by Connor, Alex
6.00 p.m.
Making coffee in his kitchen, Gil heard a sudden noise from the empty flat below: the sound of glass breaking. He knew that the builders had finished for the day and that no one else was living there. Cautiously he moved to the front door of the apartment and listened. There were footsteps coming up the stairs.
He tensed.
The footsteps stopped.
He looked through the spyhole in the door.
Nothing.
But there had been someone there, Gil knew, even if they had now gone. A soft noise behind him, a gentle tinkling sound, made him jump as the computer screen flashed up the image of an envelope. Gil walked into the sitting room and then stopped in his tracks. If he stood by the computer table he could be seen from across the garden at the back of the houses. Someone using a zoom lens could follow his every move.
Ducking down, Gil closed the shutters. In virtual darkness, he felt his way back to the front door and listened. There was no sound from below, from the unoccupied flat. The house was still. Checking the locks, he moved back to the computer and opened the message. It was the image of a foetus.
The threat had found its mark.
Fifty-Nine
St Bartholomew’s Hospital
7.00 p.m.
Sitting next to her hospital bed, Gil put his hand on Bette’s stomach and bowed his head to kiss the back of her hand. After receiving the email he had phoned Simmons.
‘It’s just a threat, Gil.’
‘Just a threat!’
‘We can’t trace where it’s from, or who sent it. We can’t do anything. It’s just a threat. Someone’s throwing a scare into you.’
He was right, and Gil knew it.
The killer was getting close. Too close. This time it wasn’t just Gil; this time it was his wife, his child. Everything that he had built up out of the ruins of his life seven years earlier. Every piece of security was now threatened. The killer’s focus had shifted – onto Gil.
His time away from the art world had limited him. Rumours and gossip he would have been privy to seven years ago had eluded him and now he was struggling to regain an advantage he had lost, to re-enter a world that had once been his by right.
Suddenly he felt the baby moving under his palm.
‘We’re OK,’ Bette reassured him.
He hadn’t told her about the image he had received. He wouldn’t. Instead he had spoken to the doctor. The medic had been anxious, but had reassured Gil that the hospital was safe.
Gil had shaken his head. ‘I want to move her—’
‘You can’t. Your wife’s condition isn’t stable. If you moved her it could be serious for her and the baby. She needs bed rest until the baby’s born.’
‘Until he’s born?’
‘That won’t be long,’ the doctor had replied. ‘This baby won’t go full term. I think your wife will go into labour within the next few days, which is another reason why she has to stay here.’
Here. Where the killer knew she was. Gil had realised that the moment he saw the image on his computer. The murderer knew everything about them because he was watching.
Gil tried to reassure himself by checking out Bette’s exact location at the hospital. She was on the seventh floor, in a private room midway along a corridor. No one could access her room via the window, or the corridor, without being seen. And apparently only staff were permitted on the seventh floor. It was safe.
Bette was watching him anxiously. ‘You look tired. How’s the case?’
‘Coming along.’
‘Liar.’
He slid onto the narrow bed next to her, his left leg hanging over the edge, his foot on the floor and in silence rested his head on her shoulder. The scent of her talcum powder mingled with the scent of the night air on his clothes, one smell comforting, the other desolate. The thought of losing her and the baby worked like a maggot into his brain. His eyes closed, lulled by the warmth of Bette’s body against his. He needed a stroke of luck, some insight, some detail that would unpick the case for him. In Berlin, and now in London, the murderer was mocking him. Six people were dead, four within a few days, and as the number of victims had risen, the number of suspects had dwindled.
Gil thought of those who were left: Harvey Crammer, Catrina Hoyt, Oscar Schultz and Jacob Levens. Even Luca Meriss. Maybe the Italian was duping everyone? He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling, at the spotlights recessed in the plasterwork. Lights similar to those used in galleries. Lights with dimmer switches. Lights he had seen in dozens of galleries here and abroad.
Suddenly alert, he jerked upright on the bed.
