The Turin Shroud Secret (27 page)

‘Talking of arms,’ Nic follows him through a door into a cool, dark kitchen. ‘Do you have a piece you can give me?’

‘Of course. But you did not get it from me.’ Overhead neons flicker on. He opens a large steel larder fridge, dips into the
coolbox and turns around with a bottle in one hand and a gun in the other. ‘Beer and a Beretta – how’s that for service?’

‘Perfect.’ Nic’s phone rings in his pocket.

Goria places the pistol and Peroni on a worktop and goes for his own beer.

Caller display says it’s Mitzi. ‘Hello.’

‘Hi, Nic. Sorry about earlier. Hey, what time is it there?’

He glances at his wrist. ‘Four a.m.’

‘Gee, I’m sorry. This too late?’

‘I don’t even know what late is any more.’ He manages a tired laugh as he picks up the beer. ‘I’m just about to have a drink
then crash.’

There’s a pause then her voice changes. ‘Alfie beat up on me again and I got him busted.’

‘What?’

‘He started slapping me about and coming the big I am. Then it all turned nasty and I called it in.’

‘Are you okay? Did that bastard hurt you?’

She’s touched to hear the anger in his voice. ‘Not so much physically.’

‘And the girls?’

‘They’re in bits. That’s why I couldn’t talk.’

Nic puts the bottle down. ‘Listen, screw this damned job, if you need me to come back, I can be on the next plane to LA.’

She laughs. ‘No way, cowboy. You finish this job.’

‘Seriously—’

‘No. I’m fine. Besides, Amy’s looking after me.’

‘Good.’

‘She asked about you.’

‘Yeah, sure she did. What’s happening with Alfie?’

‘They already put him through court. Thirty days in the Big House.’

‘And then?’

‘I’m not thinking of having him back, if that’s what you mean.’

‘That was exactly what I meant.’

‘Lesson learned.’

‘Glad to hear it. If I can help – in any way – let me know.’

‘Thanks. I will. You can help right now by closing this freakin’ case.’

‘Wish I could. I just moved out the hotel. Someone turned it over while I was chasing down Craxi.’

‘You sure?’

‘Absolutely. Dave Burge from the FBI fixed a PI to help me chase down some leads. Good guy by the name of Fabio Goria.’

‘I told you there was no money for that, Nic.’

‘None spent. It’s a favour. Burge owed me one. Owed me several actually.’

‘Good. And Craxi?’

‘Found him and lost him. It’s a long story. Anyway, I’m about to go AWOL on the Carabinieri.’

‘Fine by me. I’m gonna hang up now, let you get a little sleep.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow – I mean later today.’

‘Great. Stay in touch.’

‘Oh, Mitz?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m glad you got that bum busted. You’re a great cop, great mom and great lady. I hope this is the first step towards you
having the great life you and the girls deserve.’

‘Thanks.’ She hangs up quick. Doesn’t want him to hear her get emotional.

In the damp, fetid darkness Roberto Craxi thanks God for small mercies.

He’s alive. And he knows he so easily could be dead.

His hands and feet are untied and he isn’t gagged. Whoever is holding him is doing so in a secluded place, somewhere they’re
sure any shouts for help will go unheard. Somewhere out of the city.

Craxi rubs his wrists. He can feel a ridge on his skin where the rope was pulled tight. He reaches down and feels his ankles.
The same is true down there. Whoever attacked him came prepared to tie him up. If it was a lone attacker, the guy was also
strong enough to carry him unconscious to a vehicle and move him around. It’s a worrying thought. He would rather not think
of a single enemy with such power.

He wipes a hand across and around his mouth. It’s sticky. Adhesive residue. A sign that tape has been plastered across his
lips. Another sign that his foe is professional and well prepared for any eventuality. Finally, he touches his windpipe. The
pain here is intense. He can feel a ridge where the wire sliced into his throat. The man choking him had known
exactly how hard to pull. He understood how to control life and death. He was a man like him.

The place he’s being held is pitch black – not a single speck of light. It’s cold too. Craxi puts his palms flat on the floor
where he’s sitting. It’s hard and smooth. Some form of polished stone, not earth. He knows better than to try to stand up
– there’s every chance he could knock himself out or fall off some unseen ledge.

