The Caravaggio Conspiracy

by Connor, Alex

  ‘And when the dealers were all running around after the Caravaggios you created a serial killer? Got close to Luca so you could get hold of The Nativity and goaded Naresh to kill the dealers off so you’d inherit this place – and the painting in it.’

  ‘And it worked.’

  ‘Now what?’ Gil asked, keeping his distance. ‘You’ve told me what you’ve done – you can’t expect me to keep quiet.’

  ‘You have no choice,’ Crammer replied, looking around the office. ‘All good generals have strategies. All of them know how to wait, to plan for the outcome they want. I thought of it as a war, a personal campaign. And I took my time.’

  ‘Was it you who put the clock on Meriss’s website?’

  ‘No,’ he smiled, ‘that was Naresh. He liked to be dramatic sometimes. To ratchet up the tension. He knew it would make the dealers panic even more.’

  ‘Did he attack Luca Meriss in his flat in Berlin?’

  ‘I don’t know about that. Perhaps it was a little fantasy on Meriss’s part? A little leverage with Catrina Hoyt? But I know Naresh hired someone to break into Catrina’s gallery. He had to make sure that if anyone checked, he was in India at the time, so he’d have an alibi. He was meticulous: he enjoyed baiting his tormentors. Started adding little flourishes, like sending photographs that spooked Catrina Hoyt—’

  ‘But Naresh didn’t kill her.’

  ‘No, of course not! She was only important when Luca Meriss went to her for help. She wasn’t a member of Der Kreis der Acht. Naresh had no grudge against her.’

  ‘Just one thing still puzzles me: why did Naresh Joshi give up so easily?’ Gil asked. ‘He didn’t put up any fight.’

  ‘Of course not. He’s a physical coward and besides, the game was up. He knew he’d gone as far as he could. He missed getting to Jacob Levens, but when Luca returned to Palermo, Naresh had to follow. When you cornered him he had nothing left. If I’m honest, I think it probably came as a relief.’

  Gil shook his head. ‘You’re responsible for six deaths.’

  Crammer raised his eyebrows. ‘I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t the killer.’

  ‘You incited murder. You can’t get away with it.’

  ‘But I already have. Only you know, and you won’t speak out. Soon you won’t be able to say anything.’ He put his great head on one side, taunting Gil. ‘That whisky you drank, it was drugged. Same drug Naresh used on the others. Before long you’ll find your muscles tightening. Then you’ll become slowly paralysed. Without help, your lungs will close down and you’ll suffocate. By the time I’ve left this place with the painting you’ll be close to dying.’ He was watching Gil impassively. ‘By the time I catch my plane you’ll be dead.’

  The words jammed in mid-air as Crammer relished his moment of triumph.

  ‘You had to boast, didn’t you?’ Gil said at last. ‘People like you always need applause, need to explain what they’ve done. It’s the criminal’s Achilles heel – their arrogance. You had to tell someone, even an audience of one.’

  ‘But you won’t be able to tell anyone else, will you?’ Crammer replied. ‘Think of it as a kindness. I had to let you know how it was done. You’d worked so hard, you deserved it. I mean, you caught the killer and you solved the case. On Monday, just as you predicted. It’s a shame you won’t be able to enjoy your triumph, but I felt honour bound to let you have the whole story.’

  ‘And let me know you were the puppet master?’

  Crammer moved closer towards him. ‘I’d sit down if I were you. It’ll be easier when the drug kicks in.’

  Gil slid into the chair beside the desk, his voice low. ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘Ten minutes, then a further half an hour to paralyse you completely.’ Crammer paused, giving him a warning look. ‘I intend to stay here until you’re helpless. It would be silly to risk anything now.’ He glanced around. ‘My bag’s already packed and my flight’s booked. All I have to do now is to get the painting out.’

  He turned away from Gil and moved back to the safe. Bending down, he began to carefully lift the wallpaper away from the wall. Working in a confined space, it was a struggle for him to loosen it and release the canvas, but after a little while he began to ease the painting out from behind the safe. Finally, after ten further minutes, he laid the image on the floor at Gil’s feet. Fillide Melandroni had deserved her reputation; she had been beautiful, her face showing no sign of the aggressive street brawler. Instead she was placidly perfect, cupping jasmine in her hand.

