Isle of the Dead

by Alex Connor

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Does its reputation put you off?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I thought not,’ she said crisply. ‘Well, I want it too. But I can’t get it without your help.’

  Calmly, he smiled. ‘Why would I help a rival?’

  ‘You know Gaspare Reni; you used to deal with him. The Italian’s old school, and he’ll talk to you.’

  ‘Ah, but maybe he won’t want to sell the picture.’

  ‘He’s struggling,’ she replied, leaning forward in her seat. ‘He’s old and he’s got that great albatross of a gallery hanging round his neck. It must cost a fortune just to keep it open. Trust me, Gaspare Reni will sell – but not to me. We had a run-in a long time ago, and he won’t let anything come to the Alim Collection if he can help it.’

  ‘I could help you,’ Triumph said after a prolonged pause, knowing that by assisting her he would be publicising the find and upping its value, ‘but then we’d be competing for the same painting – which means you’d lose.’

  ‘You can’t win every time,’ Farina challenged him. ‘No one wins every time.’

  7

  Sunnyvale Rest Home, London

  Finishing her shift, Sally Egan pulled a coat over her uniform and left by the back exit. Her door keys were in her pocket, her handbag slung over her left shoulder. She was thinking, with some pleasure, of the man she had slept with the previous week, Eddie Gilmore. They had been a bit drunk, but he had still managed to perform pretty well and afterwards he hadn’t hustled her either. Instead he’d made her a sandwich and together they’d pulled the duvet around them and watched a DVD. For the first time in years she had felt comfortable and treasured. At nine they had made love again, with real affection, but at nine thirty Sally’s alarm had gone off and, reluctantly, she had dressed and headed home.

  She hadn’t heard from him since.

  Briskly pushing open the gate, Sally hurried up to the semidetached house and opened the door. Immediately a woman came down the stairs, dressed in a nurse’s uniform.

  ‘Your dad’s asleep.’

  ‘How’s he been?’ Sally asked, taking off her coat and moving into the kitchen to put the kettle on. The woman followed her.

  ‘A bit het up this afternoon. Asking for your mother, but he calmed down later.’

  Pulling out a chair, Jean sat down. For the previous three years she had acted as a part-time carer for Sally’s father, who was approaching the last stages of Alzheimer’s. At times she wondered how Sally coped with her full-time job at the care home and a senile father. How did an attractive, intelligent woman in her thirties take to being an incessant carer? Didn’t she ever get sick of emptying bedpans and listening to interminable stories from the past and long to escape? Weren’t there moments of complete despair as she walked from the care home across the green to the semi where her father was fading, hour by hour?

  A couple of times over the years Sally had confided that she had wanted to go to art school. She’d been talented, she said – top of her class. But her mother’s early death and her father’s already erratic behaviour had prevented her from leaving home, and the need for a proper wage had shattered any illusions of pursuing a painting career. So instead of studying Michelangelo, she had started work in a nearby care home for the elderly, shelving Rodin for Radio 4 and incontinence pads.

  If there was any bitterness, Sally never showed it. And if Jean had been told about her being a bit the worse for wear in the local pub, who the hell could blame her? Even the rumours about Sally sleeping around she had shrugged off. You had to find comfort somewhere, Jean had told her husband, and that poor cow’s got precious little else going in her life.

  ‘So he’s asleep now?’ Sally asked, passing Jean a mug of tea. ‘Maybe he’ll sleep through.’

  ‘You should get someone in at night—’

  ‘Yeah, right!’ Sally laughed. ‘And how do I pay them? I can just about cover your wages.’

  ‘You need more help.’

  Shrugging, Sally sat down. ‘You know something? I was talking to one of the residents at the home and she said that when she was forty she’d had her first child. Forty.’ Sally gazed across the kitchen. ‘I mean, that was old then, but she did it. And it made me think that I could still have a shot at it … That’s if I ever meet anyone.’

