Michael White - The Medici secret

'Thank you. It's hit all of us very hard.' Cartwright had a deep, booming voice and a soft, amiable face. He plucked his coat from a hook and started to pull it on. 'Now, I'm afraid I have to dash. I have a meeting at the university. Hope to catch up with you later, Jeff.'

Edie turned to Jeff and placed a hand on his arm. 'Come into the lab, let's sit down.'

She pulled a chair over for Jeff and lowered herself into another. 'You said on the phone you had something important to tell me.'

'Last night I had a visit from an elderly man who told me he had tried to warn Mackenzie that he was in some sort of danger.'

Edie sighed and shook her head slowly. 'I imagine you're talking about Mr Sporani?' Jeff nodded.

'He's been here a few times. He's convinced he found a Medici artefact sometime back in the sixties. But he can't support the claim with any hard evidence.'

'He told me he was visited by some people who threatened his family. And he really was the warden here, wasn't he?'

'Yeah, until about five years ago. To be honest, Jeff, I think he's lost it a bit.'

Suddenly Jeff felt a little foolish. 'I must say, Sporani struck me as quite together,' he said. 'I thought he was the genuine article.'

Edie took his hands in hers. 'I really appreciate your concern,' she said. Then standing up, she added. 'Now you're here, would you like a look around?' 'I'd like that very much.'

Edie led the way into the burial chamber. 'There are fifty-four members of the Medici buried here,' she said. 'Just before Carlin died… was murdered, we had started work on a body my uncle believed was Cosimo the Elder.' She indicated a table with a white plastic sheet covering a lumpy object. 'Believed?' 'It's a long story.' 'You're still working here?'

'Jack and I came back early this morning. I find it helps to keep busy. The others have been given some time off.'

Jeff glanced into the other room where Mackenzie had his office. 'The police have almost emptied it,' Edie said.

The computers had gone, as had many of the folders once housed on shelves over the desk. The remaining papers on the late professor's desk had been arranged in neat piles.

'Do you have any idea what all this is about?' Jeff asked and perched himself on a vacant dissection table just beyond the entrance to Mackenzie's office. He caught something odd in her expression. 'You know something.'

'My uncle had received at least one death threat,' she said simply. 'When?'

'The first was a few weeks ago. He didn't know I knew, but not much gets past me here. I was in his office searching for a lab report and came across a note. One of those ridiculous cut-up newspaper messages. Such a bloody cliche. It said something like: Stop work, or… or there will be consequences.' 'So when Sporani came along?' 'Well I couldn't let on I had seen the letter.' 'No, quite. You must be scared out of your wits.' 'I am.' 'Does Jack know about this?'

'He and I have never been close and I couldn't say anything about the letter, he would think I'd been snooping.' 'What do the police say?'

'Not much, actually. One of the lab assistants has a brother in the force and we've gleaned a little from her. They're working on the assumption it was simply an opportunistic murder. We have no real security here, as you can see.'

He looked into her eyes. 'There's more though, isn't there?'

'Yes,' she said quietly and told him about the object they had found inside the body only a few hours before Mackenzie was murdered, and how it had since vanished. 'And you've told the police about this?'

'Of course. But it means little to them. We didn't have time to properly analyse the artefact and it appeared to be completely featureless.' 'Appeared to be?'

She sighed. 'My uncle called me late the evening he died. I was at a function in Pisa. He left a message on my mobile, which I only picked up the next morning, just after Jack called to tell me Carlin had died.'

'The last time I saw my uncle alive he was sitting in that chair studying the tablet under a desk light. He was still irritated with me over a silly disagreement hours earlier and he hardly acknowledged me when I wished him goodnight. That was about seven o'clock. The police think he died not long after that, no later than ten o'clock. His message was left just before nine.' 'What did he say?'

'This.' Edie produced her mobile, flicked to 'messages in' and put it on speaker.

The dead scientist's voice emerged from the phone. 'Edie. I don't have long. I…' Mackenzie sounded both excited and nervous, his voice pitched higher than Jeff remembered it. 'I'm looking at the tablet and lines have just started to appear on the surface. It's extraordinary. I can only conclude the chemical structure is changing as the tablet absorbs moisture. In the body it must have been coated in a thin layer of embalming fluid which sealed it against the atmosphere. When we took it out and washed the surface, the tablet began to hydrate again. The lines are appearing with amazing speed now, fluorescent green against the black. Must be some odd sulphurous compound.

'I can see some sort of animal and below that a few lines of writing. Let me see.' They could hear his chair scrape on the floor as he repositioned himself under the lamp. 'The animal is a lion. It's strange though… Hang on, it's a winged lion. Yes, I see it now. Below that… writing, Italian, a verse by the look of it. "SulPisola dei morti, i seguici di geographus incomparabilis', progettato qualcosa nessuno ha desiderato, Sara ancora la, Al centro del mondo."

'Haven't a clue what that means…' Then, 'Hang on… I can just see a couple of centimetres from the bottom… two, no three evenly spaced wavy lines. Now listen Edie…'

There was a bleep to indicate the phone's memory had expired. Edie locked up the lab and they left through the upper level of the crypt. The Via dei Pucci was busy as they made their way to a small cafe across from the chapel. It had red awnings and plastic screens protecting customers from the winter wind. Inside, only a few tables were occupied. A waiter who recognised Edie showed them to a table close to an open log fire and they ordered coffees.

Jeff picked up a napkin. Taking a pen from his top pocket, he drew a rough representation of a winged lion. 'What was the verse?' She played the message again.

'It sounds archaic, and my Italian is far from perfect,' Jeff said. 'But I think it translates as:

"On the Island of the Dead, the followers of the 'geographus incomparabilis'"… What the hell is that?' Edie shrugged, '"Great geographer", I guess.' Jeff looked at her blankly. 'OK, so, "On the Island of the Dead, the followers of… the great geographer .., made, no, designed something no one wanted." Can you play it again?' As he listened he wrote the verse out on a napkin: On the Island of the Dead, the followers of the great geographer designed something no one wanted. It will be there still, At the centre of the world. Edie looked at the napkin. 'What does it mean?'

'Well, the winged lion is the symbol for Venice, obviously.' 'The Island of the Dead? The centre of the world?' 'Search me.'

The coffees arrived and Edie stirred hers absent-mindedly. 'Your uncle sounded scared.' 'That was my immediate impression too.'

'Which would imply he had taken the death threats more seriously than he let on.' 'He had no shortage of enemies, he knew that.'

'But you think it goes further; that the artefact you discovered is directly linked to his murder? What about this character Baggio?'

Edie looked angry. 'Don't think I haven't considered him,' she said. 'But the police have drawn a blank. The good Father has a perfect alibi. He was taking a late night mass in front of some seventy people when Carlin was believed to have been killed. Then he was in a prayer group until midnight. He's just what he appears to be: a nut, but not a murderer. Even so, I'm totally convinced my uncle died because of the tablet we found. It's too much of a coincidence otherwise.'