Michael Morley - Spider

'Welcome to Spider's web,' says a cold and stutter-free voice from above her.

Florence, Tuscany The railway station in Florence was a cauldron of heat, cooking a human minestrone of travellers from all over Europe. Tempers boiled as tourists bumped and banged into each other, searching for directions to their trains. Finally, streams of people surged, spilled and dribbled down their chosen platforms, squeezing into the baking-hot carriages.

Jack was fortunate enough to find an empty one at the far end of the Siena train but it was still unpleasantly hot and stank of a thousand strangers' bodies. He chugged back half a bottle of lukewarm water he'd taken from the fridge at the Sofitel and shook his shirt from his sticky body.

He tried to open a window but it was jammed. As he sat back on the broken springs of the dusty seat, he could see that outside a couple of members of the transport police, the Polizia Stradale, were sharing a cigarette in the shade after making what had currently become a routine check for terrorist bombs. Above their heads robot CCTV cameras scanned the tracks. Jack recognized them as state-of-the-art IMAS cameras. Even here, in historic Florence, Bill Gates was present. The Microsoft-based Integrated Multimedia Archive System powered more than three thousand cameras on Italian tracks and had become the global standard-setter for video capture and information analysis.

On the sticky table in front of Jack was the still unopened envelope given to him by Orsetta, on behalf of Massimo Albonetti. He and Mass had become friends a long time ago, during an Interpol exchange held in Rome. A year later, Massimo had helped Jack crack a paedophile ring in Little Italy when New York's Italian underworld had closed its doors to local cops and sought to settle the problem the traditional Mafia way using torture and murder. Albonetti was a no-nonsense cop, who, like Jack, had a degree in psychology and saw profiling merely as a powerful tool to help investigators focus on behavioural clues, not as a crystal ball that would magically produce the name of a killer.

Jack finished his bottled water and slit open the envelope with his finger. He pulled out a piece of expensive cream paper covered in Massimo's handwriting.

Dear Jack,

I am pleased you are reading this. It means that the things I have heard about you retiring are simply not true and that a policeman's heart and brain still beat vigorously inside of you. I am very glad that this is so!

I hope you will excuse me, old friend, but I was unable to get away from this awful Europol meeting in Brussels, so I sent Detective Portinari to visit you instead and persuade you to give us your expert assistance on a very disturbing homicide. Jack, if after reading the documentation you feel it is too difficult a case for you to be involved in, then I fully respect your right to decline.

Like many of your friends, I have been praying for you to make a full and fast recovery from your illness and if I didn't think that only you could really help us with this particular case, then honestly, I would never have troubled you.

Inside this package are some brief confidential documents which will give you a quick insight into the investigation, and why I have been forced by events to ask for your help.

Perhaps when you have come to your decision you will call me, either on my office number or my cell phone?

I remain, your friend,

Massimo

Jack let out a slow sigh. He hadn't heard from Massimo since his breakdown, but this was an entirely different note from the kind and supportive one his friend had sent back then. Did he really want to immerse himself in a case that had such a distinct echo of BRK about it? Was he ready for that kind of test? Could he honestly convince Nancy that him going back to police work was for the best? The questions flooded into his mind, but the answers stayed elusively out of reach.

Jack pulled the envelope open again and emptied out another sealed envelope, marked confidential, with his name on it. He'd received many such documents in the past, summaries that reduced to stark facts and figures the death of some innocent victim and the lifelong anguish of their family.

Down the platform, a long, shrill whistle cut through the stifling air. The train doors thudded shut and the metal snake slowly stirred itself, slithering lazily out of the shade of the engine shed and into the blistering brightness of the mid-day sunshine. Jack felt a wave of sadness hit him. It had been a long time since he'd journeyed into the lonely, stressful world of murder and deep down he wasn't quite certain he was truly ready to go there again.

Marine Park, Brooklyn, New York For a second, Ludmila Zagalsky thinks she is dead, then as soon as she opens her eyes, she wishes she was. Now, despite being totally disorientated, she instantly remembers the full severity of the dilemma she's in. That useless mudak, that creep who was so boring that he wouldn't even drive above the speed limit, had jumped her and nearly choked her to death with his own handmade hangman's noose. Fuck, Lu, she thinks to herself, how many times have you told people never to trust anyone? Now you let this happen. Remember, girl, life is full of fucking surprises, and they always bite you on the ass.

Slowly, consciousness and awareness return to her traumatized mind. She's flat out on her back, looking up at the ceiling, but, she realizes, she's no longer in the lounge, she's somewhere else.

Where?

There's a light on, shining painfully into her eyes, but somehow the room looks black. Lu tries to move her head to one side to take in more information but she feels that the noose is still there, pulling across her windpipe.

A noose? What the fuck is happening here?

The pressure is from below her though, not from above. She realizes too that her wrists and ankles are cuffed with leather restraints. She tugs at them and alarm spreads through her body when she hears what sounds like the rustle of chains beneath her.

The pieces of the jigsaw slowly slot into place. She feels cold. Cold all over. She's naked, spreadeagled on some kind of bondage table. The rope is tied underneath it, so that when she tries to raise her head she starts to choke. She would scream, scream for all she's worth, except that she can barely breathe.

I'm choking! Oh my God, I'm choking!

Some form of cloth is jammed in her mouth and held in place by sticky parcel tape wound around her face.

Panic grips her. Her heart is racing dangerously and she knows that unless she calms down she will suffocate.

Come on girl, get your shit together. Get it together or you are one dead bitch.

She concentrates hard on breathing slowly through her nose and gradually manages to dip her pulse rate and control herself.

And then, as she lies there, staring at the strangely black ceiling, she sees him again. Leaning over her.

His face is so big and so close to her that she can see the pores on his skin. She can see the hairs in his nose and feel the heat of his breath.

Not so fucking harmless now, is he, girl?

'Hello, my little Sugar,' he says softly, smelling her skin, rubbing his face against hers like a pet dog sniffing out a new visitor. 'Don't worry, my little darling, Spider's here. Spider's right beside you.'

She isn't as pretty as the other Sugars, Spider thinks to himself, but he can tell she is just the same as them. They all thought that they were strong and didn't need anyone, could play the game by their rules, could come and go in people's lives as and when they wished. Well, they were wrong. All wrong. No one leaves Spider. No one. Ever.

He pulls over a leather-topped, wooden stool so he can sit facing her. 'How long you stay – alive – depends upon how well you listen,' he says.