The Turin Shroud Secret (17 page)

The monk walks the perimeter. Church stone that was originally the colour of honey has been blackened by time and dirt. Someone
has smashed most of the handcrafted stained-glass windows that bore the Stations of the Cross. Gang graffiti has been spray-painted
over the rusted metal, symbols and names that he doesn’t understand and doesn’t give much thought to as he levers off the
panels that bar the
ancient front doors through which centuries of worshippers walked.

The inside is dark. Hardly any light penetrates the boarded-up windows and time-weathered holes in the unrepaired roof. Most
people would struggle to see more than a few feet. But Ephrem has spent most of his life in total darkness and sees right
into the furthest corner. The smell is of damp, rotting timbers and the faeces of rodents that have made this place their
sanctuary. But the monk, as no one else could, can still smell candle wax, the incense of High Mass, the fresh soap on the
skins of those who washed themselves knowing they would come and kneel in the presence of their Lord.

He moves past the broken pews and the empty space where the altar once stood. He turns to his left and finds what he came
for. With a little work it will be perfect.

Just perfect.

BOYLE HEIGHTS, LOS ANGELES

‘Kim? Hey Kim, you in there?’

Jenny Harrison shouts and squints through the mail slot of Kim Bass’s apartment. Her friend can be such an idiot sometimes.
If she does too many pills or hits on a half-decent guy, Jen doesn’t hear from her for ages. Over Christmas she went
on a binge with a cabbie and disappeared until New Year.

Odd for her not to turn up for work, though. She’s broke and needs every dime right at the moment. ‘Kim, if you’re in there,
stop messing around. It’s Jen, I need to talk to you.’

Harrison lets the slot snap shut and bangs the flat of her hand on the door. Goddamn it. She spends half her freakin’ life
chasing after this girl. She walks away, calling her friend’s cell phone as she does. It rings for a long time before going
to the answerphone. ‘Okay, Kimmy, if you don’t get your sorry ass to call me, this best friend is soon going to be an ex-friend.
It’s Thursday night and we’re supposed to be meeting those delivery guys. Call me or else.’

She stomps down the stairs, turns the corner and almost bowls over an old man levering himself up by the handrail.

‘Shi-it!
Mr Dobbs you nearly give me a heart attack.’

The bald-headed seventy-year-old is Kim’s next door neighbour. Leroy Dobbs looks as shocked as she does. He keeps himself
to himself and as far as seniors go he’s okay. The girls even bummed cream and coffee off him one Sunday when they had hangovers
so bad they couldn’t crawl to the store to buy any.

He puts his hand to his bony chest. ‘I’m the one should be cursing. You shouldn’t come flying round the corner like that.’

‘Sorry, Mr D. Hey, you haven’t seen Kim, have you? She didn’t make work today. Have you heard her knocking about?’

He looks cross. ‘I mind my own business, I do. I don’t go spying like some people around here. I ain’t seen her.’

‘I didn’t say you were spying.’ Harrison nods to the apartment upstairs and behind her. ‘It’s just the walls are thin and
Kim says you like banging on them if she watches TV in her bedroom.’

‘That’s because it’s so loud. I might be old but I’m not deaf.’

‘Did you hear her?’

‘Not last night, I didn’t. I didn’t hear no TV at all last night.’

Harrison thinks back to standing in her own doorway and waving goodbye to her friend. Kim was pretty wasted when she went.
Both of them were. Crazy bitch had done too much blow.

‘Can I get past now?’ Dobbs is staring up from two steps down, frail fingers clutching the rail.

She weaves her way round him and over the remaining steps. Outside she lights a cigarette and walks the rest of the way home.
Something’s wrong. She feels it deep inside.

By the time she reaches her own porch, Jenny Harrison is sure she knows what it is.

LOS ANGELES

Tonight Mitzi’s only answer is drink. Drink to forget. Drink to lose consciousness if necessary. Drink to wipe out the memory
that she pulled a gun on her husband and almost shot him.

She and Amy leave their cars at the restaurant and catch a cab back to the pathologist’s place, where a bottle of cold white
is uncorked before they do anything else. After shuffling the iPod into oblivion, Amy grabs blankets and pillows and makes
up the sofa. One day she’ll buy a two-bed place but not for a while – probably not until she gets herself a long-term man,
a stayer. ‘So where’s Tricky Nicky?” she asks her friend.

