by Sam Christer
‘Are they crazy?’
‘Of course they are. You ask are the hands and head proportionate to the body. The answer is no. Nor is the length of the corpse appropriate. This man would have been way over six feet tall – nearer seven feet. Jesus may have been the son of God but he wasn’t a giant. Or if he was, no one ever bothered to comment on it.’
Amy inspects one of the shots that Mitzi sent her. She sees what he means. ‘How do you know all this, Gunter? Did you do your own studies?’
‘No need. There has already been a lot of work done. There are no external coordinates to compare the corpse with but the dimensions of the Shroud itself are good baselines. Another thing, if you measure the length of the image on the back of the cloth, it is two inches longer than on the front.’
‘Maybe it stretched and distorted the image? That would also explain the over-large hands.’
‘Good to see you are still so open-minded. There is an English professor you should talk to. I will go through my files and ask that he call you.’
‘Is he an open-minded believer or non-believer?’
‘Believer. Very big believer. Even though I am not, it is important that you talk to him and also to STURP, the Shroud of Turin Research Project. Speak to them, then use your own intelligence to decide that it’s a fake – a fakety-fake-fake.’
She laughs. ‘So I guess what you’re saying is that you think it’s a fake, then?’
‘I have no doubts. No questions at all. I can even tell you who the faker was.’
‘Go on.’
‘Not so quickly. It will cost you dinner next time I am in LA.’
‘Sure – but I get to call Astrid and tell her where I’m taking her husband.’ ‘An unnecessary offer.’ ‘So who faked it?’ ‘Open your email. I just sent you a document.’
78
TURIN
By 6 p.m. Nic’s had it. He’s done with Carabinieri inefficiency. With struggling around a foreign city where it’s impossible to park. With the whole damned Tamara Jacobs case.
For the past two hours he’s chased down addresses linked to Craxi’s logged calls and all he’s got for his troubles are a pounding headache and enough dead ends to fill a road atlas. Fredo drives them back to the station house parking lot in Via Beato Sebastian Valfré. From there, Carlotta walks Nic to the hotel and tries to make peace. ‘I am sorry things didn’t work out – that we didn’t find Craxi.’
He’s too angry to respond.
‘I will make some more enquiries when I go back to the office. You should get some rest, you look tired. Tomorrow we will find Roberto Craxi, I am sure.’
He seriously doubts she could find milk in her own fridge.
‘I pick you up at nine again in the morning, okay?’
‘Fine.’ He tries to be nice. ‘I hoped for more – something quick, a strong lead to build on. I’m sorry if I’ve been gnarly. I know you’ve been trying to help. Grazie.’
She smiles at his first stab at Italian, ‘Prego. You have my numbers. Don’t forget, if you want anything, call me.’ She waits a beat then adds, ‘If you feel better a little later and want to see some of Torino, I will be in the office. Like I said to you, I still have other crimes on my desk.’
‘Thanks again.’ He turns away, feeling a little guilty. He knows what a pain it is to babysit a cop from another country and do all the ferrying around and legwork on a case that isn’t yours.
Nic collects his room key at reception and heads upstairs to sink into his swampy bed. No sooner has he kicked off his shoes than his cell rings and flashes up Mitzi’s desk number.
‘Pronto,’ he tries to mimic Carlotta’s accent. ‘Signore Carry-can-diss here.’
She laughs. It’s reassuring to hear him cracking jokes. ‘Glad you’ve still got your sense of humour, Signore. So how’s it going?’
‘You mean aside from the jet lag, crappy weather and major runaround I’m being given?’
‘Yeah, aside from all those exotic treats, how’s it going?’
‘Just great.’ He pushes the pillows back and leans against them. ‘I went to Roberto Craxi’s apartment. He wasn’t there but I tell you Mitz, that place was so clean – fresh paint everywhere, new units in the kitchen, the works – it was like someone wanted to erase any trace that Craxi or his wife had ever set foot in the place.’
