Isle of the Dead Read online

  ALEX CONNOR

  New York • London

  © 2014 by Alex Connor

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of the same without the permission of the publisher is prohibited.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use or anthology should send inquiries to Permissions c/o Quercus Publishing Inc., 31 West 57th Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10019, or to [email protected].

  e-ISBN 978-1-62365-370-5

  Distributed in the United States and Canada by Random House Publisher Services

  c/o Random House, 1745 Broadway

  New York, NY 10019

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.quercus.com

  Alex Connor is also known as Alexandra Connor, and has written a number of historical sagas under this name. She is an artist and lives in the UK.

  The illustrations within this book are copies of Titian’s paintings, the portrait of Angelico Vespucci the author’s own.

  Contents

  Book One

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Book Two

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Book Three

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Book Four

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Book Five

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Book Six

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Epilogue

  Bibliography

  Also Available

  TITIAN (SELF PORTRAIT)

  PIETRO ARETINO (AFTER A PORTRAIT BY TITIAN)

  ANGELICO VESPUCCI – THE SKIN HUNTER (IMAGE BY THE AUTHOR)

  BOOK ONE

  Thirty feet under the first supporting column of Grosvenor Bridge a savage tangle of birds were fighting, shaken on the shifting surface of the Thames, their beaks dipping and jabbing at each other to get closer to the package which had just been dropped there. Over the previous few minutes they had tried to rip open the plastic covering, but when they finally gained access to the insides they flew off, disappointed. Slowly but determinedly the tide finished off the birds’ work and tugged aside the wrapping to expose the corner of a painting.

  Incongruous under a sulky London sky, the painted face looked up as though surprised to find itself shuffled between the bridge supports; the merchant’s vestments lapped by water as the painting headed towards a small launch vehicle. Then, buffeted by another early November wind, it spun on the current and was shunted away. Ten minutes later the portrait washed up on the slimy bank of the Thames where it was spotted by a tourist walking along the Embankment.

  It was the first time the portrait of Angelico Vespucci had been seen in public for over four hundred years. As the painting was lifted out of the river, the varnished surface shimmered in the light, the eerie gaze of the sitter unblinking and oddly defiant. No one knew the history of the portrait, or of the man it portrayed.

  No one knew that its discovery would result in brutal murder and the identification of a killer who had been active centuries earlier.

  Prologue

  Venice, 1555

  I am afraid of water. Even though I was born with a caul on my head, which the old say is a protection from drowning. No one knows this, for people know little of me. That is my talent – to be invisible. Walking among people as unseen as the monsters under the Lagoon, the grasping weedy fingers lurking under bridges and the echo of drowned men, bleached and bloodless under the sea.

  Winter has come quickly to Venice. Too soon, too cold, mists curling about the alleyways and the narrow bridges, figures looming up like ghouls as they go about their day. The atmosphere of the city has changed too. Long, fathomless nights and murky, unwholesome days lure in the city dwellers with the call of the bells from St Mark’s. A darkness more profound than anyone can remember comes down on the city after dusk. Lamps struggle to make an impact, and they say more than fifty dogs have drowned, losing their bearings in the blackness.

  Not only dogs are dying. Not long ago I saw a woman dragged up from the Lido, laid out for the passers-by to gawp at. She had been in the water a long while, caught up under one of the bridges, and was unrecognisable: her eyes blind opals, her tongue slimy, thick as a sea slug. Her throat was cut, the skin stripped from her torso and limbs.

  At first it was thought that the tides had mutilated her, but later it was discovered that she had been flayed. Rumours began to circulate: the killer had been disturbed before he could finish his work, before he could strip the flesh from her face. People talked of a lunatic, come to the city from abroad. Others suggested it had to be someone with wealth and means, a man with room and time to mutilate a corpse. Still others blamed the whores. But everyone asked themselves the same question: where was the victim’s skin? Where was the flayed hide?

  Venice is waiting, dreading but expecting another victim. The courtesans talk of nothing else and stay away from the piazzas at night, while respectable women visit their priests and burn candles in the dying light.

  1

  London, the present day

  Struggling to hold the package under her arm, Seraphina Morgan scrambled up the muddy bank of the Thames and on to the Embankment beyond. There she sat down, propping up the parcel she had just rescued beside her. She could see at once that the painting was old and that the frame was gilded and valuable, which made her wonder why
the picture had found itself dumped, so ignominiously, in the Thames. Pulling back the brown wrapping, Seraphina realised that the picture had only been in the water for a little time. There was no damage – none that she could see anyway.