  ‘You’re good-looking—’

  ‘That’s bugger all to do with it. It’s not attracting men, it’s getting to keep the right one,’ Sally replied, changing the subject. ‘Anyway, I was looking at Dad yesterday and he looked pretty good. You know, not so thin. Maybe he’s putting on a bit of weight?’

  ‘I don’t think so, love.’

  ‘Nah, maybe not. I’m just imagining things. I know he can’t get better, I’m not kidding myself. I know he’s dying.’ She sipped her tea. ‘I just wonder sometimes how long. I mean, I love him …’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘… but I wonder how long it’ll go on. Because you see, I don’t have him. Not my father. I’ve got someone else who looks like my father. And I don’t know who he is, and sometimes, at night, I think about it and wonder if I owe this man. You know what I mean? If my father doesn’t know me, do I have to know him?’ She shook her head. ‘I know I do! I know I have to look after my father for as long as it takes. But I can’t help thinking that every time he deteriorates, a bit of me does too, and I don’t want to be dried out at forty.’

  Hurriedly standing, Sally moved over to the washing machine and piled in some dirty clothes. With the light on in the kitchen and the blinds open, she could see her reflection in the window and the image of Jean behind her, and wondered about Eddie Gilmore. About whether he would ever ring.

  It never occurred to her that as she studied her reflection in the window someone was also looking in at her. Someone who had watched her laughing, getting drunk, larking about in the pub. Someone who had seen her kissing Eddie Gilmore. Someone who had been about when she left home at seven in the early morning darkness. The same someone who had followed her home across the green that night.

  That night, and every other night, for the past three days.

  8

  Gaspare Reni sat at the table, gazing out into the walled garden of his house. What had served him as an extraordinary home and gallery for over forty years had once been a convent for a silent order of nuns. In among the gloss and activity of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, it had served as a reflective nucleus of a changing world. Wars, the deaths of monarchs and the scandals of empire had passed beyond its gates, while nuns in meditative silence made pleas to Heaven.

  Minutes earlier Gaspare had received a phone call from the Countess di Fattori, telling him of the murder of her daughter, Seraphina. He had flinched at the words, thinking of the last sight he had had of her, walking out into the London street, her hand raised, illuminated in the lamplight. Her coat had dried by the time she had left. And she wasn’t carrying any parcel. Not any more. She had left the painting with Gaspare.

  He had thought that would be enough to save her. He had been wrong.

  And now, here was her mother, an old friend of his, trying to make sense out of the insensible. ‘Her body was—’

  She spoke quickly, almost as though she thought he could catch her distress.

  ‘—the skin was taken off her.’

  No! thought Gaspare, taking in a breath. No.

  ‘They skinned her.’

  No.

  ‘I don’t know why …’ The woman, the mother, paused. Her words came from another place inside her. Raw from the heart. ‘When you saw her, was Seraphina worried about anything?’

  What do I say? Gaspare wondered. Confess? Tell an old friend, a grieving mother, that her child had found a painting which had indirectly killed her? How could he tell her that? What difference would it make? Seraphina would still be dead, still in a Venetian morgue with the water lapping at the city’s wooden supports underneath her. And even if he told her mother abo
ut the Titian, how would he explain? Talk to her of rumours, old stories long buried? Or maybe he should tell her of The Skin Hunter. Maybe comfort her with the memory of a man who had once terrorised Venice.

  ‘Seraphina said she had visited you in London,’ her mother continued. ‘I know she enjoyed herself but she was glad to be home, glad to be back with her husband … I wondered if there was anything you had to tell me? Tell any of us? Is there anything, Gaspare?’

  He said no.

  Negative.

  Nothing to tell.

  He said no because there was nothing else he could say that would help or give any comfort. But when Gaspare had put down the phone, severed the frail, terrible connection to Venice, he stared out of the window at the walled garden and thought of the portrait he had hidden in the rafters, high above his head. Looking upwards, his gaze scanned the painted ceiling, his pulse quickening.

  … It was said that if the portrait of Angelico Vespucci ever emerged, so would the man.

