The Caravaggio Conspiracy

by Alex Connor

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

1608. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the greatest Italian painter of his day, is expelled from the Order of the Knights of Malta. Subject to a clandestine hearing, his crime remains a closely guarded secret. 2014. Two bodies are found in a London art gallery - stripped naked, necks bound with wire and legs obscenely contorted. They are twin brothers - successful art dealers - their brutal murder linked to the mysterious disappearance of two paintings by the master Caravaggio. Investigators are confounded, and it falls to art expert Gil Eckhart to identify the killer before he slays again. But as the search for clues takes him from the glamorous skyline of New York to the fetid catacombs of Palermo, Eckhart finds that in the high-stakes world of art, good and evil are often tarred with the same, blood-soaked, brush.

Release date: December 24, 2013

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 348

Sample

Cork Street, LondonJanuary 2014, 8.36 a.m.

The police had cordoned off the area with yellow tape, closed both ends of the street to prevent any traffic entering or leaving. An ambulance, its siren muted, was parked at the entrance of The Weir Gallery and two police officers stood guard at the door.

It was seven thirty on a winter’s morning. Sleet was making the capital’s streets unwelcoming, a mordant sky promising a fitful, chilly, January day. But inside the gallery, where the heating had been turned up to the maximum, over a hundred degrees, a distraught man was sitting with his head in his hands by the stairs that led to the downstairs gallery.

‘Jacob?’

Hearing his name, he looked up. ‘Gil. Thanks for coming.’

He stared at the thickset man standing in front of him. Wiry dark hair, nose broken from a fight in his teens, stevedore’s hands. Not the kind of man anyone would expect to see in an art gallery.

‘You were the only person I could turn to …’ His eyes moved towards the back of the main gallery, where a partition screen had been pulled across. ‘I was going to call the police straight after I’d phoned you – but Oscar beat me to it.’

The name resonated in Gil’s head. Relax, he thought. There are a lot of men called Oscar. But he knew before asking which Oscar this would be.

‘He was here until a few minutes ago. You just missed him. I need you to help me. I need you to take on the case.’ When Gil didn’t reply, Jacob hurried on. ‘The police won’t let me leave. Surely they can’t think I had anything to do with it?’

‘They want to talk to you because you found the bodies,’ Gil said, sitting on the steps next to the dealer. ‘They just want to ask some questions.’ He felt in his inside pocket and then remembered that he didn’t smoke any more. Hadn’t smoked for over seven years. Since Berlin. ‘How did Oscar find out what had happened?’

‘I don’t know. He didn’t say. You know Oscar, always in on everything.’

As he talked, Gil noticed the smell of alcohol on Jacob’s breath. At 8.45 in the morning? Jacob Levens had been a heavy drinker for a long time, but the previous year ill health had forced him to give up. Supposedly.

‘Why were you here, Jacob?’

‘We had a breakfast meeting at eight. I was early, but the door was unlocked and so I walked in. The lights were on, so was the heating—’

‘You’re not kidding. It must be over a hundred degrees in here. Why doesn’t someone lower the thermostat?’

‘I was going to, but we can’t touch anything.’

Gil watched the tableau that was taking shape at the end of the gallery. Old memories, unpleasant and unwanted, forced themselves on him.

‘I haven’t been here for a long time.’

‘I’m surprised the police let you in—’

Gil shrugged. ‘I know the officer on duty.’

‘Still got influence?’

‘I hope not.’

He glanced at Jacob — the man who had hired him many times, and over the years had become a friend. The man who had stood by him after the death of his first wife and introduced him to his second. The man Gil liked, admired, even though his weaknesses were common knowledge. But friendship only went so far. Now Jacob Levens was calling Gil back to the world he had rejected. And if it had been anyone other than Jacob he would have refused.

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ Gil told him, as he moved towards the partition.

The officer who had let him into the gallery was talking to a detective, another man familiar to Gil. Detective Phil Simmons, around forty, with bags under his eyes and an angry rash running from his neck up to his forehead. Seeing Gil, Simmons gestured for him to approach.

Gil hesitated.

No, he thought. If I walk behind this screen, I’m involved. I’m back where I used to be, investigating the art world, down in the midden with the crooks and the grandees who pose as honest men. Among the money men who manipulate them all. If I go behind the screen I go back to my other life. Before I met Bette. Do I really want to risk the future by revisiting a past I despised?

Well, do I?

‘I thought you’d given all of this up,’ Simmons said, again beckoning for Gil to come forward. ‘Seem to remember that you swore off the investigating work.’ He scratched at his blotchy skin. ‘Heard you were a researcher now.’

