by Sam Christer
‘Yeah, sometimes. Mostly we all get on.’ Jenny peers into her coffee cup. ‘Any chance of a refill?’
‘Sure. We’ll take a break in a minute. Just finish telling me about your co-workers. Did Kim pick fights with any of them?’
‘No one messed with her – or me. We had some fun, you know. There was always a bit of bitching going on but no one disrespected us.’
Mitzi comes at it from another angle. ‘Is there a chance you went too far with anyone – crossed the line at all?’
‘What d’ya mean?’
‘Gave someone reason to carry a grudge?’
Harrison scratches at an eyebrow. ‘Not now. There was a girl, but she quit. Emma, Emma Varley. Teacher’s pet – you know the type, worked so freakin’ hard we all looked like slackers next to her. We used to roast her a bit.’ Harrison puts two fingers to her left cheek. ‘She’s got a birthmark here and was always tryin’ to hide it, so the harder she worked the cover the more we gave her.’
‘She ever turn violent?’
‘You’re jerking me, right?’ Harrison laughs. ‘She wouldn’t know how. Girl’s a mouse.’
‘Mice can be dangerous – go ask an elephant. This place, Fahed Fabrics, who runs it – a Mister Fahed, or his wife?’
‘It’s a mister but we don’t see him much, maybe once a month. He’s got a couple of places downtown, all rag shops. Factory’s run by a supervisor named James. We call him Fish Face.’
‘First name or last?’
Harrison frowns.
‘James, not Fish or Face.’
‘Last. I don’t know his first name. He can’t tell shit from Shinola.’ She thinks for a second. ‘To be fair, he’s been okay the last few days. He rang you guys for me, tried to find out if Kim was in trouble and needed bail.’ She touches her cup again. ‘I really need that caffeine now. Either that or you let me have some weed.’
‘Coffee’s all you’re getting.’ Mitzi waves the bunch of papers that Harrison has written on. ‘I’ll have a pot sent through while I get people working on these names and see if Robbery have had your door fixed.’
‘Pot would be cool.’
‘Pot of coffee.’ Mitzi heads out of the room.
‘Hey, can I ask you something?’
‘Sure?’
‘Why are you being nice to me? I mean, most people think I’m a clownbitch and they treat me like shit. So why?’
‘Maybe because you’re not shit. Maybe it’s your life that’s shit and you just smell of life.’ Mitzi walks back to the table. ‘Get through all this and start again, Jenny. Help me catch who killed your friend and you’ll have done something good. Wiped the slate clean. Then you’ll be able to tell yourself you deserve a new beginning.’
Harrison nods and for a second Mitzi thinks she almost made a connection. If she’d caught this kid a few years back, maybe she could have turned her life around.
128
FRANCE
Ursula Broussard is dressed modestly in a white silk blouse and ankle-length blue pleated skirt. The only real clues to her wealth are the rows of pearls around her neck, the thick gold wedding band and huge engagement diamond on her finger.
‘I know this is going to sound strange,’ says Nic, as they stand in the study, ‘but I need you both to leave this house and I need you to do it as quickly as possible.’ He locks his attention first on Édouard. ‘Earlier today I saw the body of your former colleague, Monsieur Broussard. He had been tortured and killed in his bed in Turin. Murdered by a man who took his life without a second thought.’ He switches his focus to Ursula. ‘The young woman Sacconi had been sleeping with had also been killed – after she had been tied up and gagged.’
Madame Broussard covers her mouth and presses against her husband. He puts on a brave face for the sake of his wife. ‘Do you know why?’
‘We both know why.’ Nic gives him a look that says it’s time to cut the crap. ‘You analysed DNA taken – correction, stolen – from the Shroud of Turin. Now someone is prepared to kill you because of what you found.’
Ursula speaks before her husband can answer. ‘How did you get our address, Monsieur?’
‘Erica Craxi gave it to me.’
She nods then asks, hesitantly, ‘Are they all right? Erica and Roberto?’
Nic doesn’t want to lie. ‘Not exactly. Roberto is missing – still alive, we think. Erica, though, is safe. I made sure of it myself.’
