The Turin Shroud Secret (15 page)

Click, click. Click, click.
Heels on the concrete path.

Cough.
A throaty female hack, sign of a smoker, signs of someone coming up the stairs.

He stands and stretches the looped belt between his hands.

WALNUT PARK, LOS ANGELES

It looks like old times. The best of times. Happy times. Four plates of picked-clean chicken bones, kids licking spicy fingers.

Only this is the new time. An unforgettably bad time. Mitzi wipes her mouth with a KFC napkin. ‘Help me clear the table, girls.’

The twins are glad to. Anything other than see mom and dad fight. They push back their chairs and sweep up the takeaway tubs
and plates.

Only Mitzi hears noise outside. Only she has been expecting it. She follows the girls, closes the kitchen door behind her
and leans against it. Her daughters dump mess in the trash and don’t see the look on her face. Right about now uniformed cops
are piling through the front door she left open.

She hears Alfie shout, ‘What the fuck?’ Her heart jumps.

Amber’s running hot water in the sink and can’t hear a thing. Jade wipes her hands on a tea towel and sees her mom with her
back to the door. She knows something’s wrong. ‘Mom, what’s happening?’

Mitzi’s face offers no comfort. ‘Something that has to happen, baby.’

It has to be her dad. He’s in the front on his own. Jade tries to push past.

‘Leave it, honey, leave it.’

Amber’s backed up against the sink, staring at them both.

Mitzi wants to hug her and hold her. Tell her baby that it’s all okay. Everything will soon be all right.

There’s a meaty thump on the wood behind her head.

‘Ma’am, we need to speak with you.’ The voice is male, full of street grit and a West Coast drawl.

Mitzi swallows and opens up. Jade flies past her. There are two cops in the room. Big black guys who could play offense for
the Lakers.

No Alfie.

The furthest cop grabs Jade. ‘Slow up, Princess. Hang on there.’

Mitzi is with her in a flash. She holds her by the shoulders, looks her straight in the eyes. ‘Take your sister and go to
your room. Don’t argue with me.’ The instruction is more cop than mother. The teenager does as she’s told.

Mitzi stands in the room with the cops and the consequences of her actions. It’s for the best. If things had turned nasty
tonight, it could have been her being hauled away with her hands behind her back – and Alfie being carried out the back door
in a body bag.

‘You going to be okay, ma’am?’ The question comes from Officer Logan Connor, six-three and two-twenty pounds of raw LAPD uniformed
muscle.

‘I’m fine,’ she lies. ‘Just fine. Thanks for your help.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He gives her a respectful head tilt and
follows his partner to the front door. ‘We’ll sure take
good
care of your husband, ma’am.’

‘Hey! I don’t want anyone going Tyson on him. Please just get him downtown and book him. You’ve got my statement. I’ll be
in Homicide in the morning if anyone needs anything else.’

‘Understood.’ He looks at the swelling to her ear. ‘Might be worth having if you had the doctor examine you and photograph
any injuries.’ He sees her open her mouth and prepare to bawl him out. ‘I know you know your job, ma’am, and I’m not trying
to be smart. It’s just if we are to press charges, every bit of evidence helps.’

She knows he’s right. These cases are messy. ‘Thanks. I’ll think about it. She eases him outside. ‘Please don’t let anyone
cut up rough on him.’

‘You got it.’ He nods and heads to the squad car.

Mitzi shuts the door. Whatever Alfie’s done in the past she doesn’t want him roughed up now. She needs a clean conscience
over whatever’s going to happen next.

Prosecution.

If she goes through with things, he’s going to get processed, land a criminal record and have what remains of his life ripped
up. Can she really do that to him?

She climbs the stairs and goes into the kids’ room.

Jade is red-eyed and angry.

‘Honey—’

‘Leave me alone.’

Mitzi’s heart sinks. The kid needs space. The apple of her
father’s eye, she’s going to take some time to get used to things. It’ll take everyone some time. This certainly isn’t the
moment to bawl her out about letting Alfie in the house. Amber is sat silent on the end of her bed, looking blitzed by the
whole affair. Mitzi sits down and puts an arm around her. ‘We’ll be okay, baby. Everything will be fine in the end. We just
have to get through this bit.’

