The Turin Shroud Secret (29 page)

‘Back to the lodge?’

Paolo shrugs. ‘Maybe. We were short on men yesterday.’

‘The Prime Minister was in court,’ explains the captain with a smile. ‘More sex and corruption charges.’

‘We checked Craxi’s lodge an hour ago,’ says Paolo. ‘It was
empty but he and his wife had been there in the last twenty-four hours.’

‘He’ll come back onto our radar,’ Carlotta tries to sound confident.

‘I’m not so sure.’ Paolo puts a finger on one of the stills in the Luogotenente’s hand. ‘Do you recognise this person?’

She stares at an athletic-looking dark-skinned man in a black coat.

‘Here he is twenty minutes later, in a green coat.’ Paolo hands over another print.

She holds them side by side and shakes her head. ‘I have never seen him before.’

‘He did not come with the American that you are handling?’

‘Not to my knowledge. The LAPD officer travelled alone.’

The captain interjects, ‘Though he
is
working here with a local private eye whom you do know – Fabio Goria.’

Paolo raises an eyebrow. ‘Good officer. We were sorry to lose him.’

Carlotta hands the photograph back. ‘So who do you think this foreigner is?’

‘Trouble. That’s who he is. Had he not got so close to Craxi we wouldn’t have even noticed him. He was following him – of
that we have no doubt.’

Her cell rings. She doesn’t wait for permission to answer it.
‘Si.’

The two men study her face and try to decipher what’s happening. She covers the mouthpiece and tells her boss,
‘Goria and the American are at the home of Mario Sacconi, a scientist in the Sezioni Investigazioni Scientifiche. It looks
like they’re breaking in.’

The black metal drainpipe proves as good as a ladder. It was fitted in an era when builders worried about downpour not security
and its position is close enough for Goria to climb and then stretch out a leg to the stone lintel of the upstairs window.

As he shuffles across onto the ledge he can see a man and a woman in bed. For a second he thinks they’re asleep. Then he sees
the river of red separating them. He turns sideways on, leans against the frame and drops to one knee. Palms to glass he slides
up the partially opened sash window and climbs through the gap into the room.

The man is closest to him. On his back. Head twisted to the left. Hands tied to the bedposts and his throat cut. The woman
is to his right. Curled up on her side. Hands and feet tied behind her back. Long black hair barely masking a fatal neck wound.

Goria makes the sign of the cross. He steps over the piled quilt on the floor and looks more closely at the corpse of Mario
Sacconi. There’s blood all over the face. It looks like his nose has been broken but there’s a more curious injury –
a deep puncture wound through the left cheek. He’s experienced enough to know it’s been made by a stiletto blade, probably
the one responsible for a single stab wound in the windpipe. The cut is clinical. Professional.

Sacconi’s legs are drawn up to his side and blood has pooled between his knees and chest. Goria moves a little. It’s a bloody
mess but he’s pretty sure he can see that the scientist has been stabbed through the heart. He steps back and makes his way
around the bed to the woman. She’s young – mid-twenties at best – and pretty. Or at least she was.

Two wounds are all her beautiful body bares – one through the throat and one through the heart. Goria takes a moment to imagine
how it was done. The killer would have had to pull her long hair back and look her straight in the eyes as he pushed the blade
through her thorax. Then, as she gasped for air, he would have needed to steady her desperate body, position the knife and
force it through her heart.

He looks between the young woman’s thighs and dips low to see beneath her breasts. She doesn’t seem to have been sexually
interfered with in any way. Professional kills. Nothing more. Nothing less. He heads downstairs and opens the front door.

Nic is stood back, looking edgy. ‘What took you so long?’

‘Sacconi is dead. So too is the woman he was with. We were too late.’

Nic steps towards the doorway.

‘No. You can’t go inside.’

‘What?’

‘I’m going to have to call the police. We can’t walk away from two bodies and we can’t disturb the scene any more than I already
have.’

‘Then call them. I’m still going inside. Whoever killed these people may well have killed Tamara Jacobs.’

