Isle of the Dead

by Alex Connor

  I wanted to find out about the victims, but after spending two months searching for clues in 2008, I hit a brick wall. So I changed emphasis and looked at Angelico Vespucci himself.

  Nino turned the page to find the familiar face looking up at him, in a variety of depictions of The Skin Hunter. As well as a copy of Titian’s portrait, there were several reproductions of engravings and a sepia sketch. Curious, Nino studied it. The sketch was high quality, even he could see that. Vespucci was turned towards the artist, his expression extraordinary. He had the same unreadable, heavy-lidded eyes, but there was a tremor about the mouth, a look of unease which bordered on instability. The sketch seemed to catch the man in an unguarded moment, when his features could not fully contain his character.

  It was chilling.

  Vespucci’s origins are unclear, Johnny’s notes continued. He seemed to come to Venice out of the ether. But he came with a great fortune around 1539, and was living on the Grand Canal by 1541, in a magnificent palazzo. Throwing extravagant parties, with the finest wines and foods imported, he became a popular figure. Generous and affable, he was well liked, but apparently he had a servant flogged publicly for serving bad oysters. Vespucci was very generous to the Church and worshipped at the San Salvatore, marrying Larissa Fiorsetti in 1546. (This much is in the records. After that it gets more difficult.) Nothing else is heard of him until 1549, when his daughter was born. His wife Larissa was, by all accounts, a great beauty. (See photos of contemporary paintings.)

  Nino paused, picking up the images of the glorious Larissa Vespucci. She had been an opulent beauty, full-fleshed, redhaired, her mouth tilting up at the corners. He could see at once why Angelico Vespucci would have fallen in love with her. And why he might well have been possessive. How could he not have been? She would have drawn attention anywhere. How difficult would that have been for a unprepossessing man like Vespucci to endure?

  Stretching his arms above his head, Nino yawned, then finished his coffee. Outside it was now fully dark and he drew the curtains, locking the doors front and back before returning to the notes.

  The next mention of Vespucci is in 1555, when he is referred to by Pietro Aretino. Known as ‘The Scourge of Kings’, this heavyweight had considerable influence in Venice, his friendship with Titian alone making him a powerful figure in the city. What Titian liked about Aretino is anyone’s guess; he was a crude man, but he was very productive in the promotion of the artist’s work. He travelled abroad, spoke to kings and courtiers, and generally acted as Titian’s agent. So it’s not surprising when Aretino mentions that he has arranged for Titian to paint Angelico Vespucci’s portrait.

  Vespucci was respectable at this time. Larissa was still alive. (I had some difficulty accessing the records. There is mention of a boy dying and a girl surviving. All my efforts to trace any living descendants of Vespucci have come to nothing. Either there are none, or they changed their name to avoid scandal.) It was in October 1555 that the contract for the portrait was drawn up, the sittings to be commenced in November. See notebook 2.

  Sighing, Nino reached for the second volume. The writing picked up immediately from where the first had left off, only this time the notes were different – short, without the conversational tone. It was as though Johnny Ravenscourt was trying to distance himself in his writing.

  4th November 1555 – Larissa Vespucci found murdered and skinned.

  Suspicion fell on Vespucci, but his protectors rallied round him. Larissa had been unfaithful.

  Aretino stands up for Vespucci.

  Titian continues painting the portrait.

  November 26th 1555 – Claudia Moroni found murdered and skinned.

  Venice in the worst winter for over a century. Fogs constant, temperatures below zero. The legend of The Skin Hunter begins.

  Thoughtful, Nino put the portraits of Claudia Moroni and Larissa Vespucci side by side. There were no physical similarities between the two women, the unremarkable Claudia looking more like a housewife than an adulteress. Stretching across the table, Nino then placed the images of Seraphina and Sally Egan above the two murdered Venetian women. Again, no similarities, not obvious ones anyway. Disappointed, he frowned. Perhaps there wasn’t a connection between a killer in the sixteenth century and another in the twenty-first century. Perhaps it was just coincidence.

