Spider

71

Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York The FBI and NYPD started checking car plates, surveillance footage from street and road cameras, and canvassing Hyundai dealers and second-hand car salesmen.

Fernandez stayed with Grazyna Macowicz while she tried to identify the man she had seen Lu leave with. A police artist worked on body shape, build and posture while a policewoman put together an E-fit of his facial components.

Meanwhile, Jack King stood on the pavement of Beach Avenue, his nose pressed to Primorski's window, imagining what Ludmila Zagalsky had been doing during her last moments of freedom almost a week earlier. It was important for him to know the mood she was in, the frame of mind that might have made her take a risk, or avoid one. First, he imagined the moment Lu saw Ramzan inside the restaurant. She waved at him, hoping he would come to the door and maybe invite her in, hoping her night would end in the arms of the big tall guy with good looks and a regular job. But for some reason he didn't come.

So what, fuck him! An average end to an averageday.

He pictured Lu spinning around from the window and feeling rejected. But then what?

Jack turned away from Primorski's window, trying to feel her pang of loneliness, trying to work out what she would do next.

Some guy was rolling up to use the ATM right next to her. ATMs were always hot pick-up spots for good-time girls. It was the perfect distraction for Lu. Why not? He looked harmless enough. Opportunity knocked.

Rejected by one man, she was likely to want to reassert her self-confidence by taking money and power from another.

Was Grazyna right? Had the machine been out of order?

Jack madea note to have it checked. Even if he used a false account, which was inevitable really, it would still contain precise information about where he was at certain times, and Jack always hung on to the hope that one day this son of a bitch would make a simple mistake. He looked at the machine; there was nothing directing users to the next one if it wasn't working. Of course to BRK it wouldn't have mattered. Even if the ATM had been working he'd have just pretended it wasn't. The whole point was to get the girl in the car.

Did that mean he already knew where the other machines were? Had he checked out this area before? Maybe even been stalking Lu Zagalsky for a couple of days, just waiting for the right moment to inject himself into her life?

Jack was convinced it wasn't a random snatch. He carried on building the scene.

BRK would have tracked this girl all day, maybe for several days; this was his moment, the streets were empty and she was alone. He'd have just slid his car to the kerb and walked over to her. Once she'd turned away from the restaurant window he'd have moved in for the kill.

Moved in for the kill – the phrase stuck in his thoughts. For serial murderers like BRK, the hunt-and-kill instinct seemed as strong and primitively undeniable as most decent people's urges to meet and mate.

Jack looked up and down the shop walls for security cameras, hoping there might be at least one covering the ATM, but he was out of luck.

So, Lu, what did you do next? Jack slipped back into her time and space, the thoughts in her head that led her to make a fatal mistake.

The guy looks harmless enough; he's going to have a roll of bills in his hands. He's up late and after money, maybe he's looking to spend it on some fun. Hey, aren't I fun-shaped? Let's get some action going. A little chat, show him where the next ATM is, then wham-bam-thank-you, Mam, something extra in the purse before calling it quits for the night.

Jack walked slowly east down Beach Avenue. Opposite him, a patrol car crawled along, ready to take him anywhere he wanted.

As he paced, he called Howie and found out where the next two nearest ATMs were. Somewhere between a DIY store that was closing down and a Russian-language video shop that was opening up, he stopped and fine-tuned his thoughts.

Where was she going to take him? Down an alley? Maybe bang him against a wall for a quick buck or blow him off next to a trash can? No, that didn't figure somehow. Jack leant against a shop wall while Lu's thoughts whispered in his mind.

Look at it like this, Jack: this sleazeball's about to withdraw a whole bundle of bucks, and even though he's acting all innocent he don't fool no one, he's sure as hell interested in spending some of them on yours truly. Look at the guy, he's an easy trick, he's in his late thirties, maybe forty-something, he's a professional-looking guy, he'll have a hotel, motel or rental nearby. Somewhere with richer pickings than the street.

Jack stood motionless on the pavement. To the torrent of shoppers and tourists flowing past him he looked as though he was in a trance, a man with his mind in an entirely different world.

Lu's thoughts were no longer of any use to him. The trap had been sprung, the hunter had his prey. From now on, Jack had to think like a killer.

Feel like a killer.

A flashgun went off in his head; images flickered by; the room he'd prepared, the restraints he'd readied, and most of all the way he felt – excited, exhilarated, unstoppable.

He gazed into the blur of passing traffic and pictured himself in BRK's place, driving along in the Hyundai, turning to Lu in the passenger seat.

I've got a house, not far from here, we can go back there.

Jack flinched. The flashgun popped again and a nervous twitch pulled at his right eye. Was he really ready to do this? He forced himself to concentrate. What kind of place did he take her to and where?

Not far from here, we don't have to go far…

Wherever he took her, it surely couldn't have been a long journey. The hunter would want to be alone with his prey as soon as possible. He'd be aching for the kill.

The twitch quickened, a tug on the skin like a hidden needle pulling thread through his flesh. Jack put a finger to his right temple and rubbed it.

Street girls aren't stupid. They'll go a few miles, but not more than a ten-, fifteen-minute drive, max.

The twitch slowed.

For what BRK had in mind, he needed to take her somewhere remote, the more isolated the better. But it would have to be respectable as well; somewhere residential that wouldn't spook her. No woman's going to take a dead-of-night trip into a barn or warehouse. And wherever he took her, he would have to get the car out of sight. It would have a garage, outbuildings, and a big room, somewhere.

A room he uses for other things.

Things such as the dismemberment and disposal of bodies.

It's a big, old house with a garage – and a basement beneath it.

The basement is where she's kept.

Jack felt sick to the pit of his stomach as he realized that at that very moment the young Russian woman was probably dying a slow and agonizing death in a basement less than fifteen minutes' drive from where he was standing.

His head was throbbing now; it was full of engine noise and the faulty flash of neons that buzzed but wouldn't light properly. And then the voices came again, the hopeless voices crying in pain and screaming for help. Jack put his hands to his temples.

It's too soon. Nancy was right. You're not ready for this.

He rubbed his face with his hands and told himself to forget the self-doubts and focus. He looked up and down Beach Avenue; fifteen minutes' drive from the spot he stood in would include all houses within a seven-mile radius.

'Shit!' he said out loud and felt his heart break into a sprint. Brooklyn was New York City's largest borough; almost a third of the entire city's population lived there. Ludmila Zagalsky was just one out of two and a half million people living within the area that had to be searched.

One in two and a half million – the odds against finding her alive were bad, very bad indeed.