The thirteen-year-old snuggles tight and relaxes a little as her mom finger-brushes hair from her face.

‘I love you, sweetheart.’ She kisses the girl’s forehead. ‘And I’m always going to be there for you and your sister, you know
that, don’t you?’

‘I know, Mom – I know.’

BOYLE HEIGHTS, LOS ANGELES

Kim Bass has drunk too much vodka and smoked too much weed. But hell, a girl has to have some fun. She’s thinking about the
laughs she’s had and the extra money she’s made, as she fishes for the apartment door key in her purse. She wants to get inside,
take a leak, shower and sleep. Grab a little rest before life starts all over again.

She pushes open the front door then stumbles over the mat as she steps inside. The door slams behind her and she sprawls
face down in the dark. A sharp pain erupts in the back of her head. Her hair is yanked violently and a terrific force presses
painfully into the middle of her back and bends her upwards. If she could scream, she would bring the place down. But something
tight is around her throat choking her. She grabs at her neck. Her head smashes into the floor. An even more horrific weight
crushes her back. She can’t breathe now, let alone scream.

Blood pounds in her heart. Someone is choking her. Panic churns in her chest. For a split second the agony stops. She can
breathe. Cool air fills her lungs. Whatever is around her neck has gone slack.

Unseen hands turn her over. She pants for breath. He’s above her, in the darkness of her own home, she can sense him. A heavy
weight hits her chest. His knees are on her. She can smell him now.

Fish Face.

The boss at work who always smells of his fish lunches.

‘Em sends her love.’

One of his hands is tight around her throat. The other is across her mouth. He bends low and whispers so close his breath
mists her skin. He says,
‘Dominus vobiscum.’

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.

Isaiah 5:21

THURSDAY
TURIN

No one knows how old he is. Not even the man himself. All he is certain of is the name he’s been given. His parents didn’t
choose it. It was passed down from generations of monks. A name men have grown to fear.

Ephrem has never celebrated a birthday. Ephrem has never celebrated anything. He has no social security number, mortgage,
bank loan, or any manner of insurance, assurance or medical or legal agreements. As far as the world is concerned, he doesn’t
exist.

A doctor or dentist would look at his skin, eyes, bones and teeth, and hazard educated guesses that he’s in his forties. But
Ephrem has never been to a doctor or dentist and never will. Nor has he ever been to school, university or any other institution
that might have entangled him in the mechanical record-keeping of growing up. No official papers bear his name despite his
four decades on earth.

It is for all these reasons that the tall, youthful and Arabic-looking man is a little anxious as he presents the passport
at border control, then from an ATM in the airport terminal withdraws three hundred euros from an international bank account
set up to serve his purposes.

Ephrem’s true vocation is even stranger than the mysteries surrounding him. He is an anchorite. A hermit. Part of an orthodox
sect, withdrawn from secular society. He lives without trace in a monastery hidden on the slopes of Mount Lebanon. Isolated.
Barely consuming anything.

Ephrem is the most trusted member of a highly secretive and revered order inside the Maronite Church and is the one devotee
who the Patriarch and esteemed advisers like Nabih Hayek can trust.

It’s on Hayek’s orders that he has come to Turin. Mixing in society is painful for him. He would rather be bricked in his
cell in the Lebanon, his only link to life the hagioscope, the shuttered slot through which he receives his food. But this
is a necessary sacrifice. As night falls he sits cross-legged on the floor of the cheap room he has rented near Turin and
thinks about who he is, where he came from and what his duties are.

His DNA is half-monk, half-warrior. His blood courses with that of the Brothers slain by the Monophysites of Antioch and with
that of the Crusaders who slaughtered the sons of Islam on the borders of the Byzantine Empire. He remembers well standing
in the crowds when the Holy Father visited his homeland and declared, ‘Lebanon is more than a country, it is a message.’

Ephrem has learned he is more than a man, he is the hand of God.

A hand that is clenched.

One that will deliver divine retribution.

WALNUT PARK, LOS ANGELES

It’s something o’clock.