  And then again, perhaps it wasn’t.

  Taking a deep breath, Nino read on. Outside, it grew dark. In its shrine, the figure of Christ bent His head to the traffic, and as the lights changed on Kensington High Street a plane came in to land at Heathrow Airport. It carried one hundred and seventy-five passengers.

  And one of them was a killer.

  20

  Six o’clock and the tide was in, nuzzling the Thames Embankment, as Triumph Jones sat on one of the benches overlooking the river. He had felt compelled to come to London, his guilt forcing his hand. Such vanity, he thought – how could he have had such vanity? His eyes closed momentarily, then opened again, stinging in the December wind. His ego had overridden his sense, his morals, and now the plan he had set in motion had spun out of control.

  Leaning forward, he watched the river, remembering how, days earlier, he had taken a taxi and asked to be dropped off at Grosvenor Bridge. There he had paused, looking around and waiting. Finally he spotted a woman a little way off, and ducked behind one of the struts of the bridge to avoid being seen. He waited, certain that she was coming closer, then threw the portrait of Angelico Vespucci over the railings and into the ebbing tide. It hit the water with a hefty splash, the woman turning as Triumph watched.

  He knew it had still been something of a gamble. What if there had been some alteration in the flow? Or some boat causing a wake that spun the Titian away from the bank? Or worse, what if it had remained in the water and been irrevocably damaged?

  Still hiding, Triumph had seen the woman react. Surprised, she looked into the water, the Titian following a sudden push of tide and washing up on to the shingle. Relieved, Triumph had then seen the slight figure scramble down the grit towards it. Once she nearly lost her balance on the wet silt, but she recovered and, after looking carefully at the package, had picked it up.

  Exhaling, Triumph had walked off in the opposite direction. His plan had been set in motion. Let the games begin …

  Taking in a breath, he clasped his hands together, trying to stop them shaking. It had been a ploy to excite the interest of the art world, to push up the price of a notorious painting. A painting which had come his way via a thief in Madrid and a forger in San Francisco. A Titian everyone would be after. What better way to get a notorious work back on to the market than to have it found by accident? How much publicity could be generated by such a story?

  Like many in the art world, Triumph had known about The Skin Hunter and was now relying on its gory reputation to start up a media scramble. Everyone knew that serial killers sold copy.

  It hadn’t mattered to Triumph who found the portrait or where it had ended up. The fact that it came to rest with Gaspare Reni was a bonus, unexpected but irrelevant. He had calculated that whoever found the Titian would sell to a gallery or put it in an auction – where he would buy it. It might cost him more, but after a little while he would sell it on and make an impressive profit while bolstering his own reputation at the same time.

  Of course he had known that it could go another way. But if anyone tried to organise a sale illegally, Triumph would hear of that too. He hadn’t earned his sobriquet by relying on the good nature of mankind. Over the years he had employed staff to run his gallery and his home, and hired a few others who lurked in the swamp of the art world, privy to unsavoury and dangerous secrets.

  It should have been so simple.

  And then Seraphina Morgan, aka Seraphina di Fattori, was murdered and flayed. The woman who had found the painting was dead – and the portrait was gone … Triumph hadn’t believed what Gaspare Reni had told him. The old dealer would never have destroyed a Titian. What he hadn�
��t expected was that Gaspare would keep it and hide it. Far from the portrait coming on to the market in a blast of notoriety, it had been concealed again.

  Worse was to follow. Having set someone to watch Gaspare’s gallery, his scrutiny had been too late. Gaspare Reni had already been admitted to hospital, after ‘a fall’. It wasn’t difficult to read the subtext. Somehow Triumph had been outwitted; before he could buy the Titian from Gaspare Reni the picture had been stolen. And worse, in a matter of days another woman had been killed. Another woman murdered in exactly the same manner as the first.

  No one had to tell him that there was a connection.

