by Alex Connor
‘Maybe.’
‘Yes, maybe,’ she agreed. ‘It’s like recovering from an anaesthetic. I feel I can breathe again. If I want to. If I choose to.’ She paused, as though she was considering her options there and then. After a moment, she spoke again. ‘Seraphina’s dead. I want to know who killed her. I know why—’
Nino was taken aback. ‘You know why?’
‘Angelico Vespucci killed his victims because they were immoral. Seraphina was immoral too.’ Her head went up, her eyes fixed on her visitor. ‘You think it pleases me to say this about my own daughter? No – but it is the truth nonetheless. All the time Seraphina was growing up I’d look at her and wonder why she behaved so recklessly. At nineteen she left Venice and travelled the world. I imagine she had many lovers. We had nothing in common, Mr Bergstrom. I married young and remained married, without taking a lover.’ She looked around her, tensing as her gaze fell on a painting of a red-haired woman. Nino didn’t have to ask who the sitter was. ‘That’s Melania. Seraphina inherited the worst of her ancestor’s traits … I used to worry that something would happen to her, but when she came back to Venice and married Tom Morgan, she was content.’ The Contessa paused, then continued in the same quiet, listless tone. ‘I believed she’d changed. After all, they were in love. But Tom Morgan was lazy, let his business slide, took risks, took drugs.’
‘Did Seraphina?’
‘No, she said not. She had no interest in drugs, or in drinking. She didn’t need it, she said, she was always full of life. Too full of life. To my amazement she continued her education, worked as a scientist, using her brain. She could separate her life into little containers, into pigeon-holes: career, family, husband, lovers.’
‘So she was unfaithful to Tom Morgan?’
‘After the first thrill of marriage wore off, Seraphina started looking around.’ The Contessa caught Nino’s gaze and held it. ‘Venetians close ranks against outsiders, but people here knew her reputation. It was only when she became pregnant that I was hopeful. Maybe, at last, she’d settle down.’
‘What about her husband? Did Tom Morgan have lovers?’
‘Too lazy,’ the Contessa said dismissively. ‘He likes to get “high”, to lounge about. He’s no taste for seduction. To be honest, I imagine he would find it tiring.’
‘But he knew about Seraphina’s lovers?’
‘Isn’t the question “Did he care?”’
‘Did he?’
‘He cared for comfort, for money, for a soft life,’ she replied. ‘He cared for my daughter, but never enough. Do I think he killed her? He could have done …’
Nino took in a breath as she continued.
‘But when I heard about the other deaths, the murders so like Seraphina’s, then I doubted it. It would take planning, cunning and energy – not traits Tom Morgan possesses.’ Her gaze moved downwards to her hands. ‘But then Gaspare told me about the Titian portrait and I started to think again. The painting would be worth a fortune. An easy way for a lazy man to get rich.’
‘But Seraphina never told you about the portrait?’
‘No. But then a wife tells a husband more than a woman tells her mother,’ she replied perceptively. ‘Seraphina could have told Tom Morgan. And he could have been tempted … And if he killed her, I want to know. I have to know.’ She rose to her feet. ‘Read the papers, Mr Bergstrom. Read what Melania di Fattori wrote. She knew The Skin Hunter. She was his lover. If you’re hoping to find Vespucci’s imitator, perhaps you should first learn more about the original.’
45
‘I need your help,’ Nino said, ringing Gaspare from Venice. ‘The Contessa di Fattori has given me some information—’
‘She said she was going to.’
‘Why did you tell her what was going on?’
‘The woman’s lost her daughter, and her marriage has broken up. What reason was there to keep it a secret from her? She deserves to know. If she was still with her husband I wouldn’t have told her, but the Contessa’s smart, she can handle it.’ Gaspare paused. ‘So, what did you want me to do?’
‘Time’s running out. I’ve got to find the last victim. So I want you to trace every woman who’s ever been connected to Angelico Vespucci—’
‘What!’
‘Go on the internet and see what’s been done on The Skin Hunter. We know about the copy of the portrait, and the article. The last victim has to have a link.’
