Michael Morley - Spider

There was work to do.

He dialled the number of Massimo Albonetti.

Marine Park, Brooklyn, New York Spider holds the bone saw in his hand and looks along the blade towards Lu Zagalsky as she thrashes about on the bondage table, desperately trying to break free of her chains. In his hand he holds sixteen inches of brutal steel that had once belonged to his father and for years had been used to butcher sides of beef and pork that the family bought wholesale. In later years, Spider had found more dramatic uses for it. And right now, he's thinking how fitting it would be to repay Lu's violence towards him, by cutting her up, limb by limb – while she's still alive.

But that's not the plan, Spider. Stick to the plan. You have great things in mind for her; don't ruin the bigger picture all because of one small setback.

Spider looks down at his bandaged hand, blood still weeping from where she'd sunk her teeth into the soft flesh. The bones around the thumb still throbbing painfully.

Lu Zagalsky can't hide the fear in her eyes. She tries to mouth words at him, to plead for her life, but nothing comes.

Her vocal cords have been bleached into silence.

'Whorebitch!' he shrieks and smashes the butt of the hardwood saw handle on to the bridge of her nose. 'You think you can hurt me, and get away with it?' he snarls. 'You fucking, arrogant little whorebitch!'

He hits her again with the butt of the saw and the pain from the second blow is so excruciating that she's sure he's broken her nose. Tears sting her eyes but her focus never leaves the blade.

'Look at you!' says Spider disgustedly. 'Look at how filthy and unworthy you are.' He stands back and laughs at her.

It's a spiteful, bullying, degrading laugh and in that split second Lu Zagalsky realizes that she's soiled herself. Something she would never, not even in her darkest nightmares, have dreamt could happen to her. He's right. This fucking crazy lunatic is right, sometime in the last five minutes, at the height of their struggle, she had failed to control herself.

Spider sneers at her. 'You're disgusting. You're no better than the others.'

Lu tries to look away from him and bury her illogical feelings of shame by reminding herself of what this animal has done to her, and to the other tortured and murdered women who have preceded her.

Spider's lips flatten into a thin smile. 'They've all done that. Sooner or later, all you dirty bitches shit and piss yourselves like that. Why did you think I stripped you naked?'

Lu feels like sobbing. Was even this planned? Is everything now so hopeless. She turns her head away from him and tries again to tell herself that it is stupid to feel so childishly humiliated. Forget your stupid pride and dignity – this man is going to gut you like a fish; that saw in his hand is not there for fun, any second now he's going to cut your throat and go slash-crazy over all your sorry little ass.

Spider is feeling calm now. Everything is under control again. Nothing bad is going to happen. It feels good to have restored the balance of power.

He walks behind her tethered body, kneels down and tightens the loose chain around her right wrist.

Lu's heart starts to pound hard. He's doing something – he's tightening the chains – why? Is he now going to kill me?

Spider seems to read her fear. 'I am going to kill you, Sugar.' He holds the bone saw blade against her throat, the jagged teeth pressing painfully into her flesh. 'But not with this, and not right now.' He drags the saw blade lightly across her throat, enough to scrape the skin but not cut it. 'Oh no, I'm going to kill you with something much more amusing than this.'

Rome Benedetta Albonetti was by no means the only love in Massimo's life. As well as his wife, he had another great passion: a very sexy young model.

His blue'97 Maserati Ghibli coupe had been a surprise gift. It had been left to him in the will of a Roman banker whom, almost two decades earlier, Massimo had saved during an armed robbery that ended in a very public and bloody shoot-out. Mass had picked up the classic car just six days after his fiftieth birthday and he intended to keep it until his dying day; which, Benedetta joked, would be sooner rather than later, judging by the way he drove it.

Today, despite leaving the office early, it had taken him almost an hour to get out of the centre of Rome and another twenty minutes before he had a chance to ease the manual gearbox into sixth and open up the twin turbo. While Massimo could clearly see the irony of enduring a two-hour journey in a car that could hit 100 kph in less than six seconds, instead of catching a sluggish metro train that would have got him home in less than thirty minutes, he couldn't care less. He loved every minute he spent in the Maserati, and, for him, the daily drive home to the seaside village of Ostia wasn't an ordeal, it was 'therapy'. It was his way of leaving work behind, both geographically and mentally. Usually, by the time he pulled up outside his modest three-bedroomed house, he was a completely different person from the police Direttore who immersed himself in a world of blood spatters, body swabs and bullet entry wounds.

Fifteen minutes from Ostia, his in-car telephone rang. When he answered, the voice of Jack King immediately made him slow down.

'Where are you?' asked Jack, acutely aware of the engine noise as the Maserati growled its reluctance to be shifted from sixth into fourth.

'On my way home,' shouted Mass, fiddling with the awkward blue-tooth ear attachment that he hated wearing. 'Benedetta and the children are flying to Nice, to be with her sister and some friends of hers. I have promised to take them to the airport, so I left the office early.'

'I hope they're well,' said Jack. 'Nancy was asking after them.'

'Grazie,' said Massimo. 'So, do I understand then that you have told your charming wife everything about our conversation?'

'Most of it,' answered Jack. 'Though of course I spared her some of the details. There's no need for her to know too much, you understand how they all worry.'

'Indeed,' said Massimo. 'And after talking with her, you are still willing to help?'

'Would I be calling if I wasn't? Where and when do you need me?'

'Rome. As soon as you can make it.'

'Okay. Fine.'

'When will that be, Jack?'

He thought for a moment. 'Not tomorrow. I need a day at home to sort things out, make sure Nancy is going to be okay running the hotel without me. How long do you think you'll need me?'

Massimo swore in Italian and sounded his horn at a big old Ford that seemed to extract great delight from undertaking and then cutting in front of the Maserati. 'Scusi, some idiots on the road here,' he explained, then added, 'It's hard to imagine you as an hotelier, Jack. You should think of being away a week. Maybe a couple of days here in Rome, then I'm sure you'll want to go to the scene in Livorno.'

Jack ran the dates through his head. 'Sounds about right, but I don't have much leeway, I have to be back for the eighth, it's our wedding anniversary. I'm dead as Parma ham if I don't make that.'

'Non c'e problema,' said Massimo, fighting an urge to chase the old Ford, fill its bonnet with his exhaust fumes, then pull the guy over and show him his badge.

'You got a translator for me? You know my Italian is non-existent.'

'Orsetta will go with you. Her English is good enough, no?'

Jack hesitated. Really, he would rather she wasn't there, but it would be impossible to explain why. 'Sure, her English is just fine.'

'She is bellissima, no?' said Massimo, mischievously. 'Una bella donna.'

'Leave it out, Mass, you know me better than that. I'm a one-woman man, always have been, hope I always will be.'