The Turin Shroud Secret

by Sam Christer

  The outer gates of the pen slide open. Mitzi. His hopes rise. The little old guy who scowled at him last night is with her as well. They’ve both got blank faces – hard faces – cop faces. Mitzi rests her hands on the inner gate, ‘They’re going to charge you with assault, Alfie. Most likely you’ll be in court in a couple of hours. I’ve talked to my lawyer and he’ll be serving you with divorce papers as soon as they cut you loose.’

  ‘Mitzi, listen—’

  ‘No, Alfie. You listen.’ Her voice is calm and without a hint of the fear and dread racing inside her. ‘I’ve got to do what I’ve told every other woman over the years to do. You have to be dealt with properly, then life goes on. Whatever it is, whatever mess is left, life goes on.’ She turns to Bobby Sheen and touches his arm. ‘Thanks for looking out for me. I’m gonna go.’

  ‘Mitzi!’ Alfie is at the bars now. ‘Wait.’

  Mother of two, wife of a decade and a half, LAPD hard-ass Mitzi Fallon is four steps away from moving on with her life. No looking back. No regrets.

  ‘Mitzi!’

  She stops and turns.

  ‘I still love you.’ His face says he does. Really does. He’d give anything for this not to be happening, for his life not to have disintegrated like this.

  ‘And I still love you.’ Her feet are glued to the spot. ‘But not as much as I did. And I love the girls too much for this to go on any longer.’

  Now she goes. Walks head held high. Heart beating like the drum at the front of the Macy’s Day Parade. With any luck she’ll make it to the washroom before she breaks down and wonders how she’s going to cope for the rest of the day, let alone the rest of her life.

  54

  ITALY

  It’s the middle of the night in Turin. The bed in the rented room is still made, pristine. The monk hasn’t sat on it, let alone slept there.

  Ephrem is naked as he kneels and prays inside the single wardrobe. The door is closed tight and he feels comforted in the claustrophobic and airless space. He longs to be returned to the seclusion of the monastery where the unblinking kiln master will watch bemused as he bricks him into the sanctuary.

  The hands that are joined together have taken many lives. Not so many that he can’t remember each and every one but too many for all but a soldier – a crusader – to live with.

  He prays, first in Aramaic, then in French and finally in Latin. He prays for God’s strength and guidance for what he is about to do. Just before twilight he opens the wardrobe and spends half an hour stretching away the pain of motionless devotion. He focuses his mind. Then he clenches his fists and adopts the press-up position. His knuckles glow white with the weight of his body as he lowers and raises himself so slowly that the movement is imperceptible. Each press-up takes more than five minutes to complete. By the end of the hour his naked body is bathed in sweat. His abdomen, thighs and shoulders are muscular coils of writhing, sinewy snakes. He wants to collapse and rest on the floor, wants to rest and recover, but he knows it would be a personal indulgence and personal indulgences are sinful.

  Ephrem takes a freezing cold shower, towels dry, then drinks a litre of bottled water. It’s all that will pass his lips. He eats only every other day and today is the fast. He dresses in black, the traditional colour of his order, in T-shirt, sweater, trousers, socks and long wool overcoat, and pulls on a tight, black hat that covers his dark, close-cropped hair. He touches the hidden tools concealed about him within the layers of clothing – two knives, a garrotte, a spike and a coil of razor-thread no more conspicuous than a dental floss container.

  The first pink light of dawn breaks over the rooftops. In the shadowy, night-frosted street he walks quietly from his hotel, clears the windshield of the rental car and patiently begins his day’s work.

  55

  CORONER’S OFFICE, LOS ANGELES

  The call takes Amy Chang by surprise.

  It’s been a long day and she’s just scrubbed up after dealing with a fatal RTA. Her secretary says Mitzi Fallon is waiting in her office. She glances at her watch – it’s almost six-thirty. She wonders what her friend wants so late in the day and why she didn’t call to say she was coming over. The two women go back a long way. Mitzi was on the first case Amy dealt with and since then they’ve grown close. A friendship born out of professional respect and common values.

