The Caravaggio Conspiracy

by Connor, Alex

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I can’t stay here long.’

  ‘You have to stay there – you’re safe there.’ Gil paused, knowing everyone was watching him. ‘I need to know where the proof is. That’s what the man wanted from you and that’s what I need now to help your father.’ When Luca said nothing, Gil pressed him. ‘Where did you hide the proof? And don’t lie to me – I’ve kept my side of the bargain. Where is it?’

  ‘Ask for a torch and a spade and go into the garden.’

  Gil spoke to the woman. She was surprised, but walked away and returned a few moments later with both items. Taking them from her, Gil walked out into the garden.

  ‘Now,’ he said down the phone, ‘where do I go?’

  ‘There’s a cypress tree at the far end. Can you see it?’

  Gil walked towards it. ‘OK, I’m here.’

  ‘Move round the back, and there’s an old pond. It’s been filled in with soil.’

  Propping the torch up to illuminate the spot, Gil felt the earth, covered with weeds. ‘Now what? Do I dig?’

  ‘No. Feel round the back of the pond and there are two loose bricks. Got them?’

  ‘Got them.’

  ‘You’ll have to knock them out. They won’t just come out – they’ve been there for years. You might have to kick them loose,’ Luca went on, listening down the phone as he heard Gil trying to loosen the stones. It seemed to take a long time, until finally the bricks fell backwards onto the path behind.

  ‘OK, stones are out.’

  ‘Now dig about a foot down.’

  Putting aside the phone, Gil began to dig. Six inches, a foot, eighteen inches … Finally, exasperated, he snatched up the phone again.

  ‘There’s nothing here!’

  ‘There must be!’

  ‘If you’ve lied to me—’

  ‘I put it there! I put it there years ago!’ Luca said desperately. ‘I buried it – I know I did. It’s there! It has to be!’

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ Gil repeated. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But I buried it—’

  ‘What did you bury, Luca? What was it?’

  ‘A plastic bag.’

  ‘What was in it?’

  ‘Disks,’ Luca said brokenly. ‘Two computer disks with the proof of where the paintings are. With everything on them: names, dates – everything. All the proof anyone would ever need.’

  Gil felt light-headed as the breath was sucked out of him. He knew where the disks had gone. He knew who had taken them all those years ago. The same person who had befriended Luca Meriss and taught him how to use a computer.

  His ex-wife. The late lamented Mrs Eckhart.

  Thursday

  Naples, Italy

  1610

  Seeking protection from the powerful Colonna family, Caravaggio waited for his pardon from Rome. Having thrown himself on their mercy, he was given a place to work and a guard to stand watch over him. His injuries were slow to heal and his face was disfigured, the wound drawing down his left eyelid, his mouth irregular.

  Skirting mirrors, Caravaggio kept to the dark. His hired bodyguard might stand at his door, but there were windows – other means of entry to his studio. Belligerent and nervous by turns, he recovered, then ventured back into the Neapolitan streets. His appearance did not go unnoticed, the news spreading to his enemies, whispered in taverns, and skimming over the water towards the redoubtable Simon de Wignacourt, the Governor of the Knights of St John, in Malta.

  De Wignacourt had been one of the artist’s greatest admirers. He had posed for his portrait and rewarded him with a suite of rooms, a slave, a gold chain. Finally he had made him an honorary member of the Order. The painter had revelled in his status, until a skirmish with one of the Knights had resulted in his being jailed. News travelled to Rome, tales of Caravaggio’s notorious temper fuelling the rumours. There was to be a trial, he was to be exiled from the Order ‘like a rotten and fetid limb’.

  Overnight Simon de Wignacourt had become an implacable enemy, and Caravaggio knew it. Desperate, he escaped from Malta and returned to Naples. But he had been followed.

  Old enemies had traced him. Some said de Wignacourt had sent a man to kill the artist and redeem the reputation of the Order. Others whispered about Sicily, where Caravaggio had been pursued by relatives of the murdered Ranuccio Tomassoni. Every place, every city, was pitted with rivals and men eager for the painter’s scalp.

