The Turin Shroud Secret (9 page)

‘Black coffee, thanks,’ Dylan Jacobs settles in a chair with his back to the crest.

Viktor takes a seat alongside him and holds his hand under the table. ‘Just water, please.’

Nic ducks outside for drinks then returns and shuts the door. Hands out the coffee and water. ‘When did you get into town?’

‘Yesterday.’ Dylan rests his elbows on the table and rubs tired eyes. ‘We went to the morgue and then finalised the funeral
arrangements. We’re told Tamara’s body can be released now.’

‘That’s right. The ME has concluded her examinations.’

Jacobs grimaces. ‘We’ve fixed a cremation service for next week—’

‘I didn’t go to see her,’ interrupts Viktor. ‘Tamara and I didn’t get along that well. I don’t think she approved of me.’

Nic can’t begin to think how she possibly could have. ‘Mr Jacobs, we’re trying to pin down a reason for your wife’s murder.
Is there anything you can tell us that may be of assistance?’

He looks a little confused. ‘She was a writer, Detective – not a gangster or a drug dealer. Tammy mixed with good people,
mainly of our age and of artistic and gentle natures.’

‘Good people sometimes carry grudges or harbour hatred. Rich, educated people are every bit as capable of doing bad as poor,
uneducated ones. It’s usually just a question of motivation, morality and means.’

‘I take your point but I’m sorry, I can’t think of any reason why anyone would want to hurt her.’ Jacobs suddenly looks much
older than his sixty years. His voice breaks a little. ‘Tammy’s face was partly covered when I saw her and the medical examiner
said she’d suffered some deep wounds. What had been done to her?’

It’s the kind of question only innocent men ask. Nic measures his answer carefully. ‘We’re not certain, Mr Jacobs. We’re still
piecing things together.’

‘But you must have some idea, something to go on?’

‘We’re working hard on that. What I can tell you is that your wife was not randomly murdered. She was deliberately targeted.’

Dylan Jacobs looks from the cop to the table, then down to the floor. He can’t help but imagine Tammy in her open-plan kitchen
with its black granite tops and biscuit-coloured wood units. He can see her cooking her favourite salmon and linguini, a glass
of crisp white wine at hand and piano jazz playing from her favourite radio station.

He looks up and his eyes are wet. Viktor takes his hand and holds it openly on the table now. ‘Thanks,’ Jacobs says and pats
the comforting hand. He looks at Nic. ‘My life is with Viktor now but Tammy and I were
once
very close. We spent fifteen years together as man and wife, trying to make things work. Even when it didn’t, we remained
good friends, the very best of friends. She was a wonderful, kind and loving woman. Even when we split up, she tried to be
understanding.’ He looks at the wall, remembering for a second when he told her he was leaving her not for another woman but
for a man. ‘I think she knew about my homosexuality even before I did. She had an instinct, a way of picking up on things.
I guess that’s what made her such a good writer.’ He manages a half-laugh. ‘Of course, all her compassion didn’t stop her
and her lawyers taking me for a fortune.’

‘You paid her too much,’ interjects his new soul mate. ‘Much more than you needed to.’

‘It’s only money, Viktor, only money.’

Nic takes a sip of coffee. ‘Mr Jacobs, if you and Viktor could take some time and list your wife’s acquaintances for me –
maybe with a short note saying how long she’d known
them and how she was connected to them – that would be a real help.’

‘Now?’ Jacobs looks troubled.

‘No, not now, but it would be good to have it some time tomorrow. Do you know anything about this movie that Tamara was working
on,
The Shroud?’

‘Oh,
that
thing?’ says Viktor, his tone sniffy. ‘Is that what she was in the middle of?’ He gives Jacobs a strained look.

‘Yes, I think she was,’ Dylan answers, wearily.

Nic spots the tension between them. ‘What about it, Viktor?’

He hesitates.

‘Go on,’ says Jacobs. ‘You might as well say it.’

‘Well, it was asking for trouble, wasn’t it?’ He lets go of Dylan’s hand and becomes animated. ‘I mean, suggesting that the
Shroud didn’t come from Jesus, it’s bound to upset all those extreme groups in the church, isn’t it? It’s blasphemous really.’

‘Viktor was brought up a Catholic,’ explains Jacobs, patiently. ‘He reads too many mystery books and imagines hooded killers
are running around everywhere.’

‘They are,’ he insists.

‘Not in Hollywood, Viktor, not in Hollywood.’ Jacobs pats his hand. ‘Isn’t that so, Detective Karakandez?’

