by Sam Christer
A tiny bathroom. She’s not there. JJ inches his way back to the splintered door and closes it. The place has paper-thin walls. Chances are people next door have heard him.
He flicks on the light. On the floor near the edge of the bed is her phone. She must have dropped it. Gone out without it. An act of forgetfulness that has saved her life. For now.
105
TURIN
It’s a long time since former soldier Roberto Craxi has been forced to lie in a pool of his own urine.
If memory serves him well it was twenty years ago in Naples. An anti-Camorra operation went wrong and he and his team got trapped in a landfill site for almost an entire day. He killed three people in the gun battle that followed. And he’d dearly like to kill again today.
The tomb that’s holding him seems escape-proof. He rolls onto his front, gets up on his knees and presses his back against the heavy slab above him. It won’t budge.
Not an inch. His captor’s been gone some time now and Craxi knows exactly where he is and what he’s doing. It won’t take an animal like him long to crack the man he’s visiting. A scientist with no guts. And when he does, he will know the truth. Know Craxi held back on him. Delayed him.
Craxi takes in a deep lungful of air and once more painfully presses his back against the unyielding stone. He has to get out. Must get out. Escape before it’s too late.
PART FOUR
He who controls the present, controls the past.
He who controls the past, controls the future.
George Orwell
106
TURIN
Since he was a child, Mario Sacconi has slept with the window open. There’s something about being shut in that disturbs him and keeps him awake. He feels stifled. Claustrophobic. It’s a habit that’s led to countless girlfriends complaining about the freezing cold in his bedroom – but that’s never been a problem the handsome geneticist hasn’t been able to solve.
He went to bed last night with the elegant sash window open and a beautiful Brazilian intern grateful for his body heat. Dawn is breaking now over the lush forest surrounding his home. As he opens his eyes in the pink light he realises what a terrible mistake he’s made.
‘Buongiorno,’ says a man dressed head to toe in black at the foot of his bed.
‘Vaffanculo!’ Sacconi tries to sit up. A slipknot tightens around his left wrist and then his right. He looks frantically for his lover. ‘Benedetta?’
‘In the bathroom,’ Ephrem nods behind him. ‘You’ll see her in a moment.’
Sacconi has read about intruders, how they sometimes get violent or sexual when confronted. Best stay calm and not rile them. Don’t turn a simple housebreaking into something much uglier. ‘Look, I don’t want any trouble. Take whatever you want. The keys to my Mercedes are in my trousers on the chair over there. I have a safe, jewellery and money. I’ll give you anything.’
The monk laughs. ‘Roberto Craxi.’
The name silences him.
‘Craxi is why I am here.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Dark eyes stare through his balaclava. ‘Yes, you do. You are Mario Sacconi. Craxi paid you money to do something you shouldn’t have done. You abused your power, the gifts God and science gave you.’
‘No. No – you’re wrong.’
The look in the monk’s eyes says he’s sure he isn’t. He strides away from the bed and enters the bathroom. He returns seconds later with the naked girl in his arms and drops her on the bed next to Sacconi. Her hands and feet are tied together behind her back. Thick parcel tape is wrapped around her mouth. Her eyes are wide with terror.
‘Roberto Craxi paid you to test samples he stole from the holy shroud. I want the results of that test and any samples you have left.’
‘You’re mistaken. I swear to God, I don’t know what you mean.’
A punch explodes in Sacconi’s face. He wails. His nose is broken. Blood is smeared across his mouth and cheeks.
‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord Thy God in vain.’ The monk reaches into black cargo pants and produces what looks like a thin, oblong case beautifully covered in mother-of-pearl. The snap of a seven-inch stiletto blade ends any ambiguity about its contents. He holds the steel in front of the geneticist’s eyes, makes sure Sacconi sees its sharpness, then grabs Benedetta around the neck and hauls her body across her lover’s. Ephrem pulls her hair back so her eyes stare into Sacconi’s. So her fear connects with his. ‘Now. Will you tell me about the tests you carried out?’
