by Sam Christer
Carlotta leads the way out. ‘First we go to my office, we can talk confidentially there. Then we go wherever you need. My capitano says you have phone numbers and a man called Craxi you wish to have traced. I have people ready to help with that.’
‘Music to my ears.’
She doesn’t understand. ‘Scusi?’
‘Sorry, just an expression. That would be great.’
The streets are wide and cobbled, blocks of stone intercut with steel channels for trams. Overhead a black cobweb of cable wires sag beneath the now dull grey sky. As they walk Nic spots the butt of a gun belted discreetly under her jacket. ‘Do you always carry a weapon?’
‘Si. Always. I am a soldier, I have to.’ She touches it. ‘But I like to, also.’ She smiles. ‘I like shooting.’
‘What do you like shooting – things or people?’
‘No.’ She laughs. ‘Shooting people is not what I like.’
‘Not even the bad guys?’
She can tell he’s teasing. ‘No, this I have never done. But shooting on the range, then yes, that I like very much.’ She makes a pistol out of her fingers and lets off a pretend round. ‘I am very good at the shooting.’
He’s sure she is. Probably much better at the shooting than at the English. Not that he should judge – he can’t read an Italian newspaper, let alone speak a sentence.
‘And you, Nic, you shoot the bad guys?’
‘Sometimes,’ he says. ‘But not as many as I’d like to.’
60
As a small child, Ephrem learned to be silent. The monks would scourge the backs of his hands if they could even hear him breathe during their lessons. They educated him in the fine art of listening – how to concentrate first on what others said and only then respond.
When he was growing up they taught him about pain. How to endure it. How to turn off his thoughts while the white heat of a branding iron sizzled his skin. And he was schooled in how to inflict pain. How to use it as an instrument. How to use the threat of physical agony to do God’s work.
As a man, he has learned transparency. How to walk among the ignorant as one of them. How to look at them and smile at them in ways that don’t attract attention, create affection or leave any kind of memory. He learned the art of being instantly forgettable.
All those years of training and discipline surface in Ephrem as he parks the rental car about a mile from where he’s been told the target will be. Jacket turned up against the wind and showers, he walks head down along the roadside, certain motorists flashing past in the rush-hour traffic will never remember him.
The monk is doing what he does best. He is becoming a sleight of hand. An illusion. Someone no one ever saw.
61
CARSON, LOS ANGELES
There is a stench inside the house. One like nothing else on earth. An odour few have ever been exposed to. He should have bathed her last night instead of just cleaning her with a flannel. He’d been too tired to do it. Too exhausted after vanquishing the tormentor Kim Bass.
Now Em needs him. He kneels on the boards of the bedroom floor and is shocked by what he sees. She is changing. Her eyes are covered in a thick milky veil, her flesh is discolouring. Even in the low light he can see the greenish tinge to her skin.
JJ reaches out to her face and strokes the dark birthmark, the sign from God that drew him to her.
Gravity has taken its course. Blood has drained from her heart and pooled in her buttocks, back and legs creating a layer of putrid purple and red. Bacteria is spreading through the body and it is beginning to marble. Hair is coming away and gasses and fluid ooze from her orifices into the fetid air of the room. He stands and backs away. He may have to give her up. Find a separate resting place for her. But not yet. Not until he absolutely has to.
62
CARABINIERI HQ, TURIN
Through the top-floor window of Carlotta Cappelini’s city centre office, Nic can see the strange soaring spire of the city’s famous Mole Antonelliana, originally a Jewish temple built in the 1800s, now a national cinema museum.
His attention has wandered because for the last ten minutes the Carabinieri lieutenant has been jabbering away in bullet-fast Italian on the phone. What’s also distracting him is the realisation that the more progress he makes here, the less chance there is of him setting sail for a new life in just a couple of weeks. Trace a killer and the district attorney heaps a hill of paperwork on your head. Trace one on another continent and he drops a mountain on your skull.
Carlotta finishes the call and sees he’s troubled. ‘Is everything with you okay?’