‘I am.’

‘So why are you here?’

‘Jacob called me in. He’s a friend.’

Simmons glanced over his shoulder towards the dealer. ‘He found the bodies.’

‘Yeah. He said.’

‘You know you’ve put on weight?’ Simmons remarked, grinning.

‘I got married again.’

‘She can obviously cook.’

‘We’re having a baby.’

‘Are you carrying it?’

To his surprise, Gil laughed, slipping back into the old informality.

‘You ready?’ Simmons asked, jerking his head to indicate that Gil could walk behind the partition.

And still he hesitated.

‘Come on!’ Simmons barked. ‘I haven’t got all bloody day.’

The Weir brothers were obviously dead. Sitting, stripped naked, back to back, their necks bound together with picture wire. Their legs had been bent into the yoga lotus position, their genitals exposed, their scrotums bloodied, punctured by deep, lacerating wounds.

‘Nail gun,’ Simmons said, pointing to the discarded tool lying only inches from Sebastian Weir’s left foot. ‘Tortured. Both of them.’

Gil stared at the brothers, at the twins who had been preeminent on the London art scene for over a decade. Two successful dealers, skin white as coconut milk, hair bleached blond. Vicious and generous by turns. Never seen apart. Not even dead.

‘Oh, shit,’ Simmons said suddenly, leaning down towards the brothers and staring into their bloated faces. He glanced over to the pathologist who was examining the bodies. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

Dunning paused. ‘I don’t know. What d’you think it is?’

‘Around the mouth. Is that—’

‘Rabbit size glue,’ Gil interrupted.

‘Thank God. I thought it was semen,’ Simmons replied. ‘What’s “rabbit size glue”?’

‘A mixture used to prepare canvases. It goes on first, before the canvas is primed.’

‘So why put it in their mouths?’

‘Search me,’ Gil replied, still staring at the corpses, wondering when Dunning – or Simmons – would notice what he had seen at once. What he hadn’t wanted to see, because he knew what it meant.

‘Come on,’ Simmons urged the pathologist. ‘What killed them?’

Dunning looked like a kid in a man’s suit. Ignoring the detective, he reached out his gloved hand and touched the bloodied head of Benjamin Weir, then frowned as the scalp moved, slipping forward over the victim’s face, exposing the skull.

Gil took in a breath and Simmons glanced at him.

‘What? You want to say something. What is it?’

‘Sebastian will have been scalped too.’

The pathologist touched the head of the second corpse, and then nodded.

Curious, Simmons glanced back to Gil. ‘How did you know?’

‘I’ve seen it before.’

‘Anything else you want to tell me?’

‘Only that the killer will have swapped the scalps. Benjamin will have Sebastian’s scalp, and Sebastian, Benjamin’s.’

He was back in the past without realising it. Back in time seven years to a case he had been working on. Not in London – this time it was Berlin. An eminent art dealer, Terrill Huber, had been found in a storage facility naked, bound with picture wire, his genitals mutilated with a nail gun, rabbit skin glue in his mouth. And he had been scalped. An hour later his wife, Alma, was found naked and bound in their gallery on the Friedrichstrasse, also scalped. Her breasts were spotted by wounds from a nail gun and rabbit skin glue had been poured into her mouth after death.

What had given the events a hideous comedic slant was that fact that the husband was wearing his wife’s scalp and she was wearing his. The sight of a pot-bellied, ageing man lying disfigured and bloodied had been made ridiculous by the topping of his wife’s dyed hair. It had added a cruel, morbidly vicious touch. As for the wife, she had been slumped against the gallery’s inner office door, her husband’s bloodied bald pate crowning her beautiful face.

The image had never left Gil. It had remained lodged in his psyche. And for all his investigations – and those of the Berlin police – the killer was never found.

Two months later Gil’s own wife was dead.

Grieving, he had given up his investigative work. Had gone into research instead, hired by writers to help with their books. The subjects varied: crime, the art world, even sport. But that suited Gil. He snuggled down into words, took comfort in a lullaby of facts, all the time knowing that it had been an accident, a fluke which had killed Holly. A set of traffic lights malfunctioning. Sticking on green when they should have changed to red. So that the car coming towards her didn’t expect Holly’s vehicle – and couldn’t avoid it in time.

‘Were they gay?’

Drawn back to the present, Gil shook his head and glanced over to Simmons. ‘No.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah. They were asexual. Advertised the fact. They’d been celibate for years.’

