Spider

38

Rome There were two important facts that Massimo Albonetti had not yet shared with Jack King. The first was that the severed head of Cristina Barbuggiani had not been recovered at sea, like the other body parts, but had been boxed up by her killer and delivered to their headquarters in Rome, seemingly by a courier company in Milan. The second was even more shocking.

Both omissions were on Massimo's mind and were making him short-tempered as he passed out cold drinks and continued briefing his team for Jack's arrival.

'Roberto has completed the victimology report and had it translated,' said Orsetta, popping the tab on a can of Cola Lite.

'Va bene,' said Massimo, glad to be distracted from his thoughts. 'And what does it tell us, Roberto? Why did this man pick out Cristina Barbuggiani? What made her the unlucky one?'

'More than anything, she seemed simply to be in the wrong place at the wrong time -' began the young researcher.

'Bullshit!' exploded Massimo, his hand again sheltering Cristina's photograph from his more 'colourful' language. 'Che cazzo stai dicendo!'

'In English, Direttore,' said Orsetta, with a smile.

Massimo glared at her and turned back to the researcher. 'Roberto, do not even think of telling that to Jack King. BRK is not an opportunist; he's not a common, spur-of-the-moment criminal. This man chose Cristina. He picked her out of the crowd. When Jack King asks you that question, do not shame this unit by telling him she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.' Massimo turned to Orsetta, holding Cristina's picture between his thumb and forefinger. 'Find me a lookalike. Go to the film casting agencies and find me an actress who looks like our Cristina and can behave like Cristina did.'

'I will fix it,' said Orsetta.

'And, Orsetta,' continued Massimo. 'What about Patologia, what did they have to say about the limbs?'

'The limbs, or the head?' she asked, opening her notebook.

'The limbs first,' answered Massimo, still not sure how he was going to break the news of the head to Jack. 'They were dumped in various places in the sea, while, as we know, the head was sent here. So, I guess he got rid of the body parts first, and hung on to the girl's head until the last moment?'

'Most likely,' said Orsetta, flicking to the relevant page of notes. 'As you request, I will start with the limbs first. Dismemberment and then dispersal of the body parts in sea water made setting the time of death very difficult. The labs said it was also made harder by the fact that they had no body fluids to test…'

'Madonna porca!' swore Massimo. 'How easy do these so-called scientists want their lives? How about we pass a law that all killers have to tag the bodies with the exact time of death before they dispose of them? Orsetta, save me from the excuses. Just tell me the facts that can help us.'

Orsetta, well used to his emotional flare-ups, continued unshaken. 'Decomposition was pretty uniform across the body parts, give or take a few hours. All the flesh had begun softening and liquefying. He'd tied the severed limbs in the plastic bags before dumping them at sea, so they went through a fairly normal putrefaction cycle. There had been discoloration, marbling and some blistering.'

'How long, Orsetta?' asked Massimo impatiently. 'How long had he kept her body?'

'They couldn't predict that accurately from the body parts, but -'

'Affanculo!' swore Massimo, slamming a meaty hand on his desk top. 'Non mi rompere le palle!'

Orsetta reddened, not with embarrassment, but with anger. 'With the greatest respect, Direttore, I am not breaking your balls; these are the path lab reports, not mine. The body parts don't help us a lot because the decomposition rate is skewed by the fact that they were dumped in sea water.'

'Mi dispiace,' said Massimo, clasping his hands together as though in prayer. 'Please continue.' He reached out and once more gently touched the photograph of Cristina on his desk.

Orsetta picked up where she'd been stopped. 'Pathology says it looks like Cristina had been dead for about six to eight days before her body was dismembered and then exposed to the sea water.'

'Anything in the stomach or lungs that helps us?' asked Massimo, hopefully.

Orsetta frowned. 'Fortunately, Cristina's torso had been wrapped quickly and tightly in the plastic sacks, presumably to avoid a lot of spillage at the crime scene, and this went a long way to preserving parts of the vital organs. Lung tissue analysis was difficult, but from what they could work out, no diatoms were found in the body organs. They checked bone marrow too, and that came back clear of the diatoms as well.'

'Diatoms are microscopic organisms usually found in lakes, rivers or seas?' checked Roberto.

'That's right,' said Orsetta. 'Even bathwater in some places can contain them. Anyway, evidence that they were not absorbed while she was alive means she was not killed by drowning nor was she dismembered in the sea water, or any other water for that matter.'

'Surely that would have been unlikely anyway?' suggested Benito.