  ‘Jasmine is a sign of immortality, you know,’ Crammer offered, glancing over at Gil. ‘It was code, a way for Caravaggio to imply her true nature.’ He stared at the painted face. ‘This is worth a great deal of money and luckily I have a collector waiting to buy it. Seven years isn’t that long to wait for such a fortune. Not when I have the rest of my life to enjoy the proceeds.’

  ‘But you don’t,’ Gil said calmly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t have the rest of your life. You have half an hour. Maybe longer, if I get help.’

  He could see the colour leaving Crammer’s face.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Gil said. ‘The whisky you gave me – I didn’t drink it. You did.’

  Ninety-Seven

  Crammer’s heavy features flushed, his hand going to his throat, panic just under the surface.

  ‘I saw you drink it!’

  ‘You saw me pretend to take a sip.’ Gil paused. ‘Remember the car outside, braking and sounding its horn at the lights? You turned away for a moment and I swapped the glasses.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, you drank it.’

  ‘Get an ambulance!’

  ‘No need. The police are due any minute now.’ He gazed at the historian, at the glowering man who was slumped on his knees on the floor, the portrait in front of him. ‘Take a good look at the painting, Crammer. Remember Fillide Melandroni’s face, because after today you won’t see it again.’ He pointed to the canvas. ‘That’s the painting you wanted so much. The one you planned for, the one that took seven years to get hold of and cost six lives.’ He bent down towards the terrified man. ‘What’s to stop me calling off the police? I could tell them not to make a wasted journey. That I don’t need them after all.’

  Crammer was sweating, his legs twitching as the drug took effect.

  ‘I could let you become slowly paralysed. I could even leave you alone here. You could die … I mean, that’s what you were going to do to me, so why should I save you?’ He stared at Crammer, his voice deadly. ‘Give me one reason why I shouldn’t just walk out of here now.’

  Crammer was mumbling and Gil bent closer to hear him.

  ‘What did you say?’

  Crammer murmured something under his breath, his eyes wide open, staring.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ Gil said, stepping back and shrugging. ‘Anyway, I’m going home now. As far away from this fucking place as I can get. I’ve heard enough about the dealers to last me a lifetime, and you know what? Most of it you bring on yourselves because you’re greedy and immoral.’ He could see Crammer crumple and fall over onto his side. ‘Body packing up on you? Well, you told the truth about that, which means you’ve not long to go … You have no idea how pathetic you look, Crammer.’ Gil towered over him. ‘Who’s the stupid one now?’

  Then he walked out, moving downstairs and leaving by the back door. Just as the police and an ambulance arrived at the front.

  Ninety-Eight

  St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London

  Fourteen hours after Gil returned from Berlin, Bette gave birth to a boy weighing seven and a half pounds. As she had predicted, she and the baby held on until Gil arrived, and their son was born at five a.m. on Tuesday. Both were healthy. Relieved, Gil waited until Bette fell asleep and then walked out into the hospital car park.

  He had over a dozen messages on his mobile, all requests for him to investigate new cases.

  He read each message then erased all of them.

  Port
e Ercole, Tuscany

  1610

  He was running. At noon, under the fearsome heat of the midday sun, the white light making a platinum haze around the buildings. The sea was molten, raw silver, no birds settling on the white glass surface. The pardon had been granted and was on its way. Within days, possibly even hours, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio would be pardoned.

  He had made his way to Porte Ercole the previous evening, ready to take the boat back to receive the pardon. His face, puckered from infection and old sores, he kept covered, a hat over his head so that no one could point out the painter Caravaggio. Say – ‘there he goes, disfigured, mutilated, the sword used against him for once.’ Mockery was not to be tolerated. No one mocked Caravaggio.

  He moved along the shoreline. The fear he had denied for so long, which had punctuated his days and nights, was still there, in his bones, his muscles. Nerve memory. His legs were weak, his face flushed, but he had dressed himself in a doublet and black hose, his sword at his belt, his beard trimmed with a pair of rusty scissors. I am Caravaggio, he told his reflection in the mirror. No one can kill me. No one can take my blood.

