The Venice Conspiracy (3 page)

CHAPTER 7

Present Day
Rio di San Giacomo Dell’Orio, Venice

The Carabinieri arrive by boat, silent and solemn beneath a dawn sky the colour of beef Carpaccio.

Smart young officers pull on peaked caps and adjust white-holstered Berettas as they climb from the craft.

Tom watches them rolling out crime-scene tapes, taking notes, doing the same things that cops do all over the world. Back in Compton he regularly saw the LAPD mopping up after the latest drive-by, the detritus of drug warfare and social failure.

It turns out that the old man who discovered the body is called Luigi. He’s a retired fishmonger in his seventies who suffers from insomnia and poor English. After leaving Tom with the body, he’d almost banged the hinges off the door of a nearby house to get someone to call the cops and a water ambulance.

Tom kneels by the corpse and blesses himself. It’s an automatic reaction. Although he no longer has the power to administer Extreme Unction, the words still come.

‘Through this holy anointing may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.’

He kisses his closed thumb and forefinger and gently crosses the victim’s forehead.

By the look of it she’s about seventeen. It’s hard to be more specific. Someone’s really gone to town on her with a knife. There are dozens, maybe even hundreds of stab marks all over her body. Chunks of flesh are missing. Her face ravaged by death. The multiplicity of wounds is strange. So many. Seemingly random - yet no doubt all part of some pattern in the killer’s mind.

‘Signor, could you come with us, please?’

The voice is firm - an instruction, not a request
-
made in good English by a young officer, radio in hand. Tom hears him through an echoing tunnel - his focus still on the work of evil in front of him.

‘Signor, please!’

Tom feels a hand under his elbow. Helping him up. Or is it to prevent him running? The thought startles him. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To the Carabinieri offices. Not far from here. Near the Rialto. We need to get a full statement.’

‘We can’t do it here?’ Tom does a one-eighty turn to see if there are more senior officers to appeal to.

‘Signor,
please.
It will not take long.’ The hand on the elbow is firmer now. Expert pressure. Persuasive. Unyielding.

‘Hey!’ Tom shakes off the white-gloved fingers. ‘You needn’t get a hold of me.’ He brushes his arm as though rubbing dirt from a best suit. ‘I’m fine to come, I want to help.’

All eyes are on them. A slightly older officer moves their way, unbuttoning his holster as he does. Someone lifts the fluttering crime-scene tape.

Tom Shaman suddenly wishes he’d stayed in bed that morning. In fact, right now, he wishes he’d never come to Venice in the first place.

CHAPTER 8

Major Vito Carvalho watches his men lead Tom away.

Another murder is the last thing the fifty-year-old wanted. He’d transferred to Venice to avoid this kind of thing. Moved here to unwind and relax, not be a hotshot with a desk stacked high with files and riddles.

‘What have we got?’ he calls to two young lieutenants by the canal edge.

Valentina Morassi and Antonio Pavarotti are cousins, the kind that come from big families and have been close ever since they reached the age where it was okay to say all girls didn’t stink and all boys aren’t pigs. He has a vacancy for a captain in his unit and they are both good candidates.

Vito claps his hands to get their attention. ‘Come on, cut the family gossip! Tell me quickly so my entire day isn’t ruined.’

They turn towards him and move aside. The victim is laid out on black sheeting. A mass of mutilated flesh, oozing canal water and clusters of insects from every wound and orifice.

‘Female, fifteen to twenty, stabbed too many times to count,’ Antonio reads from a notebook. He’s late twenties, small, slim and unshaven. Doesn’t look anything like a cop. Tries hard not to. He usually works undercover and was only a day away from a new job before this call caught him on the hop.

Vito glances at the dead girl, then puts his hand reassuringly on the shoulder of the female lieutenant. ‘You okay, Valentina?’

‘
Si
.
Grazie,
Major.’ The twenty-six-year-old covers her mouth and prays she won’t hurl. ‘
Scusi
. It’s just’ - she looks at the young girl’s eyes, part-digested by crustacean and fish - ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’

Vito feels her pain. Remembers his own first floater. Stomach churning. Head and heart full of mixed-up emotions. ‘None of us has ever seen anything like this. Go back to the station, Valentina. Write things up. See if you can figure out who this dead girl is.’