  The detective is sat on a moulded black chair, busy frowning at her phone when Amy walks in pulling a small jacket over her shoulders. ‘So, Lieutenant Fallon, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’

  Mitzi looks up. Seems her bad news hasn’t reached the morgue yet. ‘Passing through. The girls are staying over at a friend’s after soccer – I just found out they won two-nil. I hoped maybe you had time for a drink or some dinner?’

  Amy’s face brightens. ‘Both sound good.’

  ‘Both it is, then. My treat.’

  She nods to her glass-walled office. ‘Give me a minute. I need to grab some work.’

  A few minutes later they walk out arm-in-arm and even while they’re making small talk she knows something’s wrong. But she says nothing. Mitzi will tell her in her own good time. They drive separately to Amy’s favourite Asian-Cuban place. It’s more bistro than full-on starched-cloth restaurant. It has warm woods on the floor and walls and they both like the fact the waitresses are real waitresses not would-be actresses.

  After a couple of margaritas and a starter of Tunapica with cucumber salad, Mitzi downs her fork and unburdens herself. ‘Alfie and I had a fight. A big physical one.’ She turns her face so Amy can detect the bruise beneath the concealer.

  The pathologist stops eating.

  ‘I threw him out. When he came back I called the cops and got him processed.’ Mitzi downs the rest of her cocktail. ‘I think I’m going to need more of those.’

  Amy’s in shock. ‘How long’s this been going on?’

  ‘Jeez. How long hasn’t it?’ She catches the eye of the waitress. ‘Two more peach margaritas please – the big ones.’ She waits until she’s gone. ‘On and off he’s been beating on me for something like a decade.’ Shame rises like backwash.

  ‘Oh, Mitz, I’m so sorry.’ Amy reaches across the table and touches her arm tenderly. ‘You did the right thing.’

  ‘I know. Should have done it years ago.’

  ‘It’s never that simple, though – what with the girls and everything.’

  ‘Nope. Funny, you hear about domestic violence and say that’ll never happen to me. No man would dare lay a hand on me. But it’s different when he does. You get so screwed up in your head you blame yourself. You kid yourself that it wasn’t deliberate, it was a mistake. Life’s full of mistakes, eh?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  The new drinks arrive and Mitzi dives in straight away. ‘I may get wasted tonight.’

  ‘Go for it.’

  They clink glasses and the lieutenant smiles for the first time in days.

  56

  TURIN

  The disused church is exactly where they told Ephrem it would be. At the end of a windy little street, behind a broken fence, hiding a small, cramped graveyard overrun by grass and weeds. The headstones are mould-green and long-forgotten. Like ancient teeth that have decayed, they lie at twisted angles in soft, subsiding plots.

  The monk walks the perimeter. Church stone that was originally the colour of honey has been blackened by time and dirt. Someone has smashed most of the handcrafted stained-glass windows that bore the Stations of the Cross. Gang graffiti has been spray-painted over the rusted metal, symbols and names that he doesn’t understand and doesn’t give much thought to as he levers off the panels that bar the ancient front doors through which centuries of worshippers walked.

  The inside is dark. Hardly any light penetrates the boarded-up windows and time-weathered holes in the unrepaired roof. Most people would struggle to see more than a few feet. But Ephrem has spent most of his life in total darkness and sees right into the furthest corner. The smell is of damp, rottin
g timbers and the faeces of rodents that have made this place their sanctuary. But the monk, as no one else could, can still smell candle wax, the incense of High Mass, the fresh soap on the skins of those who washed themselves knowing they would come and kneel in the presence of their Lord.

  He moves past the broken pews and the empty space where the altar once stood. He turns to his left and finds what he came for. With a little work it will be perfect.

  Just perfect.

  57

  BOYLE HEIGHTS, LOS ANGELES

  ‘Kim? Hey Kim, you in there?’

  Jenny Harrison shouts and squints through the mail slot of Kim Bass’s apartment. Her friend can be such an idiot sometimes. If she does too many pills or hits on a half-decent guy, Jen doesn’t hear from her for ages. Over Christmas she went on a binge with a cabbie and disappeared until New Year.

  Odd for her not to turn up for work, though. She’s broke and needs every dime right at the moment. ‘Kim, if you’re in there, stop messing around. It’s Jen, I need to talk to you.’