She toys with the phone cable and wishes he was back in the office with her. ‘Sounds like a professional wipe-down – maybe after a shooting or at least some kind of bloodshed.’
‘I thought the same, but there are no signs of a crime. No signs of anything. The Craxis just vanished – poof, gone!’ He jams the phone between his neck and ear as he pours water from a bottle on the bedside table. ‘I went to his bank as well. Account’s been closed – all the money withdrawn in cash.’
‘How much?’
‘In euros, about a hundred and fifty thou’. What’s that – about two hundred thousand dollars?’
‘Guess so. However much it is, it sounds like he and his wife ain’t coming back.’
‘Yeah, sounds like it. But why?’
She sips coffee. ‘Usual reasons – avoiding something or somebody. I’ll check emigration, they might have left the country. Or maybe you can have the Carabinieri do that?’
‘Ha, some hope. I’ve been assigned a beauty queen who couldn’t investigate a crime in her own house.’
‘You being a little sexist?’
‘I don’t know, Mitz. She’s a loo-geo-ten-ente or whatever the heck they call it out here. So she certainly ranks big enough to know the ropes. It’s just that everything takes an age in Italy and she really doesn’t seem so bright.’ He wonders for a second if he’s being fair or whether his irritation is just the product of not understanding the unhurried pace of the culture. ‘I went to see the Shroud – that was a waste of time as well.’
‘How so?’
‘I got more BS from the cathedral’s verger than you got from Matthews last time you asked for a raise. The relic is locked in boxes inside boxes and only the Pope can fix for anyone to see it.’
‘Do you think we’re chasing down blind alleys, Nic?’
‘If it wasn’t for the money, I might think that. But Jacobs paid out more than a hundred K to this Craxi guy for some kind of information about the Shroud. What was the info and why was it worth so much? It’s important, I’m sure it is.’
She trusts his instinct. It’s one of the things that have made him such a good cop. Instinct. That’s something she’s certainly been lacking in her personal life. God knows she screwed things up with Alfie.
Nic thinks he’s lost the connection. ‘Mitz, you still there?’
‘Yeah, I’m here. Just …’
‘What’s wrong?’ He can tell from her voice that something is wrong. Can tell from that one lonely word hung out on its own.
Just.
‘Nothing. Well, something, but it’s only personal shit that I have to sort out.’
‘Personal shit called Alfie?’
She nearly laughs – that instinct of his really is good. ‘Yeah, but hey, what the hell, we all have to deal with our own crap, don’t we?’
He shifts position on the bed. ‘You want to talk about it?’
‘Nah, get some sleep, and solve this case for me. I don’t want you hanging around at work longer than need be, you’ve got a boat to sail. Bye.’
Nic smiles at the disconnected phone. His boss is a class act. Deserves better than that bum of a husband she’s stuck with.
79
CORONER’S OFFICE, LOS ANGELES
The iMac cursor glides over the Adobe PDF icon and clicks it open. Amy Chang’s jaw drops in astonishment. ‘You are kidding me.’ In front of her are more than four hundred pages from Gunter Quentell suggesting the Shroud of Turin was faked by one of the world’s most talented artists, sculptors, writers, mathematicians and inventors.
Leonardo da Vinci.
Ridiculous. Then again, he was also a scientist and i
ntellectual prankster. He conceptualised tanks, helicopters and solar power, and created the most reproduced religious painting of all time, the Last Supper, in which he inserted Mary Magdalene as the companion of Christ. Maybe not so ridiculous an idea after all.
Gunter’s document claims that just as Leonardo allegedly modelled the Mona Lisa on his own face, he did the same with the Turin Shroud. Amy studies three shots – the Shroud print, a portrait of da Vinci and the Mona Lisa. There are similarities – in the eyes and even nose – but she struggles to be completely convinced. For a start, the great painter was born a hundred years after the disputed carbon dating. And multiple scientific examinations have recorded no sign of any oil or watercolours on the linen cloth. Could Leonardo really have invented some form of photography hundreds of years before others claimed more widespread recognition for the technique? Not impossible.