Antonio touches her arm comfortingly as she turns away from them. She feels a little ashamed that she isn’t yet experienced enough to swallow her shock and just get on with the job. ‘
Grazie
,’ she calls. She exits in style. Strong strides. Head high. Shoulders straight. Just in case her boss is watching. And she knows he will be.

‘She has a sister of about the same age,’ explains Antonio, defensively. ‘It kind of made it personal.’

Vito pulls on latex gloves and crouches by the body. ‘It
is
personal, Antonio. You don’t get any more personal than the taking of someone’s life.’

‘Si
.
’

Vito’s eyes trace the wounds. Dozens upon dozens of them. ‘
Cazzo!
What in God’s name went on here?’

‘The ME is on his way. I counted more than three hundred stab marks, then you arrived and I stopped.’ He looks worried. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure
where
I stopped. Not really certain where to pick up from.’

Vito smiles. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll describe them as multiple wounds.’ Antonio says something but the major doesn’t hear him. The girl was pretty before some lunatic took a blade to her. The kind of daughter he and his wife would have loved to have had, if only God had chosen to bless them with children. ‘Wait five minutes then call Valentina and make sure the squad is doing the basic work. Check last-minute bookings for flights out of Venice. Put teams on the train and bus stations. Look out for lone, male travellers, anyone seeming edgy. Have someone ring around hotels for early check-outs.’

Antonio scribbles in his notebook. ‘We’ve already got search teams looking for bloodstained clothing and the knife.’ He nods towards the canal. ‘What do you want to do about the water?’

Vito stands up. ‘Get dive teams in there and examine every drop of it. Like I said, murder is personal.’

CHAPTER 9

When Valentina Morassi gets back to headquarters the dead girl’s father is waiting in the cold reception area. He’s reported her missing and still doesn’t know the awful truth.

Valentina quickly learns that the victim is fifteen-year-old Monica Vidic. A Croatian schoolgirl, visiting Venice with her dad as something of a bonding trip. An ugly divorce had ripped the family apart and forty-two-year-old Goran had thought the trip would help his daughter deal with it.

They’d gone to St Mark’s together, and then she’d stormed off after dinner while arguing about where she wants to spend her weekends. The father thought he’d find her back at the hotel but she never turned up. Soon after midnight he and the concierge had searched the bars, clubs and train station. The paperwork on Valentina’s desk shows they even reported her missing to the Polizia, but her body was found before an alert made it into the morning briefing sessions.

Valentina gets both a male and female officer to accompany Goran to the morgue, though from the photograph he’s given her, there’s no doubt the butchered girl in the canal and the smiling kid doing a thumbs-up on a funfair ride are one and the same. When they’re finished, they’ll take him back to his hotel. Sit with him while he phones his ex-wife, then see if he needs a doctor and help in dealing with all the bureaucracy that comes with death in a foreign country.

More notes on her desk tell her that colleagues have already finished interviewing the retired fishmonger who found the body. She reads Luigi Graziuso’s statement on her way to the interview room where the other witness is waiting. The old man says he was out walking his dog when he came across the girl’s body dangling from a rope. At first Luigi thought the girl had slipped and was caught half in and half out of the water, so he shouted for help. It was only after screaming his lungs out and pulling for several minutes that he realised she was dead.

It was then that the young American had arrived. He’d sat with the dead girl while Luigi went to the door of an apartment building and got someone to call the Carabinieri.

Valentina pauses outside the interview room and looks through a pane of wired glass at the American witness: Tom Shaman. A tourist with no fixed abode.
Strange
. She studies him for a while. Normally, witnesses who’ve found dead bodies don’t look as calm as he does. There are usually outward signs of distress. Edginess. Depression. A head hung low in reflective thought. But not this guy. He looks at ease. Comfortable. Bored, if anything.

She pushes the door open and he looks her way. Bright brown eyes. Some natural warmth. Tall when he stands. One of those guys who meets the world with a bone-crushing handshake. ‘
Buongiorno,
I’m Lieutenant Valentina Morassi.’ She looks again at her notes. ‘You’re Tom, Tom Shaman?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sorry to have kept you waiting. Please sit down. Do you talk Italian?’

He smiles. A nice smile. Easy. Maybe practised. ‘Not enough to get us through this.’

‘Okay. Then please forgive my bad English.’

Tom doesn’t think there’s much to forgive. She seems smart. Bright as a button, as his mom used to say. ‘You sound word perfect. Did you learn English at school, or did you live abroad?’