‘Well,’ says Nic. ‘I’ve seen plenty of hooded killers, but they were interested in drugs, guns and two-hundred-dollar sneakers,
never religion.’

Dylan Jacobs manages a smile. ‘Find him, Detective.
Please give me your word that you’ll catch whoever did this.’

Not likely.

The detective doesn’t say it, but it’s the truth. Because a month from now he won’t even be around to take a progress call.
Instead, he does what he’s always done, what he’s always delivered on. ‘I give you my word, Mr Jacobs. I’ll find him.’

Captain Deke Matthews isn’t the kind of cop you want to keep waiting. He’s a big guy in every sense of the word. Big physically.
Big in the department. Big on making his detectives’ lives hurt. He sits behind his office desk waiting impatiently for Fallon
and Karakandez, his barrel stomach wrapped in a blue shirt battened down with braces as red as his jowly face.

‘Sorry boss.’ Mitzi breezes in with Nic in tow.

‘Fifteen minutes late, Lieutenant. D’you have any idea how burned good food can get in nine hundred seconds? How mad Mrs Matthews
will be if I am the reason said good food is burned?’

‘I get the message, boss.’

The captain drums all ten of his chubby fingers on his desk, like he’s waiting for a plate at Thanksgiving. ‘So what have
you got? Let’s be having it, with luck I may still make it before the charring starts.’

Mitzi thumps down a thick wad of folders and pulls out some photographs. ‘Tamara Jacobs, screenwriter, mid-fifties, found
dead in the water at Manhattan Beach. Unsub had tortured her – taken out her left eye and some teeth, ligature marks around
the wrists. To finish, he cut her throat. Kill scene seems to be her home, nice spread in Beverly.’

‘Why so?’

‘Forensics matched blood spatters on the living room ceiling to the victim.’

Matthews glances at the post-mortem pictures then picks one up between finger and thumb like he doesn’t want to be dirtied
by what’s on it. ‘What we have here, lady and gentleman, is something straight from the sewers.’ He slaps it down on his desktop.
‘Why didn’t the perp leave the old girl in her own home after he’d killed her? Why drive out to the beach and dump her in
the ocean?’

‘Buying himself time.’ Nic slides over a pack of surveillance-camera shots from the beach. ‘He was most probably an out-of-towner
and the driver of this rented Lexus.’

‘This one of those 4×4s?’

‘Yeah, pricey metal, a hybrid.’

‘Nice.’ He takes the photograph. ‘What pins your guy to this car?’

‘Tyre treads in sand on the pier match those of one rented from LAX. Could be he flew in for the hit then flew straight out
again.’ Nic gets out the documents his helpers from Robbery traced.

‘Our flyer got a name?’

‘Agne.’ He passes over a rental agreement.

Matthews frowns. ‘Agnes – a girl?’

‘No, Agne – that’s the last name the driver entered on the paperwork. First name “Abderus”. Take a look.’

‘Abderus?’
He stares down at the photocopy. ‘This for real?’

‘Probably not. I Googled both names. They’re Greek and common. Abderus was an ancient hero, of dubious parentage.’

‘It figures.’ Matthews pushes the copy back. ‘Nothing good came from the Greeks. Their economy is down the pan. Their food
is crap. There’s a reason you don’t see Italians smashing plates at the end of meals.’

‘Civilisation?’ suggests Mitzi. They both frown at her. ‘I hear rumours that came from the Greeks.’

He ignores her. ‘So we got a Greek hitman – possibly flying in to torture and kill a writer from LA. This make any sense to
you two dinner-spoilers?’

Mitzi pushes over a copy of the script she finally prised from Sarah Kenny. ‘This is the movie Jacobs was working on. It’s
about the Turin Shroud and we believe it makes some startling claims about whether it really was the burial cloth of Christ.’

Matthews glances at the clock. ‘Do people really give a shit about this?’ The comment stuns his detectives. ‘I mean, have
you even seen a good movie with religion in it?’

‘The Exorcist,’
says Nic.

‘Bruce Almighty?’
suggests Mitzi. They both frown at her. ‘That was sort of religious.’

The captain shakes his head. ‘Okay, I concede God can be box office. But tell me, who in real life cares so much about this
Shroud? Catholics? Greeks?’

‘Them and maybe others.’ Mitzi sifts through the stack of folders as she talks. ‘An assistant at the studio we spoke to said
Jacobs paid researchers in Italy to work for her – maybe provided data on the Shroud.’

‘What data?’