Ursula cups her hand and says something quietly in French that Nic can neither properly hear nor understand.
But Édouard does. Édouard has done many foolish things in life, mostly for money, but he seldom if ever ignores the advice of his wife of thirty years. Without speaking he walks to a wooden wall panel behind the detective and presses it hard with the palm of his right hand. A door pops open. He swings it wide, revealing a squat black safe half a metre by half a metre, with a twist dial combination. It takes the urbane scientist almost thirty seconds to twirl in a complicated sequence of numbers. Finally he pulls down on a heavy steel bar and swings the door open.
Nic checks his watch. He’s been in the house almost ten minutes. Six hundred seconds for Mario Sacconi’s killer to close in on them.
The Frenchman lifts out the only thing in the safe – an A4-sized envelope, sealed and taped. ‘This is it.’ He holds it out. ‘Everything. The full results. The original transparency. The data file and the last remains of the sample.’
Nic takes it from him and rips open the top. Inside is a glossy A4 of what looks like a giant barcode. It’s a genetic fingerprint. Maybe the most important one in the world. Maybe God’s DNA? Or it could be just that of an unknown stranger? There’s a small plastic envelope containing dark scrapings and a tiny, eight-gigabyte microchip for a USB port. There are notes and letters too. Typed and handwritten documents in Italian and French. Another in English. From Tamara Jacobs to Robert Craxi.
Nic looks up. Not at Édouard. It’s clear to him now who makes the major decisions in the Broussard household. ‘Madame, we need to leave here – straight away.’
‘Then we leave.’ Ursula Broussard opens the office door. ‘Our lives are in your hands, Monsieur.’
129
Édouard Broussard presses the zapper on his key ring and the electronic iron gates at the rear of the villa swing open. He drives the black BMW 7 almost silently from the driveway out into the side street.
Nic is in the back, head down, gun levelled just below the window line. Ursula uses the in-car phone to make several calls as her husband takes them west along the Promenade. The ocean crashes white and noisy on their left. Grand hotels flash past on their right. Nic scans traffic on all sides. He uses the driver’s rear-view and side mirrors to aid his surveillance of the front and anything that comes up alongside. ‘How long will it take us to get there?’ he asks.
‘Ten minutes, no more,’ says Ursula, leaning between the front seats.
‘Don’t look at me,’ snaps Nic. ‘Turn around. It’s just you and your husband in the car, remember.’
‘Pardon,’ she says, startled by his lack of manners.
Nic doesn’t care. Whoever snatched Roberto Craxi – a former special operative – needs no advantage against a middle-class married couple and a jet-lagged cop.
The car slows into a rolling jam as a large truck crosses both carriageways. Traffic around them struggles to get through and horns blaze.
Nic grows tense. A jam is a bad place to be. They’re going to be sitting ducks. The car in front comes to a standstill and Édouard is forced to halt the big BMW. Nic sees a motorbike coming up in the rear-view – slaloming the stranded cars behind them – searching for openings. The rider is clad in black leathers and a full face helmet. Perfect cover for an assassin. Nic slides across the back seat, braces himself against a door pillar and grips the gun with both hands.
The bike weaves around the cars. Pulls level with the window of the passenger side rear door. Nic levels the Beretta at the helmeted head. The car
’s windows are heavily tinted and he presumes the rider can’t see him. The bike edges forward. Its engine growls. Nic’s finger tightens on the trigger. The rider edges level with Ursula Broussard.
Nic repositions and sizes up a shot over her shoulder. No point going for the Kevlar-protected head, it’ll have to be either the neck or body. Suddenly, there’s a roar. The bike dips to the right. Nic leans left. He swings his arms across. It’s gone. The motorbike races off. Just the noise remains. A throaty roar to confirm an explosion of gasoline and exhaust fumes trailing through a narrow gap in traffic. Nothing more.
The guy was just being nosy. He simply wanted a gawp inside the top of the range sedan to see what it was like and what kind of person can afford a vehicle worth more than a hundred thousand euros. Nic breathes more easily as the jam frees up and they spot signs for the Côte D’Azur airport.
