Spider - Michael Morley [107]
Jack stood motionless on the pavement. To the torrent of shoppers and tourists flowing past him he looked as though he was in a trance, a man with his mind in an entirely different world.
Lu’s thoughts were no longer of any use to him. The trap had been sprung, the hunter had his prey. From now on, Jack had to think like a killer.
Feel like a killer.
A flashgun went off in his head; images flickered by; the room he’d prepared, the restraints he’d readied, and most of all the way he felt – excited, exhilarated, unstoppable.
He gazed into the blur of passing traffic and pictured himself in BRK’s place, driving along in the Hyundai, turning to Lu in the passenger seat.
I’ve got a house, not far from here, we can go back there.
Jack flinched. The flashgun popped again and a nervous twitch pulled at his right eye. Was he really ready to do this? He forced himself to concentrate. What kind of place did he take her to and where?
Not far from here, we don’t have to go far…
Wherever he took her, it surely couldn’t have been a long journey. The hunter would want to be alone with his prey as soon as possible. He’d be aching for the kill.
The twitch quickened, a tug on the skin like a hidden needle pulling thread through his flesh. Jack put a finger to his right temple and rubbed it.
Street girls aren’t stupid. They’ll go a few miles, but not more than a ten-, fifteen-minute drive, max.
The twitch slowed.
For what BRK had in mind, he needed to take her somewhere remote, the more isolated the better. But it would have to be respectable as well; somewhere residential that wouldn’t spook her. No woman’s going to take a dead-of-night trip into a barn or warehouse. And wherever he took her, he would have to get the car out of sight. It would have a garage, outbuildings, and a big room, somewhere.
A room he uses for other things.
Things such as the dismemberment and disposal of bodies.
It’s a big, old house with a garage – and a basement beneath it.
The basement is where she’s kept.
Jack felt sick to the pit of his stomach as he realized that at that very moment the young Russian woman was probably dying a slow and agonizing death in a basement less than fifteen minutes’ drive from where he was standing.
His head was throbbing now; it was full of engine noise and the faulty flash of neons that buzzed but wouldn’t light properly. And then the voices came again, the hopeless voices crying in pain and screaming for help. Jack put his hands to his temples.
It’s too soon. Nancy was right. You’re not ready for this.
He rubbed his face with his hands and told himself to forget the self-doubts and focus. He looked up and down Beach Avenue; fifteen minutes’ drive from the spot he stood in would include all houses within a seven-mile radius.
‘Shit!’ he said out loud and felt his heart break into a sprint. Brooklyn was New York City’s largest borough; almost a third of the entire city’s population lived there. Ludmila Zagalsky was just one out of two and a half million people living within the area that had to be searched.
One in two and a half million – the odds against finding her alive were bad, very bad indeed.
72
San Quirico D’Orcia, Tuscany
The telephoto lens that McLeod unscrewed from the Nikon was the same one he’d used to take the photo of the headless skeleton in Georgetown. He capped both ends and packed it in its own cloth bag, which he then put into the rucksack along with the rest of his equipment. He’d earned a fortune from that snap at Sarah Kearney’s grave and was eternally grateful for the anonymous tip-off that had sent him there ahead of the cops.
McLeod was a veteran hack, a freelance photo-journalist who made his money providing pictures and stories for the Crime Channel, Court TV, Crime Illustrated and all manner of other true-crime magazines and publications. He was well used to working alone, moving around secretly, acting on whispers here and tip-offs there. Mainly the