Alex Connor - Isle of the Dead

4th November 1555 – Larissa Vespucci found murdered and skinned.

Suspicion fell on Vespucci, but his protectors rallied round him. Larissa had been unfaithful.

Aretino stands up for Vespucci.

Titian continues painting the portrait.

November 26th 1555 – Claudia Moroni found murdered and skinned.

Venice in the worst winter for over a century. Fogs constant, temperatures below zero. The legend of The Skin Hunter begins.

Thoughtful, Nino put the portraits of Claudia Moroni and Larissa Vespucci side by side. There were no physical similarities between the two women, the unremarkable Claudia looking more like a housewife than an adulteress. Stretching across the table, Nino then placed the images of Seraphina and Sally Egan above the two murdered Venetian women. Again, no similarities, not obvious ones anyway. Disappointed, he frowned. Perhaps there wasn’t a connection between a killer in the sixteenth century and another in the twenty-first century. Perhaps it was just coincidence.

And then again, perhaps it wasn’t.

Taking a deep breath, Nino read on. Outside, it grew dark. In its shrine, the figure of Christ bent His head to the traffic, and as the lights changed on Kensington High Street a plane came in to land at Heathrow Airport. It carried one hundred and seventy-five passengers.

And one of them was a killer.

20

Six o’clock and the tide was in, nuzzling the Thames Embankment, as Triumph Jones sat on one of the benches overlooking the river. He had felt compelled to come to London, his guilt forcing his hand. Such vanity, he thought – how could he have had such vanity? His eyes closed momentarily, then opened again, stinging in the December wind. His ego had overridden his sense, his morals, and now the plan he had set in motion had spun out of control.

Leaning forward, he watched the river, remembering how, days earlier, he had taken a taxi and asked to be dropped off at Grosvenor Bridge. There he had paused, looking around and waiting. Finally he spotted a woman a little way off, and ducked behind one of the struts of the bridge to avoid being seen. He waited, certain that she was coming closer, then threw the portrait of Angelico Vespucci over the railings and into the ebbing tide. It hit the water with a hefty splash, the woman turning as Triumph watched.

He knew it had still been something of a gamble. What if there had been some alteration in the flow? Or some boat causing a wake that spun the Titian away from the bank? Or worse, what if it had remained in the water and been irrevocably damaged?

Still hiding, Triumph had seen the woman react. Surprised, she looked into the water, the Titian following a sudden push of tide and washing up on to the shingle. Relieved, Triumph had then seen the slight figure scramble down the grit towards it. Once she nearly lost her balance on the wet silt, but she recovered and, after looking carefully at the package, had picked it up.

Exhaling, Triumph had walked off in the opposite direction. His plan had been set in motion. Let the games begin …

Taking in a breath, he clasped his hands together, trying to stop them shaking. It had been a ploy to excite the interest of the art world, to push up the price of a notorious painting. A painting which had come his way via a thief in Madrid and a forger in San Francisco. A Titian everyone would be after. What better way to get a notorious work back on to the market than to have it found by accident ? How much publicity could be generated by such a story?

Like many in the art world, Triumph had known about The Skin Hunter and was now relying on its gory reputation to start up a media scramble. Everyone knew that serial killers sold copy.

It hadn’t mattered to Triumph who found the portrait or where it had ended up. The fact that it came to rest with Gaspare Reni was a bonus, unexpected but irrelevant. He had calculated that whoever found the Titian would sell to a gallery or put it in an auction – where he would buy it . It might cost him more, but after a little while he would sell it on and make an impressive profit while bolstering his own reputation at the same time.

Of course he had known that it could go another way. But if anyone tried to organise a sale illegally, Triumph would hear of that too. He hadn’t earned his sobriquet by relying on the good nature of mankind. Over the years he had employed staff to run his gallery and his home, and hired a few others who lurked in the swamp of the art world, privy to unsavoury and dangerous secrets.

It should have been so simple.

And then Seraphina Morgan, aka Seraphina di Fattori, was murdered and flayed. The woman who had found the painting was dead – and the portrait was gone … Triumph hadn’t believed what Gaspare Reni had told him. The old dealer would never have destroyed a Titian. What he hadn’t expected was that Gaspare would keep it and hide it. Far from the portrait coming on to the market in a blast of notoriety, it had been concealed again.

Worse was to follow. Having set someone to watch Gaspare’s gallery, his scrutiny had been too late. Gaspare Reni had already been admitted to hospital, after ‘a fall’. It wasn’t difficult to read the subtext. Somehow Triumph had been outwitted; before he could buy the Titian from Gaspare Reni the picture had been stolen. And worse, in a matter of days another woman had been killed. Another woman murdered in exactly the same manner as the first.

No one had to tell him that there was a connection.

For the first time in his life, Triumph Jones felt cursed. Everything he had wanted, he had achieved. The art world was becoming giddy with the leaking news of the Titian. How long before it was common knowledge? He had wanted that, but not what followed. How long before some hack made the front page by pairing the legend of The Skin Hunter with the deaths of Seraphina Morgan and Sally Egan?

And it was his fault. He’d built up the rumour, nourished the seed. There had been a killer called Angelico Vespucci, and a legend. Along with a shattering threat – when the portrait emerges, so will the man . That had been Triumph’s plan, to utilise the fable when he had the cursed painting in his possession.

Ashamed, he thought back. God, he had hardly been able to believe his luck, that the infamous portrait should end up in his hands. But then greed had entered the equation. How could he ensure that the picture got on to the front pages, his coup publicised globally, adding another victory to his roll-call of triumphs? And so he resurrected a legend. Polished, embellished, refined, the tale taking its time to marinate, so that its revelation would be all the more newsworthy when the portrait came to light …

Shivering, Triumph wrapped his coat around him, still staring into the water. What had he done? What had he called up? The thought unnerved him. Of course Angelico Vespucci couldn’t come back from the dead. It was absurd. And yet two women had been murdered by the same means The Skin Hunter had employed over four hundred years earlier. So something had happened. Triumph’s actions had triggered something.

Unsettled, he grabbed at the comfort of a human villain. Maybe a killer copying The Skin Hunter? It was possible, Triumph thought, God knows, it was possible.

But it was still his fault. Two young women were dead. And his conscience floundered under the weight of their deaths.

21

Narita International Airport, Tokyo

Harriet Forbes came off the 18.06 flight from London irritable and tired. A bad journey hadn’t improved her temper and the thought of having to check into her hotel and then return a list of phone calls depressed her. What, she asked herself, was the point of promoting yet another nail polish? What the shit did anyone need with another varnish? She waited for her luggage, tapping her foot impatiently, her short hair greasy, her face sullen with bad temper and lack of sleep.