Her mangled language helps him shake off the depression. ‘Yes. I’m sorry. Everything with me is very much okay.’ He reaches inside his jacket and produces a folded sheet of paper. ‘These are the numbers we mentioned to your boss. Once we’ve got a trace, I want to meet the phone owner immediately. I’m guessing that Craxi is at least one of them. I don’t want anyone asking questions until I’m face to face with him.’
‘I understand. You are afraid he may run.’
‘Very.’
She points a slim finger tipped in a very light shade of pink nail polish. ‘These numbers here is – how you say …’ She struggles. ‘… cellulare o cell?’
‘Cell phone?’
‘Ah, yes.’ She points again. ‘And this here – they are public phones, ones in the street.’ Her eyes move down the lines. ‘But one or two numbers are private lines. Craxi is a common name – like your Smith or Jones.’
She pulls over the keypad of her computer terminal and expertly touch-types an instruction into the command terminal. ‘Finito. They will be traced very shortly.’
‘Grazie.’
She smiles. ‘You speak any Italian?’
He smiles back. ‘Si. I’m fluent in grazie and prego. Oh, and parmigiano and pesto.’
‘Va bene. These are good words to know.’ She glances at her monitor. ‘Your victim, I read she was a famous writer.’
‘Scriptwriter not author. No books to her name. I’d never heard of her before, but apparently she was big in Hollywood circles.’
Carlotta frowns. ‘Do you have idea why she was killed?’
‘We’re working on it. Maybe something to do with the project she was writing.’
She puts a hand on a two-page document. ‘I read the briefing you sent – you mean the movie about our Shroud?’
‘Seems that way. Has anything particularly unusual happened to it recently?’
‘Nothing ever happens to it. It is in a sealed case in the Duomo di San Giovanni in the darkness.’
‘But it does come out regularly, right?’
She shakes her head. ‘No. Last time the Church exhibited it was in 2010.’
‘In the cathedral?’
‘Si, but with big protection.’ She draws a huge square in the air with both hands. ‘They build a giant box of bulletproof glass. In it they put the Shroud – a sealed case filled with nitrogen.’
‘And a lot of people came to view this?’
Carlotta laughs. ‘More than one hundred thousand people a day – every day. For five weeks they queue.’ She pauses while she tries to remember more about the last exposition. ‘I read that in those weeks, three and a half million people come. This is more in weeks than visit the grave of your John F. Kennedy every year.’
Nic is amused by the comparison. ‘I wasn’t aware the two were in competition.’
‘It is good they were not. The Shroud would have won. Easily. Catholics will always win these kinds of things. Death and religion are very important to us.’
‘I’ll keep it in mind. So I guess it is no longer on display?’
‘No. Displays are very rare. It is kept in a permanent case, closed within an alcove of the Duomo, where visitors can come to pray. The church has some private security – they do not tell us exactly – and of course we have our own people watching the cathedral all the time.’
‘So it could never be stolen or damaged?’
She shrugs. ‘This you cannot say. In 1997 there was arson. Firemen had to break into the cabinet. They use their axes and sledgehammers to smash through the glass, thick bulletproof glass – then they had to pull it from the flames.’
‘Was it damaged?’
‘No, not that time, but before, yes. A long time ago, in the sixteenth century there was another fire – again arson – and, yes, that did damage it.’
‘In the same church?’
‘No. Back then it was in France, in the Saint Chapelle Chapel in Chambéry.’
‘What was it doing there?’
‘I believe it was in possession of the House of Savoy. In those days there was much theft and looting. Today, here, security is very good.’ She says it with confidence and reassurance. ‘These days you cannot get anywhere near the Holy Shroud.’
‘Really?’ He nods to the computer. ‘While we’re waiting for those telephone traces, why don’t we give it a try?’
63
CARSON, LOS ANGELES
He tests the water with his wrist – like a parent does for a baby.
Not too hot. Not too cold. Blood temperature. He squeezes washing-up liquid into the water and stirs it until a layer of bubbles covers the surface.
