Sign of the Cross (22 page)

‘Yachtfinder.com.’

‘Do you still have access?’

‘Sadly yes. The minimum subscription was for a year.’

‘Does it only list yachts? Or does it keep details of commercial vessels?’

‘Anything over a certain footage.’

‘Can you take down some names for me?’ Spike heard a rustle of what sounded like bedclothes.

‘Fire away.’

‘One is
Falcon Freight
, the other,
Calypso Lines
.’

‘What am I looking for?’

‘Ownership predominantly – but I’d be interested in anything irregular. Use your initiative.’

‘I’m on my way to the office now. Can I call you from there?’

Spike checked the time: 11 a.m. ‘Sure,’ he chuckled. The sound was unfamiliar. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Drew. And thanks for your help.’

‘Bring me back some Maltesers and we’ll call it quits.’

Spike’s appetite was returning; he opened up the cans of tuna and tomatoes and mashed them together in a white china bowl. Sitting at the kitchen table, he spooned the combination into his mouth, trying to focus his mind enough to think.

A rap came from the door; still carrying the bowl, Spike went to the hallway and slid all three bolts firmly in place.

‘My darlink?’ came a voice from behind the door.

He drew back the bolts and found the Baron and Baroness standing outside. They peered in like a couple of well-heeled Jehovah’s witnesses.

‘You went to the hospital?’ the Baroness asked.

Spike swallowed his mouthful of tuna. ‘And all’s well.’

‘Is it?’ the Baroness said pointedly. Her powdered brow was crinkled. ‘Michael and I have been talking,’ she said in a gentler voice. ‘You’ve had a shock. You must go home to your father.’

‘Just a few more days.’

‘Why?’

Spike glanced from her to the Baron, who was smiling conspiratorially. ‘I’m still trying to track down my friend.’

‘That was why you were in Marsa?’ the Baroness said.

Spike nodded.

‘Perhaps we can help. We know many people.’

‘It’s fine. Really.’

‘How about supper?’ the Baron said, looking down into Spike’s bowl. ‘Get some proper grub into you.’

‘That’d be great. But I’m going to rest for now.’

The Baroness set off back towards the palazzo, while the Baron lingered, sniffing the air, moustache twitching as he caught the rum on Spike’s breath. ‘That girl was back here last night,’ he said.

‘Which girl?’ Spike replied at once.

‘The curvy one. From the museum. She spent a while knocking on your door.’

Spike exhaled. ‘I missed an appointment with her.’

‘I’ll say,’ the Baron added with a wink. ‘Beats the hell out of a trip to Marsa.’

‘Michael?’ came the Baroness’s shrill voice from round the corner.

The Baron rolled his eyes. ‘See you later,’ he said, ‘8 p.m. as per. We can head out to Carnival afterwards. Have a gawp at the dancers.’ With a knowing grin, he set off in the direction of his wife.

Back in the kitchen, Spike discarded his half-eaten food, then brought up Azzopardi’s number on his phone.

2

Azzopardi answered immediately. His voice was hushed, as though speaking in a library.

‘Where are you?’ Spike asked.

‘At the hospital.’

‘Are the girls OK?’

‘They were all drugged with the same mix of codeine and heroin. All showed signs of sexual assault. But they’ll live.’

‘And the baby? Was it Dinah’s?’

‘The lab’s working on it.’

Spike heard a squeak of linoleum. ‘Why kill a child?’

‘Probably an accident. Or he got in the way.’

‘Any other leads?’

‘One set of prints from the safe house. We’re working our contacts in the camps but it’s hard to get information from the migrant community. My Mobile Squad are going door to door in Marsa, but as you can imagine, the locals are none too welcoming.’

‘How about the marina?’

‘It’s more of a scrapyard. The boats were all empty. Nothing.’

‘Petrovic?’