  Time passed. Cornered, Caravaggio hid, waiting for the pardon to be granted. And he worked. Summoning his favourite model from Rome, Fillide Melandroni, he began his painting of Salome with the Head of John the Baptist. Indolently beautiful, Fillide became surly and lazy, falling asleep as Caravaggio painted her, provoking him, mocking his disfigured face. But she slept in the crook of his arm, and listened to the footsteps of the guard outside the door. And she watched the canvas cradle her image in among the all-devouring shadows of the background.

  When the picture was finished Caravaggio sent it to Simon de Wignacourt, with a note explaining that the severed head of John the Baptist was his own self-portrait. An offering, a token to apologise, to beg a painterly sacrifice. Here is my head on a plate. I give you something all Italy would prize: valuable, admired, another for the collection of the Order.

  Take the image of my skull, but leave me whole.

  Word finally came, first from Malta. The painting had been rejected. The Knights wanted Caravaggio’s real head, not a painted image. Caravaggio painted another sacrificial picture, of David and Goliath, and this time the giant’s severed head was his.

  He rushed the painting, irritable, nervy, the pain in his face flaring as the nerves tugged under the tightening wound. Soon the magnificent image was on its way to the notorious cardinal Scipione Borghese, a long-time admirer of Caravaggio and a man powerful enough to grant pardons.

  Spring turned over, summer coming early, hot and Fillide Melandroni returned to Rome. In his rooms, Caravaggio received news that his longed-for pardon was finally about to be granted. But was also informed that de Wignacourt resented his painterly attempt at an apology. On Malta, the Knights of the Order took the painting as an insult, a trumped-up attempt to placate them. Caravaggio might have escaped Malta, but he hadn’t escaped them.

  Disturbed, haunted, hunted, Caravaggio slept with a knife under his pillow, roaring at anyone who approached him. At the slightest criticism of his work he ripped up the canvas he was working on, lapsing into rages, unstable. Summer came hot. Summer came quick. He slept, sweating in his armour plate, and waited for his pardon.

  And he listened to the footsteps of his guard outside the door, wondering if – or when – they would become the steps of his murderer instead.

  Forty-Seven

  Campolfelice, Nr Palermo, Sicily

  12.30 a.m.

  ‘What was on the disks?’ Gil asked, sitting down on the mouldering brick wall, too far away from the house to be overheard – although he knew he was being watched from the kitchen window. His head was aching from the assault, his patience exhausted. ‘What was on the bloody disks?’

  On the other end of the phone, the Italian snapped to attention. ‘The whereabouts of the paintings.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘The Nativity is still in Palermo …’

  ‘Still here?’

  ‘It never left the island.’

  ‘Not stolen by the Mafia?’

  ‘That’s what everyone was supposed to think.’

  Gil could hear noises over the line, Luca’s voice dropping. ‘I think someone’s coming!’

  He hurried on. ‘What about the portrait of Fillide Melandroni? Where’s that?’

  Luca’s voice very faint, barely more than a whisper. ‘It’s in Berlin.’

  ‘Where in Berlin?’

  ‘It’s on the disks.’

  ‘For God’s sake, just tell me!’

  ‘The Nativity is—’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Luca? Luca!
’ Exasperated, Gil tried to redial the number.

  But all he got was voicemail.

  He wondered if Luca been caught by the medical staff, his phone confiscated, forbidden by the hospital rules. At this moment Luca Meriss might well be on his way back to bed, chastened like a child. Gil hoped so. But then again, there might well be some more sinister reason for the sudden cutoff.

  Uneasy, Gil turned to the woman. ‘Ask Mr Ranuccio exactly what his son told him about Caravaggio and the paintings, will you?’

  She spoke to the old man, listened to his reply, and turned back to Gil.

  ‘Luca said their family was related to Caravaggio, and that he knew where the missing paintings were.’

  ‘Nothing else? Nothing more specific?’

  He waited for her to interpret. ‘No, Mr Ranuccio says there was nothing more.’