  Harrison lets the slot snap shut and bangs the flat of her hand on the door. Goddamn it. She spends half her freakin’ life chasing after this girl. She walks away, calling her friend’s cell phone as she does. It rings for a long time before going to the answerphone. ‘Okay, Kimmy, if you don’t get your sorry ass to call me, this best friend is soon going to be an ex-friend. It’s Thursday night and we’re supposed to be meeting those delivery guys. Call me or else.’

  She stomps down the stairs, turns the corner and almost bowls over an old man levering himself up by the handrail.

  ‘Shi-it! Mr Dobbs you nearly give me a heart attack.’

  The bald-headed seventy-year-old is Kim’s next door neighbour. Leroy Dobbs looks as shocked as she does. He keeps himself to himself and as far as seniors go he’s okay. The girls even bummed cream and coffee off him one Sunday when they had hangovers so bad they couldn’t crawl to the store to buy any.

  He puts his hand to his bony chest. ‘I’m the one should be cursing. You shouldn’t come flying round the corner like that.’

  ‘Sorry, Mr D. Hey, you haven’t seen Kim, have you? She didn’t make work today. Have you heard her knocking about?’

  He looks cross. ‘I mind my own business, I do. I don’t go spying like some people around here. I ain’t seen her.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were spying.’ Harrison nods to the apartment upstairs and behind her. ‘It’s just the walls are thin and Kim says you like banging on them if she watches TV in her bedroom.’

  ‘That’s because it’s so loud. I might be old but I’m not deaf.’

  ‘Did you hear her?’

  ‘Not last night, I didn’t. I didn’t hear no TV at all last night.’

  Harrison thinks back to standing in her own doorway and waving goodbye to her friend. Kim was pretty wasted when she went. Both of them were. Crazy bitch had done too much blow.

  ‘Can I get past now?’ Dobbs is staring up from two steps down, frail fingers clutching the rail.

  She weaves her way round him and over the remaining steps. Outside she lights a cigarette and walks the rest of the way home. Something’s wrong. She feels it deep inside.

  By the time she reaches her own porch, Jenny Harrison is sure she knows what it is.

  58

  LOS ANGELES

  Tonight Mitzi’s only answer is drink. Drink to forget. Drink to lose consciousness if necessary. Drink to wipe out the memory that she pulled a gun on her husband and almost shot him.

  She and Amy leave their cars at the restaurant and catch a cab back to the pathologist’s place, where a bottle of cold white is uncorked before they do anything else. After shuffling the iPod into oblivion, Amy grabs blankets and pillows and makes up the sofa. One day she’ll buy a two-bed place but not for a while – probably not until she gets herself a long-term man, a stayer. ‘So where’s Tricky Nicky?” she asks her friend.

  Mitzi grins drunkenly from a chair she’s slumped into. ‘Italy. Turin.’ Her wine glass wobbles. She wisely decides to hold it by the bowl rather than its elegant stem. ‘Poor schmuck has been flying almost all day.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh? That all you were thinking when you mentioned him?’

  Amy smiles.

  ‘Or maybe you were thinking, I wish I was in Italy with Nic. Quite a romantic country, Italy. Poetry. Violins. All that stuff.’ She raises her glass. ‘And really great wine.’

  ‘It crossed my mind.’

  ‘Course it did, sister. And so it should.’

  ‘He’s a bit uptight, though, Mitz. I know he’s been through a lot but it seems his head is still a mess.’

  ‘Probably is. Give the boy time.’

  Amy remembers their afternoon at the boatyard together. ‘I think he’s going to need months – maybe years.’

  ‘Could be.’ Mitzi slugs a jolt of the cold, crisp Sauvignon. ‘Worth waiting for though. He’s a good guy.’ She tries to blot out thoughts of her husband. Damn him. Alfie had been a good guy once. Damn the hell out of him for going from good guy to bum so easily.

  ‘Why is Nic in Italy?’

  ‘Long story. To do with Tamara Jacobs, that writer you had on your slab.’ Mitzi sits up out of her slouch. ‘Seems she’s involved somehow with the Shroud. That’s why Nic’s there.’