‘Left the country the morning after your altercation. Plane to London then Atlanta. I don’t hold out much hope of extradition.’ Spike heard muffled chatter in the background; Azzopardi responded in Maltese, then spoke again to Spike. ‘The youngest girl has woken up. We’re waiting for the doctor to confirm she’s fit for questioning.’

‘You’ll ask her about Zahra?’

‘My opening line.’

Spike sensed Azzopardi preparing to hang up. ‘What’s your gut instinct on this?’ he said.

The squeaking linoleum fell silent. ‘We think this “Salib” may be Sicilian. He brings a boat over twice a year, picks up migrants from the warehouse. It starts off as people smuggling, then he gets greedy, takes to drugging the girls and selling them to the Mafia.’

‘A Sicilian with a tattoo of a Maltese cross?’

‘Maybe it’s a celebration of how he earns his living. A tribute to our national symbol.’

Spike let that pass. ‘He can’t have been working alone.’

‘Probably not.’

‘So you’re saying he’s back in Sicily? Taken Zahra with him?’

‘We’re liaising with the Italian police. But it’s tricky these days; people can move between EU countries without even showing a passport.’

‘She can’t have just
vanished
.’

‘Hold tight and I’ll keep you posted.’

The picture hooks resembled insects climbing the bare walls. Finding his glass empty, Spike threw it into the grate, where it shattered, pieces scattering over the floorboards. From outside came the beat of Carnival. Another, lighter knock in the hallway. ‘What am I, a fucking butler?’ Spike swore to himself as he crossed the room and pulled open the door.

3

Rachel Cassar was waiting outside the flat. She wore the same silk shirt as in the cathedral, but her wavy hair was unwashed, loosely held in a ponytail. Her arms were folded across her chest, her eyes wide and expectant behind her black-rimmed specs. Slung over one shoulder was a computer case. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’ she said, before shaking her head and striding past him into the hallway.

Spike stared out at the empty street, seeing the statue of the apostle opposite in its corner niche. The fingers raised in the sign of the cross no longer seemed a blessing, but a gesture of aggression, or a curse. He turned back to the flat.

Rachel was in the sitting room now, eyes ranging over the walls.

‘You OK?’ Spike said.

‘Very much so. You?’ Her eyes dropped to the shattered pieces of his tumbler.

‘If this is about last night, I’m sorry, something came up.’

She put down her laptop, then bent to one of the crates.

‘What are you looking for, Rachel?’

‘David’s copy of the painting.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ she said, ‘I found pentimenti.’

‘Regrets?’

Rachel moved to the next crate. ‘Your father mentioned you spoke Italian. No, “regrets” is the literal meaning. I can assure you, there’s nothing to feel bad about here.’

Spike watched her pick up her computer case, then settle in the chair beside the desk. Irritation began to flare through him like indigestion.

‘Those photographs David took,’ Rachel said, parting her laptop. ‘I digitised the infrared images, and the computer slotted them together.’

Spike moved behind her and stared down at the screen. The attachment she’d opened showed a washed-out, negative version of the painting in Mifsud’s original photograph. On closer examination, Spike saw it was composed of a mosaic of thirty or so images, formed of the blurred IR photographs Mifsud had taken. The white squares dotted within presumably represented the ones Spike had lost to the St James Ditch.

‘A “pentimento” occurs when an artist starts to paint something one way, then regrets it and decides to paint over. See there?’ Rachel pointed at a greyish blur to the right of the jailer’s breeches. ‘That’s the start of a new figure. You can even see the shoes. An assistant to the jailer, I’d imagine. We’d have known more about him if you hadn’t lost the rest of the photographs.’

‘Why does this matter, Rachel?’

‘Because,’ she said, exasperation creeping into her voice, ‘it suggests that the Gozo St Agatha is not a copy.’

Spike waited for this revelation to hit home.

‘If someone is copying a painting,’ Rachel went on, ‘they’ll make minor adjustments as they go. Human error. But major structural changes, like adding a figure, then choosing to take it out – that only tends to occur with original paintings.’

