The Abomination (3 page)

Nodding her thanks, she made her way to the car park, which to her delight was lightly dusted with snow. A white minibus was parked to one side, engine running. It too was marked only by the acronym “SETAF” in small letters on the front doors. The US Military tried to keep its presence here relatively low key: even unscrambled from its acronym, “Southern European Task Force” sounded suitably generic.

The driver, a private, jumped out to help with her bags. Taking in his passenger's face – which was kind of geeky for a blonde, but not without charm – as well as the newness of her second lieutenant's tabs, he decided to chance a conversation.

“Welcome to Venice, ma'am. TDY or PCS?” Meaning: Temporary Deployment or a Permanent Change of Station?

“PCS,” she said with an eager smile. “The whole four years.”

“Awesome. Must be your first foreign posting, right? Ever visited OCONUS before?”

OCONUS – that was military-speak for Outside the Contiguous United States. To many soldiers, she knew, OCONUS was just as much of a place as Utah or Texas. Perhaps that wasn't surprising, given that their experiences of all three ended up being remarkably similar.

“First foreign posting,” she agreed. “But actually I was raised here.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Army brat?”

“Affirmative. My dad was in the 173rd. Camp Darby, down at Pisa.”

“Speak any Italian?”

She nodded. “
In realtà, lo parlo piuttosto bene.
”

“Neat,” he said, clearly not understanding a word. “Listen, I'm not meant to do this, but since you're the only passenger, want to take off now and get a tour en route? There's a great view of Venice if we go by the coast road, and we'll still arrive on schedule. Ederle's only about fifty minutes away.”

She knew he simply wanted an opportunity to flirt with her, and a part of her recognised that as an officer, even one with the greenest and most lowly of rankings, she should probably say no. But another part of her was euphoric at finally getting back to the country where she'd done her growing up. She'd found it hard even to walk past the airport coffee shop without pausing to go inside – a proper coffee shop! At last! With a real zinc counter to lean against while you threw your espresso down your throat, rather than the faux-college-library atmosphere and gigantic cappuccinos of Starbucks or Tully's! Even before that, on the plane, she'd pressed her forehead to the window when the seatbelt sign came on, eager after so long for a glimpse of Italy. It hadn't been a particularly auspicious one – from the glorious dawn sunshine of altitude they'd struggled shakily down through cloud, the window becoming flecked with ice, before emerging above a grey, cold-looking lagoon dotted with islands. For a moment she'd had the strange sensation that she was actually in a submarine, dropping towards a dark seabed, rather than flying. But the plane was still turning, and just for a moment Venice – that magical, extraordinary island – had been tantalisingly visible beneath her, buildings and canals crowded into its ridiculously small area, as intricate as a piece of coral or the inner workings of a watch.

“OK,” she said suddenly. “Why not?”

The private grinned, certain it was him, not the promised view of Venice, which had swung the decision. “Outstanding. What's your name, ma'am?”

“Boland. Second Lieutenant Holly Boland.” And then, because the place and the soil seemed to demand it, she added, “
Mi chiamo Holly Boland.
”

Despite taking her along the coast road, where the views of Venice across the water – “Regularly voted world's most romantic,” he assured her – were just as remarkable as he had promised, Private Billy Lewtas's talk was all of their destination. Caserma Ederle, or Camp Ederle as he called it, had everything a soldier might need, right there on post. The PX was no ordinary store but a whole shopping mall, with a 24-hour supermarket, various clothing concessions including American Apparel and Gap, and a flower shop for those – like him – who liked to give a girl a nice gift after a date. There was a twelve-bay auto repair centre specialising in Chryslers, Fords and other vehicles unfamiliar to Italian mechanics. There was an 800-bed hospital; four bars – including the Crazy Bull, the Lion's Den, and the “outstanding” Joe Dugan's; a bowling alley, movie theatre, sports arena, high school, three American banks, five restaurants serving everything from French fries to pulled pork, a Burger King . . . even an Italian gift shop, so that you could buy mementoes of your deployment abroad without actually leaving the post. Best of all, he enthused, was the proximity of the Alps – look, they were visible right now, if you looked high enough, with that great coating of snow – where the military maintained its own cadre of skiing instructors for their exclusive use.

Holly had an idea that it was actually the Dolomites, not the Alps, that rose in the distance, but chose not to correct him. She was obliged to live on-post for six weeks – had in fact already been assigned a room in the rather unmilitary-sounding Ederle Inn Hotel – but after that she'd be free to move off-base, into private housing around Vicenza. Six weeks wasn't so long to wait. Until then she would drink Miller and Budweiser in Joe Dugan's, and probably even go on dates with, and accept flowers from, men like him, although not – if she could help it – after a visit to Burger King.

She turned her head to the window, drinking in every Italian street sign and licence plate, every expressive gesture of the drivers and passers-by. A teenager on his way to school, steering his moped with ridiculously exaggerated panache through the crawling morning traffic, carried a raven-haired girl on his pillion. Neither was wearing a helmet: the girl was facing backwards, the better to eat the hot slice of pizza that was folded
a fazzoletto
, like a handkerchief, in her right hand. The boy shouted something back to her; she looked up, her brown eyes alive and dancing. With a pang of mingled yearning and exultation, Second Lieutenant Holly Boland recognised herself, a decade younger, speeding through Pisa on the back of her first boyfriend's Vespa.

“This is it,” Private Lewtas said.