An indeterminate time in the dead of night when you should be asleep but you’re not. A time so horrible it doesn’t deserve
digits. Mitzi hasn’t been to sleep. She’s been lying in the dark for hours churning things over in her head. The bed is big
and cold and empty. Alfie was a pig and a bully but he was a warm one. She’s been reminding herself that despite the tears
of Jade and Amber, she’s done the right thing – should have done it years ago. He didn’t hit her until the second year of
their marriage. A backhand slap when they’d both been drinking and she’d been busting his balls because he’d lost his job.
The next morning she got round to thinking it had been her fault. Maybe she’d been too physically confrontational and had
pushed him into it. She’d grown so used to fighting hard-asses in the street that a scrap at home didn’t seem so off the scale
to her.

Then he hit her when he was sober. A full-blooded blow
in the stomach that knocked the wind right out of her. She left for a week after that. Made him crawl through broken glass
to get her back.

The beatings stopped when the babies were born. Or at least they did for a while. Then, because she was too tired to do anything
but sleep at night, rows over sex, or more accurately the lack of it, often ended with fists flying. Then they made up. Made
up and swore it would never happen again. Made up like the world was going to end and only the greatest sex ever might save
the planet.

She knows now how foolish she’s been.

At
way past
something o’clock she climbs out of bed, finds her robe and checks on the girls. They’re sleeping like angels. Maybe they’ll
get through this all okay. Maybe she will too.

CARSON, LOS ANGELES

JJ sits in the chilled dark of his bedroom trying to compose himself. The kill is only an hour old and his adrenalin is still
pumping.

He breathes in slowly, the sweet smoky smell of burning candles a balm for his raw emotions. This one felt different. Less
spiritual. More visceral. More human than divine.

He looks at his hands. Marvels at them and their power of
life and death. Until tonight God had always controlled them, guided them to the mouths and throats of the unkilled. But not
tonight. Tonight he made the choices. He
was
God. The thought troubles him. A tiny speck of doubt, like a tear in the corner of a baby angel’s eye. Perfect, but somehow
wrong.

The sight of Em lying before him, just as he left her, shakes him out of his reflective moment. She looks so beautiful. Lovingly
covered from head to toe in the long, clean sheet of expensive linen he stole from work. He touches the cool, soft cloth.
Em’s shroud. He unwraps it, like an archaeologist discovering an Egyptian queen.

Queen Em.

He kneels alongside and whispers proudly in her ear, ‘One of them is dead, my sweetheart. That piece of trash Kim Bass – her
Day of Judgement came and went.’ He moves the candles on the floor around her. There are odd smudges on the inside of the
shroud. Marks so clear that he can see the outline of her face. Maybe the smudges have come from the last of her make-up,
sweat, or even speckles of blood.

Darker stains follow – leakage of urine and faeces. He’s not shocked. Nor revolted. No more so than a parent in the first
days of handling a newborn.

JJ leaves her on the floor and wets a flannel in the bathroom. He wipes her gently then pats the skin with a towel. Just like
a baby. Now he’s done they’ll sit together and hold each other in the first light of a new day. He and his love. His queen.
Together for ever.

77TH STREET STATION, LOS ANGELES

Lock-up is not the place you want to have spent the night.

From a whole corridor away Mitzi can smell the drunks and the down-and-outs who’ve passed the hours of darkness sweating off
their addictions and stewing in the fear-soaked, overheated, overcrowded bullpens. There’s no denying it, she’s feeling guilty
as hell as she heads into the hole to see what kind of hell Alfie Fallon endured following his arrest.

‘Morning, Bobby,’ Mitzi’s smile masks her embarrassment. ‘Guess you know why I’m here?’

‘Whole station knows, Mitz. Come here.’ Custody Sergeant Bobby Sheen opens his big arms to hug her.

Mitzi gladly gives herself up to the bear hug. ‘Thanks.’

He answers her unasked question. ‘Been a model lodger. Not a peep out of him since they shut the cage door.’

‘Was he …’ She just can’t say it. ‘I mean, you know … did any of the guys …’

‘No. They would have liked to, but none of them laid a finger on him. Logan Connor put out the word – wasn’t gonna be anyone
crossing him on that.’