JJ puts down the plastic bottle and returns to the bedroom. His knees crack as he crouches. Carefully he scoops Em’s naked corpse into his arms and carries her across the room. In a mirror he glimpses himself with her. It’s a powerful sight. Heroic. Like a firefighter carrying a woman from a blazing building. Like an angel of God saving a sinner from the fires of hell.
He carries her to the bathroom and lowers the love of his life into the soapy tub. Water sloshes over the side. It pools around his bare feet and sinks into the wooden boards. There are candles around the bathroom, on the floor, shelves and window ledge. Diamonds of golden light dance in the water. It makes him think of a baptism font.
She looks heavier somehow. Almost as though death has been good to her. Fattened her up. Fed her well. And peaceful too. He’s never seen anyone look more at rest than Em does.
JJ strips and steps into the lukewarm water. He grimaces as suds splash over the side. He wants this to be perfect. Nothing must be wrong. They have so little time together.
He lowers himself further. Manoeuvres his body under hers. Wraps his arms around her breasts and holds her close for one final time.
64
PIAZZA SAN GIOVANNI, TURIN
A gust of wind irreverently shoves Carlotta and Nic down the hallowed and brutally open approach to the Duomo di Torino e Cappella della Sacra Sindone.
The cathedral has a near-white Renaissance frontage, newly cleaned, and is itself incongruously dwarfed by the spiral sprouting dome of Guarini’s Chapel of the Holy Shroud.
‘Buongiorno’ calls Carlotta to the small thin man clad in black robes waiting in the shelter of the front entrance. ‘This is Lieutenant Karakandez, from the Los Angeles Police Department.’
The robed man politely dips his head of steely grey hair as he shakes hands with the big detective. ‘Dino di Rossi – I am, what I think you say, is the verger.’ He glances sideward. ‘Luogotenente Cappelini wishes that I accompany you and answer any questions about the building and the Shroud.’
‘Good to meet you. Thanks for doing this at short notice.’
Nic follows Carlotta and the verger up the cathedral steps and through giant eighteenth-century wooden doors. Above his head he sees a copy of Leonardo’s Last Supper and to his left – much to his surprise – a stall selling books, postcards, DVDs and cheap prints of the Shroud. A long nave spills out in front of them and down the side are two giant wall-mounted TV screens showing footage of the Shroud. The commodifying of the relic extends to plastic, electrically operated offertories, where pilgrims are encouraged to drop euros through a slot in return for the right to say a prayer and light a plastic candle. Far ahead is the more impressive transept and sacristy.
‘This architecture – it touches your soul, no?’ says di Rossi, in a hushed voice, as they walk the marble-tiled floor. ‘It conveys to the devoted, the experience of entering death and of reaching the light of divine glory.’
Nic wouldn’t go that far; but the altar, flanked by massive marble statues and a startling central crucifixion scene, is certainly something.
‘The sculptures are of Saint Theresa and Saint Christina.’ Di Rossi gestures to them. ‘Made in Rome in 1715 by the Parisian sculptor Pietro Legros. The great wooden statue of the crucifix was carved by Francesco Borelli.’
‘And the Shroud?’ asks Nic, almost impatiently. ‘Where is that kept?’
Di Rossi sighs as he leads him through the pews and past a stack of hard, brown metal chairs. ‘Here,’ the verger points to a strange roped-off area in the far corner of the cathedral.
To Nic’s untrained eye the chapel looks like a couple of theatre boxes stacked on top of each other. The upper one has wide, gold columns, a gold balcony and above it a giant ornate centrepiece of what looks like golden angels plus a huge crown and a red shield with a white cross on it.
‘That is the Royal Tribune.’ Di Rossi’s fingers flutter skywards. ‘Carved by Ignazio Perucca in 1777. The Kings of Piedmont and Sardinia stood there. It has been graced by Carlo Emmanuele III, Carlo Alberto of the Savoy-Carignano line and the first King of Italy, Vittorio Emmanuele II.’
Nic’s eyes drop to the lesser looking box under it. One with stone pillars and a bulletproof glass window.