  Hadn’t he said those words? Repeated the old belief? Not knowing if he truly believed the superstition, but wary enough to accept the possibility? He had had two people to consider. Two young people. One of whom was now dead. Closing his eyes, Gaspare fought grief. If only Seraphina hadn’t seen the painting, hadn’t picked it up, hadn’t brought it to him. If only she had been looking the other way, or the tide had been going out, not coming in.

  ‘Gaspare?’ He turned to see Nino approach. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Seraphina’s dead.’

  Shaken, Nino moved over to the old man and touched his shoulder. He had only met Seraphina once, but he had liked her. ‘A car accident?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  Gaspare turned slowly in his seat. Above his head the portrait was propped up against one of the roof’s rafters, a blanket thrown over the canvas to protect – and cover – it.

  ‘She was murdered—’

  Nino stared at him. ‘What?’

  ‘They found her in the Lido …’

  Nino could see from the old man’s face that there was more to it. ‘How did she die?’

  ‘I suppose they’ll have more details when the pathologist has examined her—’

  ‘But you know, don’t you? Tell me.’

  ‘She was found murdered. Her body was flayed …’ Gaspare said, turning away. ‘I should have stopped her leaving. I should have done something.’

  ‘How could you have known what would happen?’

  ‘Because I knew something would!’ Gaspare snapped. ‘I knew as soon as I saw that painting of Angelico Vespucci. For centuries people believed that if the painting re-emerged, he would too.’

  ‘That’s nonsense!’ Nino said shortly. ‘Dead men don’t resurrect themselves. It was a story, Gaspare, nothing but a story—’

  ‘Yet Seraphina found the portrait and now she’s dead.’

  ‘But Vespucci didn’t do it! Gaspare, someone killed Seraphina, but not someone – or something – supernatural. It’s not possible … You know that, don’t you?’ He paused, wary. ‘Where’s the painting now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Nino replied, looking around him. ‘You could have hidden that bloody thing in this place and no one would find it for years.’

  ‘I dumped it,’ Gaspare said, the lie smooth.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In a skip. On Kensington High Street,’ Gaspare replied. ‘I dumped it the night Seraphina came here. When I looked this morning, the skip had gone.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. You’d never have got rid of that Titian.’ He poured two whiskies, passing one to Gaspare and then sitting down. ‘Go on, drink it, then we’ll talk about what we’re going to do.’

  Obediently, the dealer sipped his drink. His panic had subsided; in the face of Nino’s logic the idea of Vespucci’s resurrection seemed ridiculous. But then again, Seraphina had found the picture. And now she was dead.

  ‘Why would someone kill her?’ he asked Nino.

  ‘A robbery gone bad?’

  ‘Maybe … But why was she killed like that?’ Gaspare countered, finally glancing back at him. ‘And why now, when the portrait’s re-emerged?’

  ‘Coincidence?’

  ‘That she might have been followed from London and murdered in Venice after she had found a portrait of a man who had killed in exactly the same way?’ Gaspare clicked his tongue. ‘Coincidence, no. No, I don’t believe it.’

  ‘What else could it be?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gaspare admitted. ‘Maybe Seraphina told someone she’d found the portrait.’

  ‘You told her not to.’

  ‘She was a woman and women talk – they can’t help it sometimes,’ Gaspare said, taking another drink of the whisky. ‘Seraphina had gone home to Venice. It would have been hard to put the story out of her mind in the city where Vespucci had once lived. Could you keep it a secret? I doubt she could. Seraphina’s parents are cultured; it would have been fascinating for them. Perhaps she couldn’t resist confiding …’ He paused, shaking his head, remembering the phone conversation. ‘No, her mother knew nothing. She was asking me what I knew.’

  ‘What about Seraphina’s husband?’ Nino queried. ‘Wives talk to their husbands. She could have easily told him. Asked him to keep it a secret, but then he slipped up.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What does he do for a living?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘She said he was American. Perhaps he talked about the portrait to a dealer back home and the dealer confronted Seraphina about it?’