She pointedly ignores his question. ‘Can you tell me what happened this morning? How did you come upon the young woman in the water?’

Tom understands her need for brevity. ‘I was out walking and heard a man shouting. I crossed some bridges and found this old guy trying to pull the girl out of the canal. Some small dog was barking and running round. I guess it was his.’

‘It was. A terrier.’

Tom wonders what happened to it. Guesses it ran off home. ‘The old fella couldn’t manage to get her out. Though he was doing his best. I think he thought the girl was still alive.’

‘Did you?’

His face shows the first flicker of sadness. ‘No.’

‘And then?’

‘I finished pulling her out. By that time the old guy had gone off to get help. I sat with him until your officers showed up, and then I was asked to come here.’ Tom glances at his watch. ‘That was about three hours and one bad cup of coffee ago.’

Valentina frowns. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right, the coffee is not good. But as I’m sure you can see, we’re a little busy with more important things than being waiters at the moment.’

‘Glad to hear so.’

Valentina notes the riposte. Normally she’d like that in a man. But not one sat in an interview room. ‘You told one of my colleagues that you are American. You live in LA and you’re just here on holiday?’

Tom shakes his head. ‘Not
quite
what I said. I
am
American. I
no longer
live in LA, and I’m
not
here on holiday, I’m just passing through.’

‘Through to where?’ The question comes out more aggressively than she meant.

He thinks about telling her it’s none of her business. Contemplates explaining that recently he’s been to hell and back and now just wants to go to his hotel and have a long bath.

Valentina repeats herself. ‘
Where
? Through to where?’

‘I really don’t know yet. Maybe London. Maybe Paris. I’ve not seen much of the world and I’m going to spend some time putting that right.’

It’s the kind of comment ex-cons make when they’re just out of the slammer. Valentina makes a note to come back to it. ‘So what about LA? That’s not home any more?’

‘No.’

‘Then where is?’

‘For tonight and the next seven days, home is gonna be here. Then I’ll see.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I said. Home is pretty much - in the words of the song - wherever I lay my hat.’

Her face shows she’s not in the mood for a sing-along. ‘Why did you leave LA, Mr Shaman?’

Tom leans back. This is a tough one to explain. Though he knew it was coming. It was inevitable. And judging from the scepticism in her eyes, she’s not going to buy anything but the full, checkable truth. So he’s going to give it to her. Or at least, most of it.

‘Because, some months back, I killed someone.’

He tries to sound casual, but guilt sticks like tar to every syllable.

‘Actually, that’s a lie - I killed two people.’

CAPITOLO V

666 BC
The Sacred Curte, Atmanta

Teucer thinks of many things on the long ride back to his home. Relief that he and Tetia have not been discovered for what they are. Murderers. Even greater relief that they are not to be subjected to the brutality of Larth. And of course he thinks about what he must do to satisfy Magistrate Pesna. Most of all, though, he is thinking about Tetia.

He is worried about their relationship, and about their unborn child. A gap is opening between them. He can feel the distance. Day by day, degree by degree, it grows. He knows it’s foolish, but he blames the baby. The stronger the child gets, the weaker the love between him and his wife. Almost as though it’s draining affection from her.

Teucer wishes that fateful day eight moons ago in the woods had never happened. It has changed so much. Tetia hasn’t let him near her since. She changes and bathes out of his sight. No longer looks at him in a way that stirs his blood and unchains his desires. The rape has traumatised her. Made her feel dirty. Used. Unclean. Any effort of his to get close to her only seems to bring back those painful memories.

The seer suffers a mental flash of the man in the grass bent over his beloved wife, thrusting at her, his face contorted by pleasure. He’d stab him again. Gladly. He’d hack him into even smaller pieces than Tetia had done and feed him to his pigs.

And then there’s the child.

The baby they’d both longed for. The final piece to make their family complete.

But
whose
is it?

His?

Or the rapist’s?

Teucer thinks he knows the answer. He suspects Tetia does too. The very fact she will not discuss the matter with him tells him so. More than that, there are signs, clear signs that he has the power to understand. Tetia gets excited when it kicks. Begs him to feel it moving. But when he puts his hand there, the child stays still, like it’s afraid to move. A guilty thought hits him:
What if she lost it? If the gods decided in their wisdom it were to be stillborn? Would this not be a blessing?