At the bottom of the electronic document are copies of newspaper articles from 2011, detailing claims from an Italian art expert called Luciano Buso that the Shroud was created not by Leonardo but by Giotto di Bondone, who lived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Amy scans them. It seems Giotto was a master of painting figures – especially Christ – and was allegedly chosen by the Church to create a replica of the cloth because the original was in such a poor state. He is said to have concealed the number ‘15’ in the painting to denote the year he completed the work.
Further down the PDF there are several other articles completely dismissing Buso’s claims as totally without foundation. Amy turns back to the images of the Shroud. Fresh questions arise. The cloth appears to show markings made by blood, sweat and tissue. Contrary to popular belief, bodies can still bleed after death, after the heart has stopped pumping, but it would be extraordinary for one to have done so in a way that left such vivid marks.
Another thing is disturbing her. Putrefaction. A corpse left for days, even inside a closed cave, would undoubtedly putrefy. If blood were visible on the linen, then other bodily excretions should be too. They aren’t.
Her telephone rings. It’s her secretary. She just missed a call from a professor in England. He left a message saying he wants to speak to her about the crucifixion of Christ and why he’s convinced the Shroud of Turin is genuine.
80
TURIN
It’s 9 p.m. when Nic finally gets the phone call he’d been waiting for all day.
‘Are you alone?’ The voice is male and Italian. A voice he has heard only once before.
‘Just me and a TV that doesn’t work properly.’ He drops the remote on the quilt and sits on the edge of the bed.
‘Leave your hotel and cross the road. At the corner turn left and you will see a Fiat Bravo. I will leave the side lights on.’
Nic wriggles his swollen feet into shoes that have somehow shrunk since he kicked them off. ‘You have some good news?’
‘I have news.’
The line goes dead.
Nic locks his phone, ties his laces, gets up and grabs his jacket and keys.
It’s dark and raining softly as he leaves the stuffy heat of the old hotel for the crispness of the November night. There’s a drizzle falling, the kind of rain you can’t really see but can feel all the time – an icy mist that surreptitiously soaks you and leaches your body heat. He turns the corner and within a couple of steps sees the parked Fiat.
He’s never met Fabio Goria but the guy has come strongly recommended. He works for a premier private investigations company and came courtesy of a friend in the FBI.
He slips into the PI’s Fiat Bravo, shuts the door and offers a hand. ‘Nic Karakandez, good to meet you.’
‘Fabio.’ Goria is gravelly-voiced, unshaven, in his mid-thirties, broad-shouldered and smells of cigarettes.
‘So what have you got?’
Passing car lights play on the investigator’s stubbly face as he talks, his pinched blue eyes focused on either the windshield or rear-view mirror. ‘You asked me to find Roberto Craxi for you and to keep a trace on him until you came to Torino. This I have done.’
Nic is more impressed than he is about to admit. ‘Where is he?’
Goria doesn’t answer immediately. He glances from the mirror into the detective’s eyes. He has to be able to trust this man. There are things he needs to know – things he has to be certain about – before he tells him anything. ‘I spoke to Special Agent Burge. He told me you are a good policeman, so I help you. But before we speak about Craxi and where he is hiding, tell me what you know about him.’
Hiding. The word makes Nic’s heart quicken. ‘I don’t know much. He’s Italian and the recipient of a sizeable income from a murder victim in LA. Oh, and the Carabinieri couldn’t find him.’
Goria’s smile is barely visible in the half-light.
‘Craxi worked for the Carabinieri until only a few years ago.’
‘What?’
‘He was a member of the Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale – the ROS. You know what this is?’
‘Special operations group?’
‘Exactly. One of their main bases is here in Turin. It is the arm of the Carabinieri that deals with organised crime and terrorism. It reports directly to the Carabinieri general command. Not much is known about it.’
Nic starts to put the pieces together and it doesn’t make for a pretty picture. In none of his calls from LA or the meetings today did any of his Carabinieri contacts mention that Craxi had been one of their own, let alone a special operative.