Both men watched as the corpses were lifted into body bags, put onto stretchers, and wheeled out. A group of on-lookers had already gathered around the gallery entrance, the slam of the ambulance doors echoing in the dead morning.

‘You said you’d seen something like this before.’ Simmons glanced over to Gil. ‘Where?’

‘Berlin. I was called in on the case, but I had no luck. Neither did the police. I thought I was close to him once, but didn’t get him.’

‘When was this?’

‘2007.’

Preoccupied, Simmons scratched at his neck, Gil watching him.

‘How d’you get that rash?’

‘I won it in a raffle,’ Simmons replied drily. ‘The doctor said it was something I ate. I’ve tried three different creams, but nothing works.’ Still raking at his neck with his nails, he turned back to Gil. ‘Were there other similarities, apart from the scalping?’

‘The other victims were naked too. And the man’s genitals had been mutilated.’

‘The man’s?’

‘Last time it was a man and a woman,’ Gil explained. ‘Husband and wife. The woman’s breasts were mutilated.’

‘What about the rabbit shit?’

‘Rabbit skin glue. There was some in both of the victim’s mouths.’

Simmons raised his eyebrows. ‘And the scalps were swapped?’

‘Yes. Their bodies were found in different locations. The killer took the husband’s scalp all the way across Berlin.’

‘Where he then stuck it on the wife’s head? After he’d scalped her?’

Gil nodded.

‘And then he crossed Berlin again with her scalp to put it on her husband’s head?’ Simmons paused. ‘So he killed the husband first?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did he scalp them?’

‘We never found out, because we never found him.’

‘And now the Weir brothers have been murdered the same way. Same killer?’

‘Maybe.’ Gil shrugged. ‘I don’t know what’s been going on for the last seven years. I’m out of touch. Perhaps there have been other murders like this—’

‘Not in London.’

‘Well, maybe you should check out what’s been going on in Germany. And everywhere else, if it comes to that.’ Gil sighed. ‘Look, it was a long time ago, when I used to do this for a living.’

‘You’re doing it now—’

‘No. I only came because Jacob called me. I’m not directly involved.’

‘But you know I’ve got to ask you about Berlin, don’t you?’

Gil nodded. ‘Yes. But if I help you, you have to help me. Give me access to the pathologist, to your witness statements – the usual. I’m discreet, you know that. You can trust me.’

Simmons put his head on one side. ‘So you are taking the case?’

‘I’ll have a quick look at it for Jacob. But I’m not getting caught up again. I’m retired, remember?’

‘Oh, I remember,’ Simmons replied, pointing across the gallery to where Jacob Levens was still sitting. ‘Question is, does he?’

Berlin, Germany9.30 a.m.

He was using straighteners, because he hated the way his hair crinkled up. Liked it to look groomed. Not like coarse, peasant hair. Still, he thought with pleasure, it was a luscious head of hair for a man over forty. Leaning towards the mirror Luca then studied his teeth, checking there was no plaque, no irritating reminder of a rushed lunch.

The only part of his face he truly liked were his eyes. Dark brown, but not welcoming. Hard. Compelling. At times inviting, at other times cold. Rough trade eyes… His gaze moved down to the waiter’s uniform he was wearing. An outfit soaked in resentment, sticky with humiliation. Everything that a customer thought was in their eyes: words were irrelevant. Their expression said it all as they looked at him: man nudging middle age, waiting on tables. Trying to be pleasant and obsequious instead. An outsider, with his slicked-down Mediterranean hair and rent boy lips. Overblown, slipping out of his good looks and youth …

Yes, Luca thought. I know how you see me.

But not for much longer.

Breathing in, he relaxed. Everything was in place at last. Within hours he would launch himself on the internet. He would also contact the papers, magazines, radio and television, and begin his blog. Facebook and Twitter were poised like greyhounds in the slips, ready to run.

He had the name, after all. A name that was famous and, more importantly, infamous. The name of a painter who was also a murderer. Of course Luca knew that people might not believe him. Might never accept that he was a descendant of Caravaggio and the notorious Roman prostitute Fillide Melandroni. But he was prepared for that. Prepared for people to scoff and think him a madman.

He knew better. He knew his bloodline, and what it meant. How it carried a secret. How he was the only man alive who knew the whereabouts of Fillide Melandroni’s portrait, long thought destroyed. But that wasn’t all. Luca also knew the hiding place of the most famous missing painting in the art world – The Nativity with St Lawrence and St Francis, stolen from Palermo, Sicily, in 1969. Allegedly by the Mafia.

