The Venice Conspiracy (3 page)

By the time Tom gets out into the blinding sunlight he sees the funny side. Maybe it’s right that he starts his new life with nothing but the clothes on his back.

Venice

‘Piazzale Roma!’ shouts the bus driver, almost as though it’s a profanity.

‘
Finito. Grazie.’

The small, dark cube of a man jumps from his vehicle and is outside smoking long before the first passenger disembarks. Tom slings his sports bag over his shoulder and asks directions: ‘
Scusi, dove l’hotel Rotoletti?
’

The driver blows out smoke. Small black eyes take in the fresh-faced
American with his phrasebook Italian. ‘It no far from here.’ He wafts his cigarette towards the far end of the Piazzale. ‘Turn left at corner – at bottom you see ’otel.’

The guy’s right: ‘it no far’ at all – Tom’s there in seconds.

A woman behind a cheap wooden reception desk is polite but falls far short of friendly. She shows him to a claustrophobic bedroom that is badly furnished in bloodshot red and faded blue. A small dirty window overlooks the air-con plant and doesn’t open. Tom dumps his bag and heads back to the streets as fast as he can.

After half an hour of walking, he finds himself in Piazza San Marco, dodging a million pigeons and window shopping for clothes that he soon realises he can’t afford. Silk ties cost more here than he paid for a stack of shirts and pants back in the discount mall. He prays his suitcase shows up soon.

The smell of fresh-roasted coffee and the buzz of tourist chatter and laughter draws him into Florin’s. He orders a cappuccino and a salade Niçoise. Aside from a blonde woman in her early thirties reading at the table next to him, everyone else is in pairs or small family groups. A middle-aged British guy sitting opposite is telling his over-made-up and under-dressed young girlfriend how, centuries ago, the café was an upmarket brothel and high-class music club. Both Tom and the blonde look up to eavesdrop on his monologue about eighteenth-century Venice, Casanova and libertine life.

‘Sounds like we arrived three hundred years too late,’ the blonde whispers huskily across to Tom.

He spoons froth from his coffee. ‘Not sure about that. I have enough problems with modern life, let alone Venetian decadence at its peak.’ He smiles comfortably as he really notices her for the first time. ‘Anyway, how did you know I spoke English?’

She brushes a fall of blonde hair away from her sparkling pale blue eyes. ‘No disrespect, but you don’t look or dress anything like an Italian.’ She pauses. ‘In fact, I’m not sure what you dress like.’ A small laugh – not unkind – confident and warm. ‘And I guess the big giveaway is that you’re drinking cappuccino in the afternoon and playing with it, with a spoon.’ She nods to the middle-aged guy across from them. ‘The Brits are probably the only Europeans unsophisticated enough to drink cappuccino after breakfast. So I have you down as a fellow American, and judging from the tan, West Coast.’

Tom nods. ‘You’re on the money.’ He places her accent as Manhattan. Uptown. ‘What are you, some kind of cop?’

She laughs again, deeper and longer this time, even nicer to hear. ‘Me? No. No way. I’m a
travel writer. Freelance. Everything from Lonely Planet to Condé Nast.’ She leans across the tables. ‘Tina – Tina Ricci.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Tina.’ He shakes her hand.

She looks into his warm brown eyes and waits for his move. Waits to be asked to his table. Waits for the follow-up line that she’s sure will come.

It doesn’t. Tom says nothing. He grows awkward and looks away, his heart beating like he’s just gone three rounds back in the boxing ring in Compton. He can feel her still staring. The bell’s rung and, for the first time in his life, he’s stuck in his corner wondering what to do.

Present Day

Venice

The stranger looks different now.

No longer the good Samaritan who helped her when she was lost in the labyrinth of shadowy streets.

No longer a friendly local lending a helping hand to a confused and anxious teenager who’d stormed off after a row with her father.

He’s dressed differently too. Long black robes and a sinister silver mask shielding his face.