‘It could be anything.’
‘I know!’ Nino snapped back. ‘But what else have we got to go on? I’ll read the stuff I was given, and then talk to Tom Morgan again. Incidentally, Seraphina’s baby wasn’t his.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘It’s true. Her mother told me.’ Nino sighed. ‘Every time I turn round there’s another corridor leading off to God knows where. Motives in motives, claims and counterclaims. No one’s what they seem.’ He was thinking aloud. ‘Less than two weeks, Gaspare. That’s all we’ve got. We have to discover the link to the victim. We have to.’
Finishing the call, Nino turned back to the papers the Contessa had given him, drawing them out of the envelope and laying them side by side. There were three pages of handwritten Italian, the writing baroque.
November 1555
He is harvesting and speaks of nothing else. As for Aretino, such a conscience there, he worships Titian like a god and yet thinks nothing of deceiving him. Last night I lay with him again, Angelico Vespucci coming later, when the boar had finished. He watches, like he watches his pet whores, sweats in his excitement, his body wheezing with the thrust of pleasure.
Aretino writes of me in his books, gives me another name, as though I cannot guess the subterfuge. Poor Aretino, so very foolish for a clever man. And yesterday, when the rain stopped for an hour come afternoon, I chose another whore for my Vespucci …
Nino stopped reading, the words staring up at him from the page.
… a little Jewish girl, come from Milan a month ago. She is naive and compliant; I think maybe he will love her. As he did the merchant’s wife.
Claudia Moroni was a whim of mine. A response to a rumour I had heard some months before. I courted her, came to her home, flattered her into a friendship, then brought her to Vespucci.
He loved her within hours. Not for her appearance, which was poor, but for her wickedness.
‘God,’ Nino said softly. Contessa di Fattori, the whore of Venice, the consort of a murderer, was also Vespucci’s procuress.
I watched her plead with him to keep her silence, but he’d have none of it. She lies with her brother – and so Vespucci wants her.
He tells me that he feels her corruption on his skin, that it dries like mud against his fingers. He licks his lips as though he can taste her poison, and calls her to him, time after time.
She comes across St Mark’s, the priest with her. Passes through the bronze archway leading to Vespucci’s room.
The priest sits fingering his rosary outside. He pays no mind to me, and so I watch the merchant’s wife pay for her sins to stay secret.
At first Vespucci thought to make me jealous. Thought I would bay at the moon for him. And so I took the writer as my lover …
Frowning, Nino stared at the words, remembering the portrait of Melania in the palazzo.
Provoked, Vespucci now thinks to take me from Aretino, tells me such tales, but I’ll have none of it. All lovers lie. Until, until …
His wife was found last evening in the Lido, stripped of her skin. He said he keeps it for her, promising to dress her when they meet in Hell. I still thought him a liar. A spinner of tales to court me, a cruel narrator scratching for some alchemy to keep me to his bed. I rolled upon him, begged to be given facts …
He told me, curled the words out with his tongue, spoke of how he peeled the skins away and hid them. He will not tell me where, he taunts me with it, speaks of adding more.
And now Claudia Moroni has been found. Vespucci promised to craft a garment for me, to fashion a chemise from h
er dead hide. Afraid, I left for the mainland.
I thought Vespucci would follow, but it wasn’t him. Instead came Aretino, begging my return. He said it was a jest, a bed sport, a bragging to make a woman moan …
I knew if I went back I would never leave again. I knew if I lay with Vespucci, felt his hands working my flesh, that he would work my soul.
When I next saw him he was washing himself, and the water that left his skin had blood in it.
Shaken, Nino pushed the notes aside and stood up. Melania, the Contessa di Fattori, had supplied Vespucci with his whores. Seraphina’s ancestor had colluded with a murderer. Willingly.
December 1555
The little Jewish girl I brought him has been found. Dead also … Aretino came to see me, lay against me in my bed, snuffled his girth against my back and pleaded Vespucci’s innocence. He tells me he is not what people say, and I should stand an ally to him. And I, drowsy with guilt, open my legs to him.