The portrait of Fillide was believed to have been destroyed in Germany in 1945. The Nativity had been missing since 1969. Although both works were valuable, The Nativity was a legend. Too famous to be sold on, too valuable to be destroyed.

In hiding.

As he had been.

Waiting.

Of course when he went public Luca Meriss knew that he would be setting himself up as a target, and not just for abuse. Revealing the portrait would be a coup. Its history was extraordinary, likely to catch the interest of the world. Luca wanted that. Fillide Melandroni was his ancestor: a beautiful, violent whore whose image shimmered out of many of Caravaggio’s paintings. Who wouldn’t want to own it? But The Nativity would stagger the art world. A painting valued at more than £60,000,000 would incite interest and greed across the globe. Every collector, gallery, connoisseur – and villain – would want it.

But only he knew its whereabouts. Only Luca Meriss. Anyone who wanted it had to come to him. And if anything happened to him? It would be lost forever.

As guarantees went, it was irrefutable.

London

Bette had been watching her husband from the doorway for several minutes. Knew the look. The same look Gil had worn when he told her about the death of his first wife – the clever, enigmatic Holly, of whom she was still jealous. The same look he had before when he was talking about his previous life and work. When he had mentioned the murder case in Berlin.

Sensing her presence, Gil looked up. ‘Did I wake you?’

‘No.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘Where were you? I woke up and you were gone.’

‘Jacob Levens called me. He had a problem.’

‘What kind of problem?’

He didn’t want to tell her – not now, when she was only weeks from giving birth.

‘What happened, Gil?’

‘There’s been a double murder. The Weir twins. Jacob found the bodies.’

‘Jesus.’

‘He’s in a bad way.’

Bette sat down at the table, thinking of Jacob Levens. It had been summer a few years earlier and Bette had been working in the fashion business. A business in which she had failed dismally. On an impulsive gesture she had fled Milan and come to London, staying with her divorced mother. Which was something else Bette failed at. Two strong characters, they had clashed and before long Bette had been desperate to get a job and rent her own flat.

At the same time Jacob Levens had been deserted by his long-time receptionist and, with an exhibition imminent, was frantic to fill the post. So when Bette applied to work at Jacob’s gallery, he took her on. Stylish, intelligent and a quick learner, she was exactly what he needed. The bonus was that she found a father figure, and Jacob a surrogate daughter. She was sparky enough to keep him on his toes, his irritation flagging in the face of her indifference. And when he drank, it was Bette who moved the bottles that Jacob thought he had hidden so furtively.

She had looked after him because he had no one else. And Jacob had returned the favour by introducing her to Gil Eckhart.

‘You have to help him,’ Bette said, putting her hand over her husband’s. ‘He needs you.’

‘I’m not doing investigations any more. I swore off it, you know that.’

Pausing, Gil wondered how much to confide. He had told Bette that the Weir brothers had been murdered, nothing else. And he hadn’t mentioned the similarities between their killings and the ones in Berlin seven years earlier. He didn’t want to tell her that. Didn’t want to put it into words, shake it loose again.

She stared at Gil curiously. ‘The police don’t suspect Jacob, do they?’

‘No. But it would have been a hell of a shock for him to find them like that.’ Gil was lying, trying to avoid giving her any more information. ‘Maybe Jacob overreacted. Maybe he doesn’t really need me. The police can handle it.’

‘I’m pregnant, not stupid!’ Bette snapped. ‘I hate it when you keep things from me.’

‘I’m not keeping anything from you.’

‘You are, Gil! Tell me what’s going on.’

He hesitated.

‘Gil, what is it?’

‘You remember the case in Berlin I told you about? The murders of Alma and Terrill Huber?’

She was beginning to understand. ‘Yes, I remember.’

‘The Weir brothers were killed in the same way.’ He stared at her, held her gaze. ‘Don’t ask me for details.’

She wasn’t about to. ‘So the police will want to talk to you about the Berlin murders?’

‘They already have. The detective in charge – Phil Simmons – was at The Weir Gallery when I got there. We talked and then he called me back. He’d been looking into the Berlin case and wanted to go over some details.’

‘Does Simmons think it’s the same killer?’

Gil didn’t reply.

‘The killer no one caught?’

‘Let it drop, Bette. I’ll sort it out. It’ll all be over by this afternoon.’

She wasn’t about to be brushed off. ‘But if it was the same man, where’s he been for seven years?’

‘Abroad. In prison. Hospitalised. Who knows?’

In that instant Bette realised that their life might be threatened, shuddering under some sudden malignant force.