Mitzi grins drunkenly from a chair she’s slumped into. ‘Italy. Turin.’ Her wine glass wobbles. She wisely decides to hold
it by the bowl rather than its elegant stem. ‘Poor schmuck has been flying almost all day.’

‘Oh.’

‘Oh?
That all you were thinking when you mentioned him?’

Amy smiles.

‘Or maybe you were thinking, I wish I was in Italy with Nic. Quite a romantic country, Italy. Poetry. Violins. All that stuff.’
She raises her glass. ‘And really great wine.’

‘It crossed my mind.’

‘Course it did, sister. And so it should.’

‘He’s a bit uptight, though, Mitz. I know he’s been through a lot but it seems his head is still a mess.’

‘Probably is. Give the boy time.’

Amy remembers their afternoon at the boatyard together. ‘I think he’s going to need months – maybe years.’

‘Could be.’ Mitzi slugs a jolt of the cold, crisp Sauvignon. ‘Worth waiting for though. He’s a good guy.’ She tries to blot
out thoughts of her husband. Damn him. Alfie had been a good guy once. Damn the hell out of him for going from good guy to
bum so easily.

‘Why is Nic in Italy?’

‘Long story. To do with Tamara Jacobs, that writer you had on your slab.’ Mitzi sits up out of her slouch. ‘Seems she’s involved
somehow with the Shroud. That’s why Nic’s there.’

The pathologist is left frowning at the sudden switch in conversation. ‘Shroud? As in Shroud of Turin?’

‘’Less you know of another? Anyways, what do you think? Real or not?’

Amy suddenly feels exhausted. ‘Mind if we do the brainteasers tomorrow? I’m feeling beat and really need to turn in.’

‘Sure. No problem.’

Amy gets up and switches off several lamps. ‘Do you want me to fetch you some water before I go?’

Mitzi raises her glass of wine in one hand and the open bottle in the other.

‘Okay, I get the message. Take it easy, though.’ The medic walks over, leans into the chair and hugs her friend. ‘Hope you
get some sleep.’

‘Me too.’

She heads to her room. If Mitzi had been sober, Amy would have asked her. Asked if there’d ever been anything between her
and Nic. There’d been rumours, but then of course there are always rumours when men and women work closely together. But she
still wonders.

FRIDAY
TURIN, ITALY

The morning sky over what was once Italy’s first capital city is a magnificent mural of kingly gold and cardinal red.

Nic Karakandez stands hypnotised at the bedroom window of the cheap hotel he’s booked into. He watches the dark chrysalis
of night turn into the exotic butterfly of day. Somewhere out there, among the mysterious shapes, beneath the rows of red-tiled
rooftops and within the swollen domes of ancient churches, lies the reason he’s travelled thousands of miles. He showers in
a bathroom so small it could make an ant claustrophobic, then dresses in black jeans, white shirt and a purple wool V-neck
that
somehow still smells of the deck oil from his boat. He sits on the saggy bed and takes a minute to go over the main lead Mitzi
has him chasing.

Money.

To be more specific, a series of international bank transfer payments Sarah Kenny made on Tamara Jacobs’s request to a man
they know to be Roberto Craxi. The pieces of paper spread out before him show deposits of $5000 a month for eleven months,
plus two lump sums of $25,000. Close to $100k in total. That’s a nice amount. The kind of cash for which many people would
be willing to break the law.

The next leads come from the writer’s visits to Turin. Receipts found in her home show she made four trips in the past two
years. Two in the last six months. One six weeks before she was killed. Nic is hoping the hotel bills, and restaurant and
taxi tickets will help him retrace her steps. Then there are the last quarter’s cell phone records showing more than thirty
calls made to different Turin numbers. As he looks at the digits he has a bad feeling. She may well have had security on her
mind. If that’s the case, the numbers may well be street phones and untraceable calls.

He takes breakfast in a damp and draughty room that’s being warmed by fan heaters at the foot of peeling cream walls. He hand-wipes
condensation from the window by his table and looks out across frosted lawns to a paved courtyard, bordered by flowerbeds
and potted Cypress trees. In summer this place might well change identities and pass itself off as quaint and delightful.

A young waitress, maybe the daughter of the owner, brings him cappuccino, a near-perfect brew of strong roasted beans topped
by a thick, sweet creamy froth that you could stand a spoon in. He collects OJ from the small buffet table and takes a couple
of homemade pastries.

