Spider - Michael Morley [126]
A disturbing thought hits Spider. His child. King has not asked about his child.
He glances down at the remote in his left hand.
Something’s wrong. He can’t have forgotten about his child and his wife.
On screen, Jack falls to his knees, Lu still held tight in his arms. It looks as though he’s praying, holding her body and asking forgiveness for what he’s done.
Suddenly, a beam of white light blazes across the floor and up into Spider’s face.
‘Armed police!’ shouts a woman’s voice. ‘Stand up with your hands in the air. Do it, now! Or I’ll shoot.’
Orsetta Portinari had ordered local police to keep a routine watching brief on La Casa Strada, just as she’d put similar surveillance on the crime scene in Livorno, the courier points at train stations in Milan and Rome and even the delivery-bay area at their own headquarters.
Her boss had demanded that the Italian investigation now be run entirely separately from the US one, and Orsetta was simply covering all bases and following up on her long-standing hunch that what connected BRK, Italy and America was Jack King himself. And as much as she hated the idea, the only way she could satisfy her curiosity with Jack out of the country, was through another unannounced meeting with his wife.
‘Stand up, or I’ll shoot!’ she says a second time, acutely aware that although she’s fully firearms trained, she’s never fired a gun outside a range.
Spider slowly rises to his feet. ‘All right. Okay. Don’t shoot.’
The flashlight beam is bright but narrow. Orsetta can see his face clearly, but can only make out the vague shape of his shoulders.
In the darkness, she misses a crucial movement.
Spider puts his right hand on the edge of the marble, not to help himself to his feet, as she thinks.
But to pick up his automatic machine pistol.
In one hazy action, he sprays gunfire towards her.
Orsetta moves instinctively, but she’s way too slow.
Her right shoulder burns with pain. The impact of the bullet spins her round and drops her to the ground, spilling her own weapon as she falls.
Spider is sure he’s hit her several times. She looks motionless but he isn’t yet convinced that she’s dead.
There’s time enough to kill her. He’ll finish her off, with a shot through the head. For now though, she’s not important.
Spider checks the computer again.
Where’s King?
Still praying. Well, Jacky boy, no God known to man is going to save you now.
Without further delay, Spider presses the red trigger button and a thunderous explosion rings out.
86
Jack tightens his grip on Lu and prepares to make his move.
The fingers and palm of his right hand are bleeding intensely from where he cut across them with the kitchen knife as he pretended to fumble for the phone with his back to the camera. Jack knew he had to cut deep for the flow to be fast enough to paint a line of blood across the girl’s neck as he faked the motion of cutting her. By cradling Lu in his hands, he was able to smear the blood everywhere and make it look as if she’d been fatally wounded.
Now, on his knees, he knows time is running out every bit as quickly as the blood haemorrhaging from his hand. In one deft movement, he dips his shoulder, falls forward and rolls himself and Ludmila as far underneath the heavy wooden bondage table as he can manage.
They’re barely beneath the chrome-legged slab of oak when the explosion rips the room apart.
Jack smothers Ludmila with his big body.
Timber, brick and dust blow everywhere.
Rubble tears into Jack’s exposed head and back, belting him like iron baseball bats, smashing his neck, his legs and spine.
He holds Ludmila tight and this time he really does pray.
Spider’s computer screen goes grey.
The dust and rubble obliterate his view.
He grabs the laptop and holds it at a different angle, trying to get some kind of picture.
Where are they? I must see their faces!
Spider tingles with the electricity of expectation.