Spider - Michael Morley [11]
‘Hey, Stan!’ he shouts.
The delivery boy breaks from his adolescent daydreaming and raises a hand to acknowledge the call. By the time Stan appears on the landing, Spider has removed his gloves, tucked a cell phone between his left ear and shoulder blade and is writing something on a motel notepad while seemingly talking to someone.
‘Yeah, sure, I finished the work about an hour ago and I should be able to get the accounts faxed to you sometime this afternoon. Don’t you worry about it.’
Stan can see the guy is real busy. He nods at the parcel on the floor and asks, ‘It’s ready to go?’
‘Just a second,’ says Spider to the party on the phone, covering the mouthpiece as he answers Stan. ‘Yeah, you can take it. Thanks again for waiting. I’ll call your number later for the other job.’
‘Sure, no problem,’ says Stan, picking up the box, smiling and walking away.
Spider carries on pretending to talk. He watches the boy until he is out of sight and then ducks back into the motel room. So far, so good, his plan is going well. He takes a bottle of ink from his suitcase and deliberately spills it over the bedsheets and pillows. Quickly, he uses the room towels to mop up the mess, then hauls the whole bundle into the shower and turns on the taps. Next, he calls room service and tells them he’s tripped and spilt ink everywhere but is soaking the sheets to get the stain out. A Mexican maid is at his room quicker than a 100-metre sprinter on steroids. She shouts at him in Spanish but settles down when he gives her ten dollars and helps her squeeze out the soaking linen and put it into her cart. He feels better knowing that within ten minutes all the sheets, quilt cover, pillows and towels that may contain traces of his DNA will be in a boil wash in the laundry room.
Spider double-checks the bedroom to ensure he hasn’t left anything behind. He grabs his belongings, locks the door and heads down to the twenty-four-hour reception desk to settle his bill. He pretends to be embarrassed about ‘the accident’ and is polite and apologetic. After a call is made to Housekeeping, he’s told that everything is okay and there won’t be any extra charge. He thanks the clerk, pays cash and leaves to collect his silver Chevy Metro hire car from the forecourt. He’s only minutes away from the Thrifty Rent-a-Car depot on Jetport Road, where he’d used a false driver’s ID to hire the eighty-dollars-a-day special and again had paid cash. Good old untraceable cash, the international currency of crime.
It takes an age for the attendant to get to him, then like everyone else, he objects furiously when he gets stung for the petrol surcharge. He’s still complaining when he catches the shuttle over to the airport’s main terminal. Spider’s first stop is the Delta ticket desk, where he pays cash for his one-way trip out of South Carolina. He checks in his suitcase, collects his boarding pass and heads off for something to eat.
He has plenty of time before his flight.
There’s one last call to make. One more piece of important business to take care of before he can catch his plane out of Myrtle.
12
Florence, Tuscany
Were the nightmares always the same? Was he frightened of going to sleep after them? During the waking hours did he have flashbacks of what happened in the dreams? The questions came thick and fast but Jack didn’t duck any of them, not even when Elisabetta Fenella asked if he was depressed, tearful, overly emotional or even impotent.
Eventually, she managed to persuade him to take her through his childhood. Unlike that of those he had pursued in his professional life, his own past contained no trauma, no abuse or deprivation, just the solid love and support of two parents who had been teenage sweethearts. They stayed married for more than thirty years, inseparable until five years earlier when a hit-and-run driver killed his father soon after his retirement. Jack Snr had been a New York City cop all his working life and his mother, Brenda, had been a night sister at the Mount