Full and happy he goes to his room, scrubs his teeth, grabs a loose black leather jacket and walks back downstairs to wait
for his allocated Carabinieri contact. He sits on an old couch in the tiny reception and tries to make sense of a copy of
today’s
Corriere della Serra
newspaper. Bad idea. Beyond Chianti, Quattro Formaggio and a few curses from
The Sopranos,
he can’t make out a word.

An elegant woman in a navy blue jacket and matching knee-length skirt hesitantly interrupts his stilted reading. ‘Signore
Carry-can-diss?’

He looks up. ‘Ka-ra-kan-dez. Yes, that’s me.’

She’s a couple of years younger than him, has short dark hair and intense blue eyes. ‘Luogotenente Cappelini. Carlotta.’ She
confidently offers her hand.

He’s surprised. Even annoyed with himself, for automatically expecting the liaison officer to be a man. ‘Nic – very pleased
to meet you.’

‘Welcome to Torino, Nic.’ She can tell that he expected her to be male – most people do. ‘Are you ready to go?’

‘I am.’ He refolds the newspaper and places it on a well-worn wooden table.

Carlotta leads the way out. ‘First we go to my office, we can talk confidentially there. Then we go wherever
you need. My capitano says you have phone numbers and a man called Craxi you wish to have traced. I have people ready to help
with that.’

‘Music to my ears.’

She doesn’t understand.
‘Scusi?’

‘Sorry, just an expression. That would be great.’

The streets are wide and cobbled, blocks of stone intercut with steel channels for trams. Overhead a black cobweb of cable
wires sag beneath the now dull grey sky. As they walk Nic spots the butt of a gun belted discreetly under her jacket. ‘Do
you always carry a weapon?’

‘Si.
Always. I am a soldier, I have to.’ She touches it. ‘But I like to, also.’ She smiles. ‘I like shooting.’

‘What do you like shooting – things or people?’

‘No.’ She laughs. ‘Shooting people is not what I like.’

‘Not even the bad guys?’

She can tell he’s teasing. ‘No, this I have never done. But shooting on the range, then yes, that I like very much.’ She makes
a pistol out of her fingers and lets off a pretend round. ‘I am very good at the shooting.’

He’s sure she is. Probably much better at the shooting than at the English. Not that he should judge – he can’t read an Italian
newspaper, let alone speak a sentence.

‘And you, Nic, you shoot the bad guys?’

‘Sometimes,’ he says. ‘But not as many as I’d like to.’

As a small child, Ephrem learned to be silent. The monks would scourge the backs of his hands if they could even hear him
breathe during their lessons. They educated him in the fine art of listening – how to concentrate first on what others said
and only then respond.

When he was growing up they taught him about pain. How to endure it. How to turn off his thoughts while the white heat of
a branding iron sizzled his skin. And he was schooled in how to
inflict
pain. How to use it as an instrument. How to use the threat of physical agony to do God’s work.

As a man, he has learned transparency. How to walk among the ignorant as one of them. How to look at them and smile at them
in ways that don’t attract attention, create affection or leave any kind of memory. He learned the art of being instantly
forgettable.

All those years of training and discipline surface in Ephrem as he parks the rental car about a mile from where he’s been
told the target will be. Jacket turned up against the wind and showers, he walks head down along the roadside, certain motorists
flashing past in the rush-hour traffic will never remember him.

The monk is doing what he does best. He is becoming a sleight of hand. An illusion. Someone no one ever saw.

CARSON, LOS ANGELES

There is a stench inside the house. One like nothing else on earth. An odour few have ever been exposed to. He should have
bathed her last night instead of just cleaning her with a flannel. He’d been too tired to do it. Too exhausted after vanquishing
the tormentor Kim Bass.

Now Em needs him. He kneels on the boards of the bedroom floor and is shocked by what he sees. She is changing. Her eyes are
covered in a thick milky veil, her flesh is discolouring. Even in the low light he can see the greenish tinge to her skin.

JJ reaches out to her face and strokes the dark birthmark, the sign from God that drew him to her.

Gravity has taken its course. Blood has drained from her heart and pooled in her buttocks, back and legs creating a layer
of putrid purple and red. Bacteria is spreading through the body and it is beginning to marble. Hair is coming away and gasses
and fluid ooze from her orifices into the fetid air of the room. He stands and backs away. He may have to give her up. Find
a separate resting place for her. But not yet. Not until he absolutely has to.