‘What is it?’ Bette asked.
‘I have to go back.’
‘What?’
He scrambled to his feet. ‘I have to go back to Germany. I’m going to finish this once and for all. The answer’s seven years old. It’s in the Huber Galley on the Friedrichstrasse. That’s where it all began. That’s where he made his first strike, his first killing.’ Gil stared at his wife intently. ‘I’ve been looking in the wrong place. I won’t find him here because it didn’t begin in London, it began in Berlin.’
Sixty
London
7.00 p.m.
His tie loosened, flushed, Jacob Levens lumbered around his office, slumping onto a leather Chesterfield and refilling his glass. The alcohol was raising his blood pressure and his colour was high, his eyes bloodshot. Too drunk to be coherent, he had locked himself into his office that morning, refusing to let anyone enter and leaving his phone unanswered. Outside was the threatening world. Outside was a killer. Outside was the man who had tortured and murdered his sister and four others. He might well be next – and it was his own fault that he had no allies.
His own stupidity had alienated Gil Eckhart and left him unprotected. So he stuck to his confines and drank, and kept on drinking. Urgent phone calls to Harvey Crammer and Oscar Schultz had not been returned, and Greta’s hatred had cowed him. She didn’t know the whole story, but what she had guessed was enough. Someone would piece it all together soon.
Jacob’s decision to hire Gil Eckhart had been a devious one. True, Eckhart had been involved in the Berlin case, but he had been out of the business for years and Jacob relied on the art world’s notorious insularity to make life difficult for him. If Eckhart did inveigle his way back in it would take time, and besides, his attention would be fixed on the killer, not on the peripheries.
Jacob knew that Gil Eckhart would be unable to refuse the challenge of catching the killer who had eluded him before. The old murders and the eerie echo of Berlin would reel him in … he drank his whisky, sodden with guilt and terror. Who would find out what he had done? His gaze moved over to the safe, which was now empty, the disks gone. Jacob couldn’t imagine how they had been stolen. After all, who knew about them? Who but Holly? And Holly was dead.
He thought of the late Mrs Eckhart, mercurial, fascinating and manipulative. Bernard Lowe had introduced her to Der Kreis der Acht, explaining to the others how she had connections in the Far East. She could get them some valuable artefacts, Holly had said. And Bernard Lowe had nodded, like the wizened old ape he was. They had all known that his shipping company would be pressed into service. After all, it had been used before to transport paintings and objets d’art from Europe and further afield.
Never fully accepted into the dealers’ hierarchy, Holly joined Der Kreis der Acht as an honorary member. She had always travelled in her work, so her many journeys attracted little attention, even from Gil. And what a cover her marriage to him had turned out to be! Eckhart never suspected his wife and Holly had played along perfectly, even tipping off the members of Der Kreis der Acht when her husband’s investigative work threatened any of them.
Jacob knew that her reason for treachery was twofold. Emotionally demanding, she resented Gil’s independence, his time away from her. Holly might be free to come and go as she pleased, but she wanted Gil under the cosh. A year after they married, she found out
that he wasn’t that kind of man and turned to others she could manipulate more easily. She had always flirted with Jacob, but they had never had an affair. Instead he had always wondered which one of the circle was her lover.
Certainly not Bernard Lowe. Oscar Schultz? Harvey Crammer? Terrill Huber? It could have been any one of them. Or all of them … Jacob drained his glass and refilled it immediately. In the gallery beyond he could hear the door being locked and the low hum of the alarm being set. The business premises were safe, leaving just the back door off the system, so that Jacob could come and go from his private quarters as he pleased.
But he didn’t please. Instead he chose to stay inside, the doors of his rooms bolted. He should never have got his sister involved, but he had and he was going to pay for it just as she had. Jesus! Jacob thought, remembering the Weir twins, the bound bodies back to back, the bloodied genitals. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t mean for it all to get out of hand. But the tables had turned since Berlin. In seven years all his scheming and double-dealing had backfired. The gun he had pointed at others was now turned on him.
