Michael Morley - Spider

Spider feels her teeth snap shut and sink deep into his left hand.

Her mouth locks closed on his flesh like the savage bite of a wild street dog. He tries to stay calm but this woman's jaw-power is extraordinary. Her bony canines are cutting their way into him, grinding through skin, slicing into the bones around his thumb. He frees his right hand from around her neck and punches her.

Lu barely feels the blow. Her mother brought her up on a daily diet of beatings a hundred times more brutal than the one this ebanat's trying to dish out. She ignores the dull throb on her left cheekbone and chews down hard on the flesh in her mouth. She can feel his skin bursting around her teeth, his stinking vonuchaya blood seeping into her mouth.

'Fuuuuck!' Spider screams.

He punches her again, but he can't get any uplift to deliver a proper blow. The little bitch's teeth have bitten into nerves and tendons and the pain's so intense it sparks a bolt of agonizing electricity up his elbow. Spider falls on top of her and uses the momentum and his body weight to try to suffocate her, to try to jam his hand deep into her evil little mouth. Little bitch will either let go or choke to death, he thinks, as he pushes through the pain and bears down on her.

Lu doesn't lose her grip. Even as his weight collapses on her, she grinds her back teeth.

She can't see now and is struggling to breathe. His body heat and weight are overwhelming, there's no air to suck in.

Everything begins to go black and fuzzy for Lu, as once more he rams the palm of his right hand across her face and again leans all his weight upon it.

She starts to retch as he forces his left thumb deeper into her mouth, deeper into her bite.

She knows what he's doing; knows that he can't pull his hand free without severe damage, so he's trying to choke her. Well, you give it your best shot, mister, it's gonna take a lot to choke Lu Zagalsky; therehavebeen biggerthingsinthis mouthandheavier people on top of this body than a creep like you.

Lu drills deep into her childhood memory; the nightmares of abuse flood into her brain, the anger boils up and over. She bites so hard she feels one of her teeth crack and splinter away. The latest wave of pain is so severe that Spider falls off her and crashes to the floor.

Lu spits out his blood and her broken tooth. It feels good, it feels wonderful! She feels like Rocky when he beat Apollo Creed. Bloody, battered but victorious. Only she knows that this victory is going to be horribly costly. Her mind flashes back again to her bedroom in Moscow and the last time she bit a man like this.

You don't have to take this shit.

Whatever happens, you don't take this kind of shit.

Fight for your life, Lu, fight for every second you can draw breath. Whatever happens he can't take your spirit away from you.

Spider cradles his left hand in the palm of his right one. Jesus Christ, how did she do that? The flesh is open and he can see inside his own hand. He can see bones and veins, blood and tissue oozing from the crescent-shaped wound caused by her vicious teeth.

He wipes sweat off his head with his right forearm and looks across the basement for something with which to make a tourniquet. His eyes settle on a sink in the far corner and some cotton rags that will be okay if he washes them first.

He turns on the single mixer tap and lets cold water pour over his damaged hand into the deep ceramic trough. The water is red with his blood but it is cool and helps ease the pain that is roaring through him. He soaks one of the rags, the type he usually uses for gags and facial bindings, and squeezes it out as best he can. Spider wraps the sodden cotton around the bite wound, makes a loop and then grips one end of the rag in his teeth so he can pull tight. Further up his forearm he ties a second tourniquet across the veins he suspects may feed blood into the wound.

Lu watches helplessly from the bondage table. She's thinking of when she was a small child watching snowflakes for the first time from the window of her parents' tenement building, thinking of when she was free and innocent, running in the meadows of Gorky Park.

She's thinking of what life with Ramzan might have been like.

She's thinking of anything other than what might happen to her next.

Spider dries his left hand on his trousers and looks straight at her.

'Bad Sugar,' he says, shaking his head from side to side. 'Bad, bad Sugar.'

Lu's eyes are fixed on his hand. Not the hand she's bitten, but his good right hand. In it, gripped tight, is what looks like a large bone saw.

San Quirico D'Orcia, Tuscany From a green-shuttered bedroom window of La Casa Strada, Jack looked down on a garden filled with apple, plum and pear trees. The row with Nancy had drained him and made him reflect, but deep down he knew he'd crossed the point of no return. Whatever his wife said, or did, he was going to help Massimo. And if necessary, he was going to help Howie too. Being truthful to himself, he now accepted that he'd never really managed to get BRK out of his system. In fact, because he was so totally removed from the case, it had preyed on his mind more than ever. Now, at least, by getting involved, by trying to do something, the mental anguish would be worthwhile, instead of just pointless.

Jack stared again out of the window. The only guests walking around the garden were an elderly couple; probably about the same age his mother and father would have been if they'd still been alive. They wandered along the stone pathway, holding hands and pausing every now and again to point out various fruits and plants to each other. Jack tried to recall their name: Giggs, or Griggs, something like that. Anyway, Nancy had said that they were here to celebrate his seventieth birthday and her sixtieth, which fell within five days of each other. How beautiful to have reached that age and still be so in love. Jack looked closer at the man, his sunburned face smiling from beneath an ivory-coloured Panama hat. The old guy seemed perfectly happy with his life, content to be slowly pacing it out, hand in hand with his soulmate. The couple stopped beneath the shade of a cherry tree and admired Zack's pet rabbit as it bounded around their legs, before darting off to the far side of the orchard. The old man brushed leaves off a nearby steamer chair and helped his wife into it, before settling in another one alongside her. No sooner was he comfortable than he stretched out his gnarled old arm so they could hold hands again. Jack would have loved to have brought his parents here, to have had them stay for a month or two each summer and watch their grandchild growing up. He would have given almost anything to be looking down from that very window on his own mother and father. They'd seldom travelled out of New York State, let alone America, but Italy was on their 'To Do' list and deep down he was certain they'd have loved the place. It was sad and ironic that it was the money they'd left him that had enabled him and Nancy to buy La Casa Strada, mortgage-free. For a moment he pictured all three generations of Kings walking together, down to the centre of town, to the Piazza della Liberta', where they could sit on long stone steps, while Zack and the grandfather that he had never got to know could choose ice cream from the nearby gelateria. Afterwards, they'd walk through the Renaissance gardens of Horti Leonini and Nancy and his mother would wait while Zack played hide and seek in the miniature maze. Somehow the argument with Nancy and the prospect of distance opening up again between them made him ache once more for his own mother and father.

Jack stepped back from the window, and from all his musings on what might have been. It was time to put Tuscany, and any thoughts of his parents, his wife or his child firmly to the back of his mind.