  The afternoon was backing off, the sky glowering as Seraphina remembered the dealer, Gaspare Reni. In the past, Reni had been a showy, theatrical character, an Italian travelling extensively and buying copious amounts of Renaissance art for his private collectors. Once based in Venice, he had settled in London and prospered. But age had slowed him down, and as he entered his seventies the younger, more ruthless dealers had usurped him. Gaspare Reni might still have his famous gallery in Kensington – previously a convent – but the money he had once found so easy to accumulate had all but disappeared and his rich lifestyle had become cramped and narrow.

  Still staring at the painting, Seraphina made her decision. Tomorrow she would return to Venice and her American husband, Tom Morgan, but before she left London she would repay a favour. Many years earlier Gaspare Reni had bought some paintings from her parents, his intervention preventing the forced sale of their Venetian home. He had paid over the odds for the works, but later, when the dealer’s own luck had stalled, he had refused any help in recompense. And the generosity he had extended so willingly to his friends had remained unpaid.

  Until now. Now Seraphina Morgan – previously di Fattori – was hailing a taxi and setting off for Kensington. It was to be an act of kindness.

  But instead it would unleash a bloodbath.

  2

  Huddled in front of the fire, Gaspare Reni held out his hands towards the heat, the room behind him deeply shadowed. A newspaper lay by his feet, and a plate with a half-eaten piece of toast on it. His head, once large and impressive, had shrunk with age, his bull neck as creased as a lace glove. Around the outer corners of his eyes wrinkles spread in semicircles, running towards the hairline like the tributaries of some slow, dun-coloured river.

  Beside him sat a man in his thirties.

  Nino Bergstrom, Gaspare’s surrogate son. A man who had at one time been dangerously ill and, having no family or friends in London, had recovered in the dealer’s home and been pressed to stay. A bond had grown between them, the usual roles reversed as the old man cared for his younger companion.

  Long widowed, Gaspare had been more than willing to offer a temporary haven to a stricken acquaintance. Trading at the gallery had been slow, due to the recession and Gaspare’s age, so his time was often empty, unfilled. Quiet days and perpetual nights had become irksome to the dealer, and it was with no small relief that he welcomed a companion.

  ‘I was thinking about the time I first came here,’ he said, turning to Nino. ‘I bought the convent off the church – the paperwork! – and then opened it as a gallery. Took me over a year to get it all sorted out, and another six months to get a good enough collection to piss off every other dealer in London. I made a killing in those days – one of the real big hitters. But now … I’ve got old, haven’t I?’

  Nino glanced at the dealer. Sepia-toned, a Daguerreotype of a man.

  ‘All gristle now,’ Gaspare went on, pinching his arm. ‘Gristle and bone.’

  Nino shrugged. ‘Maybe. But I’m the one with the white hair.’

  It was true. Due to his illness, Nino’s once black hair had lost its colour, and at the age of thirty-eight it was white as a snow goose. The effect was all the more striking against the peppercorn blackness of his eyes and provided a lasting reminder of that terrible time. Now fully restored, he had only to look in the mirror to recall the summer which had changed him. After collapsing on a film set in London, he had found himself under the care of Dr Steven Morrison, the world’s foremost authority on neurological diseases. Morrison had lived up to his reputation, but Nino had faced a lengthy and expensive clamber back to health, which had all but obliterated his savings.

  The long dry season of illness had turned a careless adventurer into a thoughtful onlooker. No more California for Nino Bergstrom; no more endless travelling. He was changed, shunted out of his old life and unsure of where to go next. It didn’t help that he had no family and his closest friends were in California, USA. In London, where he had had the malign fortune to fall ill, Nino Bergstrom had no one.

  Except for the old dealer, Gaspare Reni. Hearing of Nino’s illness, the Italian had visited him in hospital and offered his home for as long as he needed to convalesce. The gesture had Nino dumbfounded. He had known Gaspare professionally for years, and had grown to like him, but his unconditional support had come as a blessing and a surprise. Too weak to protest, and certainly too frail to take care of himself, Nino had slid behind the protective and shielding walls of the imposing convent gallery. Fed by Gaspare and left to sleep, his recovery limped through the first week, but by the end of the second, Nino Bergstrom had climbed back to life. By the time the month was up, he was restored. Nothing about his build or face gave his illness away; only his hair did that, remaining defiantly white.

  ‘Why don’t you put the lights on?’

  The old man shrugged. ‘Expensive.’

  ‘And the heating?’

