, and I mean all of them. I want every last second of Cristina Barbuggiani's life accounted for. And let me make this very clear to you. I do not want this sociopath slaughtering dozens of young girls here in Italy. I do not want a second person to die. Do you understand me?' The looks on their faces told him that they did. 'Good. First killings in new areas are never perfect. This may be our best chance to catch him. No, let me correct myself. This may be our only chance to catch him. And that is the reason I have asked Jack King to put his own health at risk in order to help us try to catch this monster – this -' Massimo was stuck for the English words to express the full venom of his hatred for Cristina Barbuggiani's killer. As he resorted to his native tongue, he respectfully covered the dead girl's picture with his big hand. 'Uno che va in culo a sua madre!'
'Motherfucker,' said Orsetta coolly. 'The word you're looking for, Direttore, is motherfucker.'
36
Marine Park, Brooklyn, New York The house stands alone on the corner of a quiet cul-de-sac, heavily shaded from view by large maple trees and thick hawthorn hedges that dominate the front garden and small driveway. In the pre-dawn darkness, Spider walks around it, checking his security system, testing the sensors on the lights, the angles of the surveillance cameras and the electricity feeds that he's put into a variety of other hidden security devices that will do much more than just deter any unwanted intruders.
In the back yard he sits on the edge of a heavily weathered wooden table and gets to thinking about the old days; the time he lived here with his parents, the time before they went to the Better Place and he was taken away to the orphanage. Fifteen years ago he'd bought the house back, paying cash out of the inheritance left in a trust fund for him. The rest of the money he'd invested wisely, managing a strong port-folio of stocks, shares and bonds over the Internet. His father would have been proud of him. Dad had always said 'never take any unnecessary risks' and that had been the key to his success, in whatever he did.
He remembers life in the orphanage: the bullying, the squabbling, the shortage of food, the fetid warm smell of overcrowded and unclean dormitories and, more than anything, the endless noise. It wasn't until he'd moved out that he appreciated just how golden silence can be. Spider knows those years were formative for him. For better or worse, they shaped him into what he is today. He knows that the reason he still eats his food too quickly is because if he hadn't wolfed down his meals as a kid, the bigger boys in the orphanage would simply have taken whatever they wanted from his plate. He understands his comfort with violence stems from the day he could no longer take the ritual abuse and beatings that all new boys endured, and exploded into a rage that led to him fracturing the skull of one of his attackers by repeatedly banging his head on a toilet wall.
The orphanage had been packed with kids from the wrong side of the tracks and it served as a university of crime, teaching him a dozen ways to establish false identities, obtain bogus documents and set up fake companies. Crime was literally child's play for him.
In the cool of his back yard he fires up a dual-core Dell laptop and, through a false identity web account, goes online. He accesses Webmail and finds his way to his own security-coded intranet system. A few seconds later, he's able to pull up picture feeds from any of the cameras inside or outside the house. He toggles between the external views, then shrinks the screen to compress the pixels and increase the night-view quality. Satisfied with the settings, he punches up the internal camera feeds. In the dark of the yard Sugar's prostrate body shows up as an intense, white shape, almost like a white-hot crucifix. Spider ponders the picture. There is something about the girl that unsettles him. He'd felt it the other night, when he'd approached her, and he feels it again now. He somehow senses that, even spreadeagled and dying, she represents a danger to him. He dismisses his feelings as illogical. His planning has been good, and apart from that one bloody moment when she'd bitten him, he'd experienced no real difficulties with her.
Spider switches angles, choosing a close-up of her face. Her eyes are shut and the camera shot is so tight it almost looks as though she's in a peaceful sleep. He knows the truth is far from that. He imagines that by now the woman is in constant mental agony. He feels no compassion or concern for her. In fact, he feels nothing for her. Hookers are not his usual prey, but then this isn't going to be a usual kill. This kill wasn't planned solely for pleasure; this kill has a much bigger prize attached to it.
37
Mount Amiata, Tuscany There were days when Tuscany looked so beautiful that Nancy imagined God must have made Italy himself, but then, for some reason known only to him, he subcontracted work on the rest of the world to some Poles who had promised to get it done cheaply and be finished by the end of the week.
Today was one of those days. With Zack in nursery, and Carlo and Paolo briefed on pending jobs at the hotel and restaurant, Jack and Nancy decided to make the most of their time together before he headed off to meet Massimo in Rome.
They spent the morning walking on Mount Amiata. Jack puffed and wheezed far more than he ever thought he would as they climbed the former volcano's great slabs of yellowish-brown rock.
The view from the top across the Val D'Orcia was as stunning as any they had ever seen. They stood side by side on the summit, a warm and gentle wind buffeting them, as they tried to pick out the more notable landmarks of Pienza, Montalcino, Radicofani and of course their own San Quirico.
'Do you know where San Quirico got its name from?' asked Nancy, as Jack pointed a finger towards its distinctive ancient walls.
'No, I don't,' he conceded, 'but I've got a sneaky feeling that I know someone who does.'
The wind sprayed Nancy's hair across her face as she turned in the breeze. 'It's not nice. Seems the town takes its name from the child martyr Saint Quiricus.'
'Who was he?' asked Jack, eager for her to get to the point.
'Be patient. I'm getting there,' said his wife, well used to his ways. 'Back in the year 304, when Quiricus, or Cyricus as he was sometimes called, was only three years old, the same age as Zack, his mother Julietta was sentenced to death for being a Christian. When she appeared before the local governor in Tarsus and sentence was passed, she had her young son with her. The boy made a fuss, insisting that he wouldn't leave his mother, no matter what happened to him. The officials told him, rather brutally, that his mother was to be killed because she was a Christian. At which point, Quiricus declared that he was also a Christian and wished to die with her. This "stand" apparently maddened the governor so much that he grabbed the boy by his legs and smashed his head on some stone steps. Now here's the amazing bit: Julietta didn't weep; instead, she openly showed that she was happy.'
'Come again?' interrupted Jack. 'Happy?'
'Yes, happy. Apparently she was honoured that her son had been chosen to earn the crown of martyrdom.' It made Nancy wonder if history was repeating itself in the modern world. 'Maybe that's how the parents of suicide bombers feel these days, perhaps their mothers feel honoured.'