Michael White - The Medici secret

Sporani handed an envelope to Jeff. He pulled out a single sheet of paper and read the short message: STOP YOUR FRIENDS. DO NOT DISTURB THE MEDICI TOMBS. YOUR SON MAY BE DEAD BUT YOUR WIFE STILL LIVES. ? For most of the night sleep eluded Jeff, and before dawn, he was up and dressed. He was making a pot of strong coffee when Rose wandered in yawning, her hair a blonde mess. 'It's alive!' He smiled broadly.

She pulled a face and rubbed her eyes. 'Are you always up this early, Dad?' 'Only when I've been out clubbing all night.'

Rose looked startled for a moment before she realised her father was kidding. When she smiled she looked disarmingly like her mother, Jeff thought, and pushed aside the painful memories. From the hall, they could hear Maria plugging in the hoover. She popped her head around the door and said good morning before starting her work.

'I love this city the most when there's no one around, Rose,' Jeff said and took a large gulp of coffee. 'A psychiatrist might draw some alarming conclusions from that, but there it is.' He pulled on a brown flying jacket. 'Have some coffee, I've put a couple of croissants in the oven to warm.' 'Where're you going?' 'Chores to do.'

Leaving the elevator, Jeff crossed the marble-floored hallway, waved to the dozing concierge and emerged into the narrow passageway behind the building. As he turned the corner, he almost tripped over a body in the shadows. The man groaned and sat up with surprising speed.

'Ah, my friend Jeffrey.' His voice had a heavily accented rasp. 'Dino. This isn't your usual day around here.'

Dino rubbed his eyes. 'Changing my routine. Keeps the tourists on their toes,' he said with a lopsided grin.

Dino had lived on the streets for as long as Jeff had lived in San Marco. During the dark days when he first moved to Venice and left behind his old existence in England, Jeff had befriended the man, taking him for a coffee and a sandwich. There, Dino had revealed some of his life. How he had fled Kosovo after his wife and young daughter had been slaughtered. He had buried them with his bare hands and headed west with nothing but the clothes on his back. Before the war, he had been a maths teacher in Pristina. Now he lived on the few euros rich American tourists occasionally deigned to toss him.

Dino followed a routine in which he would show up in San Marco once a week having passed through a list of hot tourist spots on the other days, and Jeff would always offer him a few euros or take him for a coffee. In a peculiar way, they shared a bond; they were both exiles, men who had passed beyond the veil of normal life. Dino was deeply religious and he believed with all his heart that he was merely biding his time here on earth and that he would see his family again in a better world. Jeff, a committed atheist, kept his own counsel on the subject but he understood that the mere existence of his friend was a great help to him, a constant reminder that his own daughter, Rose, was very much alive and well.

'Here, Dino,' Jeff said, handing him some crisp new notes. 'Get a bite to eat. I have to go. Talk next time, yes?'

Dino took the money and shook Jeff's hand. 'God bless you,' he said with a smile.

An orange light was spreading across the eastern sky as Jeff strode into San Marco and long shadows stretched across the Piazza. At the Torre Dell' Orologio he followed a winding course along Calle Larga and then turned left into Calle dei Specchieri. The place was deserted, the shops closed up. Jeff could almost imagine the entire population of Earth had been exterminated and he was the last man left to wander these silent passageways alone. But soon he was crossing Rio di S. Zulian where he passed a woman with a tiny dog on a lead. Between her bright red lips she clasped a slender black cigarette holder, which she kept in her mouth as she remonstrated with the dog for dawdling at a lamppost. Cigarette ash fell on to cobbled stones. Behind her wandered two middle-aged women, their skin worn, eyes tired. They both looked extremely drab except for their multicoloured headscarves pulled low over their brows.

By the time he reached the Rialto, the sun was emerging, transforming the waters of the Grand Canal into a pastel palette. Under the bridge passed a vaporetto packed with early commuters. The bridge itself was almost deserted, gondola T-shirts and cheap carnival masks could be seen behind grilled glass.

Pausing for a moment, Jeff surveyed the view. He had seen it a thousand times but it still moved him deeply. Venice, he decided long ago, was what he liked to call an 'emotion amplifier'. If you felt happy, it made you happier, and if you were depressed, it could drag you further down. In one way or another, Venice had always been a special place for him and his ex-wife. They had come here when they were first married. Flushed with confidence and a buoyant share market, they had bought the apartment on San Marco. But here too was where he had learned of Imogen's infidelity.

They had left Rose in London with the nanny and flown to Venice for a two-night stay. The evening they arrived, they went straight out to dinner at The Danieli. It had been a typically extravagant affair, but at that time Jeff was revelling in the high life to which he had grown accustomed. Walking back along the Riva Degli they called into the piano bar at the Monaco, and Imogen had told him she had been seeing someone. The next morning, she flew back to England, but he had elected to stay on for a while. He had needed time to think, to try to take on board what he had learned.

Alone and bereft, for him, Venice transformed into a city of ghosts and he felt himself losing touch with reality. He lay in bed in their apartment and searched his mind and soul in an effort to discover what he had done wrong.

He felt sorry for himself, of course, but he was most concerned for Rose, and furious with Imogen for tearing their family apart. He got angry and his anger made him stoic, and he surprised himself with his ruthlessness. Returning to England, he immediately filed for divorce and anaesthetised any feelings he once had for his perfidious wife.

He sometimes wondered whether it had been a good idea to return to the city where his world had fallen apart. But he loved this place too much to let it go. He could not blame Venice for what his wife had done to him. During the early days, soon after the divorce, he had spent long nights walking through the empty maze of Venice listening to Samuel Barber and Tom Waits on his iPod and wondering if he would ever be happy again.

His oldest friend Edie had helped pull him through. She had taken time off work to stay in Venice with him. She had forced him out to restaurants, compelled him to talk, and rationed the booze he found too easy to pour down his throat. The bond between them grew stronger than ever. Jeff knew Edie did not care for Imogen. She never said a word against his ex-wife, but he knew Edie so well that at times they were almost telepathic. Imogen had certainly been jealous of their relationship, but it was misplaced. Edie was his dearest friend, they shared a brotherly-sisterly closeness; Imogen had been his wife and he had loved her, for a while.

Thinking of Edie led his mind back to the previous night and the strange figure of Mario Sporani. The man had been convinced Jeff could somehow talk Edie into influencing Carlin Mackenzie, and he was clearly convinced the team working at the Medici Chapel were in real danger. The old man had left soon after showing him the bizarre note, refusing the offer of a room for the night. Jeff had made a lame promise he would sleep on the idea of calling Edie. Sporani would be in Venice for a couple of days and Jeff had agreed to meet up with him for coffee during that time. Now he didn't know what to think. He couldn't help feeling concerned for Edie, but surely it was all nonsense? Only religious nuts believed there was anything wrong with disinterring the Medici. Surely Sporani was deluded, a fantasist. Perhaps the loss of his family had turned his mind.