by Connor, Alex
All Jacob had to do was to make the story airtight. Luca already knew where the paintings were, but he had to be taken seriously. And for that, he needed proof of what he said. Proof Jacob Levens had provided him with.
The note and the paintbrush were old, from the time of Caravaggio, but that was all. The master had never used them, never written his name in his own hand. That had been Jacob Levens’ doing. It would have been simple for a dealer in the Old Masters to obtain some paint, paper and a brush from the seventeenth century. Easy for someone in the business to fabricate the proof that the unstable Luca Meriss came to believe was his real history.
Because provenance always drove a sale. A sensational story to catch the attention of the press, a figurehead, the offspring of the painter himself – no one could resist that. Jacob Levens had known that he could secure global attention based on a simple bit of fakery. But what Levens didn’t expect was Naresh Joshi. He didn’t expect that murders would follow, that a lie to elaborate the provenance of the Caravaggio paintings would cost six lives, possibly even his own.
And Holly had secretly filmed Jacob coaching Luca Meriss, making sure she had a hold over the dealer. She probably even taunted him with it. Otherwise how would Jacob Levens know about the disks? Gil imagined the scenario: Holly giving Levens a copy of the damning film, so he could watch it and know she had the power to ruin him if he didn’t do what she wanted. And she had wanted money – hadn’t Jacob told Gil that himself? That Holly was greedy, longing for a rich lifestyle?
And so she tried to blackmail Jacob Levens to get it … Another thought came to Gil in that instant: Naresh Joshi commenting on Holly’s death and his intimation that Gil had been wrong in suspecting Oscar Schultz. ‘Some said there had been two men in the car …’ Gil sat down, breathing rapidly, shaken by what he had just seen and heard. Jesus, he thought, he had always suspected Oscar Schultz – but was it Jacob Levens who had killed his wife? Knowing that he could get away with it? That Schultz would be the main suspect?
Gil stared at the blank screen. If the disk had ever been released to the press Jacob Levens’ career and reputation would have been destroyed overnight. No wonder he had been desperate to find the stolen disks, desperate to make sure that his deception was never exposed.
Gil thought of Naresh Joshi, of Harvey Crammer, of all the murdered dealers and of the only one left behind – Jacob Levens. Scared, certainly, but always cunning. He was out there somewhere, wondering what to do next. Wondering who had the disks and what they were going to do with them.
And Gil knew then that it wasn’t over. That the story that had begun in Berlin seven years earlier wasn’t at an end.
He studied the bag in which the disks had been delivered but could find no postmark or return address, nothing to indicate where it had come from or who had sent it. But Gil knew he would find out. Whether he wanted to or not, he would find out.
Turning back to the machine, he started the film again, watching the familiar face and listening to the same lost voice.
‘… I’m Luca Meriss, the living descendant of Caravaggio, the painter. And I have proof …’
Bibliography
Works
‘Caravaggio’ Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Gash, John Caravaggio, London: Chaucer Press, 2004
Spike, John T Caravaggio, New York: Abbeville Press Inc., 2010s
Collections
Lost Art Library Collection of Study Photographs and Clippings, ca. 1930–2000: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Records, Williamstown, MA, The Clark Digital Collections, http://maca.contentdm.oclc.org
ALSO BY ALEX CONNOR
City of Splendour
In October 1555 the Italian master Titian painted the portrait of Angelico Vespucci — a Venetian merchant whose cruelty words could not capture.
City of Secrets
When Vespucci was revealed to be the elusive monster who had been flaying young women across the city, he vanished inexplicably, along with the painting. All that remained was a chilling warning: when the portrait emerges, so will the man.
City of the Skin Hunter
Now the lost Titian masterpiece has surfaced in modern-day London, and skinless corpses are amassing across the globe. And it will fall to an unlikely man from the fringes of the art world to unravel half a millennium of myth, mystery and murder.
AVAILABLE NOW
www.quercusbooks.co.uk
ALSO BY ALEX CONNOR
‘Floating on the water at the edge of the canal, hardly visible, was a bundle, wrapped tightly in a soiled white blanket.
The beam illuminated the blood-spattered wrapping -and the place where the parcel had come partially untied.
From which a disembodied hand, fingers outstretched, clawed its way to the light.’
IN THE FIGHT TO POSSESS THE SKULL OF ONE OF THE
GREATEST ARTISTS
THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN
Blood will be Spilled
AVAILABLE NOW
www.quercusbooks.co.uk