The Abomination (25 page)

“That deer's been shot,” Kat said, surprised.

Father Uriel nodded. “Indeed. We're almost self-sufficient here – there are two hundred acres of farm and woodland surrounding the buildings. The majority of our patients work the land in some way.”

“Very admirable. I'm just surprised you let psychiatric patients use firearms.”

“We're very careful, I can assure you. But trust and rehabilitation are fundamental to what we do here. Except for those undergoing a specific intervention, no door is ever locked.”

“I'll need a list of all your weapons, and the calibre of bullets each one uses.”

“Of course,” he said stiffly. “Though I assure you, you'll find no irregularities.”

He took her out of the kitchen by a different door, into a long passageway. This was clearly part of the original monastery. Above her head, massive stone arches scalloped the ceiling. Father Uriel walked on, quickly.

On her right she glimpsed a room with a bare stone floor. Painted in flowing script over the door were the words
Il celibato è la fornace in cui si forgia la fede
. Celibacy is the furnace in which faith is forged. She held back for a closer look. The room was empty apart from a row of wooden pegs. Knotted leather cords hung from some of them. A brass tap jutted from the wall. In the floor, a depression in the stone was clearly some kind of drain.

Father Uriel reappeared at her side. “This is a scourging room, isn't it?” she said accusingly.

“Yes. It's not in use, of course, and hasn't been for decades.” He smiled faintly. “What was once spoken of approvingly by the Church as ‘self-discipline' is now called ‘self-harm' and treated accordingly. Proof, if you like, that we have indeed moved on.”

She crouched down. The wall was discoloured and crumbling, but even so she could make out several rust-coloured spots a few inches above the ground.

“These bloodstains don't look that old to me, Father.”

“The room has been used for butchering pigs, I believe. The drain makes it convenient for such things.”

She stood up, feeling a little foolish. “Oh.”

“Was there anything else. . .?”

“Yes. I'd like to see a complete list of the patients who were here in the first week of January, please, together with their passport details,” she said, all pretence that this was not an interrogation abandoned.

He spread his hands apologetically. “I'm afraid that won't be possible, unless you bring a warrant. We want to cooperate with the police, naturally, but we also have a duty to preserve our patients' confidentiality.”

There was no chance whatsoever that Marcello would give her a warrant without any further evidence to support it, she knew. She suspected Father Uriel knew it too.

“You seem suspicious, Captain Tapo,” he said gently. “Can I ask what it is that you suspect us of?”

Caution, and the desire to provoke him, battled briefly. She said, “I think you lied to me about those
stećak
markings. I think you recognised them from the start.”

“Ah.” Father Uriel had the grace to look a little shamefaced. “It's true that it did occur to me they might be Croatian in origin. Although,” he added quickly, “I don't think I actually lied. It was stupid of me not to tell you what I suspected, though. I should have realised that you would identify them sooner or later.”

“Why didn't you want to tell me what they were?”

“These are difficult times for the Church. With respect, Captain, your own hostility and willingness to assume the very worst of us is mirrored, on a larger scale, in the wider world. I feared that if you drew an erroneous connection between what happened on Poveglia and the Church, this Institute might get dragged into your investigation. And it's essential for our work that we keep a low profile.”

“Many of your patients have committed criminal offences in their own countries,” she guessed. “Having the police wandering around might frighten them away.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed.

“In fact, let's take that a step further. Many of the priests you treat here are women-haters of one sort or another. None of them would exactly be in favour of female priests, would they? You can see why I've good reason to be suspicious.”

He looked her directly in the eye. “Captain, I accept that your victim may have been on Poveglia because she felt some misguided affinity with a previous patient of ours. But that's as far as the connection goes. You've seen how remote we are here – there's simply no way that a patient could go missing and commit a crime without our being aware of it. As a man of God, I promise you that if I had any evidence at all that linked a patient here, past or present, with your murders, I'd save you the trouble of a warrant and tell you. But I don't.”

ALDO PIOLA DROVE
down to Chioggia, taking care to park some distance from the house he intended to visit. When Mareta Castiglione opened the door she recognised him and froze.

“Can I come in?” he said quietly. After a moment she nodded and let him past. He noted that before closing the door she checked to see if any neighbours were watching.

“No one saw me,” he said. “I just want to ask you some more questions about your husband.”

“What about him?”

“Let's sit down, shall we?”

Back at headquarters, Kat did some internet searches on the Institute of Christina Mirabilis. As she'd expected, information was scant. There was a bland, uninformative website – with no map, she noticed, no contact details other than an email address, and no explanation of what the hospital actually did.

She clicked on a tab titled “Who we are” and read:

The Institute is a privately funded charitable organisation generously supported by donors at home and abroad. We acknowledge in particular the longstanding support of the Companions of the Order of Melchizedek.

That was all. She ran another search, this time for the “Order of Melchizedek”. There were a number of links, mostly to pages pointing out that Melchizedek was the first priest mentioned in the Old Testament, and that all priests were thus sometimes said to belong to his Order. There were several organisations with similar-sounding names, but most seemed distinctly amateur. None had links to the Institute of Christina Mirabilis.

Then she came across a website that, though light on content, had clearly been professionally designed. A symbol at the top caught her eye. The upper half was a conventional Christian cross, but the lower half resembled a sword, the down-beam transformed into a short, stubby blade. She'd noticed a pin of a similar design in Father Uriel's lapel.

The Companions of the Order of Melchizedek are dedicated to promoting and defending the highest personal and moral standards amongst the priesthood. “The Lord has sworn, and He shall not repent: thou art a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchizedek” – Psalms 110:4.

Admission to the Order is by invitation only. There are twelve degrees, each of which must be fulfilled before the candidate progresses to the next.