'You're right,' Massimo agreed. 'Unlikely, but not impossible. It has been known for a murderer to drown a victim in bathwater and then dismember the body in the same water, the logic being that there is only one crime scene for the killer to clean up, rather than a death site and a separate dismemberment site. We should always look for the unusual. If you can find it, then you have a sat nav guide to your murderer.'

Orsetta took a long drink of the cold cola. Massimo waited until she finished before he urged her to continue. 'Now her head,' said the Direttore. 'What does Patologia say about the head of Cristina Barbuggiani?'

Orsetta flicked over a page of her notes. 'The head…'

'Her head, Cristina's head,' snapped Massimo. 'It is not an object. We are dealing with a person here. Let's remember that.'

'Cristina's head,' Orsetta began again, 'we can treat as a pure sample, in that it had not been exposed to any sea water. So fixing the time and date of death is more possible here.' Her eyes dipped down to her notes, to find the pathologist's exact wording. "'The skin was easy enough to peel from the skull and the hair could be gently pulled out." From this, they fixed the rate of decomposition at about two weeks.'

Roberto was pondering something. 'How differently does a body decompose on land, compared to in water?'

'Very differently,' said Massimo. 'Bodies decompose in air twice as quickly as they do in water, and eight times as quickly as they do in soil.'

'And young people decay faster than old people,' added Benito.

'Why's that?' asked Roberto.

'Because of the fat levels,' explained Benito. 'Fluid and fat accelerate decomposition. So if you want to hang around in life, or death, stay off the burgers and beer.'

'Thank you, Benito,' said Massimo, cutting off the start of his case coordinator's streamof black humour. 'Maggots, Orsetta. Jack will want to know about infestation. Were all the usual suspects present?'

'Yes, they were,' confirmed Orsetta. 'Analysis revealed the presence of multiple fully formed Calliphora.'

'Blue-bottle fly,' explained Benito to Roberto.

Orsetta raised her eyebrows at him, making sure he'd finished with his interruptions, then carried on. 'The larvae were mature, elderly, fat, indolent, third-stage maggots, not in pupa cases. The estimate was that they had been laid about nine or ten days earlier. The lab said we should allow an extra day or two for the original flies to have found the head. Sorry, Cristina's head. So we're back with the fourteen-day estimate.'

Massimo looked up from his desk top. 'None of the progeny of the flies had themselves reached the breeding stage?'

'No,' she answered. 'I asked the same question. Apparently that would have taken about a month.'

'So again the timing coincides?' checked Roberto.

'Yes,' Orsetta confirmed. 'In the summary, the notes concur again that the head was probably kept in a lukewarm place for between ten and fourteen days.'

Massimo scribbled some words on his pad and the team waited silently until he had finished. 'We need to have a stab at a timeline. Let's look…'

Roberto interrupted him. 'Direttore, I think I have a rough one.'

'Go on,' said Massimo, pleased to see the youngster had been thinking ahead.

'Cristina was last seen alive on the ninth of June and was reported missing on the tenth. From what we've been told by the pathology reports, it's likely that she was killed somewhere around the twelfth to the fourteenth. We're told the corpse was kept for six days before it was dismembered and disposed of. This takes us to the twentieth of June as probably the earliest that he started disposing of the limbs. We have our first public finding of remains two days later, on the twenty-second.'

Massimo held up a hand. 'That's good, but let's stop for a moment and back up a little. It looks as if this man held Cristina alive for between a minimum of two and a maximum of four days.' He looked up at his team, and continued, 'Then, when he killed her, he kept her body, or parts of it, for another six to eight days. Why? Why did he wait so long? What was he doing?' He let the dates and questions sink in, swallowed hard and added, 'Our killer then kept Cristina's severed head for another four or five days, before it was delivered to us. Again, why?'

Orsetta made the sign of the cross and bowed her head; she could not begin to imagine what agonies Cristina had endured, or what kind of man they were hunting.

'He has left us with many questions to answer, but let's concentrate on the main ones,' said Massimo, preparing to tick them off on his fingers. 'How did he manage to abduct Cristina? Where did he hold her for those two to four days that she was alive? Did he keep her corpse in the same place, for up to six days, or did he move her somewhere else? Why did he wait so long before sending Cristina's head to us?'

Massimo let his hand fall to his desk and glanced across at the framed picture of Cristina. She seemed not to have a worry in the world. Her face was unlined, radiant and full of promise. Her smile was so wide that the photographer had probably caught her just as a laugh was about to escape her lips. Massimo looked up again, and moved the conversation on to something he'd so far kept secret from Jack. 'And the other big question is: what exactly did the killer mean to tell us by the note that he sealed in a plastic bag and left inside Christina's skull?'