  The pathologist is left frowning at the sudden switch in conversation. ‘Shroud? As in Shroud of Turin?’

  ‘’Less you know of another? Anyways, what do you think? Real or not?’

  Amy suddenly feels exhausted. ‘Mind if we do the brainteasers tomorrow? I’m feeling beat and really need to turn in.’

  ‘Sure. No problem.’

  Amy gets up and switches off several lamps. ‘Do you want me to fetch you some water before I go?’

  Mitzi raises her glass of wine in one hand and the open bottle in the other.

  ‘Okay, I get the message. Take it easy, though.’ The medic walks over, leans into the chair and hugs her friend. ‘Hope you get some sleep.’

  ‘Me too.’

  She heads to her room. If Mitzi had been sober, Amy would have asked her. Asked if there’d ever been anything between her and Nic. There’d been rumours, but then of course there are always rumours when men and women work closely together. But she still wonders.

  59

  FRIDAY

  TURIN, ITALY

  The morning sky over what was once Italy’s first capital city is a magnificent mural of kingly gold and cardinal red.

  Nic Karakandez stands hypnotised at the bedroom window of the cheap hotel he’s booked into. He watches the dark chrysalis of night turn into the exotic butterfly of day. Somewhere out there, among the mysterious shapes, beneath the rows of red-tiled rooftops and within the swollen domes of ancient churches, lies the reason he’s travelled thousands of miles. He showers in a bathroom so small it could make an ant claustrophobic, then dresses in black jeans, white shirt and a purple wool V-neck that somehow still smells of the deck oil from his boat. He sits on the saggy bed and takes a minute to go over the main lead Mitzi has him chasing.

  Money.

  To be more specific, a series of international bank transfer payments Sarah Kenny made on Tamara Jacobs’s request to a man they know to be Roberto Craxi. The pieces of paper spread out before him show deposits of $5000 a month for eleven months, plus two lump sums of $25,000. Close to $100k in total. That’s a nice amount. The kind of cash for which many people would be willing to break the law.

  The next leads come from the writer’s visits to Turin. Receipts found in her home show she made four trips in the past two years. Two in the last six months. One six weeks before she was killed. Nic is hoping the hotel bills, and restaurant and taxi tickets will help him retrace her steps. Then there are the last quarter’s cell phone records showing more than thirty calls made to different Turin numbers. As he looks at the digits he has a bad feeling. She may well have had security on her mind. If that’s the case, the numbers may well be
street phones and untraceable calls.

  He takes breakfast in a damp and draughty room that’s being warmed by fan heaters at the foot of peeling cream walls. He hand-wipes condensation from the window by his table and looks out across frosted lawns to a paved courtyard, bordered by flowerbeds and potted Cypress trees. In summer this place might well change identities and pass itself off as quaint and delightful.

  A young waitress, maybe the daughter of the owner, brings him cappuccino, a near-perfect brew of strong roasted beans topped by a thick, sweet creamy froth that you could stand a spoon in. He collects OJ from the small buffet table and takes a couple of homemade pastries.

  Full and happy he goes to his room, scrubs his teeth, grabs a loose black leather jacket and walks back downstairs to wait for his allocated Carabinieri contact. He sits on an old couch in the tiny reception and tries to make sense of a copy of today’s Corriere della Serra newspaper. Bad idea. Beyond Chianti, Quattro Formaggio and a few curses from The Sopranos, he can’t make out a word.

  An elegant woman in a navy blue jacket and matching knee-length skirt hesitantly interrupts his stilted reading. ‘Signore Carry-can-diss?’

  He looks up. ‘Ka-ra-kan-dez. Yes, that’s me.’

  She’s a couple of years younger than him, has short dark hair and intense blue eyes. ‘Luogotenente Cappelini. Carlotta.’ She confidently offers her hand.

  He’s surprised. Even annoyed with himself, for automatically expecting the liaison officer to be a man. ‘Nic – very pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Welcome to Torino, Nic.’ She can tell that he expected her to be male – most people do. ‘Are you ready to go?’

  ‘I am.’ He refolds the newspaper and places it on a well-worn wooden table.