He raises his hands above his head. Or at least he tries to. Sat down he has about a foot of space above him. He runs his
fingers over the ceiling. It feels like the floor – cold and smooth. Stone. His heart thumps out an objection. Craxi puts
his hands to his sides. There’s not much room there either. Maybe a foot on one side and perhaps a little more on the other.
The surfaces are also stone.

Cautiously, he lowers himself into a lying position. A shade less than six feet, his head and toes don’t touch any walls.
He reaches up behind him and scrapes his fingers – stone. Barely six inches away. He shuffles forward. His feet quickly reach
a hard stop. More stone. So now he knows. He’s being held in an airless seven-foot-by-four-foot stone block. Or, to use a
more familiar description, a tomb.

GARDENA, LOS ANGELES

By day the neighbourhood is a suburban boiling pot. People of all hues go about their business. Cars stick bumper-to-bumper.
Noise rises like steam above the suburb. Right now it’s a ghost town. Dark and deserted. Silent and spectral.

It’s just the way JJ likes it. He scans for house lights and surveillance cameras as he walks slowly past the clapboard buildings
that run the length of Emma Varley’s street. The place she used to live. It’s 3 a.m. and there’s nothing to disturb him. No
reason why he can’t go return his queen to her domestic throne. Just one more circle around the block and then he’ll do it.

He winds his way back up West 169th, swings open the front gate and crosses the worn grass to her front door. JJ stops on
the doorstep. Turns. Takes a final look at the street then pulls out the ring of keys he took from her purse. Satisfied he’s
unwatched, he tries several. The last, a square-headed brass one, does the trick.

The place is filled with the essences of Em. Her perfumes, soaps and talcs. Her hair sprays, washing powders and fabrics.
He stands in the dark and inhales them all. It is like she is here with him. The rental is small – just two downstairs rooms
– a sitting area and cramped kitchen-diner. Upstairs there’s an
adequate enough bedroom, a much smaller spare room that has no furniture in it and a tiny bathroom with a sink that’s coming
loose from the wall. He picks up her toothbrush from a cracked glass shelf and runs a hand over the worn bristles. He closes
his eyes and puts it to his lips, glides it into his mouth and over his tongue. The taste of her makes him tremble.

JJ lingers in every room. He takes her carefully ironed and packed clothes from a rickety chest of drawers and smells and
holds them. He opens the tiny one-door wardrobe and embraces the only two dresses that she owned – one short and black, one
long, flowing and hippy-like.

He lies on her unmade bed, his face in the same pillow crease she made during her last night under the covers. How he wishes
he’d come here earlier, spent longer among her things, got to know her even better. Painful as it is, he drags himself away
from the sensual reminiscences, leaves the house and returns to the Explorer.

He drives slowly and kills the lights fifty yards from Em’s place. Ten yards away he turns off the engine and lets the big
old bus glide to the kerb. With darkness pressed to breath-misted glass he sits patiently and watches the street and surrounding
houses. He winds down the window and listens for approaching traffic or people.

Nothing. This is the dead of night.

JJ makes his move. Quickly. Smartly. Confidently. He opens the driver’s door then the rear door. He grabs Em under the arms
and hauls her out of the vehicle. ‘Sorry,’ he
whispers as her feet thud down onto the asphalt. He shuffles backwards and drags her through the gate he left open, up the
doorstep and into the house.

JJ lays her out on the hall floor. He walks calmly back to the Explorer and shuts the doors. He knows he can’t delay now.
Can’t spend the time he’d like with her. He quickly returns to the house, shuts the door behind him and crouches down to get
a good lifting grip of her. The stench of decomposition is awful but it doesn’t matter. He lifts her in his arms and feels
like a groom carrying his bride over a threshold.

He struggles up the stairs and almost falls when her feet bang on a wall. Moonlight is streaming through her window as he
lays her on the bed. It’s as though God is shining a light for him, affording him a final parting view of his beloved. He
leans over her pale face and kisses her lips. Then he covers her. Wraps the bottom sheet around her. Tucks her in. Tight.

‘Night, night, my queen,’ he says from the doorway. ‘I will see you on the other side.’

