Spider - Michael Morley [117]
‘Why?’ asked Jack gently. ‘What was odd?’
‘Well,’ began Yoana hesitantly. ‘Well, like I just said, I don’t know his name, he never seems to be around and I’ve never met him, but he’s always got personalized plates on his car. I used to think he was a car dealer of some sort, but then I noticed that sometimes he even changed the plates before he changed the cars.’
Jack felt a surge of excitement. His phone rang again, but he ignored it once more. Whoever it was, whatever they wanted, it couldn’t be as important as this. ‘Yoana, you don’t know what plate he currently has, do you?’
She smiled. She liked helping the FBI, they asked such easy questions. ‘Don’t be silly. Sure I do. It’s B – 898989.’
83
San Quirico D’Orcia, Tuscany
The entrance floor of the catacomb is covered in soft soil but, after you walk about twenty feet through the narrow gap, the surface underfoot changes into hard rock, cinder and compacted earth. Spider shines his flashlight up the walls. They are damp and green from an underwater stream that dribbles down from the hillside above them. He is searching for the point where the narrow route dog-legs left and opens up into a much wider, high-ceilinged chamber dominated by a raised marble tomb. The air gradually loses its last vestiges of freshness, as they move deeper into the sterile darkness where nothing grows. Spider feels perfectly at home amid the dank smell of infertile land. The smell of death.
He pushes the woman and child to the back of the catacomb and forces them to sit with their backs to the tomb, which contains the remains of a soldier and his family from Medici times.
Little Zack, his hands still bound in front of him, crawls over to his mother and puts his head on her knees, desperate for protection and reassurance. Nancy’s wrists are still tied viciously tight behind her back, but her real pain comes from being unable to comfort or touch her son. She bends her body over the top of him and rubs her face against his back, like an animal nuzzling her injured young.
Spider clicks his laptop off standby. It hums into life and instantly locks in on the hotel’s wi-fihot spot, located almost directly above his head. He glides through Webmail and logs on to his own intranet system.
As the computer monitor fills with an overhead camera shot of Lu Zagalsky’s body, he sees her face and shivers with anticipation. Not long now. Soon all that waiting will be deliciously rewarded. A tingle spreads from his neck, down the sweat forming on his spine.
He pulls Zack’s young body away from his helpless mother, his eyes hardly ever leaving the image on the screen.
Spider senses death in the air.
Multiple death.
84
Marine Park, Brooklyn, New York
898989
The numberplate is the same as the code that BRK had given to Daher to access the video footage. Jack pumps his memory. What does it remind him of?
HA! HA! HA!
That’s what it reminds him of. H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, but the ninth is not A. And then Jack has it.
Hi, Hi, Hi.
BRK was saying hello. Another of his fucking sick jokes.
Jack calls Howie with what he’s just discovered and learns it will take another half an hour for the Strike Team to be fully mobilized and in position at Marine Park. He hopes the delay won’t prove fatal.
Yoana Grinsberg talks all the time, as she guides him upstairs to her front bedroom, from where he hopes to be able to keep a watch on number 15. The room, full of old clothes and magazines, is far too warm. A bowl of stale pot pourri that should have been replaced months ago makes the place smell earthy. Jack notices double locks on the windows and guesses that the ultra-cautious Mrs Grinsberg hasn’t opened them since her husband died years back. He pushes his face to the glass. Even if he unlocked one the view would be useless. A cluster of overgrown trees on both corners blocks the line of sight, there’s no way he could get even a half-decent view of the target house.
‘It’s no good,’ he says, heading out of the room and back down the stairs, ‘but thanks anyway,