Immediately Gil picked up on her anxiety. ‘Look, the police will just ask me some more questions and that’ll be it.’

He smiled at her, but she didn’t respond. Instead she huddled into herself, folding her arms across her pregnant stomach. She could feel the baby moving inside her, restless, unnerved. Like she was. There were only a few weeks left of her pregnancy. Why couldn’t Jacob Levens have called in someone else? Why Gil? She owed the dealer her happiness, Bette knew that, but she was suddenly afraid. She didn’t want the stink of torture and murder coming into her home. Didn’t want her husband back in the life he had hated. She wanted Gil to be painting the nursery with her, counting down the last weeks of her pregnancy with her. Not travelling, not mixing with criminals, not talking to the police, not reliving the past. Not going back to Berlin. To his old life. To the memory of his first wife.

‘You’re retired. Jacob knows that.’ She paused, staring at her husband. ‘Anyway, why you? Why does Jacob want you to investigate?’

He was trying to dodge the questions, to field the truth. ‘I’ve worked for him before, on other cases.’

‘That was years ago.’

‘Maybe so, but Jacob knows me, trusts me.’

She shook her head.

‘No, there’s more to it. Like you said, he just found the bodies. So why the need to drag you in?’ She paused, holding her husband’s gaze. ‘Why do these murders matter so much to Jacob Levens?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes, you do! Tell me.’

He paused, then answered her. ‘Alma Huber was his sister.’

New York3.30 a.m.

‘Hello? Hello? Is there anyone down there?’

Catrina Hoyt paused, listening. It was still dark, dawn slow to show its face. Always a bad sleeper, she had woken to some sound she couldn’t place. Certainly loud enough to permeate the double-glazed windows. Turning over, she had listened for a moment. But apart from the endless siren and cab horns that embroider every New Yorker’s sleep, there had been nothing unusual.

Then she heard another sound coming from inside the building, and jumped out of bed. Groping in the drawer of the bedside table, she pulled out a hand gun, gripping it tightly as she moved downstairs. The apartment steps were separate from the main building and ran behind the alarmed gallery area. Catrina made for the basement door.

Flicking the safety catch off her gun, she opened the door and pushed it back with her foot. But when she turned on the light switch, nothing happened. Then she heard another noise coming from the basement. A noise that seemed as though someone intended to be heard. Spooked, Catrina put out her left hand, took the torch from the back of the cellar door, and shone its light down into the darkness.

Silence.

She wasn’t afraid.

She could handle herself.

Besides, Catrina was five foot eleven, muscular and naturally aggressive. If someone had broken into her gallery, she was going to take them on. It wasn’t the first break-in she had had. Slowly, purposefully, she descended the first few steps.

A noise.

A shuffling.

She paused halfway down the steps, shining the torchlight around the cellar below. Packing crates were stacked against the walls, some propped up like coffins, others gaping open like the mouths of timber giants. Scanning the area, the torch beam picked out the workbenches on which the paintings were packed for shipment, and, next to them, the other benches where the pictures were unpacked, ready for exhibition.

In the furthest corner, the solemn red eye of an alarm sensor blinked. Someone had walked past it. Catrina swung the torch, but whoever had tripped the sensor had moved out of its orbit again. Unnerved, she moved the light around, trying to catch sight of whatever was down there.

The red light flicked on again.

And off.

She could hear movement, only yards to her right.

She swung the torch round.

Nothing there.

Then the noise moved to her left.

Again, she swung the light in its direction.

Again, nothing.

Then she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps just behind her.

Hampstead, London1.00 p.m.

Jacob Levens was in the sitting room of his flat, staring apologetically at Gil.

‘I shouldn’t have called you. Not this morning, and not just now. I don’t know why. I didn’t think. I’m sorry.’

Jacob shrugged. He was nursing a whisky, making no attempt to hide it. And it obviously wasn’t his first drink either. He was, as ever, immaculate. Portly, yes, but carrying his excess weight as though he had paid good money for it.

He gestured to the chaos around him. ‘Someone broke in. Wrecked the place.’

‘Have you called the police?’

‘No.’

‘You have to call them, Jacob—’

‘You think this is related to the Weir murders?’

‘Maybe. Have you touched anything?’

‘No.’

He looked at Gil, reassured by his calmness. If truth were told, he had missed him. Like everyone else, Jacob could understand Gil Eckhart’s exile and his grief over the terrible and unexpected death of his first wife – but he had still missed him.

Life had gone on for both of them – phone calls exchanged a few times a year, a note in a card at Christmas, but no meet. . .