130
The cell phone on the passenger seat rings.
Ephrem picks it up. ‘Yes.’
‘Where are you?’ Carlotta Cappelini asks in a brusque manner.
‘I am outside the villa. Their lights are on. I can see the vehicle the American was driving.’
She knows he means Fabio Goria’s Fiat. ‘They’re not there. Neither is the American.’
He scans the grounds. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Exactly what I just said. Our communications unit picked up a GPS lock on Édouard Broussard’s phone. As it was moving west at a speed of fifty kilometres an hour, it is reasonable to think it is in his car and they are heading to the airport.’
He starts the engine. ‘Do you still have the signal?’
‘Si.’ She looks at the map on her computer monitor and the flashing orange dot. ‘Get moving and I will direct you.’
He slips off the handbrake and pulls out into the main road along the Promenade.
‘Did you stop the parcel being shipped?’
He was afraid she’d ask that question. ‘I was too late. It had gone.’
‘Too late?’
He chooses not to explain what had delayed him. He couldn’t leave Craxi to die a slow death in that tomb, nor could he afford the risk that the man might escape.
Cappelini is furious. ‘What if someone in the parcel office recognised you or gives your description to anyone?’
‘They will not.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘I am sure. All that is left of them are ashes. Ashes cannot speak.’
131
Édouard Broussard hands his car keys to a uniformed valet at the Sheraton Hotel, directly opposite the airport.
Too late to get flights out of the country, Nic and the Broussards have booked rooms and will leave first thing in the morning. Ursula will head to a friend’s home in Switzerland – a senior diplomat with twenty-four-hour security. Nic and Édouard will fly to Paris and catch a connection to LA where full statements will be taken by the homicide squad. Or at least that’s Nic’s plan to keep everyone safe and get himself off the inquiry.
They collect their keys and haul the small bags they hurriedly packed to adjoining rooms on the third floor. Nic bolts and chains Ursula’s and jams a chair beneath the handle for good measure. He and Édouard retreat to the other room and Nic secures the door in the same way.
Édouard opens the mini-bar, ‘I need a drink. You?’
Nic does. He wants several cold beers and then a tumbler of Jack Daniels but a restrained voice overrules his desire to unwind. ‘Just some water please.’
‘As you wish.’ Édouard picks a couple of brandy miniatures and tosses a plastic bottle of still water to Nic. ‘The man who killed Mario, I think I know something about him, where he came from.’ He empties the brandy into a glass. ‘Your writer, Madame Jacobs, I met her in Italy with Roberto. We saw her together when I verified the results of the DNA tests. She had been worried about the accuracy of tests carried out on something so old.’
‘I can understand that. A viable sample from centuries long gone – I wouldn’t have thought it was even possible.’
‘No, it was very possible.’ Édouard is dismissive even of the thought that he couldn’t carry out such a thing. ‘Mario used standard PCR processing, you know what that is?’
Nic’s blooded enough rapists to have a basic understanding of the process. ‘I think so – Polymerase Chain Reaction – the lab use it to build up a sample when there isn’t enough of the genetic code to do a full profile.’
He smiles. ‘A crude analysis of a scientific breakthrough that won its inventor the Nobel Prize in Chemistry more than twenty-five years ago, but it is accurate enough. PCR can amplify a single piece of DNA thousands or millions of times, certainly until we have enough genetic information to form a reliable profile.’
‘But that wasn’t sufficient in the case of the Shroud?’
‘It was but we wanted verification by two techniques and two different testers. So I decided to use a new technology, something more cutting edge than standard PCR.’
‘Being what?’
‘Amplification of MicroRNA.’
Nic looks nonplussed.
‘I don’t have time to explain. Think of RNA as being like DNA, like a genetic code. But single-stranded rather than double-stranded, with a much shorter chain of nucleotides than DNA.’ He stops, as if deciding something. ‘Let us just say that MicroRNA, coupled with newer commercial kits like MiniFiler and Identifiler Plus, gave us a more trustworthy result, something we were certain the scientific community would feel more secure with.’