  I am alive.

  Breathing with difficulty, he paused, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked out to sea. And then he spotted it – the felucca. The boat on which he had booked his place. The boat which had been due to leave that afternoon. Caravaggio gasped, taking in the hot air, beginning to run. The felucca had all his possessions on board – his paintings, everything he owned – and it had left without him.

  He ran. He ran so fast that his hat fell off, the sun burning his face and the wound, waving his arms frantically to try to catch the attention of someone on board. The heat smouldered on the sand, on the sea, on the blinding white sail of the departing ship.

  And Caravaggio fell.

  He fell, breathing hard, the heat and the fever taking him down. He fell on the shore, on the boiled white sand, under the midday sky, his arms flung out to his sides, his twisted face turned upwards to the wild Italian sun.

  On 18 July 1610, the artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio died of fever at Porte Ercole, Tuscany. He left behind some of the greatest works of art ever created. He left behind his enemies and his assassins. He left behind a life of fame and violence. And he left behind the pardon that had finally come from Rome.

  The order that had gone out for the killing of Caravaggio had failed.

  But in its place, a legend had begun.

  Epilogue

  London

  Nine months later

  While Harvey Crammer hired a brace of lawyers to prove that he had no involvement in the six murders that Naresh Joshi had committed, Luca Meriss returned to his home in Palermo. But he didn’t stay there. As Naresh Joshi was held at a secure mental facility, Meriss began to do interviews for the media. His rise to fame was rapid. People were thrilled at the thought of his being Caravaggio’s descendant, and his escape from death made compelling reading. Touting the brush and note around Europe and later the USA, Luca assured everyone that the painting of his ancestor, Fillide Melandroni, would be exhibited worldwide, then donated to the Italian Government. All of which made him a local hero. A man of importance, a person of status.

  He had done it.

  And yet he seemed reluctant to keep in contact with the man who had saved him. For a while Gil had thought it was because of bad memories, reminders of the past that the newly fledged celebrity wished to shed. He was surprised nonetheless, and news that Jacob Levens had been spotted in Milan almost led him back to the case. But Gil resisted. He had a family: all memories of his first wife, and Berlin, had been severed. As Gil promised Bette, he would never look back.

  Until one Tuesday morning in May when the past looked back at him.

  ‘Just a minute!’ he called out, hurrying to open the front door and taking a parcel. Thanking the postman, he moved back into the kitchen and undid the small package.

  It contained two disks. Curious, Gil put the first into the DVD machine and sat down to watch.

  He hadn’t seen her for years and felt a jolt go through him as he saw his dead wife. Holly was looking into the screen, talking directly at it.

  My name is Holly Eckhart …

  He tensed, relieved that Bette was out with the baby.

  … I’m doing this as a record. Along with a copy of another disk, which is enclosed …

  Gil looked at the second unmarked disk.

  … I’m recording this on the sixth of June, 2007. I’m in Berlin, working with a group of dealers called Der Kreis der Acht – Terrill and Alma Huber, Sebastian and Benjamin Weir, Jacob Levens, Oscar Schultz and Bernard Lowe. I was brought in by Bernard Lowe to smuggle art works from the Far East …

  Gil paused, a clammy sensation overwhelming him. He had an sudden impulse to stop the disk, destroy it. But he didn’t. Instead he kept watching.

  … it was fun at first. But when I wanted to leave they stopped me.

  There were noises in the background and people laughing. Holly took a moment to continue.

  I’ve just met someone called Luca Meriss. He’s at the hospital and I’ve been teaching him how to use a computer. He was very ill, had some kind of a breakdown, and he’s got no family. Well, not in Berlin. Anyway, he told me that he was a descendant of Caravaggio and that he knows where two missing paintings are hidden.

  Gil paused the disk, waited for a moment, then pressed Play again.