His hand reached out. I can’t die, Jacob panicked. I can’t.
Blearily he squinted at his phone and punched a number in, listening to the eerie tone as it rang, unheard and unanswered, far far away.
Sixty-One
Berlin
8.00 p.m.
Oscar Schultz leant against the office desk. His sleeves were rolled up, his hair sweaty and dishevelled. So far his search had yielded nothing, but he wasn’t overly worried. The Huber gallery was a large city property on three floors, with a cellar below. It would take days, maybe even a week, to search everywhere.
If he could have hired someone to do the dirty work, he would have done, but Oscar didn’t want anyone around. If he found what he was looking for, he wanted it kept secret. And people talked. People always talked. Flicking on the main light, he looked around him. The top floor had been thoroughly searched. Nothing could have been hidden there. So next it was time to search the offices.
The enormity of the task didn’t faze him, his attention only distracted by the phone ringing in the room beyond. It rang out several times and Oscar cursed himself for forgetting to put it on voicemail. When it stopped, he relaxed and headed for the back offices where the gallery staff had once worked. But once in there, the phone began ringing again. Leaning over the desk, he diverted it to voicemail. No one was going to disturb him.
Resuming his search, he began with the filing cabinets, emptying each drawer and going through the contents, then feeling round the back. He did the same with each desk, but found nothing. Going into the staff toilet, he climbed up and lifted the top off the cistern, grimacing as he felt inside. Water, no more. Climbing down, he rinsed his hands and checked the broom closet, pulling out brushes and buckets, tugging down shelves and tapping walls. Again, he found nothing.
As he searched he thought of his colleagues, of their slyness at never mentioning Luca Meriss or the Caravaggios, those missing paintings worth a fortune. And there was more. Meriss had proof of their whereabouts and his claims of lineage. As everyone knew, proof was everything. Provenance dictated the sale of a work, the price, just as it dictated the validity of a story.
Oscar didn’t give a toss if Meriss was a descendent of Caravaggio or not. Who cared if he could prove that a hundred times over? The paintings were all that concerned him. The paintings that none of his mendacious colleagues had even mentioned.
Well, Oscar thought, he might not be the best educated, but he was the most sly. When it came to deceit he was a master of the art. Concentrating, he walked out of the bathroom and crossed the corridor into the accountant’s old office. It smelt vaguely of damp and there was a crack in one of the upper windows. On the wall were three spaces where paintings had once hung, Oscar moving over to a stack of pictures leaning up against the wall.
His hands were shaking with excitement. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? Surely it couldn’t? Pulling off the covering sheet, he stared at the old hunting prints. Then, one by one, he ripped off the backing boards, pulling them free to expose what was there. The first was only a print, as was the second. And the third. Infuriated, Oscar kicked out at the frame, hearing the wood splinter. All right, he told himself, it wasn’t going to be that easy. He would just have to keep looking.
After all, he had all the time in the world.
Sixty-Two
Berlin
Regaining consciousness, Luca opened his eyes, panicking when he remembered what had happened to him. He had been cornered in his hospital room and then injected before he had even had time to struggle. The last thing he remembered before he passed out was the white orb of the light hanging over his head and the pressure of someone’s hand covering his mouth.
And now he was in an ambulance, travelling at speed, but without its siren switched on. There was no one sitting with him in the back, but he could hear the voices of two men coming from the front cabin of the vehicle and tried to sit up. He couldn’t move. He tried again, but his arms were bound and a broad leather strap ran across his chest, holding him down.
He panicked. His heart was pumping erratically, his pulse thumping in his ears, sweat making his skin slimy. Calm down, he told himself. Calm down.… Finally he composed himself. Then, silently, he began to wriggle his body downwards. He was agile, thin from days of barely eating. He drew his knees upwards as he inched his body under the strap.