The girl grimaces as her bound and gagged body is dragged along the moss-slimed deck boards. He’s taking her to his sacred area. The libation altar. The spot where he will let her blood feed the water.

He pushes the teenager’s head over the edge. Makes it dangle in that supernatural space between sky and earth. Limbo. The place where he’ll steal her soul.

Only when she stares directly up at him does he begin.

An incision by the left ear. A long red slice beneath her cute little chin.

A popping noise in her slender throat.

The gag in her mouth slackens.

A fountain of red. Then a splutter. The greedy black water drinks until she’s bled dry.

Indifferently, he drops her skull with a dull thump on the wooden decking, then unwraps the tools he needs to complete his bloody ritual.

He kneels and
prays.

A doctrine handed down across the centuries. A verbal chain of unbreakable belief.

Now there’s a whispering in his mind. A swelling choir of voices. Communal prayers of those who came and killed before him. The chants of the believers climax as he completes his ceremony.

He wraps the sinner’s sticky corpse in sheets of black plastic then tucks it beneath the tarpaulin in the gondola and waits for night to come.

Ribbons of milky moonlight finally flutter across the boards of the boathouse.

A long, deathly nothingness hums in his ears and fizzes in his blood.

He breathes it in. Absorbs its blackness. Feels it transform him.

The unlit, black gondola glides invisibly through the city’s canals and out into the lagoon.

The end is beginning.

An end planned six hundred years before the birth of Christ.

The Following Day

Venice

The streets are cool, dark and deserted. It’s just after 5 a.m., and Tom’s already been up for an hour and is walking the city’s majestic bridges. Locals say that the best way to get to know Venice is to get lost, and Tom is at least halfway there. The most he’s aware of is that he’s meandering vaguely towards the Rialto. Maybe it’s years of rising early that shook him from his bed, or the fact that crossing time zones has messed up his body clock. Then again, it could be that he’s still trying to understand why yesterday he didn’t ask Tina –
was her full name Tina, or something longer, like Christina?
– if she wanted to catch up later for a drink, or maybe dinner. The words that deserted him like an awkward teenager come easily now.

He leans over the rails at the foot of a bridge and looks along the water. His head is spinning. Anyway, what did he really expect to come from a short conversation with a woman in a café?

It’s a good time of the day to clear his mind and see the city. He seems to have it to himself – like a
private viewing at an art gallery. And Venice certainly has fascinating exhibits. A hundred and fifty canals, spanned by four hundred bridges. A hundred and seventeen separate islands. Three hundred alleyways.

Tom lifts his head. He’s heard something.

Maybe locals going to work. The first wheels of Venetian life grinding into daily motion. Perhaps even priests making their way to church for early prayers.

He takes his hands off the cool iron railings. Looks around. The noise comes again – this time it’s more of a shout than anything. A man calling something in Italian? Tom steps up on to the crest of the bridge and listens more attentively. Tries to get a bearing. Pins it down to a spot straight ahead and off to the right somewhere.

He jogs down the other side.

The streets smell of wet stones and rotting vegetables. The road here is cobbled and his worn leather soles slide on the smooth surface.

He takes two more bridges. Shuffles to a halt. ‘Hello!
Hello
, is anyone there?’

‘
Here! Here!
’ comes the out-of-sight reply.

Tom sets off again. Maybe two more bridges to the right?

He crosses the hump of the second and sees him.

An old man.

White shirt, white hair, dark crumpled trousers.

Kneeling by the edge of the water, like he’s fallen, or he’s trying to pull something out of the canal.

Probably a small boat.

Maybe a bag or something he’s dropped.

‘Hang on. I’ll help you.’

Tom hurries alongside. The old man’s face is strained. His knuckles white from gripping and pulling.

Now Tom sees it.

A sailing rope is tied around the railings and the old guy is heaving something heavy from below.

‘Don’t strain yourself – let me give you a hand.’

The pensioner falls back. There’s a splash. He cracks his bony back on the cobbles. Puts his slack-skinned hands to his face and starts to sob.

