Spider

'You know, Angelita,' mused Manny, a five-carat sparkle in his eye, 'if only I were twenty-five years younger and free and single, then you and I -'

'Yeah,' laughed Fernandez. 'Then you and I'd be down the jail house'cos you'd be busted, on account that I'd still be under-age and you'd still be a wicked old man.'

They both laughed. Fernandez took one of the tiny biscuits and crunched off the icing. 'You got anything for me, Mr L? Or do I have to come back again?'

Manny Lieberman sighed. He knew he was being 'worked' by the sassy agent, and he loved every minute of it. He put the document he had been examining into a file and demoted it to a desk drawer. He took out another file. Fernandez instantly recognized the carefully cut piece of cardboard with the black felt-tip writing as coming from the package containing Sarah Kearney's head sent to the FBI. Manny also slid out a photocopy of the BRK note from Italy and placed this alongside the cardboard.

'I know you officers have very short attention spans, so I'll try to be as brief as possible about this.' He folded his hands together. 'The same man wrote the same writing with the same pen. Your Italian package and your American package were addressed by the same hand.'

Fernandez's eyes widened as she took in the implications of his snappy summary. 'You're sure?'

Manny picked up some gold wire-rimmed glasses and popped them on. 'Aah, so now you want the not-so-brief version?'

'Afraid so.'

'Okay; then let's start with the science first. As you know, I am a little old-fashioned in my ways and methods, but they haven't let me down yet. I pin-scraped a tiny part of the ink from the writing on both samples that you gave me. I then subjected these scrapings to pyrolysis gas chromatography, which I have always favoured for analysis of paint and fibre samples. The final program produced in this process is virtually unique. Certainly reliable enough for me to say confident lyin any court that the samples matched.'

'Fine,' said Fernandez, getting her evidential bearings. 'So that tells us that it was the same type of pen, maybe even the same pen, but it wouldn't be evidence that the same guy used it?'

'No, indeed it wouldn't. And that presumably is the main reason why you came to me.'

'Mr Lieberman, where else would I go – you're the best.'

'Flattery, my dear Agent Fernandez, will get you everything your heart desires.' Manny slid a piece of tracing paper out of the file envelope and paper-clipped it on to the photocopy of the BRK letter recovered in Italy. 'First I did top-of-the-letter analysis, and I've marked up this "trace" to show how the offender starts off his letters. Can you see?'

Fernandez had to stand behind him to get a proper look. The trace paper was covered with tiny marks. The first marks were made at the highest point of all the letters. 'I've got it,' she said.

'Okay. Next I marked out where his second peaks are. So, for example, on the letter B, my first mark is at the top of the B, then my second mark is where the top half-circle of the B hits the middle of the vertical letter line. You got that too?'

Fernandez looked at the trace paper closely. 'Yeah, Mr L, I'm still with you.'

Manny sat back. 'By marking out all the peaks and troughs of his letters with those small dots that you saw, I was able to join up the dots and get a kind of graph. Let me show you.' He returned to the trace paper and ran his finger along the pencil line, which looked to Fernandez very similar to the printout you might get from an ECG or a polygraph. 'Then, I was able to take this trace from the BRK letter and place it over the writing on the label of the box sent to your office here in New York.' Manny slid the trace over the cardboard sample and clipped it into position. 'You'll see now that although he wrote in capital letters, obviously to avoid handwriting detection, he has still given us enough to go on. The height of all the letters is identical, the mid-points are identical, the spacing between the letters is identical, the spacing between the words is identical and the spacing between the lines he's written is also identical. As I said, the same man wrote the same messages with the same pen.'

'Mr L, at times like this I wish I was fifty years older,' said Fernandez, planting a kiss on the top of his head.

Suddenly, all the hunches and gut instincts were justified. At last, they had positive proof, hopefully proof strong enough to one day put before a jury, that there hadn't been two killers at work. Just the one. The Black River Killer had indeed crossed continents and killed in Italy.

65

Pan Arabia News Channel, New York Jack and Howie had no time to waste on pleasantries. Howie shoved his FBI shield in the face of the security guards at Pan Arabia's reception and made it brutally clear that he and his colleague were going straight to el Daher's office, whether they liked it or not.

They rode the elevator, both visualizing how the coming scene would play out. The metal doors slid open, revealing a busy open-plan office with another reception area. Howie flashed his badge again. 'FBI. Where's Tariq el Daher's office?'

A young woman in her mid-twenties almost held her nerve and thought about stalling them, but caved in and said, 'At the bottom on the left. Shall I call his secretary and say -'

Jack and Howie were gone before she finished. They strode past journalists pounding computer keyboards and secretaries running off multi-coloured copies of scripts. Tariq el Daher was sitting watching TV with another man, when they pushed open the door to his glass-fronted office.

'I didn't know you had an appointment, Mr Baumguard,' said the journalist, his eyes never leaving the screen.

'Do I need one?' said Howie, jabbing his finger on the set's off button. 'I thought yesterday that we had an understanding. Then I drive into work and listen to a pile of bullshit on the radio that upsets me so badly I have to come straight round here.'

Tariq looked at Howie. 'Be good enough to turn the television back on and I'll show you something of interest to you.'

Howie shot him a searching look, then switched on the set.

Jack sat down on a couch next to Tariq's companion and sprawled out his giant frame. 'Hi there,' he said, in a way that sounded more intimidating than courteous. The man, a professional type in his late fifties, looked back at him but said nothing.

Tariq hit a remote control and rewound some footage. 'This morning I received a telephone call from someone who rang our reception and asked to speak to me. Anonymous callers don't usually get put through, but he asked reception to tell me the numbers 898989. I took the call and he told me that the hyperlink I clicked yesterday would be reactivated in five minutes' time and would then be inoperable again within another five minutes. He added that unless I disconnected the police trace it would not work.'

'What did he sound like?' asked Jack.

Tariq frowned at him. 'And you are?'

Jack frowned back. 'I'm the guy asking you the question. What did he sound like?'

'His voice was disguised,' said Tariq. He waved a hand towards his glass-topped desk. 'I recorded it on my phone. I will have a copy made for you.'

'Gee, thanks,' said Howie. 'What'd he say?'

Tariq yawned, as though it was a big effort to answer their questions. 'That was it. He just said I had five minutes to access the site. I think we missed thirty seconds, maybe one minute of it. When you came in, I was reviewing the footage.'

'The same footage that you screened on this morning's eight o'clock bulletin?' asked Howie.

'Yes,' confirmed Tariq. 'But I presume if you only heard about it on the radio, then you haven't seen the material?'

'You presume right,' said Howie.

Tariq hit play on the remote and as the first picture came on screen he paused it. 'I will show you, but please understand we did not screen this version in its entirety. We selected only the least disturbing part of the tape and we showed it on air for only twenty seconds.'