  ‘No, not a dealer,’ Gaspare replied thoughtfully. ‘A runner more like. There are hundreds of small-time crooks in the art world, all hustling each other and scrabbling after the latest rumour or find. They live off the scraps dealers throw them for tips or information. Italy, in particular, has a massive trade in art crime. Paintings change hands or are stolen to order and then exported all over the world. Only recently a member of the mob confessed that the famous Caravaggio in Palermo was taken by the Mafia in the seventies.’

  ‘So someone could have challenged Seraphina – but she wouldn’t tell them anything. Wouldn’t admit to finding the portrait. Or tell them where it was.’

  ‘And they killed her?’

  ‘Maybe that part was an accident.’

  ‘So why do that to her body?’

  Nino finished his drink and shrugged. ‘You’re the art dealer, I’m just guessing. But if this was a film, what better way to bring the painting to the forefront of everyone’s imagination than by copying the murder method of the infamous sitter?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve often said that to raise the interest and value of a picture you need publicity—’

  ‘Not murder.’

  ‘It wouldn’t work for you or me, but for some it would. You said yourself, people collect sick stuff. And this portrait is a Titian. It could be that the murder was an accident and the killer made use of the Vespucci legend to reignite the story.’

  Nino could see Gaspare shift in his seat, and pressed him. ‘You still have it, don’t you?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Don’t bother denying it, Gaspare, but think about it. Perhaps having the portrait puts you in danger.’

  ‘I’m an old man. Why should I care what happens to me?’

  ‘I care. I care about Seraphina too. She didn’t deserve to die.’ Nino paused, thinking. ‘You should back off. You’re too old. I need your brain – the brawn I can supply.’

  Puzzled, the dealer stared at him. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘I know about the painting and Vespucci – probably as much as anyone else does now. I speak three languages, including Italian. I’ve been all over the world, travel comes easy, and people talk to me. Let me try to find out what happened.’

  Immediately, Gaspare put up his hands.

  ‘Let the police handle it—’

&n
bsp; ‘I’m not going to interfere with the Italian police. I just want to ask around a bit.’

  ‘You’ve been seriously ill—’

  ‘I’m fit now,’ Nino persisted.

  ‘It’s dangerous.’

  ‘Is it? Maybe so, maybe not. There might be no connection between Seraphina’s death and the portrait. But if there is, we need to find out what.’

  ‘Leave it to the experts—’

  ‘There are no experts in this! It’s about Seraphina, her death, a painting and Angelico Vespucci.’ He put down his glass, turning to the dealer. ‘I’m fit again and I need to work. You won’t let me pay for my keep – or repay you for what you’ve done for me – so let me repay you this way.’ He pulled his chair closer to the old man. ‘I’m a quick learner, you know that. I’m used to dealing with people and I don’t scare easily. That picture came here. You can’t undo that. It came to you – and now Seraphina’s dead. I want to know why.’ He held the dealer’s gaze. ‘Tell me you don’t want the same.’

  Venice, 1555

  There was a rumour that the plague was returning to Venice, but this time we were spared, the merchants and the rich leaving their palaces and strutting about the piazzas like cockerels spared the knife. There is a fashion here for the men: at night the cloth covering their genitals is transparent, and some hang bells and tie ribbons on their appendages.

  Meanwhile the industrious Titian is working on his latest portrait: a sitter known to Aretino, as licentious a man as any in Venice. Angelico Vespucci. When the contract was first signed Vespucci was respected, known to the Church, a giver of alms, a man loved by his servants for his kindness. They say he was gentle. They say he was generous. They say he loved his wife as no man had ever loved a woman before. Such was the noble merchant Aretino brought to the studio of Titian. Such was the sitter whose likeness was drawn out in red chalk.

  The plague never came to Venice. Some other sickness came in its stead. On the night of November 11th the corpse I had seen dragged from the Lido was finally identified as Larissa Vespucci. When the news spilt over the city Venice talked of little else. And while her lover fled to Rome, she was buried in the Vespucci crypt on the Island of St Michael. Skinned like a fish, like a rabbit, a dog, like vermin. Skinned, relieved of the beauty she had over-used.