“He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil” – Romans 13:4

That was all. She tried clicking on individual words, but none contained links. A “Contact us” button looked hopeful, but led only to a blank page and the words “Under Construction”.

If the Companions of the Order of Melchizedek were funding an entire private asylum, their resources must be vast. That wasn't in itself suspicious – quasi-religious organisations such as the Knights of Malta and the Red Cross of Constantine were, she knew, able to raise huge amounts from those attracted to their particular blend of ceremony, snobbery and charity. But those organisations – she checked, to be certain – had thousands of individual webpages devoted to their work.

Even so, there was nothing here which implicated the Institute in any wrongdoing. Perhaps Father Uriel had been right: she was inherently hostile towards the Church, and as a consequence was willing evidence into existence rather than following a genuine trail.

Piola hated doing it, but he had no choice.

“But I think you knew, Mareta,” he persisted. “I think you knew about the girls he brought in on his boat. A woman always knows, doesn't she? I think you knew that was how he got paid sometimes. That he went with the girls for nothing.”

She was already crying, but now she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head so violently that tears flew through the air, like a dog shaking water from its fur.

“What I'm looking for is proof,” he went on relentlessly. “Something I can show a prosecutor.”

“There's nothing,” she gasped.

“Nothing? Or nothing you can tell me? Mareta, I understand there are some things it's not safe to talk about. But girls who go with other women's husbands? They're nothing but sluts. Why protect
them
?”

“I found a film,” she said.

The instant she said it, he knew that this was it, this was the breakthrough he'd been looking for. He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. “What sort of film?”

“A disc. Him. With one of those . . . those
creatures.
”

“What creatures, Mareta?”

“My husband. And a . . . a whore.”

“How much did you watch?”

“A few seconds. It was enough.”

“Did you tell him you'd seen it?”

Mutely, she shook her head.

“So what happened to the film? What did you do with it, Mareta?”

“I put it back.”

“Yes? Where?” If she'd returned it to its hiding place and never told her husband she'd seen it, there was a slim chance it might still be there.

Her eyes went to the floor.

Piola pushed back the rug with the edge of his shoe. One floorboard had no nails in it. He got down on his knees and pulled it up. It was stiff; he had to get out his car keys to lever it free.

In a cavity under the board were two fat bags of white powder. And a disc. No markings, no title.

He left the drugs where they were and stood up with the disc in his hand, careful to hold it by the edges. “Well done, Mareta. You've done the right thing.”

“Don't tell anyone,” she said in a dull voice. “Please, Colonel. It's too dangerous. Ricci always kept his mouth shut. He wouldn't even talk to a priest usually, and then look what happened. . .”

“I'll have to write this up, just like any other evidence. But only the prosecutor will see my report.”

She shook her head and moaned. “No. . .”

“Mareta, I have to take it.”

“I'm not letting you have it. Give it back.” She made a sudden grab for the disc.

“Mareta, listen to me,” he said, taking an evidence bag from his pocket and slipping the disc inside. “I'm taking this film because I think it could be evidence of a crime. I think the girl you saw your husband having sex with may have been unwilling. That's why, legally, I'm entitled to take it. It's called ‘reasonable grounds'. Do you understand?”

“No, no, no,” she keened. She began to slap her own face, whether in grief or rage at her own stupidity in telling him about the disc he couldn't say. “You mustn't take it. They'll kill me.”

“I'll keep it safe.”

“I know what you want.” She stared at him, wide eyed. “Of course you do. Take the drugs. Just not the film. I'll. . .”

“You'll what, Mareta?”

“I'll go upstairs with you,” she whispered. “That's better than any film, isn't it? The real thing.”

He felt an unbearable sadness. Standing up, he said gently, “I have to go now. I promise I'll keep it safe.”

She pushed her hands over her eyes and let out a terrible wail. As he left the room, all he could see of her was black hair cascading over her face and those two hands, beating a savage rhythm against her own flesh.

At Campo San Zaccaria he went straight to his office and put the film into his computer, ignoring Kat, who was trying to catch his eye through the glass.

For a moment the metal whirred uselessly in the disc drive and he thought he was going to have to call a technician to come and make it work. Then it started. He forced himself to watch for several minutes with the sound turned down.

Kat knocked and entered all in one movement and he jumped to pause it.

“What's that?” she asked curiously.

“Don't look. Please, Kat. I don't want you to watch it.”

“Why not?”

He made a hopeless gesture. “It's Ricci Castiglione. With a girl.” He took a breath. “I thought maybe he'd filmed himself with one of them. But it's worse than that.”

“What is it?”

“It's one of the videos they use to . . . keep the girls docile.”

“Let me see.”

He shook his head. “I can't.”

“Because I'm a woman, or because I'm your lover?” she said, her voice low but furious.

“Because I want to protect you from filth like this,” he muttered.

“Filth is our job.” Without waiting for him to answer, she reached past him and pressed “Play”, swivelling the screen so they could both see.

“Oh my God,” she said after a few moments. “This is clearly rape.”

He nodded. “Mareta must have known that. But maybe he was the same with her. Some men . . . they end up thinking this is the way it's meant to be. Some women too, when it's all they've ever had.”

She reached out and paused the image again. “You were right. I probably didn't need to see it. But now that I
have
seen it, I'm going to watch it all, with the sound up, to see if there are any clues, anything at all, that could help us identify the girl or the place where it happened.”

“Kat, you realise what this means, don't you? I think we've found a pipeline. Poveglia's how they bring the stuff in – cigarettes, drugs, guns, even girls. I'll bet they use a number of fishermen like Ricci for the last leg, to avoid suspicion. If we play this carefully, we may be able to roll it up section by section – first this end, then back to Eastern Europe. We might even get to some of the big players at last, the money men who sit in their nice houses and never get their hands dirty.”