Goria can tell what’s on his mind. ‘Your pretty lieutenant wasn’t of much help, was she?’
‘No,’ says Nic, ‘And now I know why.’
The Italian lights a cigarette and winds down an inch of window to blow out the blue-grey smoke. ‘Craxi wasn’t only ROS, he was un’ombra – a shadow. He was part of a black ops team.’
‘You mean she might not have known Craxi was part of her own force?’
‘It is possible. The Carabinieri is a big organisation, with both military and policing functions. They overlap at times and are entirely separate when it suits them. The executives will know. They probably figure you are here for two or three days at most and will then have to go back to Los Angeles, so they assign someone to show you around a little and frustrate you.’
‘They’re certainly doing that.’
Goria grips the cigarette between his lips and digs inside his jacket. ‘Take a look at this.’ He hands over several long lens photographs of a man in a raincoat crossing a street.
‘Dino di Rossi. This is the verger of the cathedral. I saw him earlier.’
‘I know you did. We took these straight afterwards. One of my team has been watching you all day.’ He takes the photographs back. ‘But this man you met, he is not the verger of the Duomo.’
‘Then who is he?’
‘His name is Pausini. He is also from ROS, an undercover specialist. He is good, no?’
‘I guess he is.’
‘I don’t know all of the details of your case, Nic, but I do know a little about the ROS. You don’t want to upset these people. They are trained to kill. If they are involved in your inquiry, then I advise you to leave. Go home to America. Burge told me that you like to sail. Good. You should do that. Go home, sail as far away as you can from all this.’
Nic shakes his head. ‘I can’t do that. Much as I’d like to. There’s been a murder and—’
‘And there will be more -if you don’t leave.’ The statement hangs as unpleasantly as the fug of smoke around him. ‘I can only help you so much, Nic. Only so much, then I am gone. Understand?’
81
77TH STREET STATION, LOS ANGELES
Being called to Matthews’ office is never good news.
Especially on a Friday afternoon. Mitzi thinks over the cold hard facts as she heads down his corridor. There are two times a week a boss will most likely lay you off, fire you or bust your balls. If he’s a nice guy, he does it first-thing Monday morning. That way you’ve
already had your weekend in blissful ignorance and most likely you’re in for an extra week’s pay if he takes your badge. If he’s an asshole – or the timing’s just plain bad – you catch it Friday afternoon. This way he gets the weight off his mind and the weekend ahead is a nice one for him but not for you.
She knocks on the upper glass part of his door, twists the dull brass knob and edges it open enough to stick her head through, ‘You called for me, sir.’
‘I did.’ He’s behind his desk in blue-checked shirtsleeves, cuffs rolled to his elbows, feet resting on the edge of a chair and a pile of financial papers spread over the vast curvature of an ample midriff restrained by black braces. ‘Sit down and adopt a mood of joyous opportunity and stoic professionalism.’
She takes a seat the other side of the desk. ‘I’d try to do that if I had a clue what stoic was.’
He takes his feet off the chair, spins round and drops his meaty forearms on the desk. ‘Stoic: noun. A person who can endure pain or hardship without showing their feelings or complaining.’
‘Ah, now I get it. Doesn’t sound much like me, Captain.’
Matthews smiles. ‘LA’s most abused liver just checked itself into rehab and has taken Homicide Detective Jordan Lynch with it.’
Mitzi gives him her best so-what’s-that-got-to-do-with-me look.
‘Meaning Tyler Carter needs a number-two on his serial case.’
She drops her head into her hands. ‘Boss, I’ve got Nic Karakandez in Italy on the Tamara Jacobs killing and he’s only a week away from sailing off to God knows where. And—’ She stops herself. No. She’s not going to say she has personal problems, he probably knows already.
‘And what?’
From the look on his face he doesn’t know. Even Matthews isn’t so mean as to make fun out of the mess she’s in. ‘And nothing, sir. I was just having trouble transitioning from pissed and rightfully letting-off steam to professionally stoic.’