It was no use. Sweating, he paused, breathed in, then exhaled, his chest falling as he squeezed himself down, the tight leather binding cutting into his flesh as he squirmed under it. Finally, with one last effort, he managed to slide out his left arm. Frantically he tugged off the strap, throwing it aside, then paused, listening, checking that no one had heard him move. No one had. The men were still talking in the front of the ambulance. Sitting up on the bench, Luca peered out of the back window.
They were on the outskirts of the city, but he didn’t recognise the location and could only see from the road signs that they had been travelling for about half an hour away from the centre of Berlin. He looked around feverishly, then spotted a paramedic jacket and pulled it over his white hospital T-shirt and trousers. Next he found a pair of rubber boots and put them on. Bare feet wouldn’t get him far and were a certain giveaway.
He had no plan and no weapon, no idea where he was or where he was going.
The ambulance was travelling fast, too fast, then suddenly it began to slow down. Luca looked out of the window again. It was taking the feeder lane which led onto the autobahn. He knew that once they hit the motorway it was all over. They could travel for hours without stopping. Going God knows where.
He didn’t think twice. As the ambulance was forced to slow down for oncoming motorway traffic, he wrenched open the back doors and jumped.
The car following screamed to a halt, just missing Luca as he made for the hard shoulder, scrambling up the dark bank without looking back.
Friday
Naples, Italy
1610
His wound wasn’t healing. The knife had sliced through his cheek and into his mouth, nicking the jawbone. He had rinsed his mouth with wine, spitting out gobs of pus as the infected wound burst. His temperature spiked, sweat curdling on his skin, his hands gripping the brush as he continued to paint.
Word had come that his pardon was imminent. All he had to do was wait … Outside, the man he had hired as his personal guard squatted on his haunches as the sun rose, and two passing women pointed out the house and began to gossip. Notorious as much for his temper as his talent, Caravaggio kept to the shaded cool of his studio and worked on a portrait of David and Goliath; the face of the fallen giant, his own. Like himself, Goliath had once been all powerful, defeated by an unexpected danger. The victorious David bringing down the giant as Rome had toppled Caravaggio. That worm of innocence in the sling that had felled the ogre.
He was rushing the painting, irritable, nervy, the p
ain in his face flaring as the nerves tugged under the tightening wound. Then suddenly, he heard voices and a knock at the door.
Automatically he felt for the knife in his belt. He had paid the guard well, but someone else might have paid him better for the scalp of Caravaggio. He watched as an old priest walked in, and relaxed. The man blinked for a few seconds after coming out of the sunshine, then stared at the artist. The shock of Caravaggio’s appearance rendered him mute and the painter jerked his thumb towards a table.
‘Wine.’
The priest shook his head, skirting the painter as he approached the easel. He could see the puckering wound on his face and smell his sour sweat. Small wonder rumours had come to Rome that Caravaggio was dead. He was obviously injured, wasted, his left eye cloudy.
‘You’re hurt.’
Caravaggio nodded, smiling bitterly. ‘I am hurt.’ His voice was impatient. ‘You have a message for me? What?’
‘I come from Cardinal Scipione Borghese …’
Caravaggio paused, his brush halted in mid-stroke. Borghese was the very man for whom he was creating the picture – a bribe, a plea for help from a long-time admirer and sponsor. Cardinal Scipione Borghese, infamous and powerful enough to grant pardons.
‘Go on.’
The old priest stepped back against the wall. He was afraid of the artist, of his reputation as a killer. Police files on Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio were copious, his brawls common knowledge, his aggression unpredictable and quick to provoke.
‘Cardinal Borghese wishes you to know that he is working to obtain your pardon. He feels that it will be granted soon.’
Turning away, the painter slumped into a chair. ‘How soon?’
‘Quickly.’
Caravaggio stared at the old priest. ‘Would you lie to me?’
The man paled. ‘No, no!’
‘How old are you?’
‘Seventy-nine,’ the priest said, reaching for his rosary and running the beads through his fingers.