Spider - Michael Morley [64]
‘Let me get this right,’ he said, addressing the pathologist again. ‘According to your report, you believe the killer kept the head for maybe up to two weeks before he sent it here?’
‘Approximately,’ said van der Splunder, cautiously. ‘Please be careful not to mix up death and decapitation. Death was on, or about, the fourteenth; decapitation and dismemberment were most likely on or around the twentieth.’
‘You mean death wasn’t through decapitation – he killed her, kept her corpse, then beheaded her?’
‘Exactly.’
‘How did she die?’ asked Jack.
The pathologist flinched. ‘I found some evidence of pre-mortem focal bruising on the larynx.’
‘She was strangled, or choked somehow?’ asked Jack.
‘I believe so,’ said van der Splunder. ‘There was no evidence of ligature strangulation, so I imagine it was done manually. Indeed, some of the marks on the throat are consistent with continuous deep pressure, possibly from a man’s knuckles.’
Jack knew what it meant, and why she had flinched. It would have taken about four minutes to strangle Cristina in this way. He hoped that she’d blacked out after about thirty seconds when her brain became starved of oxygen, but he was sure it would still have been a horribly slow death. Perhaps the most horrible imaginable, with the killer using his hands to choke her to the point of death, then easing up and letting her recover, before choking her again. Jack knew many stranglers who had turned the act of murder into a sexual marathon, indulging their violence in small ebbs and flows, before brutally climaxing with the final fatal pressure of their fingers.
‘Care to share your thoughts with us?’ said Massimo casually.
Jack shook himself out of the death scene, and returned to the more functional business of the timeline. ‘Let’s presume BRK was responsible for Cristina’s murder and also for the desecration of Sarah Kearney’s grave in Georgetown. Given the approximate time of Cristina’s death and the recorded time that some kids discovered Sarah’s disturbed grave, we should be able to work out the window when he had to fly out of Italy and into America.’
Massimo nodded. ‘We are already doing border patrol passport checks on all male US citizens over thirty years of age who entered and left Italy in the last three months. You will be amazed at how many come and go!’
Jack ploughed on. ‘Well, if we get this timeline right, we should be able to narrow the focus considerably.’ He moved to a whiteboard, picked up a black marker and wrote the key points as he talked. ‘Cristina is last seen alive by friends on the night of June the ninth. The day after, the tenth, she’s reported missing. She’s killed around the fourteenth, but he hangs on to the corpse, keeping it intact for six days, which takes us to the twentieth.’ He glanced over to the pathologist and she signalled her agreement with his account. ‘On the twentieth he started disposing of the limbs. We have our first public finding of remains two days later, on the twenty-second, and the next significant date is the arrival of Cristina’s head at police HQ in Rome on the twenty-fifth, which is examined by the good professor here on the twenty-sixth.’ Jack paused to make sure he hadn’t made any mistakes. No one corrected him, so he slotted in the last pieces of the jigsaw. ‘The FBI thinks he was in the cemetery at Georgetown, South Carolina on the night of June the thirtieth, morning of July the first, so it’s reasonable to presume that he may have left Italy on the evening of June the twenty-fifth, or morning of the twenty-sixth, which would have got him into America on the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh, just a couple of days before the desecration of Sarah’s grave.’
‘Is there a direct flight from Italy to Georgetown?’ asked Massimo.
Jack frowned. ‘Don’t know. Myrtle is quite a big international airport, maybe there are flights from Rome or Milan.’
‘We’ll re-focus on these tighter dates,’ promised Benito, adding to his ever-lengthening list.
They stared at the board again, then Massimo asked, ‘Why