Still Sacconi hesitates.
The monk puts the tip of the blade into the soft skin below the girl’s right eye. He studies the scientist’s face. Sees instantly that she doesn’t mean anything to him. There is no hero in the man, no bond of love between them. He pushes her away. Hears her roll off the bed and hit the hard wooden floor.
Ephrem puts a hand over Sacconi’s mouth then calmly runs the point of the stiletto through his left cheek.
The scientist’s muffled screams last almost a minute.
Ephrem withdraws the blade slowly. Lets a curled droplet of blood drip from the tip of the steel into Sacconi’s eyes. ‘I am going to ask you one final time to tell me about the tests you did for Craxi.’
107
‘Wake up, my friend.’
Nic hears the voice but isn’t together enough to answer.
‘We need to get moving. Come on.’ Fabio Goria places a hand on the detective’s shoulder.
Karakandez raises himself on his elbows. Blinks at the daylight as the private investigator draws back the curtains. ‘I’m awake, just give me a minute to get my shit together.’
‘I am making coffee and eggs, then we run.’ Goria wanders out of the room. ‘We don’t have long.’
Nic staggers to the bathroom, feeling half-drunk as he steps into the shower. Afterwards, he towels dry and dresses in a clean, soft cotton, baggy blue plaid shirt, plain blue fleece hoodie and blue Gap jeans. He grabs his BlackBerry from the bedside cabinet and types out a mail to Luogotenente Cappelini.
Carlotta,
I’m not going to be at the hotel this morning for you to pick me up. I got a little drunk last night with some guys I met and we ended up across town. I’ll give you a call this afternoon and arrange a meet.
Thanks.
Hope you have a good day.
Nic.
He hits send and then enters the open-plan kitchen where Goria is sliding scrambled eggs and fatty bacon out of a pan. ‘Help yourself to coffee.’ He waves a hand towards a glass jug of freshly ground brewing on its own hot plate. ‘There’s milk and cream in the fridge.’
‘You want some?’
‘Si. Just black.’
Nic takes two white mugs off a shelf and pours coffee. They sit on leather-topped benches at a long junk wood table, looking out on a functional garden. It’s a single man’s yard. No flowers, no neat areas, mainly decking and a barbecue area should there ever be opportunity for such a thing.
They didn’t find time to eat last night and now Nic is hungrier than he thought. ‘The eggs are good.’
‘Grazie. Italian boys are taught to cook well.’
‘One day you’ll make someone an excellent wife.’
‘You are very funny. Eat quickly. We need to go before we end up regretting even the short sleep.’
Both men are exhausted but they know they are in a race against time. If whoever took Craxi has obtained the same information that his wife Erica gave them, then it is only a matter of time before they get to the scientist Craxi used to analyse DNA from the Shroud.
By six forty-five Nic and Fabio are in the Fiat heading south-east down Via Antonio Sciesa and Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi. Just after seven they join the eastern stretch of the Tangenziale Nord and make decent progress until they hit the tolls on the road to Milan where a huge truck has blown a tyre. Strips of shredded black rubber cover the autostrada.
It’s seven-fifteen when they come off at the Chiva
sso exit and twenty-five past when they quietly shut the doors of the Fiat and walk to the small detached home on the outskirts of a giant estate.
‘The castle behind there,’ Fabio points over hedges to a distant palace of pinkish brick and green shuttered windows. ‘This is Castagneto Po, the family home of Carla Bruni.’
Nic glances into the lavish grounds. ‘I guess after living somewhere like that, you have to marry a president to keep you in the manner to which you are accustomed.’
‘But Sarkozy?’ Goria shrugs as they walk. ‘It is a mystery why a beautiful Italian should choose a French dwarf.’ He swings open a black metal gate and they walk a gravelled drive of honey-coloured chips to a fine three-storey house with spectacular views across the rolling Turin hills and surrounding vineyards.