  Gil stared at the old man. His hands were thrust defiantly into his pockets, his glasses smudged with fingerprints. His expression was combative, without fear. He had realised he was in danger, but his first thought was not for himself. Speaking to the woman, she nodded and turned to Gil.

  ‘Mr Ranuccio says for you not to worry about him, but to help his son.’

  ‘I should—’

  She waved his interruption aside. ‘He says that he has good friends here.’ She gestured to the two young men, one pointing to a shotgun leaning up against the wall. ‘He says he will be all right. He wants you to help Luca.’ She listened as the old man spoke again, then translated. ‘Mr Ranuccio asks if you will save his son.’

  Gil paused for an instant. ‘If I can.’

  She stared at him intently. ‘Where are you going now?’

  ‘Back to London. But not before I visit the church where The Nativity was stolen.’

  ‘The Oratory of San Lorenzo?’

  He nodded, then scribbled down his mobile number. ‘You can call me any time. If you hear anything, or think of anything, call me. I mean it – keep in touch.’

  ‘You won’t find anything at the church,’ the woman told him. ‘There’s nothing there.’

  ‘No reason not to look.’

  She said something to Carlo and he nodded.

  ‘Mr Ranuccio says that you must stay here tonight, and go in the morning. The church will be locked until then anyway.’ She guided him back into the house, towards the kitchen table. ‘Eat some food, then rest.’

  In silence Carlo took a seat next to him, watching as Gil was given some bread and cheese. When he had finished eating the woman showed him into the sitting room beyond, dusty and cool, handing him a blanket and gesturing to an old sofa.

  ‘Sleep,’ she told him. ‘Nothing will happen tonight.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘Because you are with us,’ she teased him. ‘Now, rest.’

  The following morning Gil rose before six, walked into the yard and washed himself at an old pump. The sun was curling upwards, promising day, a cockerel marking its vocal territory in the waiting stillness. No one else was about and he woke no one. Instead he helped himself to some more bread and cheese, drank some milk, and left.

  It was only when Gil reached the gate that he realised Carlo Ranuccio had followed him. Glancing behind him, the old man checked that no one was watching, and then handed Gil a faded suede pouch, closing his fingers over it.

  His expression was intense. ‘Dio sia con te … God go with you.’

  Nodding, Gil tightened his grip around the pouch then walked off, closing the rusty gates behind him.

  Forty-Eight

  The Oratory of San Lorenzo, Palermo

  9.00 a.m.

  Dusting off his clothes, Gil entered the church. It was smaller than he had expected – hardly more than a large room. The opulence of the interior surprised Gil, frosted statues and soaring figures materialising like ectoplasm from the icing-sugar walls. Around the ceiling, ghost limbs, white-marbled, hung like elegant sides of meat, and a chandelier was frosted with unlit candles. Pews inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory rested on the blood-red marble of the floor, the gold on the statues prickling in the early sunlight.

  Gil looked around him at the pristine interior, almost shocking in its lack of colour. Every statue, every pillar, every niche, was locked in crystallised perfection. Every white face, white hand, white limb was transfixed. Time had not entered the Oratorio. Nothing had faded or dimmed. Nothing had aged. No sun, no wind, no rain had effected any changes over the centuries. It was, he thought, a deeply unsettling place.

  As quietly as he could, Gil moved towards the altar and paused, staring at the huge painting facing him. Although only a copy of The Nativity with St Lawrence and St Francis, it had the power to thrill, its bravura composition and colouring profoundly moving. Gil could understand why the painting had meant so much, and had been so desired. What a coup for Palermo to own such a masterpiece! And then, one October night in 1969, the original had been cut from its frame and bundled out. It was never seen again.

  His gaze moved over the replica Caravaggio, the power of which was intensified by the elegant frippery of its surroundings. And then he tensed. To his right, a door closed. Gil turned, but no one was there. Another noise alerted him and he turned again, only to see a man enter, cross himself, and begin to pray in a pew behind him. The woman had been right: there was nothing to see at the Oratorio of San Lorenzo.

  Gil heard a cough behind him.

  ‘You like the painting?’ Startled, he turned to find the worshipper watching him. ‘You like the painting?’