  For the first time in his life, Triumph Jones felt cursed. Everything he had wanted, he had achieved. The art world was becoming giddy with the leaking news of the Titian. How long before it was common knowledge? He had wanted that, but not what followed. How long before some hack made the front page by pairing the legend of The Skin Hunter with the deaths of Seraphina Morgan and Sally Egan?

  And it was his fault. He’d built up the rumour, nourished the seed. There had been a killer called Angelico Vespucci, and a legend. Along with a shattering threat – when the portrait emerges, so will the man. That had been Triumph’s plan, to utilise the fable when he had the cursed painting in his possession.

  Ashamed, he thought back. God, he had hardly been able to believe his luck, that the infamous portrait should end up in his hands. But then greed had entered the equation. How could he ensure that the picture got on to the front pages, his coup publicised globally, adding another victory to his roll-call of triumphs? And so he resurrected a legend. Polished, embellished, refined, the tale taking its time to marinate, so that its revelation would be all the more newsworthy when the portrait came to light …

  Shivering, Triumph wrapped his coat around him, still staring into the water. What had he done? What had he called up? The thought unnerved him. Of course Angelico Vespucci couldn’t come back from the dead. It was absurd. And yet two women had been murdered by the same means The Skin Hunter had employed over four hundred years earlier. So something had happened. Triumph’s actions had triggered something.

  Unsettled, he grabbed at the comfort of a human villain. Maybe a killer copying The Skin Hunter? It was possible, Triumph thought, God knows, it was possible.

  But it was still his fault. Two young women were dead. And his conscience floundered under the weight of their deaths.

  21

  Narita International Airport, Tokyo

  Harriet Forbes came off the 18.06 flight from London irritable and tired. A bad journey hadn’t improved her temper and the thought of having to check into her hotel and then return a list of phone calls depressed her. What, she asked herself, was the point of promoting yet another nail polish? What the shit did anyone need with another varnish? She waited for her luggage, tapping her foot impatiently, her short hair greasy, her face sullen with bad temper and lack of sleep.

  Of course, if she had had the guts, she would have got out of PR years ago. But now she was forty-six, at the top of her game, and earning impressive amounts of money. Her friends were envious, coveting the first-class flights and the goodie bags dished out at every promotional event. Goodie bags worth more than a week’s wage for most people. And all in the name of eyeshadows and lipsticks.

  Harriet had grown bored with the lotions which had undergone intensive, ground-breaking scientific research and promised superb results. They never delivered, of course. But she promoted them because she was paid to. Paid to keep her own make-up pristine, her urchin face and figure perfectly in tune with the fashion, her clothes following the messianic dictates of Dolce and Gabbana and Vivienne Westwood. She wore Rouge Noir on her nails, until it was commonplace, then switched to Jade. Her perfume depended on which launch she was attending, her scent in tune with whichever paymaster was signing off her expenses that week.

  It was all so very chic. So very covetable. But all so very anodyne. As her friends had married, had children or divorced, Harriet had spun like a gadfly around the continents. She didn’t see that she had aged until it was too late. She didn’t notice that she was lonely until she realised it was three years since she had broken up with Arlene. And all that had been kept a secret, because a lesbian wasn’t supposed to know about fashion and beauty. And because, if she was honest, Harriet didn’t like being gay. The fact that she was attracted to women had been an embarrassment to her, only made acceptable when she entered a secure, long-term relationship with Arlene. But when that broke up, part of Harriet’s self-image broke too. Suppressing her lesbian feelings, she found it easier to stay busy and deny herself any close relationship.

  Reaching for her luggage, Harriet pulled the case off the carousel, moving away when she saw a man watching her. It was strange how much attention she received from men. It was ironic how many were attracted to her, never suspecting her inclinations … Sighing, she made for Customs, passed through and then paused, deciding she would go to the Ladies before she left the airport.

  Entering the door marked with the Japanese symbol for toilet, Harriet walked in. Nodding to two uniformed cleaning women, she moved into a cubicle and relieved herself, taking a moment to straighten her clothes before she washed her hands. Her image in the mirror annoyed her and after fiddling with her hair for a few moments she lost patience. Then she found, to her amazement, that she was crying.