The Italian nods to the black Mercedes SLK parked to one side. ‘The car is his. He is in.’
Nic reaches across his waistband and checks the gun he’d been given last night.
Goria lifts the giant brass ring hanging in the middle of the glossy black door and hammers it hard. He reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a false ID. ‘Carabinieri! Signore Sacconi, open up!’
Nic heads round the back of the house. He peers closely through the ground-floor windows as he goes quickly round and then circles back to the front. ‘There’s no sign of life but there is an open window on the second floor.’
Goria pockets the ID. He looks up at the drainpipes and trellis-work. He knows what’s expected of him.
108
CARABINIERI HEADQUARTERS, TURIN
Luogotenente Carlotta Cappelini feels like death warmed up. She’s been awake most of the night – not finally turning in until she’d seen the car registered to the company of private investigator Fabio Goria pick Nic Karakandez up outside the American’s hotel and enter the grounds of Goria’s home.
Now she’s back at work. Driving her desk. Reading reports from her surveillance team and discovering the American and his new Italian friend have just rolled out of their gated retreat and made their way to a house out near Chivasso. She looks at her computer and rereads the mail he sent her full of nonsense about a night on the town and a promise to call her later. She taps his cell number into her desk phone and dials him for a second time.
‘Buongiorno, Nic – this is Carlotta again. Please call me as soon as you can, I have some important information I want to share with you.’
She doesn’t. But she knows she has to establish contact quickly or risk losing him completely. And that mustn’t happen. Not now. Not after last night’s events.
Captain Giorgio Fusco beckons her through the window of his office opposite her desk. It’s one of the perils of sitting within his sight line. She drops what she’s doing and plods wearily his way. Pokes her head around his door. ‘Capitano?’
‘Come in.’ He gestures to a grey-suited man with cropped black hair sitting in the shadows of the room. ‘This is Paolo. He is an ROS administrator, and a close friend.’
The man from the Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale nods and manages a polite ‘Ciao.’ His unblinking brown eyes show no interest in her.
Fusco walks over to the door and makes sure it’s tightly shut. ‘Roberto Craxi was seen in the centre of Turin.’
‘That’s not news, sir. We know he and his wife recently returned to their lodge.’
Paolo dips into his jacket pocket and produces a pack of colour stills that he fans out like a hand of cards. ‘We picked him up on CCTV, using facial recognition software.’
She looks at the pictures. ‘What was he doing?’
‘Drawing money from a bank account we didn’t know he had and probably much more.’ Paolo peels off several shots. ‘By the time we got operatives into the area, he’d gone.’
‘Back to the lodge?’
Paolo shrugs. ‘Maybe. We were short on men yesterday.’
‘The Prime Minister was in court,’ explains the captain with a smile. ‘More sex and corruption charges.’
‘We checked Craxi’s lodge an hour ago,’ says Paolo. ‘It was empty but he and his wife had been there in the last twenty-four hours.’
‘He’ll come back onto our radar,’ Carlotta tries to sound confident.
‘I’m not so sure.’ Paolo puts a finger on one of the stills in the Luogotenente’s hand. ‘Do you recognise this person?’
She stares at an athletic-looking dark-skinned man in a black coat.
‘Here he is twenty minutes later, in a green coat.’ Paolo hands over another print.
She holds them side by side and shakes her head. ‘I have never seen him before.’
‘He did not come with the American that you are handling?’
‘Not to my knowledge. The LAPD officer travelled alone.’
The captain interjects, ‘Though he is working here with a local private eye whom you do know – Fabio Goria.’
Paolo raises an eyebrow. ‘Good officer. We were sorry to lose him.’
Carlotta hands the photograph back. ‘So who do you think this foreigner is?’
‘Trouble. That’s who he is. Had he not got so close to Craxi we wouldn’t have even noticed him. He was following him – of that we have no doubt.’
Her cell rings. She doesn’t wait for permission to answer it. ‘Si.’