‘And why is this significant?’

Rachel paused, as though unsure whether to continue. ‘I think I mentioned before that there are lots of St Agathas in Malta.’

‘You did.’

‘Well, from the seventeenth century onwards, they all follow a similar structure and style. Because of this, most people believe that they were copied from a single original painting, now lost. A few eccentric academics even think this original was painted by Caravaggio. Do you follow?’

‘Just about.’

‘This is because they all share certain Caravaggian tropes.’ She hit a key on the computer and the screen switched to Mifsud’s basic photograph of the painting. ‘See . . . no putti beckoning Agatha up to heaven, no haloes, no sudden apparition of St Peter – just harsh, brutal naturalism. And there . . . Agatha’s hair, for example, is a swarthy Sicilian brown, rather than the usual angelic blonde. Then there’s the fact that so few paintings are accounted for from Caravaggio’s time on Malta. He was employed by the Order of St John for almost two years, he was a famously fast worker, so where are the fruits of his labours? The two masterpieces in the oratory, then four others abroad. But that’s it. So a certain number of other paintings must be lost, the experts claim. Plundered by Napoleon. Squirrelled overseas. Or hanging misattributed in dingy chapels.’

‘You sound dubious.’

‘Caravaggio’s influence in Malta was pervasive. With the St Agatha cycle . . . a talented local artist could just have executed an original painting in the Caravaggian style, then had others copy it. There’s no reason for the source material to have been by Caravaggio.’

‘So that’s what you’re saying the Gozo St Agatha is? An original painting by a talented local artist?’

‘That’s what I assumed when I saw the first pentimento. But then something else struck me. I told you before about preliminary sketches.’

‘Pencil lines?’

‘The infrared picks up most strongly on those because the carbon content is highest.’ Rachel switched the computer screen back to the IR photo-mosaic. ‘Do you see any clear lines in this image?’

‘It’s too blurred.’

‘Exactly,’ Rachel declared with satisfaction. ‘An ordinary artist creating a new painting would sketch out what he was going to paint first. In the baroque era, there was only one person skilful enough to forgo that process yet still produce a work like this.’

‘Your man?’

‘Michelangelo Merisi himself. Caravaggio didn’t bother with anything as tedious as preliminary sketches; he just painted directly on the canvas. And not just any old canvas.’ Rachel’s fingers flitted around the image. ‘Looks pale, doesn’t it? That’s because the canvas has been covered in a red underwash. That’s another of Caravaggio’s indicators: he used to wash his canvases with a red preparation, let them dry, then get started. The colour red is barely picked up by IR radiation. That’s why the background looks so muted.’ Rachel ran her hands through her hair; her ponytail came loose, the elastic tie falling to the ground.

‘So you’re suggesting David might have uncovered a lost Caravaggio?’

‘I’m saying . . . I need to see the original.’ She zipped the laptop back in its case.

‘Good for David,’ Spike said.

She sprang to her feet. ‘Good for David? Is that all you can say? Do you have any concept of how few confirmed Caravaggios there are in existence? This would be like winning the lottery of the century.’

‘But David wouldn’t have gained financially. Surely the Church would own the painting. Or the Maltese government?’

‘Forget ownership. Think of the status. Book tours. Lecture circuits. The respect and envy of your peers.’ Her eyes glowed behind her spectacles.

‘So where is the original?’

She dipped into another crate. ‘Well, it’s not in the chapel, I can tell you that. I’ve checked with the Gozo Curia and David didn’t lodge any formal requests to remove it. So I started to wonder if someone else might have taken it. But then you told me about the copy David had been making.’

‘I don’t see why it’s of such interest.’

‘Because,’ Rachel retorted, ‘it means that David took the painting from the chapel himself.’

‘No it doesn’t.’

Rachel gave a contemptuous snort.

‘David could have been painting his copy from a photograph.’