  The sobs came deep and low as Harriet sat on her suitcase and clenched her fists. What had she done? Why had she wasted her life? Not taken enough time to think it out, to plan. She was meticulous, clever, practical in her work – why had she been so casual with her life? It was all so much waste. Days, weeks, months spent talking about foundation and primers, discussing the subtleties of colours which few customers would even notice. Why did it matter if the lipliner was taupe rather than bisque this year? It was all so fucking stupid, so small, so pointless. So undemanding.

  Her hands clenched even tighter, nails scraping her palms. When she started she had had such ambition! A few years in fashion and beauty, then set up her own PR company and move on to health and lifestyle. She had imagined that she would then progress into interior design, investigating how a person’s mood could be altered by a colour or a painting. Then, finally, she would enter the world of antiques. She had so much knowledge about art. Had, for a time, been fixed on the idea of working in an auction house. But in the end she had changed tack – and all her culture had been wasted. She had fallen for the almighty dollar, then the almighty yen.

  Empty, Harriet stared at the tiled floor of the washroom, unable to find the energy to move. She despised herself. Despised turning her back on the woman she had been, to become an automaton circling the globe and chattering endlessly about mascara. In her twenties she would have cringed to see herself now, would never have believed that someone erudite enough to write about art would sell themselves out for cash.

  But maybe it wasn’t too late, she thought hopefully. She had put quite a bit of money aside. She could give up the beauty business and nurture her intelligence instead. It would be difficult – and financially tough – to make the switch, but anything was better than sitting in a Japanese toilet, trying to work up enough energy to get a cab to another dreary Hilton hotel.

  Rising to her feet, Harriet lifted her case and slung her handbag over her right shoulder. She was tired, drained, but ready to step off the goodie train, stop the antidepressants, sleeping pills and amphetamines and get her mind clear. It wasn’t too late, she told herself as she moved to leave the toilet cubicle.

  But it was.

  As the door opened Harriet felt a blow to her face which was so violent it knocked her backwards, splitting her nose and sending blood down her throat. Choking, she fell on to the tiled floor, cracking her head and falling into semiconsciousness. But she was still aware. Harriet Forbes lived long enough to see her attacker lock the door. Lived long enough to feel the knife tearing through her flesh and ripping into her organs.
Lived long enough to feel – in her dying moments – her skin being severed, then torn from her breasts.

  Venice, 1555

  A banquet was held last evening in one of the palaces on Grand Canal, a little way from the Rialto and opposite the fish market. Pietro Aretino, defying the cold and the elements, invited the elite of Venice to attend, his pack of cohorts ready to greet the hardy who ventured out into the bitter night. As before, I watched him. As before, he saw nothing of me. Yet he seemed more callous than usual, his hair dyed black, his girth hardly encased in cloth of gold.

  Beside him at the table sat Titian. Elegantly reserved, good-humoured and attentive to the ladies present, he wore his brilliance lightly and was all the more admirable for his humility. In a blatant effort to impress, a feast was served on solid silver plates, and when the diners finished, Aretino ordered the servants not to clear the plates but to throw them out of the window. Such is his wealth. His vulgarity amused those present, yet later, outside and beyond sight of the company, I saw the servants pulling in nets from the water, saving the silver dishes from the clutch of the outgoing tide.

  Reserved, Titian remained in his seat while the bawdy Aretino danced with some of the most celebrated women in the city. Once or twice I saw the artist sketching in a little notepad he always carries with him, then applauding as the Contessa di Fattori rose to dance. The clock was striking the half hour after midnight when she excused herself from Aretino’s grip and took another dancing partner, Angelico Vespucci.

  He dances with perfection, but his vices tell on him, the dark lidded eyes puffy, his mouth a little slack as he moves in time to the music. His hands open and close like the mouths of drowning men, his palms unnaturally white. And as he moves in step with di Fattori the candles about them shuffle and belch their smoke.