‘The Whore of Venice’ I am called. Vespucci something else. His title, which will not grace his portrait – is that of Skin Hunter.

I know I will not live to see this black year’s end …

Melania, Contessa di Fattori, had been depraved. Her deviancy had kept her tied to a murderer, her sexuality condemning her.

Possibly that was where Seraphina had inherited her traits. It explained how it was possible for her to be an adulteress and pass off another man’s child as her husband’s. The young woman Nino had met in London weeks earlier had seemed uncomplicated, charming. Her death had been a shock. But now it was obvious why Seraphina had been the next victim. It wasn’t simply because of her relationship to the Contessa di Fattori, but because of her own sexual history.

They were alike, even in the way they met their end. Seraphina had not anticipated hers, but Melania had had a chance to escape – and had chosen not to. The fourth, and last, of the Skin’s Hunter’s victims, she was murdered and mutilated on 1 January, 1556.

While Nino was considering what he had just read, his mobile rang. He recognised the voice of Seraphina’s mother immediately.

‘Have you read the papers, Mr Bergstrom?’

‘Yes,’ he said uncertainly. ‘Have you?’

‘Should I?’

‘No, Contessa,’ Nino lied. ‘They’re of no importance. No importance at all.’

46

Tokyo, Japan

Jobo Kido wasn’t sure why, but the last three times he had gone online, there had been no response from the Vespucci website. Anxious, he had tried at different times of the day, with no success, until finally there was an answer.

Jobo: Where have you been?

Answer: What makes you think I’ve been anywhere?

Jobo: I couldn’t get a response.

Answer: I was angry with you. I don’t think you were very polite last time we spoke.

Jobo: I’m sorry.

Answer: You should be. If you want the Titian you play by my rules, not your own. It makes me wonder if you’ve been talking to someone.

Jobo: No, no one.

Answer: Not even the man with the white hair?

There was a long pause before Jobo answered gingerly.

Jobo: I don’t know who you mean.

Answer: Think very carefully, Mr Kido. Do you want the painting, or do you want to continue to lie to me and lose it? Who is the white-haired man?

His hands suspended over the keyboard, Jobo hesitated. If he gave Nino away would he be endangering him? But if he didn’t give him up, he would lose the Titian. He cursed inwardly. What was Nino Bergstrom to him? Until a few days ago, he had never met the man. Why should he give up such a prize to shield a comparative stranger?

All his life Jobo had been waiting to be at the top of his game. The Titian portrait would propel him into the artistic stratosphere, into that platinum orbit Triumph Jones and Farina Ahmadi inhabited. The portrait of Vespucci was his by rights.

Jobo: He’s called Nino Bergstrom.

Answer: What does he want?

Jobo: To catch you before you kill again.

Answer: Are you helping him?

Jobo: No.

Answer: Have you worked out the connection between the victims yet?

Jobo: No, how can I? I don’t know who the last victim is going to be.

Answer: What if I were to give you her name? Would you tell Mr Bergstrom? Or would you warn the victim?

Stunned, Jobo stared at the screen.

Answer: If you did either, you’d lose the Titian. So how much do you want it? Enough to sacrifice one life? Two lives?

Jobo: I’ll buy the painting off you.

Answer: It’s not for sale. It has to be earned. I’ll ask you again, Mr Kido. If I tell you the name of the next victim will you keep it a secret? Or will you let her die? If she dies, can you read about it later? Can you hear all the details and know you could have saved her? How much does the Titian really mean to you?

Agonised, Jobo stared at the words on the screen. His previous doubts had been annulled, his guilt suspended. And with Nino no longer sitting alongside him, Jobo Kido’s greed overrode his conscience.

Jobo: I want the Titian. I swear I won’t tell anyone who the next victim is.

Answer: Very good, Mr Kido. But if you’re not going to save her, why do you need to know? Until tomorrow.

On that note, the connection was severed.

47

England

He was watching her and thinking that he had chosen very well. She had an interest in his passion, a mutual connection, and she was young and attractive. Of course she was a whore, but she had to be or she wouldn’t be suitable.

The man stared at the photographs he had put on his computer, tilting his head to one side, his gaze tracing the line of her throat. Flaying a body wasn’t easy. At first he had presumed that it would be – merely a peeling away. But it hadn’t been like that at all. He had had to cut the flesh away from the muscle underneath, and that had taken sharp knives, not your usual kitchen utensils. In the end he had gone to a medical suppliers on Wigmore Street and bought a set of scalpels which had made skinning so much easier. Concentrating, he had sliced into the skin, making a V shape. When he had done that, he had lifted the bloodied flap and, holding it, had continued slicing it away from the body.

It had been very neat.

He had always thought of himself as a non-violent man, so it had been difficult for him to come to terms with what he had to do. But he wanted everything to be perfect – he wanted the homage to be exact– so the murders had been copied in every detail. And what he didn’t know in fact, he followed in instinct; imagining what Vespucci would do.

After the first killing he found the flaying stimulating, almost as though he had two victims, not one. Of course the corpse was blood-red when he had taken the skin away, but the hide was soft, supple. It rested in his hands, and after he had washed it, it took on a chamois leather, butter-soft quality. Sometimes he even draped it over his bare arms, feeling the dead skin resting on his own.

Sipping a mug of coffee, he relished his memories. He had first come across Angelico Vespucci at school. One of those chance findings in the library where he used to hide out to miss Games. Of course he had had to keep his studious side a secret – girls never went for nerds and his peers only admired the tough boys. It wouldn’t do for him, considered very cool, to be revealed as an intellectual.

So instead he studied in secret and polished his glossy outer image until he became more and more removed from his lower middle-class upbringing. His parents might be proud of his brain, but that wasn’t what interested him; he wanted to feel something. Feeling had always been difficult. Over the years he had observed his mother crying when the dog was put to sleep, and his father overcome with affection at Christmas, happy with booze and sentimentality. He had watched them with curiosity. What was all this feeling everyone talked about? It was in films, books, computer games – feelings, feelings, always fucking feelings. But not for him. He didn’t feel anything.

But while he didn’t feel, he could mimic. He could replicate any emotion. As a copyist, he was second to none. And no one ever guessed. He left his childhood and slid into his teens without emotion. He attracted a girl and had sex with her, without emotion. He tried cutting himself with a knife, and felt nothing. Nothing he experienced, read or saw touched that hidden nub of feeling. If it was there at all.

But it was there. It was just a question of stimulating it. Of finding some trigger which would detonate him into life … His attention moved back to the girl’s photographs, then he entered the Vespucci website he had created. His gaze fed off the image of the Italian, the tips of his fingers resting longingly against the screen, tracing the bulbous eyes.