‘What did Tamara Jacobs expect to prove with the results?’
‘The identity of the man beneath the Shroud of Turin. She thought she could use it to prove – or disprove – that it was Jesus Christ.’
‘But how?’ Nic frowns deeply. ‘To do that she would already have to have a DNA sample of Christ to match it to.’
‘Not necessarily.’
Nic’s confused. ‘Yes, she would. It’s a problem we face all the time. You get DNA from a crime scene, but you’ve got to match it to a suspect. The Shroud is essentially her crime-scene sample, but she had no subject.’
‘No, but she knew there was one.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Tamara believed there was another sample. Not taken from the Shroud. Taken from the cross on which Christ died.’
132
77TH STREET STATION, LOS ANGELES
It’s almost midnight by the time Mitzi has checked in with Tyler Carter and finished processing Jenny Harrison’s statement. She’s tried Nic’s phone several times and not managed to get through. Matthews is going to go ape again tomorrow.
Even though she could get the girl a cab or have a uniform drop her, she chooses to drive her back to Boyle.
The Robbery squad has been as good as its word and Harrison gratefully slides the new key into the lock fitted to her busted-up door. ‘We should have a ribbon or somethin’ to cut. This place ain’t never had anything new before.’ She turns to Mitzi. ‘You want to come in for a drink? I’ve got vodka.’
‘No thanks, I’m kinda beat. You have my number – find a pay phone and call me Monday. Earlier if you think of anything or you’re just messed up and need to talk.’
‘Thanks.’
She watches the door close and listens for the lock to turn before she goes. The world is full of Jenny Harrisons – single women born on the wrong side of the tracks and stuck there. On the drive back she thinks of the scan picture she found under the mattress and wonders if one day Jenny will get her act together and be lucky enough to get married and have children. Despite all her trouble with Alfie, she’d go through it all again if that’s what she had to do to have Jade and Amber.
Mitzi parks up and lets herself into the house. It feels horribly empty. No Alfie. No kids. Just her on her lonesome. Makes her wonder what life will be like when the girls finally fly the nest. She glances at her watch. It’s kicking on for 1 a.m. but she’s not going to be able to sleep. Her mind wanders
. They’ll all be locked down now out at California State. A prison built for two thousand inmates and jammed tight with more than twice that number. What the cops call cosy. Lights will be out. Strange noises banging and bumping in the labyrinth of stinking blackness. Thousands of guys – including the father of her girls – staring up in the dark above their bunks trying to figure out how in God’s name they messed up so badly.
‘Keep staring,’ she says with no shake in her voice. She opens the refrigerator and realises she should have gone shopping. ‘Think hard about what you’ve thrown away, Alfie Fallon.’
Her cell goes and she snatches it off the table where she dropped her bag. ‘Hello.’
‘Mitzi, it’s Nic.’
Her eyes widen. ‘Thank God. What the hell have you been doing? Matthews is going to tear you a new asshole.’
133
FRANCE
Mellow light filters through the reception windows of the Sheraton Hotel. It’s 7 a.m. on the kind of morning that promises to be warmer than it should be for the time of year.
Édouard and Ursula pay the bill while Nic sits in a chair watching the hotel grind into life. This is his last week at work. The thought is uppermost in his mind. It is the beginning of an end. The drawing to a close of his life as a detective and the personal horrors that have accompanied it.
Late last night he gave Mitzi chapter and verse on everything that had happened in Turin and she promised to go straight to Matthews today and explain things, including why he had to take evidence from the Sacconi crime scene. Soon, he and Broussard will be on a flight into LAX and Ursula will be safe in Geneva. Tomorrow he’ll take Broussard’s statement and hand him over to someone to run the case after he’s left the force. Come Tuesday, with a little luck, all the forensic will have been processed and verified. It’s hard to imagine the crap that’s going to fly as and when news gets out that there’s a DNA profile of Christ going around. Adam Geagea and the other dorks in the Press Office are going to shit in their pants.