Michael Morley - Spider

The knock on the door surprised both of them and broke the silence, a silence that this time felt far more intriguing than awkward.

'Food!' said Jack. 'Great, I'm starving.'

FBI Field Office, New York Not since he'd discovered that his sister was a lesbian had Special Agent Howie Baumguard been so stunned and speechless.

The air-con in his office had broken down – again – and it was now steam-room hot. He rubbed sweat from his creased brow with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand while he tried to work out what to do next.

Howie clicked the mouse on his desk pad and dragged the image that had just been sent through to his flat screen. 'God damn it! God damn it!' he shouted to an empty office.

He flipped the picture 180 degrees one way, and then rotated it back the other way. He changed the colour several times, examined it upside down and back to front. 'Jesus H. Christ!' he swore again at the empty room.

Howie quarter-framed the image and docked it in the top left-hand corner of his screen, then maximized another two shrunken frames and started to examine them through a similar process of flipping, rotating and decolouring. The new 360-degree imaging kit he was using was so sharp and realistic that he felt he could almost pick objects up off the screen and toss them around in his hands like a baseball.

'God damn it!' he shouted, finally reaching the limit of his patience.

Howie stood up and headed to the Men's room. Not only because he'd drunk so much coffee that he desperately needed a leak, but also because he needed to buy himself a little more thinking time.

He freshened up and returned painfully slowly to his desk, almost as though he was afraid of getting back there. Instead of sitting down, he chose to stand behind his swivel chair, his sausage-fingered hands drumming on the top curve of the seat, his eyes locked on his desk monitor.

'God damn!' Nothing had changed. It was still as disturbing as it had been the first time he'd seen it.

The computer showed three clear shots.

Shot one was of a cardboard box.

Shot two was of Sarah Kearney's decapitated skull.

But it was shot three that was making Howie curse out loud in an empty room. Full frame on the flat screen was the address on the box, the very thing that had made airport security scan the package and alert Howie's office. In black felt pen were the words 'Fragile. For the attention of Jack King, c/o the FBI.'

Monday, 2 July

Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York Cops always say that when it comes to hookers, a year on the street puts ten on the face. By that score, Ludmila Zagalsky is twenty-five going on one hundred and thirty. In truth, Lu's bearing up slightly better than the maths predict; though two abortions and a drug problem that would shame even the wildest of rock stars don't bode well for the future.

Lu's been out on the streets since she was fifteen. Her latest pimp is a Russian called Oleg, who has pretty much most of the Beach Avenue business to himself. Oleg's a brute of a man, a mountain of lard with tattooed forearms the size of a bull's back legs and a big round shaven head that's as attractive as an overripe pumpkin. But he doesn't beat her, not like her drunken mother used to, a grizzled Muscovite jealous of her daughter's beauty. And he doesn't come into her bed 'to be close' like her stepfather used to. It's true that running away from Moscow and working for Oleg wasn't the brightest move she ever made, but it sure as hell was better than the alternative. Lu had turned tricks to save for the airfare out of Russia and she'd been turning them ever since. She breakfasts every day on a couple of 'E's; chugging them back like most people do coffee and pastries. They keep her sane as she sets about the soul-destroying work of being violated and abused in return for rent money and little more. She starts around lunch and finishes whenever her last mudak – some sick, dumb asshole – has paid his cash, hauled himself off her and got out of her sorry life. Her first shift is Coney Island Avenue, down to 6th and 7th. At the end of that she meets up with Oleg around six p.m. and 'cashes out'. Sometimes, if she's earned more than her daily target take, he buys her a burger and beer before slapping her ass and sending her back to the street. Second shift sees her strutting her stuff down Beach Avenue, usually in red stilettos and not much else. If the cops from the 60th Precinct move her on, then she hits Riglemann Boardwalk down on the east side, heading out to Chambers Square.

Right now, at just gone one a.m., she's feeling blasted. Minutes after emptying her purse for Oleg and heading home, she gets a pull from some City dude cruising in a gold Lexus. She ends up jerking him off and keeping the cash for herself – man, it will cost the perv a fortune to clean that leather. Anyway, she's got two fifties tucked away for just ten minutes' trade and that's damn near a record for Lu. Most of the working girls say she's cheap, a shluha vokzalnaja – a train station whore – but lately Lu's been rolling in the big tricks and feels she's on the way up again. Lexus-man had told her how he liked to come back to the 'hood' that he'd been brought up in and bragged how he'd got out and made his fortune in Manhattan. What an asshole, what a swoloch! Lu had soaked up his bullshit and taken him to a spot she favoured at the back of the Brighton Fish Market and had left him there as stinky as smoked mackerel when they were done. He didn't look such a high-and-mighty tycoon with his pants down and his cum all over his stomach and that fancy leather interior. She was still smiling at the sweet nothings she'd whispered in his big waxy ear and how she'd turned him on. 'U tebia ochen malenki hui, tolko pyat pat centimetrov?' she'd purred as she'd started unzipping him. He might not have been so excited if he'd known she'd told him, 'You have a very small dick, how big is it… only five centimetres?' And there certainly wouldn't have been a tip if he'd known that 'U tebya rozha, kak obezyanya zhopa' was not 'Thank you very much' but 'Your mug looks like a monkey's ass.' She laughs and says 'Mudak, mudak!' as she strolls past Primorski's restaurant, pausing to look through the window as cleaners stack chairs on tables and sweep floors. She'd rather sell her ass any day of the week than sweep someone's floor.

She catches sight of a young waiter she knows called Ramzan and he waves at her but is too busy helping clear up to come to the door. Just last week he caught her eye down at a new bar off Ocean Parkway but by the time she'd shaken off the attention of an unwelcome punter he'd vanished. Her friend Grazyna says she should stay away from Ramzan, says he's a Chechen and she'd do well to remember how much Oleg hates Chechens. But Lu doesn't give a shit; Oleg can go fuck himself. Ramzan is tall, thin and handsome with kind eyes. He looks like the type of guy who would take care of her, maybe change her life for ever and get her out of this hellhole. Nose pressed to the glass, she watches Ramzan help one of the cleaning women move a table so that she can wipe beneath it and she feels a stab of jealousy. Fuck him, then. Lu Zagalsky waits for no one. She fishes in her purse and pulls out some crystal amphet; it'll help take the pain away. As she gears up, her punter-radar alerts her to a guy about to use the ATM next to Primorski's.

'It's broken,' she calls to him.

'Excuse me?'

'It's broken,' she repeats, with no trace of her native Russian. 'It's always broken.'

'Oh damn!' He takes off his glasses and returns a gold credit card to his wallet. 'Do you know where the next one is?'

'Yeah, sure. East end of the Avenue,'bout three blocks down,' says Lu, scenting an easy final trick of the night. She puts her hands on her hips. 'I can show you if you promise to spend some of it on me.'