She became aware that they were driving alongside a long, unmarked wall of bomb-resistant concrete. It was, however, hardly anonymous, being covered in long, looping scrawls of graffiti. “NO DAL MOLIN” she read, and “US ARMY GO HOME”. There were people milling by the roadside – civilians, some dressed in outlandish clown-like costumes, while others were holding placards with more slogans. When they saw the minibus they shook them fiercely.

“What's going on?” she asked.

“Oh, this is nothing. Weekends we get hundreds, sometimes thousands of these guys. Camp Ederle's scheduled to double in size over the next few years, and some of the locals ain't too happy.”

“What's Dal Molin?”

“The airfield we're expanding onto.”

The bus slowed briefly at the gate, Lewtas exchanging swift salutes with the guards as the barrier was raised. Most of the guards were
carabinieri
, she noticed, Italian military police, working alongside an American MP.

“You'd think the ginzos would be more grateful we're here, protecting them,” he said as they pulled over inside the gate to have their IDs checked. “Welcome to Camp Ederle, ma'am.”

In front of her was a town – or rather, a fortified town-within-a-town, its boundaries marked by that bomb-resistant wall that ran in either direction as far as the eye could see. Italian street signs were replaced by American ones; right now they were on the junction of Main Street and Eighth. Crosswalk poles in English instructed pedestrians to “Walk” or “Don't Walk”. Most people wore army fatigues, and military vehicles alternated with Buicks and Fords.

“Hey, Inprocessing's just about a hundred yards down. I can drop you right outside. They'll give you a map, by the way – everyone gets lost to begin with. This place is huge.” He turned round a traffic circle where the Stars and Stripes fluttered on a pole. “Do you want to give me your number? Oh, I forgot, you won't have a European phone yet.” Pulling up, he scribbled something on a piece of card and handed it to her. “I believe I'm free on Saturday night.”

As she stepped off the shuttle bus, still a little amused by Private Lewtas's self-confidence, Holly Boland still saw only a vast military encampment of anonymous buildings, similar to every other US army post she'd ever been on. There was nothing to make her suspect that what happened in this place would soon test, and stretch, loyalties she didn't even know she had.

THE BODY WAS
in the mortuary at last, where Kat was barely any warmer, the morgue being kept at a constant nine degrees in order to prevent its occupants' flesh from corrupting during the long Italian summers. Piola still hadn't relinquished custody, and Kat, determined not to be outdone in stamina, intended to stay with him until he did, even though the colonel had suggested several times that she go home and get some sleep, not to mention some proper clothes.

The mortuary technician, a man called Spatz, was explaining why identification was going to be difficult.

“See here,” he said, lifting the dead woman's left wrist in his own blue-gloved hands. “Salt water does terrible things. Fingerprints will be almost impossible.”

“Is there anything you can do to enhance them?”

“We can glove her.”

“Better do it then.” Piola glanced at Kat. “Know what gloving is, Capitano?”

“No, sir,” she confessed.

“Spatz will peel the skin from the victim's fingers and stretch it onto a hand cast.” He nodded to where four or five wooden hands of different sizes, like glove-makers' mannequins, stood on a shelf. “Standard practice where a corpse has been in seawater, and something we have to do quite often in this waterlogged city of ours. In future, if you hear something you don't understand, ask, OK? This is your first homicide, but I expect you to be able to run the next one on your own.”

“Yes, sir,” she said awkwardly.

“Now go home and get a couple of hours' rest. This time I mean it. And next time we meet, I don't want to see quite so much of your legs.” His smile – the lines beside his eyes falling into a well-worn pattern, like a fan – robbed the words of any offence, even before he added, “They're a distraction, quite frankly, and I'm a happily married man.”

“Colonel?” Spatz said softly behind them. Piola turned. The technician was still holding the corpse's arm. The sleeve of the robe had fallen back, revealing something on the woman's right forearm, just above the wrist. Both officers went to examine it, Kat holding back a little since she was technically disobeying an order not to be there.

It was some kind of tattoo. Dark blue and barely more sophisticated than a child's drawing, it resembled a circle with lines coming out of it to represent the sun – except that in this case there was something inside the sun as well, a motif like a kind of extended asterisk.

Pushing the sleeve further up, Spatz revealed a second tattoo, similar but subtly different in design.

“Curious,” Piola said after a moment.

“And here. . .” Spatz indicated the fingernails. None were painted, the cuticles short and unpolished, but three of them, Kat now saw, were missing completely, the skin beneath lumpen and scarred. “Same on the other hand too.”

“Torture?” Piola ventured.

Spatz's shrug said that interpretation of evidence wasn't his concern. “The scars look pretty old.”

“How quickly can you do the autopsy?”

Spatz's eyes went to the hand. “Next week, according to the schedule. But I'll make sure it's today.”

“Good.” Piola's gaze turned back to Kat. “Now off you go.”

As she walked to the door she thought she was conscious of his eyes watching her, following those inappropriate bare legs of hers. But when she reached the doorway, and, without quite meaning to, glanced back to check, she saw he had returned to the corpse. He was leaning over the dead woman, her hand laid in his, examining it minutely. Like a manicurist, she thought; or someone extending an old-fashioned invitation to a lover at a dance.

DANIELE BARBO SAT
in a cell below the Verona courtroom, reading a book on mathematics while he waited for the jury to reach their verdict. A few feet away, his lawyer went through her notes, anxiously rehearsing the different arguments that might be required, depending on what combination of charges he was convicted of. She knew better than to involve her client in these deliberations. The same book that held his attention now had rarely left his hand during the trial, the proceedings of which he had deigned to notice only with the occasional disinterested glance, and she had learnt to her cost that any attempts at conversation would be rebuffed.

Eventually her client closed the book and stared into the corner of the room.