The portrait all of Venice talks about is nearly complete. Titian says nothing of it, only that it will be shown in the church where Vespucci worships. He says, come the last Sunday in December, the painting can be seen by any with the will to view it.
What Titian thinks of his sitter is impossible to know. Certainly he turns away from me whenever I approach and people have pinned papers to my door, condemning me.
‘The Whore of Venice’ I am called. Vespucci something else. His title, which will not grace his portrait – is that of Skin Hunter.
I know I will not live to see this black year’s end …
Melania, Contessa di Fattori, had been depraved. Her deviancy had kept her tied to a murderer, her sexuality condemning her.
Possibly that was where Seraphina had inherited her traits. It explained how it was possible for her to be an adulteress and pass off another man’s child as her husband’s. The young woman Nino had met in London weeks earlier had seemed uncomplicated, charming. Her death had been a shock. But now it was obvious why Seraphina had been the next victim. It wasn’t simply because of her relationship to the Contessa di Fattori, but because of her own sexual history.
They were alike, even in the way they met their end. Seraphina had not anticipated hers, but Melania had had a chance to escape – and had chosen not to. The fourth, and last, of the Skin’s Hunter’s victims, she was murdered and mutilated on 1 January, 1556.
While Nino was considering what he had just read, his mobile rang. He recognised the voice of Seraphina’s mother immediately.
‘Have you read the papers, Mr Bergstrom?’
‘Yes,’ he said uncertainly. ‘Have you?’
‘Should I?’
‘No, Contessa,’ Nino lied. ‘They’re of no importance. No importance at all.’
46
Tokyo, Japan
Jobo Kido wasn’t sure why, but the last three times he had gone online, there had been no response from the Vespucci website. Anxious, he had tried at different times of the day, with no success, until finally there was an answer.
Jobo: Where have you been?
Answer: What makes you think I’ve been anywhere?
Jobo: I couldn’t get a response.
Answer: I was angry with you. I don’t think you were very polite last time we spoke.
Jobo: I’m sorry.
Answer: You should be. If you want the Titian you play by my rules, not your own. It makes me wonder if you’ve been talking to someone.
Jobo: No, no one.
Answer: Not even the man with the white hair?
There was a long pause before Jobo answered gingerly.
Jobo: I don’t know who you mean.
Answer: Think very carefully, Mr Kido. Do you want the painting, or do you want to continue to lie to me and lose it? Who is the white-haired man?
His hands suspended over the keyboard, Jobo hesitated. If he gave Nino away would he be endangering him? But if he didn’t give him up, he would lose the Titian. He cursed inwardly. What was Nino Bergstrom to him? Until a few days ago, he had never met the man. Why should he give up such a prize to shield a comparative stranger?
All his life Jobo had been waiting to be at the top of his game. The Titian portrait would propel him into the artistic stratosphere, into that platinum orbit Triumph Jones and Farina Ahmadi inhabited. The portrait of Vespucci was his by rights.
Jobo: He’s called Nino Bergstrom.
Answer: What does he want?
Jobo: To catch you before you kill again.
Answer: Are you helping him?
Jobo: No.
Answer: Have you worked out the connection between the victims yet?
Jobo: No, how can I? I don’t know who the last victim is going to be.
Answer: What if I were to give you her name? Would you tell Mr Bergstrom? Or would you warn the victim?
Stunned, Jobo stared at the screen.
Answer: If you did either, you’d lose the Titian. So how much do you want it? Enough to sacrifice one life? Two lives?
Jobo: I’ll buy the painting off you.
Answer: It’s not for sale. It has to be earned. I’ll ask you again, Mr Kido. If I tell you the name of the next victim will you keep it a secret? Or will you let her die? If she dies, can you read about it later? Can you hear all the details and know you could have saved her? How much does the Titian really mean to you?
Agonised, Jobo stared at the words on the screen. His previous doubts had been annulled, his guilt suspended. And with Nino no longer sitting alongside him, Jobo Kido’s greed overrode his conscience.
