There was no body.
Yet.
Only then did Jean Rizzo notice the envelope, crisp and white like the one Señora Prieto had found at the foot of the Shroud. It was propped up against the pillows, and addressed in a clear, cursive hand:
To Tracy Whitney, c/o Inspector Jean Rizzo.
Ripping it open, Jean started to read . . .
CHAPTER 23
JEFF WAS IN THE house in Eaton Square. He was naked in bed, with Tracy lying next to him. Only, when he leaned over to kiss her, it wasn’t Tracy. It was another woman, a stranger.
Tracy was standing in the doorway shouting at him.
“How could you?”
Jeff felt sick. He ran to the door, but when he got there Tracy had gone. Now it was Jeff’s mother, Linda, who was talking. She used the same words Tracy had: How could you? But she was in another house, in another time, and she was shouting at Jeff’s father. Linda Stevens had caught her husband out in another affair.
All her inheritance money was gone, squandered on Dave Stevens’s latest get-rich-quick scheme.
“Get off me, you bitch!”
Cowering outside their bedroom, Jeff heard the crack of bone on bone as his father’s fist smashed into his mother’s cheek.
Linda screamed, “Stop it, Dave! Please!”
But the beating went on: thwack, thwack, thwack.
THWACK, THWACK, THWACK.
Something hard and cold slammed again and again into Jeff’s back.
He was lying on the floor, a metal floor, being thrown around like a potato in a sack.
I’m moving. Where am I?
He heard a sound like roaring engines and felt the shaking intensify.
A plane? A cargo plane?
Then he slammed down hard on the floor. The blackness returned.
THE BED WAS WARM and soft but Jeff had to get out of it. His stepmother wouldn’t leave him alone.
“Hold me, Jeffie! Your dad won’t be back for hours.”
Her breasts were like pillows, soft and enormous, suffocating him. Rolls of smooth, feminine flesh pressed down on him like dough. He couldn’t move! Panic rose up within him.
Jeff ran to the window and jumped out, naked, into the snow.
He started to shiver. It was so cold. So deathly cold.
Some instinct told him, Don’t fall asleep. If you sleep you’ll die.
Wake up, Jeff. Wake up!
“WAKE UP!”
The voice was real. The cold too. Jeff wasn’t moving anymore, but he was still on his back. The stone beneath him was like a block of ice.
“I said ‘wake up!’ ” A sharp kick to the ribs made Jeff scream and writhe in agony.
The voice was distinctive, masculine yet oddly high-pitched, and with a distinct note of hysteria. Jeff recognized it at once, and a flood of memories came back to him.
Seville.
The church.
Going to meet Daniel Cooper.
Cooper was quoting from the Bible. He sounded utterly deranged.
“ ‘Are you still sleeping?’ said the Lord. ‘The hour has come. I am to be delivered into the hands of sinners. Wake up!’ ”
Jeff groaned. “I’m awake.”
His ribs hurt from Cooper’s jackboot, but that was nothing compared to the pain in his head, a constant throb, as if his brain had swollen to such catastrophic proportions that it was about to shatter his skull from within. Instinctively he moved to touch the wound, then realized that his hands were bound.
Hands, arms, legs, feet.
He was dressed, but not in his own clothes. What he had on was flimsy and insubstantial, like a hospital gown. A blindfold of something thicker and coarser had been tied around his head. Could it be a bandage?
“I need a doctor,” Jeff croaked. “Where are we?”
Another kick, this time to the collarbone. The pain was excruciating. Jeff couldn’t understand why he hadn’t passed out.
“I ask the questions,” Cooper squealed. He sounded like a stuck pig, or an angry child who’d just inhaled the helium out of a party balloon. “The Lord will heal your pain. Only the Lord can help you now.”
Unless “the Lord” had a flair for emergency cranial surgery, and/or an ability to convince deranged psychopaths to release their hapless prisoners and walk into the nearest mental hospital, Jeff couldn’t bring himself to share Cooper’s confidence in His present usefulness.