The two men study her face and try to decipher what’s happening. She covers the mouthpiece and tells her boss, ‘Goria and the American are at the home of Mario Sacconi, a scientist in the Sezioni Investigazioni Scientifiche. It looks like they’re breaking in.’
109
The black metal drainpipe proves as good as a ladder. It was fitted in an era when builders worried about downpour not security and its position is close enough for Goria to climb and then stretch out a leg to the stone lintel of the upstairs window.
As he shuffles across onto the ledge he can see a man and a woman in bed. For a second he thinks they’re asleep. Then he sees the river of red separating them. He turns sideways on, leans against the frame and drops to one knee. Palms to glass he slides up the partially opened sash window and climbs through the gap into the room.
The man is closest to him. On his back. Head twisted to the left. Hands tied to the bedposts and his throat cut. The woman is to his right. Curled up on her side. Hands and feet tied behind her back. Long black hair barely masking a fatal neck wound.
Goria makes the sign of the cross. He steps over the piled quilt on the floor and looks more closely at the corpse of Mario Sacconi. There’s blood all over the face. It looks like his nose has been broken but there’s a more curious injury – a deep puncture wound through the left cheek. He’s experienced enough to know it’s been made by a stiletto blade, probably the one responsible for a single stab wound in the windpipe. The cut is clinical. Professional.
Sacconi’s legs are drawn up to his side and blood has pooled between his knees and chest. Goria moves a little. It’s a bloody mess but he’s pretty sure he can see that the scientist has been stabbed through the heart. He steps back and makes his way around the bed to the woman. She’s young – mid-twenties at best – and pretty. Or at least she was.
Two wounds are all her beautiful body bares – one through the throat and one through the heart. Goria takes a moment to imagine how it was done. The killer would have had to pull her long hair back and look her straight in the eyes as he pushed the blade through her thorax. Then, as she gasped for air, he would have needed to steady her desperate body, position the knife and force it through her heart.
He looks between the young woman’s thighs and dips low to see beneath her breasts. She doesn’t seem to have been sexually interfered with in any way. Professional kills. Nothing more. Nothing less. He heads downstairs and opens the front door.
Nic is stood back, looking edgy. ‘What took you so long?’
‘Sacconi is dead. So too is the woman he was with. We were too late.’
Nic steps towards the doorway.
‘No. You can’t go inside.’
‘What?’
‘I’m going to have to call the police. We can’t walk away from two bodies and we can’t disturb the scene any more than I already have.’
‘Then call them. I’m still going inside. Whoever killed these people may well have killed Tamara Jacobs.’
Reluctantly, Goria lets him pass. Nic takes the stairs two at a time. There’s only one bedroom door open and he can sense death before he even steps inside. The white base sheet is soaked with blood and the girl is facing him as he enters. He pulls up short, takes out his BlackBerry and thumbs through to the camera function. Quickly and professionally he circles the room and fires off as many shots as he can. He stands on a dressing table chair and gets a range of high angles and then goes in close and captures all the wounds.
He can hear Goria downstairs talking on his cell. The polizia will soon be on the way. He pockets the BlackBerry, rushes to the en-suite bathroom and pulls the toilet roll from its holder.
The dead couple are close together on the bed – the killer must have manhandled them, probably rubbed his clothes or body hair against their bodies. On the ropes binding Sacconi he finds two short dark hairs, possibly from the killer’s hands when he tied the knots. Nic rips off several sheets of toilet roll, places them carefully in the middle and then folds them protectively around his sample.
His attention falls again on the dead girl. The tape. There’s an outside chance the killer’s fingerprints will be on the sticky tape plastered across her mouth. Nic knows that if he removes it, a pathologist will be able to tell. He also knows that the Carabinieri will go wild if he tampers with the body.
But he does it anyway. He reaches over the girl, finds the tape’s edge and peels it off. He doesn’t want it to double back on itself – it could ruin the print. Quickly but carefully he attaches the tape to a make-up mirror and smoothes it out.