Jobo: I want the Titian. I swear I won’t tell anyone who the next victim is.
Answer: Very good, Mr Kido. But if you’re not going to save her, why do you need to know? Until tomorrow.
On that note, the connection was severed.
47
England
He was watching her and thinking that he had chosen very well. She had an interest in his passion, a mutual connection, and she was young and attractive. Of course she was a whore, but she had to be or she wouldn’t be suitable.
The man stared at the photographs he had put on his computer, tilting his head to one side, his gaze tracing the line of her throat. Flaying a body wasn’t easy. At first he had presumed that it would be – merely a peeling away. But it hadn’t been like that at all. He had had to cut the flesh away from the muscle underneath, and that had taken sharp knives, not your usual kitchen utensils. In the end he had gone to a medical suppliers on Wigmore Street and bought a set of scalpels which had made skinning so much easier. Concentrating, he had sliced into the skin, making a V shape. When he had done that, he had lifted the bloodied flap and, holding it, had continued slicing it away from the body.
It had been very neat.
He had always thought of himself as a non-violent man, so it had been difficult for him to come to terms with what he had to do. But he wanted everything to be perfect – he wanted the homage to be exact– so the murders had been copied in every detail. And what he didn’t know in fact, he followed in instinct; imagining what Vespucci would do.
After the first killing he found the flaying stimulating, almost as though he had two victims, not one. Of course the corpse was blood-red when he had taken the skin away, but the hide was soft, supple. It rested in his hands, and after he had washed it, it took on a chamois leather, butter-soft quality. Sometimes he even draped it over his bare arms, feeling the dead skin resting on his own.
Sipping a mug of coffee, he relished his memories. He had first come across Angelico Vespucci at school. One of those chance findings in the library where he used to hide out to miss Games. Of course he had had to keep his studious side a secret – girls never went for nerds and his peers only admired the tough boys. It wouldn’t do for him, considered very cool, to be revealed as an intellectual.
So instead he studied in secret and polished his glossy outer image until he became more and more removed from his lower middle-class upbringing. His parents might be proud of
his brain, but that wasn’t what interested him; he wanted to feel something. Feeling had always been difficult. Over the years he had observed his mother crying when the dog was put to sleep, and his father overcome with affection at Christmas, happy with booze and sentimentality. He had watched them with curiosity. What was all this feeling everyone talked about? It was in films, books, computer games – feelings, feelings, always fucking feelings. But not for him. He didn’t feel anything.
But while he didn’t feel, he could mimic. He could replicate any emotion. As a copyist, he was second to none. And no one ever guessed. He left his childhood and slid into his teens without emotion. He attracted a girl and had sex with her, without emotion. He tried cutting himself with a knife, and felt nothing. Nothing he experienced, read or saw touched that hidden nub of feeling. If it was there at all.
But it was there. It was just a question of stimulating it. Of finding some trigger which would detonate him into life … His attention moved back to the girl’s photographs, then he entered the Vespucci website he had created. His gaze fed off the image of the Italian, the tips of his fingers resting longingly against the screen, tracing the bulbous eyes.
It was easy to remember when he had first heard of The Skin Hunter. The name had jolted him, given him a shift in the stomach, something he had never experienced before. The image, and the legend of a long-dead man, had evoked a feeling. A reaction so intense it had been almost sexual. A stripping away of all the dullness, until a waxen world seemed suddenly stained glass.
At last he was responding, and everything he read about Angelico Vespucci spiked his emotions. He revelled in the Italian’s murders and the details of the skinning, taking Vespucci’s feelings as his own. Somehow a dead killer had managed to skip the centuries and waken the psyche of a disaffected man.
After that first rush of adrenalin, he was addicted. Angelico Vespucci’s victims were not allotted sympathy: they had disappointed the merchant, deceived him, been less than he desired. Committing himself to research, he delved into the archives in Italy and London and on the web, and even visited Venice. His obsession growing, he fancied that Vespucci walked alongside him, taking them through the same dank, restricted alleyways he had once walked, the Italian throwing a shadow behind his own.