He remembered another quote from the Bible, something Uncle Willie used to say: “The Lord helps those who help themselves.” Jeff’s survival instincts began to kick in.
Step one was to figure out where he was. From the echoing quality of Cooper’s voice, he could tell they were in a very large building of some sort, something high-ceilinged and drafty. A church? No. All churches had a certain smell to them that this place lacked. A barn? That seemed more likely. When Cooper wasn’t spouting off about the Lord or kicking him like a dog, the silence was total. There was no sound of traffic, no ambient noise, no birdsong even. Just an enveloping blanket of soundless peace.
We’re in a barn, somewhere remote.
The cool temperatures suggested that it was nighttime. Also that they were probably no longer in the south of Spain. The plane ride came back to him . . . if it was a plane ride. And something else. A car?
He wondered how long he’d been unconscious. Hours? Days?
They could be anywhere by now.
Jeff tried to work back logically. What was the last thing he could remember? The pain in his head and body made it hard to focus for more than a few seconds. Thoughts and images came back to him piecemeal. He remembered the church in Seville. The smell of incense, the beautiful altar.
Then what?
The plane. The cold metal. Tracy. His mother.
It was so hard to untangle what was real from what was imagined.
Jeff’s mother had been dead for twenty-five years, but her voice, her screams, had felt so real. He felt himself on the brink of tears.
“Do you know why you’re here, Stevens?”
Cooper’s voice stung like a cattle prod.
“No.” Talking seemed to require an inordinate amount of strength. Each word was exhausting. “Why?”
“Because you are the lamb. The third and final covenant.”
Great. Well, thanks for clearing that up.
A weak smile played at the corners of Jeff’s bruised lips.
“Do you think this is funny?” Cooper seethed.
Jeff braced himself for another blow, but none came. What’s he waiting for?
He tried to put himself in Cooper’s shoes, to get inside his mind-set—not easy given that the man was clearly a card-carrying fruit loop.
He’s talking to you. That means he wants to engage in a dialogue.
He could easily have killed you by now, but he hasn’t.
Why not?
What does he want?
What does he need that you have?
Jeff’s mind was a blank. But he knew he had to do something, say something. He had to keep Cooper engaged. On instinct he said, “I’ll tell you what I think. I think this has nothing to do with the Lord, and everything to do with Tracy.”
Cooper erupted. “DON’T SAY HER NAME!”
Jeff thought, Jackpot.
“Why shouldn’t I say her name? She is my wife, after all.”
Cooper made an awful, howling noise like a dying animal.
“No. No no no. She is not your wife!”
“Sure she is. We never actually divorced.”
“It doesn’t matter. You defiled her. You took what was mine. You took something beautiful, something perfect, and you made it filthy. Like YOU.”
Jeff heard the little man scrabbling around on the floor. Then he felt himself being rolled over onto his stomach and the thin garment he was wearing being ripped off his back.
“You will atone.” Cooper let out a wild shriek, then struck Jeff hard on the back with some sort of crude whip. It felt as if it were made from electrical wire, with sharp metal tips that ripped into Jeff’s flesh like razors.
Jeff screamed
“You WILL atone.”
The whip came down again.
And again.
And again.
The pain was beyond words, beyond anything Jeff had ever experienced.
He was still screaming, but the sound seemed to be coming from outside him now. Inside, he had shut down, waiting for oblivion, knowing that it must surely come soon.
The last thing Jeff remembered was the sound of Daniel Cooper’s labored breathing, the little man gasping with exertion as the blows kept raining down. Then, like a lover, the silence rushed up to greet him.
“DO YOU PLAY CHESS?”
Jeff opened his eyes. He could see nothing but blackness. For a second he panicked. I’m blind! The bastard’s blinded me!
But then he remembered the cloth bandage over his eyes and took a breath. He waited for the pain to shoot through his rib cage as air entered his lungs. Or for his headache to return or his raw, flayed back to start screaming. But all the agony he’d felt before was gone. It was miraculous. Wonderful.