The Turin Shroud Secret by Sam Christer

Hollywood.’ Jacobs pats his hand. ‘Isn’t that so, Detective Karakandez?’
    ‘Well,’ says Nic. ‘I’ve seen plenty of hooded killers, but they were interested in drugs, guns and two-hundred-dollar sneakers,
     never religion.’
    Dylan Jacobs manages a smile. ‘Find him, Detective.Please give me your word that you’ll catch whoever did this.’
    Not likely.
    The detective doesn’t say it, but it’s the truth. Because a month from now he won’t even be around to take a progress call.
     Instead, he does what he’s always done, what he’s always delivered on. ‘I give you my word, Mr Jacobs. I’ll find him.’

27
    Captain Deke Matthews isn’t the kind of cop you want to keep waiting. He’s a big guy in every sense of the word. Big physically.
     Big in the department. Big on making his detectives’ lives hurt. He sits behind his office desk waiting impatiently for Fallon
     and Karakandez, his barrel stomach wrapped in a blue shirt battened down with braces as red as his jowly face.
    ‘Sorry boss.’ Mitzi breezes in with Nic in tow.
    ‘Fifteen minutes late, Lieutenant. D’you have any idea how burned good food can get in nine hundred seconds? How mad Mrs Matthews
     will be if I am the reason said good food is burned?’
    ‘I get the message, boss.’
    The captain drums all ten of his chubby fingers on his desk, like he’s waiting for a plate at Thanksgiving. ‘So what have
     you got? Let’s be having it, with luck I may still make it before the charring starts.’
    Mitzi thumps down a thick wad of folders and pulls out some photographs. ‘Tamara Jacobs, screenwriter, mid-fifties, found
     dead in the water at Manhattan Beach. Unsub had tortured her – taken out her left eye and some teeth, ligature marks around
     the wrists. To finish, he cut her throat. Kill scene seems to be her home, nice spread in Beverly.’
    ‘Why so?’
    ‘Forensics matched blood spatters on the living room ceiling to the victim.’
    Matthews glances at the post-mortem pictures then picks one up between finger and thumb like he doesn’t want to be dirtied
     by what’s on it. ‘What we have here, lady and gentleman, is something straight from the sewers.’ He slaps it down on his desktop.
     ‘Why didn’t the perp leave the old girl in her own home after he’d killed her? Why drive out to the beach and dump her in
     the ocean?’
    ‘Buying himself time.’ Nic slides over a pack of surveillance-camera shots from the beach. ‘He was most probably an out-of-towner
     and the driver of this rented Lexus.’
    ‘This one of those 4×4s?’
    ‘Yeah, pricey metal, a hybrid.’
    ‘Nice.’ He takes the photograph. ‘What pins your guy to this car?’
    ‘Tyre treads in sand on the pier match those of one rented from LAX. Could be he flew in for the hit then flew straight out
     again.’ Nic gets out the documents his helpers from Robbery traced.
    ‘Our flyer got a name?’
    ‘Agne.’ He passes over a rental agreement.
    Matthews frowns. ‘Agnes – a girl?’
    ‘No, Agne – that’s the last name the driver entered on the paperwork. First name “Abderus”. Take a look.’
    ‘Abderus?’
He stares down at the photocopy. ‘This for real?’
    ‘Probably not. I Googled both names. They’re Greek and common. Abderus was an ancient hero, of dubious parentage.’
    ‘It figures.’ Matthews pushes the copy back. ‘Nothing good came from the Greeks. Their economy is down the pan. Their food
     is crap. There’s a reason you don’t see Italians smashing plates at the end of meals.’
    ‘Civilisation?’ suggests Mitzi. They both frown at her. ‘I hear rumours that came from the Greeks.’
    He ignores her. ‘So we got a Greek hitman – possibly flying in to torture and kill a writer from LA. This make any sense to
     you two dinner-spoilers?’
    Mitzi pushes over a copy of the script she finally prised from Sarah Kenny. ‘This is the movie Jacobs was working on. It’s
     about the Turin Shroud and we believe it