Spider - Michael Morley [59]
It was the same question that Orsetta had alluded to, and one which Jack had been repeatedly asking himself over the last few days. ‘I am,’ he said forcefully, though deep down he still had his doubts. ‘From what you’ve said, your murder, if it is not a copycat killing, may be the work of a man who killed at least sixteen young women in America. Now, I’ve tracked this bastard for close on half a decade, and the effort and strain damned near killed me. But I’ll tell you this, Mass, watching him kill again and again, and being unable to try to stop him, well, that would be the worst thing in the world for me. For the sake of my own sanity, I have to be involved in this with you. I must, one more time, try to do everything I possibly can to get this guy off the streets.’
‘Bravo, my friend,’ said Massimo, relieved that he’d got the answer he’d been hoping for. ‘I’m very proud that you have decided to work with us.’
‘Okay, cut the gushy stuff,’ said Jack light-heartedly. ‘What is it you haven’t been telling me?’
Massimo leant forward on his elbows and let Jack read the serious look on his face. This wasn’t going to be easy. ‘The report I sent you mentioned that Cristina’s body had been dismembered, but some things were left out.’
Jack said nothing; his eyes asked the question for him.
‘Cristina had been decapitated. He dismembered her body and severed her head. After he disposed of the other parts, he sent her head to our offices, here in Rome.’
There were a dozen questions Jack wanted to ask, but he started with the most obvious one. ‘Why wasn’t this in the confidential briefing notes? If I remember correctly, they’d gone to your Prime Minister’s office.’
Massimo smiled. ‘There is nothing confidential in Italian politics, especiallyin the Prime Minister’s office. Send something confidential to the highest level and you merely push up the price at which an aide or civil servant will sell the document to the press.’
Massimo opened a long drawer that ran the full width of his desk. ‘There’s something more,’ he said, determined to address all the outstanding issues with Jack as quickly as possible. He pulled out a thin file marked ‘Barbuggiani/Confidential’. He handed it across the desk, adding, ‘This is a copy of a note found inside the mouth of Cristina Barbuggiani. Forensics have the original.’
‘Inside her skull?’ checked Jack.
Massimo nodded. Jack slowly opened the file, his mind trying to put the various angles together. A pattern was clearly starting to emerge in both the US and Italian cases and he suspected he was about to see more links and similarities. Jack looked down at the photocopy. It was of a handwritten note. Black felt-tip ink, in capitals on plain white paper. The message was short, but devastating:
BUON GIORNO ITALIAN POLICE!
HERE IS A GIFT FOR YOU, WITH LOVE
FROM BRK.
CALL IT A ‘HEADS-UP’ OF WHAT I’VE
GOT IN STORE FOR YOU!
HA! HA! HA!
BRK
A cold wave of emotion seeped down Jack’s shoulders and spine, his eyes locked on the three letters that had ruined his life.
BRK.
The Black River Killer.
Jack read the note again and noticed that the three letters came up twice. It was almost as though the writer was trying too hard to convince the police that it was his handiwork.
‘Are you okay, Jack?’ asked Massimo.
‘I’ve been better,’ he said, rubbing a hand across his forehead. Something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe it was the sick humour – a heads-up – or maybe once more he was just grasping for a reason, any reason, to convince himself that this wasn’t proof that BRK was killing again. He took a long breath and cleared his head. ‘I spoke to my old office in New York and it turns out that the corpse of an early BRK victim had been exhumed and the skull posted there, care of yours truly.’
Massimo screwed up his face. He felt