Reluctantly, Goria lets him pass. Nic takes the stairs two at a time. There’s only one bedroom door open and he can sense
death before he even steps inside. The white base sheet is soaked with blood and the girl is facing him as he enters. He pulls
up short, takes out his BlackBerry and thumbs through to the camera function. Quickly and professionally he circles the room
and fires off as many shots as he can. He stands on a dressing table chair and gets a range of high angles and then goes in
close and captures all the wounds.

He can hear Goria downstairs talking on his cell. The polizia will soon be on the way. He pockets the BlackBerry, rushes to
the en-suite bathroom and pulls the toilet roll from its holder.

The dead couple are close together on the bed – the killer must have manhandled them, probably rubbed his clothes or body
hair against their bodies. On the ropes binding Sacconi he finds two short dark hairs, possibly from the killer’s hands when
he tied the knots. Nic rips off several sheets of toilet roll, places them carefully in the middle and then folds them protectively
around his sample.

His attention falls again on the dead girl. The tape. There’s
an outside chance the killer’s fingerprints will be on the sticky tape plastered across her mouth. Nic knows that if he removes
it, a pathologist will be able to tell. He also knows that the Carabinieri will go wild if he tampers with the body.

But he does it anyway. He reaches over the girl, finds the tape’s edge and peels it off. He doesn’t want it to double back
on itself – it could ruin the print. Quickly but carefully he attaches the tape to a make-up mirror and smoothes it out.

‘Nic, come on!’

‘One minute.’

He lifts a dressing table stool and smashes the mirror. As he picks up the pieces he hears footsteps on the stairs. He quickly
salvages the long sliver of broken glass bearing his sample.

Goria stands aghast in the doorway, cell phone dangling from his left hand. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Never mind. Give me your car keys.’

SANTA MONICA, LOS ANGELES

The zombified computer is still playing on Amy Chang’s mind as she finishes her morning jog along the white California sands.

Hours of labour lost. Dozens of files messed up. She hopes to God some of the documents can be rescued.

She showers, then dresses in jeans and a pink hoodie. The day is shaping up fine and she pours a glass of OJ, slides open
the patio window and sits down in the ribbon of sunshine warming her balcony. Someone infected her Mac with a virus, and the
last person who sent her anything was the English professor, Hasting-Smith. That just doesn’t seem right. Cambridge dons don’t
send infected mail. Surely their own firewall would pick that kind of thing up? But there’s no denying the fact that her programs
all got fried after he sent her his reports. Come Monday she’ll tell security and see what they make of it.

She drains her juice and remembers she still owes Mitzi the report on the Shroud. She ducks out of the sunshine and fires
up her own laptop. Amy spends an hour trying to recall everything she wrote at work before the Mac crashed, then turns her
attention to assembling an account of the Shroud’s movements across the later centuries – history and
geography always help pathologists know their victims and samples better:

Thirteenth century

Ray-sur-Saone, France: Shroud kept in a casket in a château.

Roussillon, France, 1287: Templar Knights reportedly showed a long, linen cloth imprinted with the image of a man.

Fourteenth century

Anthon, Cruseilles, Rumilly and Mornex, France/Geneva 1358–89: Shroud believed to have been kept on various estates.

Fifteenth century

Montfort, France, 1418: Kept briefly in the castle of Montbard near Montfort.

St Hippolyte sur Doubs, France, retained here from 1418 to around 1453.

Sixteenth century

Turin, Italy: Held almost continuously in Turin since 1578 (apart from during World War II when it spent seven years at the
Abbey of Montevergine in Avellino).

She reviews the list. In policing terms the chain of custody is dubious, to say the least. The evidence – the Shroud itself
– could have been tampered with and contaminated tens of thousands of times. More than anything, the huge absence of details
about it before the thirteenth century rings
investigative alarm bells with her. No court in the world – except perhaps one inside Vatican City – would rule it to be that
of Jesus Christ.

From her workbag she pulls out a brown Moleskine notebook. Pasted in it is a small photograph of the Shroud. Under it are
notes she made based on the assumptions that the marks showing up on the cloth were caused by blood:

• Extensive ‘blood markings’ on skull where a crown of thorns is reputed to have been forced into position. *Note – there
  are also marks on the back of the skull consistent with puncture wounds caused by deep thorns and also consistent blood flow
  lines.
  