Teucer rests his old horse in the sagging hammock of the valley and tries to clear his head of bad thoughts. The autumn day is already drawing to a rosy close and the air is cool like a mountain stream. He feels guilty as he walks the animal up the hillside towards his hut and imagines Tetia tending the golden fire that forever glows in their hearth. It was before that same hearth, that they had married several honey moons ago, just after the Solstice, when the honey had fermented into fine ceremonial mead blessed by Fufluns, the god of wine. Tetia had looked so wonderful as her father accompanied her from his hearth to Teucer’s. So perfect.

He tethers the horse and walks inside. ‘Tetia, I’m back.’

She is speechless. Sitting by the hearth. The fire out.

Teucer falls to his knees. Blows hard into the ash. Silver flakes fly from the dry twigs. They both know the fire must never be allowed to die - the deity that lives there has prohibited it.

She puts a hand on his back. ‘I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry.’

Teucer removes the fresh wood that has failed to burn. He puts his hand to the ash. It is cold. Several hours have passed since it felt the comfort of flames.

The fire is dead.

It is an omen - a dark one. Such disrespect and neglect for a deity inside the home will be punished, they can be sure of it.

CAPITOLO VI

A new day brings a new dawn and a new fire in Teucer’s hearth.

But not a new start.

Today, he and Tetia did not sit together and watch the sunrise. They did not even sleep together last night. Instead the netsvis tended the flames, feeding wood into the deity’s hungry hearth, hoping for forgiveness, struggling with dark thoughts.

He looks across at his wife as she sleeps in the skins that cover their bed. Her long black hair is spread out like the damaged wings of a fallen raven. Her peacefulness draws him to her and reminds him of their love. He places more kindling on the fire and walks over to the bed. He slips in beside her and holds her from behind. His hands touch her bloated stomach. He fights back a wave of repulsion and resists the urge to move them. ‘Tetia, Tetia, are you awake?’ She sleepily murmurs something in response. ‘I need to talk to you.’

Her eyes stay closed. ‘What?’

Teucer moves one hand and strokes hair from her face. ‘Tell me - I won’t be angry - is the child mine?’

She can’t help but flinch. ‘It
is
yours. It is
mine
. And it is
ours
.’ She pulls away from his hand.

‘That’s not what I asked. You
know
what I meant.’ He hears her sigh. ‘We have to talk about this. Are you carrying the child of the man who raped you?’

For a moment she says nothing. She gathers the skin covers and sits upright, her slender back against the cold wall, her hair falling like dark rain over her shoulders. ‘Teucer, I don’t know.’ She sounds exhausted. ‘I know only that we are having a child and I pray to the gods that it is yours and that it is healthy.’

His eyes are full of challenge as he steps away from her. ‘And if I am
not
the father?’

She looks exasperated. ‘Then you are
not
the father.’ She looks away and stares at a twist of light streaming through the woven walls of the hut. She turns back to him, reaches out a hand. ‘Teucer, it is still
our
child. We will still love it, raise it and make it our own.’

Hate flashes in his eyes. ‘I will not bring up the child of the monster who raped my wife!’ He steps away from the bed. ‘What comes from evil brings only evil. If the sperm of badness grows inside you, then we must not let it live.’

Horror spreads across her face. Instinctively, she puts her hands to her stomach. The child is moving, no doubt sensing her fear. ‘Husband, you are angry. Do not say such things.’ She pulls a skin over her shoulders, stands and walks to him.

Teucer does not move. He loathes himself for his thoughts, for what he just said, for how he feels. But he knows he is right. Tetia wraps the cover around him so it envelops them both. ‘Come and lie with me. Hold me and take me. Let’s try to find each other again.’

And despite all the anger, he does. He lies with his wife and he lets her kiss him and hold him and put him inside her. He lets her do it because he’s desperate for her, desperate for how things
were
and how he hopes they will be again. He holds her tighter than he’s ever done. Kisses her so passionately they both struggle to breathe. And when she makes him come, it is more intense than he’s ever experienced.

Lying in a warm post-coital haze, they both decide to move silently on. Tetia doesn’t mention her awful fears. Her deep, dark worries that her husband may be right, that something truly evil might be growing inside her. And Teucer says nothing of the decision he’s come to. The course of action he’s determined to follow. To kill their child as soon as it’s born.