  … I thought he was crazy at first, but I think there’s something in it. I’ve told Oscar and he seems very interested, and then I told the others in confidence … but I’m not sure I should have involved Luca Meriss with the dealers …

  Gil flinched at the words.

  … He’s a sweet man, but confused, always wants to please. That was his problem in the hospital – the doctors said he would do anything for someone he admired. And Luca adores Jacob Levens.

  Luca adores Jacob Levens … Gil stared at the machine, waiting for what was to come next.

  … Maybe I’m wrong, but everything’s changed here. The atmosphere is charged, everyone’s whispering behind each other’s backs. Alma’s terrified, and to be honest, I’m scared too.

  She was still staring into the camera, calm, but remote.

  … I just wanted to put this on record because I think I might have bitten off more than I can chew. Whoever finds this, watch the second tape and take action. I made two copies, but one’s disappeared. Make sure this one doesn’t …

  And that was it.

  Shaken by what he had just seen, Gil put in the second DVD, transfixed when he saw Luca Meriss sitting alone in a comfortable room. He seemed uncertain, shy, his hands clasped together tightly.

  ‘I’m Luca Meriss …’

  There was the sound of the door closing, then a moment of silence before Luca began to talk again. His voice was low, almost muffled. Gil had the distinct impression that Luca didn’t know he was being filmed and that the camera had been hidden in the room.

  ‘… I’m Luca Meriss. I’m a descendant of Caravaggio, the painter.’

  He paused, the words sounding stilted. Almost forced.

  ‘… I’ve got proof that no one can doubt. A paint brush and a note he wrote. They’re both in my possession …’

  Another pause, then he carried on.

  ‘… I know where the two missing Caravaggio paintings are hidden. One in Berlin and one in Sicily …’

  He turned to someone in the room with him.

  ‘Is that OK? Am I doing it right? About having the proof, I mean.’

  ‘It’s perfect, Luca. Really good.’

  Gil recognised the voice immediately – Jacob Levens. Then the dealer came into view, his portly frame upright, his expression encouraging as he looked at Luca.

  ‘Just carry on, and say what I taught you. We have to practise until it’s just right. You’re a fast learner, Luca, and you’ll get your reward.’

  His voice was honeyed.

  ‘… w
e must keep this as our secret. Just you and me. I mean, you can’t be too careful, can you? You never know who you can trust.’

  He touched Luca’s shoulder, silkily kind.

  ‘But you can trust me. I’ll help you. I’ll make people see how important you really are. Just do what I say and it will all work out perfectly. Now let’s go over it again …’

  On screen, Luca nodded, then Jacob asked him a question.

  ‘What’s the proof you’re talking about?’

  ‘A brush, handed down in my family.’

  Gil took in a breath as Jacob interrupted Luca.

  ‘You told your father what to say? That he must give the brush to Gil Eckhart when he comes looking for it?’

  ‘I told him. He’ll do it.’

  ‘Your father was paid well. He should do it.’

  Unaware that he was being filmed, Jacob smiled at the nervous man.

  ‘And the note – he must give Eckhart the note too. The one in the pouch I gave you.’

  Luca nodded earnestly.

  ‘My father knows what to do. He won’t let me down.’

  Jacob patted him like an obedient animal.

  ‘Good. Good boy … Now, let’s go through it again. It’s important that people believe you, Luca. Your story must be convincing. You want to be famous? Of course you do. You’ve earned it. You should be recognised as Caravaggio’s descendant …

  He leaned towards the Italian, paternal, kind.

  ‘I can make your dreams come true, Luca. Just trust me and do as I say. I know the art world, I know what they want to hear, what they want to believe. What they need to believe … Only a little while longer, Luca. Only a little more practice and you’ll be ready. It will all be worth it in the end, believe me.’

  The filming stopped suddenly, the camera shut off. Only the disk was left spinning in the DVD machine as Gil stared at the blank screen. It was obvious what had happened. Holly had told Jacob Levens about the patient in the hospital and his claims about Caravaggio. Seeing a chance to make a killing, Levens had sought Luca out – a gullible man, mentally unstable, desperate to be important. A man who would follow anyone he admired. A man with a longing that could be moulded into reality.