  Gil nodded, waiting to see if the man would say more, but to his surprise he just shrugged and returned to his prayers.

  Sliding into a pew at the back, Gil took out the pouch from Carlo Ranuccio. It was aged, greasy with fingerprints, the cord fraying as he eased it open and shook out a small, narrow piece of wood. Gil frowned, staring at it and turning it over in his hands. But it wasn’t simply wood. On closer inspection he could see that it was the top of a paintbrush, the ferrule holding the remains of sable hairs, the handle broken, only two inches long.

  Hurriedly, Gil felt into the pouch, drawing out a slip of paper on which was scrawled Pennello di Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi da, Palermo 1608.

  Stunned, he took in a breath. So the old man had known something, perhaps proof of his family’s link to the painter. A link that Carlo Ranuccio had decided to suppress – especially as it concerned a painting stolen by the Sicilian Mafia. He had tried to secure his family’s safety by denial.

  And failed.

  The broken brush might prove to be a fake. But if it didn’t – if it was confirmation of Luca Meriss’s claims – it meant that the Italian was telling the truth about everything else.

  Gil stared at the piece of wood. He could imagine how coveted such a prize would be. How the likes of Crammer, Schultz, Hoyt and Jacob Levens would slaver to own it. Jesus, Gil thought, the Italian was lucky to be alive. No wonder his father had been threatened. And whoever had threatened Carlo Ranuccio would now be watching him.

  Gil sat immobile in the pew, knowing that his visit to the old man would not have gone unnoticed. Perhaps they would guess that he had been given something and would want it. Gil might have got Luca Meriss to a safe house, but he was hanging in the wind. In his hand he was holding history – and his own noose.

  If proved authentic it would be the brush used by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, dating from Palermo in 1608, the year the artist was exiled, moving from country to country, running for his life.

  Just as Luca Meriss had been.

  Just as Gil was now.

  Forty-Nine

  London

  11.00 a.m.

  ‘I told you, I had nothing to do with it!’ Gary Rimmer repeated, staring at Phil Simmons. ‘She turned up at my flat and died there—’

  ‘Just like that?’ he replied, his expression weary. ‘She was Bernard Lowe’s nurse. She had access to him, she was the one person who could tamper with the cylinders. And you knew her.
I spoke to the housekeeper – she said you two talked a lot.’

  ‘We worked at the same place!’ Gary spluttered. ‘I fancied her, that was all. I just chatted her up, I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘But Frieda Meyer’s body is, nevertheless, in your flat,’ Simmons replied, ‘and her employer’s been murdered. And that looks very much as though she was involved – and you were too. Did you plan it together? To kill off the old man and—’

  ‘I never wanted to kill him!’

  ‘Someone did.’

  ‘All right,’ Gary said, raking his hands through his hair. ‘Why would I want to kill Bernard Lowe?’

  ‘His house is full of valuables.’

  ‘Was anything taken?’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ Simmons replied, ‘but then again, you might have had something particular in mind that no one else knew about. Lowe was a very wealthy man. Perhaps you saw something you fancied? Or heard about something he was after?’

  Gary swallowed, thinking of the Caravaggios.

  ‘I didn’t steal anything from Mr Lowe.’

  ‘You’ve got a record for assault.’

  ‘Oh, fuck.’

  ‘Yeah, it doesn’t look good.’

  ‘My ex-wife made that complaint. She dropped it later.’

  Simmons’ expression was flat. ‘Did you make her drop it?’

  ‘No! She was after me for child maintenance, so she made the complaint to the police to throw a scare into me.’ He paused. ‘I paid the fucking maintenance. She was lying about the assault. Ask her.’

  Simmons sat down facing Gary. The rash on the detective’s face had begun to die down, the redness slowly fading.

  ‘Why did you kill Frieda Meyer?’

  ‘I didn’t kill her!’

  ‘All right, why would she come to your flat and then die there?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Gary said pleadingly. ‘She came in the back door, I said her name and she dropped down – just like that, onto the floor. There was blood everywhere.’