his stock in trade, but even he looked a little greyer than Joel had ever seen him before. He was crouched over a bodybag in the grass, pulling off a pair of surgical gloves as Joel crossed the inner cordon and walked over to him. A couple of police photographers had just finished up and were packing away their equipment.
‘Hell of a thing,’ Brier muttered to Joel and Carter. ‘Have you had lunch? Then don’t look.’
Joel stared down at the thing in the bodybag.
Brier chuckled at the expression on his face. ‘Told you. She’s seen better days, that’s for sure. We’ve recovered the head, most of the trunk, the left arm and what’s left of the right leg. The rest could have floated down into Berkshire by now.’
‘What did this?’ Carter asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Brier shrugged. ‘Hard to tell, until we get her on the slab and have a poke around inside. If this was Alaska, I’d say a grizzly had taken a bite out of her.’ He gave a dark grin. ‘But this isn’t Alaska.’
‘Jesus,’ Carter mumbled. He’d seen enough. He looked away, watching the divers and visibly trying to control his emotions.
‘The strangest thing is,’ Brier went on. ‘I mean, I can’t be sure just yet, but look how little lividity there is. And she’s still fresh, too. Not been in the water more than six, seven hours tops. Cut a long story short, it looks to me like this young lady has been completely exsanguinated, even before she was dissected.’
‘In English,’ Carter said.
Joel answered for Brier. ‘He’s saying something drained her blood.’
‘Drained her blood,’ Carter repeated flatly.
Brier nodded. ‘Every last drop of it.’
Joel was still staring at the pieces of the girl’s body as Brier got to his feet and went off with Carter to confer with some of the others. Just then, his phone started to vibrate in his pocket. He fished it out and saw that the call was from Dan Cleland.
‘And for my next miracle,’ Cleland said.
‘You got the results already?’
‘Just in. Specially for my favourite CID officer.’
Joel tensed. Dan was one of those guys who liked to string things out for effect. ‘Well?’
‘The arresting officer was right about the pills. Not top stuff, but definitely ecstasy.’
‘And the blood test, Dan?’
‘Goodness, we are in a tizzy today.’
‘If you were standing here looking at a dead girl’s head in a bag, so would you be.’
‘All right, all right. Well, if your man’s dealing, he doesn’t use from his own stash. Blood test was clean.’
‘What about alcohol?’
‘Zilch. Soberer than a Sons of Temperance convention.’
‘You’re sure about that? Quite certain?’
‘When have I ever been wrong?’
‘Never. Thanks, Dan.’
‘You owe me now, Solomon.’
‘Right.’ Joel ended the call and was about to flip the phone shut. Then he stopped. Glanced around him. Brier was deep in conversation with his colleagues and Carter was getting belligerent with someone on the police radio. Nobody was watching him.
He quickly turned on the camera function on his phone, crouched down in the grass and took two snaps of the victim. One of her face, the glassy eyes staring right into the lens.
And the other of the spider tattoo on what was left of her neck.
Villa Oriana, forty miles from Florence
1.50 p.m. local time
The butler in the crisp white jacket emerged into the sun carrying the tray with the chilled lemon vodka, prepared exactly the way his employer liked it. He climbed the steps to the balustraded terrace and set the drink down on the marble-topped table at the man’s side.
Jeremy Lonsdale ignored him, didn’t even glance at the drink until the butler had disappeared back inside the villa. Only then, he reached for the glass and winced as the iced vodka burned away the aftertaste of the lobster he’d eaten for lunch.
He closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair and felt the sun on his face. Soaking into him, its glow burning orange through his closed eyelids. Even in early November, it was still easily warm enough to have breakfast and lunch outside. That was one of the things Lonsdale loved most about his Tuscan bachelor hideaway. The gloom and drizzle of that piteous little island called Britain depressed him. He had no affection for the place and certainly no allegiance. He was just one of the ones lucky enough to ride the wave and enrich themselves before the remains of the dying empire imploded into the Third World country it was waiting to become. Whenever he could, he’d jump on his private jet and come out here to soak up the sun. There’d come a day when he wouldn’t return. That had always been his plan.
Lonsdale had been a multi-millionaire for twenty-seven years, which at forty-nine was well over half his life. He could have retired a long time ago, if it hadn’t been for his love of his political career. He was passionate about that whole world of lies and deceit. He loved the way he looked in the public eye when he took up some worthless cause to champion the innocent victims of…whatever. He loved the flash of the cameras and the simper of the media as he kissed babies in Manchester or Liverpool, while the arms companies that earned him millions a year in investments were churning out products to kill other people’s babies in some faraway country nobody gave a shit about, as long as they were kept sated with their television and sport and beer and infantile gadgets. It was all a big game. To win, you just needed the right attitude.
And he’d always thought he was the master of the game, until that day in February. That day had changed everything.
Lonsdale had snatched a week out of his schedule to take a skiing holiday in Lichtenstein. On the third night, as he lounged in the bar of his luxury hotel with a martini cocktail and some nameless floozy at his elbow, he’d spotted the tall figure across the crowded room. Men of wealth and taste were ten a penny in Lonsdale’s world, but this one was different. A man so effortlessly self-possessed, radiating an air of such supreme indifference that he made Lonsdale feel like a schoolboy. He seemed to draw the most beautiful women to him with mesmeric, almost uncanny ease and then dismissed them as though they were nothing. Here was a man who understood power, lived and breathed it. Was he a prince? Unable to recall his face from the society pages, Lonsdale had been desperate to talk to him, but the chance had escaped him when some paunchy dullard of an oil billionaire had appeared to pin him down in gratingly boring conversation. By the time he’d been able to wriggle away from the guy, the fascinating man had disappeared along with his female entourage.
All the next day on the ski slopes, Lonsdale had looked out for him – but no sign, nor the next night.
Finally, on the last evening of the holiday, Lonsdale caught sight of the man again. And this time, nothing was going to stop him from going up and introducing himself.
The man’s name was Gabriel Stone. They’d talked until late in the night and, when Stone had invited Lonsdale to be his guest at his mountain home in Romania, Lonsdale had been straight on the phone the next morning to advise his staff in London that he’d been struck down by a virus and wouldn’t be back in the country for another week.
Two days later, Stone’s helicopter had flown in to land at his home, with Jeremy Lonsdale on board, flanked by the two burly bodyguards his host had provided for his security. Snowy