Where did she get that idea? I was under the impression that I liked women very much. ‘To the contrary,’ I told her. ‘Furthermore, when he did venture out, women seemed to find him extremely charming and – I don’t think I’m being indiscreet – very sexually attractive.’
She barely blinked. ‘Charming, smart – and sexy? God, I would have liked to have met him!’ she said, to a huge round of applause and cheering.
As I grinned at her I realized that all the months of reaching for normal might be achieving something, and I was attracted enough to hope that later in the day I might find the chance to talk to her and ask for her number.
In the meantime, I changed gear. I told them about a case which – were Jude alive – he probably would have found the most interesting of all. I told them about the day the Towers fell and the murder at the Eastside Inn.
‘Ben Bradley spoke earlier about the man in a wheelchair,’ I said. ‘What he didn’t tell you was this – he was the one who led the group that carried the guy down.’
There was a moment of shocked silence in the auditorium, then a rolling wave of applause for him. Ben and Marcie – she was sitting next to him – stared at me in surprise. Until then, they had no idea that I knew about Ben’s bravery, but I think they understood then why I had agreed to speak.
‘He didn’t find Jesus at all,’ Marcie said to her husband, feigning surprise.
‘No, we should have realized he’d learn the truth – he’s a damn investigator,’ Bradley said, berating himself, getting to his feet to acknowledge the crowd.
When the clapping stopped, I continued. ‘But that was a day full of remarkable events. Ben’s was just one of them. Earlier in the morning, a young woman was running late for work. As she approached the Towers she saw the first plane hit and realized that – as far as the world was concerned – she was already at her desk, as good as dead.’
For the second time in less than a minute Bradley was taken aback. I had never shared my theory with him, and he raised his hands, as if to say, Where the hell is this going?
So I told him – and the crowd. ‘You see, the woman whose tardiness had just saved her life wants to kill somebody, and now she’s got the perfect alibi: she’s dead.
‘So she walks through the chaos and fear until she finds a place where she can live off the grid and nobody will find her. It’s called the Eastside Inn.
‘Whenever she goes out, she disguises herself and, on one of those trips, she borrows a textbook – probably the definitive work on how to kill somebody and how to get away with it. We all know the book – it was Jude Garrett’s.’
That caused a stir, a sharp intake of breath among the delegates. Bradley caught my eye and clapped silently – yeah, he was saying, it was pretty damn good.
‘She invites a woman – young, probably attractive – to the Eastside Inn,’ I said.
‘A little drugs, a little sex. Then she kills her date – exactly by the book, so to speak, and disappears.
‘When the NYPD arrive they find a victim with no face, no fingerprints and no teeth. So that is what they’ve got – a victim nobody can identify and a killer nobody suspects because she’s dead. Why the murder? Who are these people? Where’s the motive? What does it mean?’
I paused and looked around. People were shaking their heads in quiet admiration for the crime. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re right – impressive. Jude had a name for ones like this. He called ’em the mind-fuckers.’
People laughed, and the comments and ideas started slowly but quickly avalanched. By then, however, I was barely listening – I had seen three men enter at the back of the hall and sit silently in the last row.
For that reason, when the attractive woman in the turquoise shirt came up with a brilliant idea, I barely registered it. Although I recalled what she had said weeks later, I still cursed myself for not paying attention to it at the time.
The only thing I could plead in my defence was that I knew the secret world and I knew what the men at the back were doing there. They had come for me.
Part Three
Chapter One
THE FUNNEL WEB, native to Australia, is almost certainly the most venomous spider in the world – worse even than the Brazilian wandering spider and, God knows, they’re bad enough.
A long time ago, I investigated a case where the neurotoxin from a funnel web had been used to kill an American engineer, an asset of one of our covert agencies working in Romania. As part of the inquiry a biologist showed me one of the black, full-bodied creatures – a Sydney male, the most venomous and aggressive of the species.