Spider - Michael Morley [89]
Paullina hadn’t known everything that McLeod had hoped, but she’d known enough. She described in detail how depressed Jack had been when she’d first met him. How he would stay in the private family quarters of the hotel and seemed almost uninterested in the staff or the guests, never making any effort to meet them or chat with them if they bumped into him in the corridors or gardens. She mentioned that about two years earlier he used to go off on walks, usually on his own, sometimes pushing his son in a buggy, just doing laps of San Quirico. He went around so many times that shopkeepers and locals said he was fuori di testa – off his head. McLeod soaked it all up, the more bad things that were said about hero Jack King the better, as far as he was concerned. Paullina mentioned that at first Jack had really let himself go, that his weight had ballooned and Nancy had to get Paolo to come up with a special diet to help him shed the pounds. McLeod would have loved to have seen that. Lately though, she said he’d apparently slimmed down and instead of the long and lonely walks, he could be seen jogging two or three times a week and was now looking in buona salute.
McLeod had asked where Jack was these days and she’d hesitated before saying she thought he was a long way away, maybe on the other side of Italy. What really excited McLeod though was when Paullina revealed that she thought maybe Jack’s absence had something to do with the Italian police. She recalled that a plainclothes policewoman from Rome had turned up to see him. It seems there had been some kind of row between Mrs King and the policewoman, and it had ended with the policewoman ordering Mrs King to get her husband to call her because it was ‘an urgent police matter’.
The thought made McLeod smile as he looked at the photographs of Jack that he’d stolen from an album in Nancy King’s bedroom. ‘I’ve got a big surprise coming for you, Mr FBI man,’ he said, putting them to one side. Then he slowly unpacked the special equipment that he’d hidden.
The equipment he now planned to use on Nancy King.
58
JFK Airport, New York
Jack’s flight touched down at JFK terminal 4 bang on time. Howie was waiting out front with a car, a bearhug and some back-slapping that could have hospitalized a smaller person. They drove straight to the office, catching up on the way. ‘You booked in anywhere?’ he asked Jack as they finally got free of the snarled traffic around the airport.
‘No, not yet. It was hard enough actually to get a flight out of Rome, so I didn’t get round to it. Do you mind getting Janie or one of the other secretaries to fix a place?’
Howie scowled at him. ‘No way. Not a chance, buddy, you’re staying with us, for tonight, at least.’ Howie’s offer was partly out of politeness but mainly reflected his concern about how Jack might react to being back on the job and forced to spend a night on his own without anyone to talk to about it.
Jack slid the passenger seat back to stretch his legs. ‘I don’t want to put you and Carrie out.’
‘You’re not. Listen, I could do with a friend around the house right at the moment. And shit, man, I might not get to see you again until God knows when.’
‘That’s kind, thanks.’ Jack took in the familiar buildings as the city started to roll up to the windshield. ‘You know, this is the first time I’ve been back to New York since the breakdown. Hell, when Nancy and I caught our flights out to Italy, what, three