‘Can’t be sure. There was going to be a lab scene, so perhaps scientists do carbon dating or take DNA from blood on the Shroud.
Maybe they come up with proof of whose body was under it.’

The captain wags a finger at the files she’s still rifling through. ‘Are you just spitballing or is there something in there
that makes you look smart?’

She finally finds the papers she’s looking for. ‘These are copies of confidentiality agreements that everyone working on the
film had to sign.’ She passes several over. ‘And here’s a copy of a memo from the publicity department to Tamara Jacobs, asking
if she wanted
New Scientist
and
National Geographic
added to the press day launch. These kind of publications would never normally be at a movie bash.’ She opens another folder.
‘And here’s an IBAN number of the bank account of an Italian Tamara was paying in Turin. It belongs to an R. Craxi.’

‘Excellenti,
it sounds like you have several leads already.’ Matthews pushes his chair back and glances again at the clock as he walks
to his jacket hung behind the door. ‘I’m
off for dinner. You two had better get yourselves to the canteen – you’ve got a long night ahead.’

Dust motes billow in the yellow light from the desk lamp as Crime Scene Investigator Tom Hix drops his report on Mitzi’s block
of wood in Homicide. He’s just heading back out as she and Nic roll in from Matthews’s office. ‘Little treat,’ he says, as
she approaches.

‘What’s that, Tom?’

‘The vet finished examining the Persian cat from the Jacobs house. Kitty scratched someone deep and it’s not her owner’s flesh.’

‘Really?’ Mitzi reaches for the file.

‘He found traces on the left claw and ran DNA. It’s definitely not from Tamara Jacobs.’

Nic asks the obvious question: ‘So who is it from?’

‘The eponymous Unsub. Nothing on Profiler or the other databases. Whoever the cat clawed doesn’t have a record.’

‘At least not in the US,’ Nic qualifies. ‘We linked the perp to a rental car from LAX.’

‘Driver hired it under a Greek name,’ adds Mitzi, ‘and there are Italian connections too. We’ll check international record
systems.’

Hix takes this as a good moment to exit, ‘All yours now.’
He musters a fresh smile for Mitzi. ‘If you want to grab coffee and talk about the case, you know where to find me.’

‘I sure do.’

They watch him leave. Nic gives her a knowing look. ‘You do realise that coffee is not all he wants you to grab?’

‘Shut up! He’s harmless. Besides, a little attention never hurt anyone.’

‘So, how are we going to divide the pain? You do forensics, I chase down Tamara’s family and friends – see if there are skeletons
in the closet?’

‘Deal.’ She flips open the report that Hix just left her. ‘You think the killer is European? Flew in, flew out – left us with
only a false name and a speck of DNA that doesn’t ring bells in any law-enforcement office on the planet.’

Nic lets out a long sigh. ‘We’re in trouble if he is.’ He corrects himself.
‘You’re
in trouble, that would make for a really long job – and I’ll be long gone.’

She tries not to think about him leaving and focuses on her growing hunch. ‘Makes sense, though. Kill and run. Cross a continent
and just vanish.’ She looks up from the DNA report. ‘You think Matthews would sanction a trip to Italy to find this guy Craxi,
the researcher getting wired money from our dead lady? He always says that if there’s money involved in a murder, you should
chase the dollars.’

Nic muses on it. ‘Clear-up rate is down. He needs a result on a high-profile case like this. Why, d’you fancy a trip?’

She shakes her head. ‘No. But you do.’

DOWNTOWN, LOS ANGELES

JJ is surprised to see Emma Varley hanging back as the shopfloor clears at the end of the day. She smiles when she spots him.
Looks him straight in the eyes with her baby blues. ‘You locking up?’

He jangles the keys in his hand. ‘That’s what they pay me to do.’

‘Want some help?’

He figures she’s angling for another ride home. ‘Sure, I’m always in the market for unpaid overtime.’

‘Well, there’s a surprise.’

He waves to the rows of distant machines: ‘Can you just check that they’re all off? Operators usually leave one or two on.
They don’t realise, or don’t care, that it burns out the motor. Wastes a lot of energy as well.’

Emma doesn’t give a damn about energy. All that crap about greenhouse gasses and ozone layers doesn’t affect her. You don’t
worry about stuff like that when you haven’t got enough money to run a car or put the heating on if you’re cold. Given the
chance, she’d burn three times as much energy as she does.

JJ turns off the lights and for a moment the two of them stand in a quiet darkness broken only by the pale spill and hum from
overhead tubes out in the corridor.