TURIN

A lesser man would have gone mad by now. The darkness of the tomb. The stench. The silence. The cramping of
muscles. The claustrophobia. Any, or all of those things, would have broken someone who lacked Roberto Craxi’s willpower and
training.

He’s experienced enough to know that he’s being kept alive for a purpose, that right now his life isn’t intentionally going
to be ended. But captors make mistakes – sometimes fatal ones – and as a result hostages are abandoned and left to suffocate
or starve.

He concentrates on lowering his heartbeat. The slower it thumps, the less oxygen he uses and the longer he lives. The mathematics
of survival. His focus is so intense he can feel the organ’s soft thuds in his chest and all but hear blood slowing in his
veins.

Sixty-nine.

Fifty-two.

Forty-seven.

That’s as low as he can get it. Forty-seven beats a minute. Twenty years ago he would have had it down another ten, but he’s
nowhere near being the athlete he was.

‘Signore Craxi, are you awake?’

The voice startles him. Bumps his heartbeats per minute back over the sixty mark. It was polite and foreign. English with
a strange accent. Oddly formal.

‘Signore Craxi.’

It is coming out of nowhere.

‘Can you hear me?’

Somewhere in the darkness is a tiny wireless loudspeaker. He has no idea where. He rubs his hands over the cold stone
but can’t find anything. He stays silent. The fact that his abductor has gone to the trouble of putting the device in here
means the man needs to communicate with him. Well, if he wants to do that, he’s going to have to come and get him out of this
god forsaken place.

‘Signore.’ The voice is louder this time and Craxi detects an accent.

Foreign. Not European – African. No, not African. Arabic.

A bored sigh hisses like steam through the thick stone. ‘Signore, there is good reason why I let your wife live. Should you
not cooperate with me, I am confident that I can torture her into doing so.’

‘What do you want?’ Craxi’s voice is thin and strained. ‘I am ready to give you whatever you want.’

LOS ANGELES

JJ steers the Explorer through the dark backstreets of Gardena, then out into the bright lights of the freeway and over to
Boyle Heights.

It is time to pay Jenny Harrison a visit. The display on the dash shows 4 a.m. He knows he has only a couple of hours before
the sun comes up and the poor folk that work late-night shifts come drifting home.

He’s going to have to be quick. Her big old house is in total blackness. He parks down the street in almost exactly the same
position he occupied last time he was here. He sits with the window down, watching and listening, waiting to see if anyone
has heard his vehicle and is stupid enough to take a closer look.

At ten after four he reaches into the passenger foot well, picks up the tyre iron he put there and slips out of the car. He
walks briskly across the road, through the gate and up the path. The patchy lawn around him smells of dog shit and is peppered
with discarded cigarette butts.

JJ jogs up the steps onto the porch, turns and checks the scene behind him. Nothing. No movement. No noise. No people. He
puts his hand on the front door and twists the big round knob. Hopefully the lock will be old and there’ll be enough movement
for him to get the thin end of the iron in.

The door is unlocked. He feels a jolt of excitement. God is indeed looking after him tonight. He enters the lobby and the
unmistakable stench of a doss-house hits him. It disgusts him. What a fitting place for Jenny Harrison to die. Around him
are more doors than he anticipated, all brown and without numbers.

JJ moves to the foot of an uncarpeted wooden staircase. He takes out his cell phone and calls the number she gave him. The
dial tone rolls into cyberspace. There’s a click. From above JJ’s head comes the noise of a ringing phone.

TURIN

A repetitive thump haunts the darkness. Not a loud one. Not hoof beats on hardened earth, more a woodpecker tapping stone.

Roberto Craxi cranes his head anxiously to the right. He shouts through the walls of the tomb to the man who’s imprisoned
him – a man he’s never seen. ‘What are you doing? What’s going on?’

Suddenly the stone vibrates. A loud screaming noise penetrates the casement.

‘Hey!’

It feels like the whole tomb is going to collapse. Craxi’s training kicks in. He calms himself. Tries to work out what’s happening.
His captor is drilling. Boring some kind of hole. There’s a bang as the whirling steel breaks through and the chuck hits the
exterior. Debris from the drill bit spatters Craxi’s face. The mechanical screaming stops.

Through the hole bursts a shaft of bright light as thick as a pencil. He rolls on his right side and shuffles along so he
can see outside the tomb.