What the hel, what the hel, what the hel?
He examined the photograph, its macabre composition. There had to be a meaning, but he couldn't see what it was.
Instead, he picked up the picture of the couple from Paris.
Emily and Clive Spencer, just married, propped up next to each other against a pale-colored headboard in a Montparnasse hotel room. They were both naked. The streams of blood that covered their torsos had gathered in congealed little pools around their genitals.
Why?
Chapter 3
Jacob reached for the wedding photograph he had asked Emily's mother to send him.
Emily was only twenty-one years old. Clive had just turned twenty-six.
They were a stunningly beautiful couple, and the wedding photo radiated so much happiness and romance. Clive was dressed in tails, tal and handsome.
Maybe a touch overweight, but that suited his status as a stockbroker in the London markets.
Emily looked like a fairy-tale princess, her hair in big ringlets framing her head. Slim and fragile, she looked quite enchanting in her ivory dress. Her eyes shone at the camera.
They had met at a mutual friend's New Year's party in Notting Hil, in one of those narrow trendy houses where the film with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts had been shot.
Emily's mother hadn't been able to stop crying when Jacob talked to her on the phone.
He could neither comfort nor help her. He wasn't even formal y involved in the case, after al. As an American police officer, he had to be careful not to get involved in the work done by the authorities in other countries.
That could have diplomatic consequences and, even worse, could lead to his expulsion from the country.
A wave of despondency washed over Jacob with a force that took his breath away and made the mug of wine in his hand shake.
He quickly emptied it of its contents and went and poured some more.