• Hard to imagine what could have caused the ring of puncture marks if not a crown/cap of thorns.
  
• Possible fracture of the nose and damage to the nasal cartilage.
  
• Dozens of marks across torso and arms, possibly inflicted by extensive scourging. The marks seem large enough to be consistent
  with flesh being torn from the body.
  
• Pronounced ‘blood mark’ on left wrist, consistent with a nail being driven through Destot’s Space.
  
• Thumbs apparently turned in and consistent with damage to median nerve.
  
• Apparent chest wound between the right fifth and sixth ribs – consistent with penetration by spear.
  

Amy looks up and down the bullet points. In her mind there’s no doubt what the marks are saying to her. The victim was whipped
horrendously, had some multi-pointed device pressed to his skull that caused numerous wounds and he was crucified. But none
of her notes answer the big question.

Who exactly was he?

BOYLE HEIGHTS, LOS ANGELES

Jenny Harrison feels the pain of the hangover before she even opens her eyes. Only when she squints up at the cracked and
cobwebbed ceiling do some of last night’s events come rolling back to her. This isn’t her place. She isn’t in bed alone. There’s
a naked man next to her. She shifts onto her side and gradually recognises the slab of hairy-backed blubber as a guy in the
bar she drank with. They shared a couple of joints, he bought drinks, then she ended up at his place drinking bad white wine
and smoking crack.

Now she’s wondering what price she paid for his generosity and companionship. One look on the floor by the side of the bed
tells her. Her clothes are scattered everywhere. She heaves herself off the saggy mattress and just makes it to the bathroom
before she’s sick. From the vomit-splattered sink she can see that her strange bedfellow is still out for the
count. She runs water and thinks about showering. She’d like to but it will only risk waking the whale and she can’t be doing
with talking to him. She puts her mouth to the tap and swills out strange chunks of food, splashes her face and rubs the remains
of make-up on his towel.

Five minutes later she’s outside the apartment block wondering where the hell she is. At first she doesn’t recognise the place,
then she remembers. She’d gone round to Kim’s to beat on the door. Feeling depressed and annoyed she’d stopped in a bar close
to Hollenbeck Park, a dive she and some of the girls go to when business is slow and they need to round up a bit of cash.

Jenny starts walking. Takes a different route. One that means she can rap on Kim’s door one last time. She’s feeling exhausted
by the time she climbs the stairs at her friend’s place. Knocking seems a waste of time so she gets down on her knees, holds
the mail slot open and shouts through it at the top of her voice. Then she slumps with her back against the wall. All kinds
of possibilities are flying through her head. The girl might have overdosed. Got pissed and choked on her own vomit. Fallen
and whacked her head. Anything could have happened.

She turns round and screams through the slot again. Two of the three other doors around Bass’s apartment now open.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ bawls Holly Caniffe, a compact woman in a slip and nothing else.

Jenny collapses into a heap again. ‘She’s in there, I know she is – and something’s wrong.’

‘That whore friend of yours is probably sleeping off
whatever you got wasted on,’ says Caniffe. ‘Why don’t you vanish and let us all get some rest? I’ve been working nights.’

‘Screw you.’ Jenny gives her the bird.

Caniffe’s husband Keegan appears in the doorway of their apartment, in time-greyed vest and boxers. ‘What’s goin’ on?’

‘It’s my friend. I’m worried about her.’

‘Whadafuck?’

‘I think she’s in there and has hurt herself.’

‘Move out the way.’ Keegan Caniffe sizes up the door. ‘Gimme some room.’

Jenny bum-shuffles out of his way. He fixes his attention on the lock and takes a running kick at it. It holds firm and he
bounces off, almost ends up on his ass.

‘Shit.’

‘Leave it, doll. She’s probably in a bar somewhere.’ Caniffe motions to Jenny. ‘This crazy bitch has probably got it all wrong.’

But Keegan isn’t for leaving it. His pride is hurt and it’s not every day you get to smash someone’s front door down without
the cops busting you. This time he runs harder and faster. He drives his left shoulder into the door and it bangs open. Keegan
tumbles inside. Falls face down on the filthy carpet. His wife races in after him, followed by Jenny and old man Dobbs who’s
come out to see what all the noise is about.