‘The lower tribune is where the royal pages sat. This is now the home of the Shroud – the cloth in which the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was wrapped after his death on Calvary.’
65
CARSON, LOS ANGELES
JJ curls his toes around the metal chain and pulls the plug. He lies there savouring the final moments as the soapy water drains off him and his queen. The noise of the bath emptying is irritating. Inappropriate.
He stays motionless. Plays dead. Doesn’t blink or twitch a muscle as he concentrates on lowering his heartbeat and slowing his breathing. Water trapped between their bodies slowly pours away, creating the sensation that Em is touching him. The bathroom grows cold. The chilly air and metal of the old tub rapidly cool his flesh. He knows that if he stays as he is, his body temperature will soon match hers. They will become as one. United in death. Together for ever.
‘One day, my love.’ He kisses the back of her neck. ‘One day I will join you.’
She is difficult to move without the buoyancy of the water. The wetness of their bodies seems to glue them together. Finally, he stands outside the tub, shivering in the candlelight. His feet make prints on the boards as he takes a towel from an old wooden rail and dries himself warm.
Warm – the difference between him and his love. The difference between life and death. He leans over the tub and pats her dry as best he can. Getting her out is harder than he imagined. The old-fashioned bath is too deep for him to be able to lift her without falling forward. In the end he stands opposite the taps, grips her beneath the armpits and pulls. Her skin feels like it’s moving. Slackening and shifting as he touches it.
He lowers her to the floor and dries the parts he missed. She smells clean. Clean and fresh. He’s too tired now to move her further. Too emotionally drained and distressed by the thought that his time with her is running out. He takes talc from a recessed shelf behind the bath and shakes the scented powder over her body. Smooths it out. Covers every inch. Until Em is as white as an angel.
Now he does the same to himself. Makes sure he is dusted from head to toe. Shrouded in white. He lies next to her. Two ghosts in the twilight. He pulls towels over them to keep warm. Snuggles up. Presses close and shares his warmth with her.
66
TURIN
Behind protective glass the casket sits covered by a dull cloth bearing a central red stripe and a crucifix. Above it is a bizarre tangle of giant thorns. Over the brambles, a cheap digital blow-up of the face of what Nic calls Shroud
man hangs on a dark and dusty curtain. The unlikely home of the world’s most famous religious relic.
‘The Holy Shroud, like the Veil of Veronica, is a unique scientific, historical and religious artefact.’ Di Rossi points as he explains. ‘We now believe it was also shown far across the Middle East. History records it once being given to Abgar, the King of the ancient city of Edessa, and it is said to have cured him of illness. The Orthodox Greeks hold the image in the highest respect. They call it Acheiropoieton – an Icon Not Made by Hands.’
Nic feels he’s being whitewashed. Just as surely as if he’d caught a spaced-out Westmont gangbanger trawling on Sunset. ‘You said Veronica. Who was she and what’s special about her veil?’
Di Rossi puts his hands to his face and mimes drying it with a towel. ‘As Christ carried the cross on the way to Calvary, he wiped his face on a cloth given him by a woman called Veronica from Jerusalem – now Saint Veronica. After he had gone, the image of his face appeared on the cloth. The Church has venerated this event by marking it as one of the Stations of the Cross.’
‘I’m going to burn in hell for asking, but the Stations of the Cross?’
Di Rossi’s face registers shock and disappointment. ‘They are the fourteen key historical Christian moments, marked usually in paintings or statues or stained glass. They show the stages of Christ’s journey from when he was condemned to death to when his body was taken from the cross on Mount Calvary and sealed in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. The incident with the sudarium – the sweat cloth – is the sixth Station.’
The verger glances at his wristwatch. ‘I realise, Signore, that you have many questions – and many doubts – but I am afraid I am now late and must go.’
‘I’m very grateful for your help,’ says Nic, aware he’s being brushed off. ‘One thing before you leave.’ He nods to the glass and the cloth-covered casket. ‘I’d like to see the Shroud, the actual cloth.’