  ‘You know why,’ he said, exasperated. ‘I’ve told you over and over again. It’s expensive.’

  ‘And I’ve told you – over and over again – to let me pay rent while I’m here.’

  ‘Pah!’ Gaspare retorted, waving his hand impatiently. ‘I don’t want money! I like your company. And I like it dark. It’s dramatic.’

  ‘So’s falling down a flight of stairs,’ Nino replied, getting to his feet and flicking on the light switch.

  The room was propelled into sudden view. Looming walls supported their skins of Turkish carpets, and a gaggle of oil paintings towered over the dour Spanish furniture and French commodes. Silverware, stacked piece upon blackened piece, leaned tipsily against blackamoor torchères and vulgar gilded screens. Tooled leather-backed books wheezed under the weight of ormolu clocks and obese cherubs, a suit of Japanese armour attempting a samurai pose by the door.

  Looking up, Nino gazed at the painted ceiling, grown more yellow by the day, its caramel-coloured angels hovering above the mouldering room below.

  ‘Christ, Gaspare, why you don’t sort this mess out? Let me help you.’

  ‘You’re convalescing.’

  ‘I’m fit again,’ Nino replied. ‘And anyway, I’ve got to start thinking about going back to work.’

  ‘Too soon!’

  Stiffly, the old man turned in his chair. He had liked having Nino around and was more than a little reluctant to let him leave. The refashioned convent, which had been admired and considered impressive in his younger days, was now too big for a single ageing man. The maintenance was a constant bleed to his wallet and gradually room after room had been cordoned off, space reduced as his years increased.

  ‘You don’t have to hurry to leave,’ Gaspare went on. ‘You used to like it here. You hired it more than once—’

  ‘But it wasn’t like this then, was it?’

  He had hired the location for a Los Angeles film company and everyone had enthused about the place and used it several times. But that had been ten years earlier, before the damp had bloomed on some of the paintings, the dust turned sticky on the silver. Now the glamour was tarnished, ravaged by age and lack of funds.

  ‘Why don’t you sell up?’

  Rising to his feet, Gaspare flicked off the light again, pitching them both back into candlelight.

  ‘Sell it? Who’d buy?’

  ‘Kensington’s a prime location. This place could be worth a fortune.’

  ‘Maybe I want to die here. Or maybe I should leave it to you? You’re the closest I have to a family.’

  He was being deliberately provoking: Nino’s affection was not reliant on any inheritance.

  ‘So why don’t you sell some of your stuff?’

  ‘My stuff,’ Gaspare replied crisply, ‘is important to me. I know every piece, and what it’s worth.’


  ‘Then let me pay the electricity bill—’

  ‘You’re broke, Nino. You know that, and I know that. Anyway, what’s with all the electricity? I don’t need to have the place lit up like a supermarket! I don’t need to see it to know it’s beautiful.’

  Thoughtful, Nino studied the dealer. What he said was true: virtually all of Nino Bergstrom’s money had gone. Not that he had ever saved that much in the first place. His life in Los Angeles, on the periphery of the movie business, had been well paid and Nino had spent extravagantly, expecting the largesse to continue. Hired to find film locations round the world, he had travelled from Australia to Sri Lanka, London to Tripoli, Hong Kong to Africa. His ease with people, and his skill at spotting unique locations, kept him in constant work. And the money rolled in. So did the parties – and the opportunities.

  A brief, unhappy marriage had dented Nino’s confidence, but an attractive man working in the film industry was never likely to be lonely for long. The clichés of glamour – sex, top-range cars and clothes bought from Rodeo Drive – became commonplace. It was difficult to appreciate plenty when it was readily available. And in the maelstrom of success prescience was for fools. Just as tomorrow was for the old.

  And then Nino collapsed.

  He had been scouting in London, on the Isle of Dogs, and a pain had gone off in his head like a car backfiring. Like a pistol shot. Like a window shattered by the impact of an extreme and violent blow. In the nanosecond the sound reverberated in his head Nino had stared ahead, looking for the source of the noise, then felt the muscles of his neck tighten with an involuntary spasm, his forehead engulfed by lacerating heat, his brain punctured and peeled by a dozen nails driven into his skull. His hands flew upwards, trying to protect his head, to hold together the breaking, bleeding mass.

  He remembered falling … but nothing else, until he woke up in hospital and Gaspare Reni was sitting by his bed …

  The memory was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell ringing in the gallery below.

  Surprised, Gaspare glanced over at his companion, his expression questioning. They had few visitors in the day, none at night.