Tom pats him on the shoulder, squeezes it reassuringly as he moves to the water’s edge and looks over the stone slabs into the canal.

Now he understands the desperation.

Dangling from the rope is the naked and mutilated body of a young woman.

EIGHT MOON CYCLES LATER

666
BC

Atmanta

Teucer and
Tetia
sit together outside their hut, watching an autumnal dawn break across a perfect Etruscan skyline. Burnt orange, pale lemon and deepest cherry colour the distant forests.

Neither of them sleep well any more.

They sit here most mornings, holding hands, resting against the outside of the modest hillside home Teucer constructed of hewn timber, thatch, wattle and terracotta paste.

But life is better.

They have got away with it.

The thing they never now speak of – they are sure they have got away with.

Tetia leans her head on her husband’s shoulder. ‘One day soon we will sit here with our child and teach it the beauty of our world.’ She puts his hand on her bump and hopes he feels the magic of the child kicking.

Teucer smiles. But it is not the expression of an excited father-to-be. It is one of a husband putting on a brave face, one who is worried that the unborn may not be his but that of the man who raped her.

Tetia squeezes his hand. ‘Look, only the pines over by the curte seem to hold their green. Everywhere else has been set ablaze by the gods.’

He follows her eyes across the canopies of trees and tries not to think of his growing hate for the child she carries. ‘The fires of the season cleanse the grounds for the coming crops.’

‘You have seen this, husband?’

He laughs. ‘It is not divination, it is fact.’

She wraps an arm around him and falls silent. Silence is often best these days. Somehow it seems to hold them together, heals the wounds they dare not speak of.

The sun is
dripping golden light on to the valley. The syrup of a perfect morning is being poured. They notice a dark shape down the opposite hillside, rolling like a boulder.

Teucer sees it first. He stares hard. Blinks. Hopes he is mistaken. Maybe it’s a giant bird or a wild cat, its black shadow cast on the straw-coloured land.

It’s not.

His mouth grows dry.

Tetia sits up straight, brushes her long black hair from her eyes and squints into the warm light.

There’s only one house on the other side of the hill.

Only one man who would send a rider from there so early in the day.

The dark shape gets bigger. In the seat of the valley it stops.

Teucer knows the figure is looking at them.

Preparing for them.

Coming for them.

The figure on the hillside is Larth. Larth the Punisher. Larth, the most feared man in Atmanta.

There are many reasons to be afraid of the mountain of muscle who has come from his master, Magistrate Pesna. First, Larth kills people. Executes them coldly in the name of local justice. Second, he tortures people, again at the behest of his master. Third, and perhaps most disturbingly of all, he enjoys every gruesome aspect of his work.

Teucer thinks of all these things as he sensibly complies with Larth’s gruff demand to take his horse and ride back with him. The young netsvis thinks too about Magistrate Pesna. The man is young and much resented. His wealth comes from the new industry of silver mining and the old art of political intrigue. Like all politicians he is different than he seems. Outwardly, he’s a nobleman, a businessman and pillar of the community. Privately, he’s corrupt – a debauched, sexual animal and voracious power seeker.

Inside the high-walled gardens of Pesna’s home, Larth leads Teucer into a vast room with
an endless floor, tiled in a strange stone the colour of milk. The Punisher leaves him with a servant so young it will be a hundred moons before he needs to shave. Teucer feels his heart beating and his knees knocking. After all this time, he was certain neither he nor Tetia would be connected with the killing near the curte. He calms himself by admiring the opulence around him. The furniture is beautifully crafted from different local woods, some bleached white and covered in thick skins, some stained red and brown using berries and plants such as Madder. Life-size bronze statues representing orators, workers and slaves line the walls. The room is alive with murals showing dancers, musicians and revellers. In each corner there are huge pots, all glazed black and intricately covered in gold-leaf paintings.

Two servants fling open large lattice-worked doors and hurry into the room. Teucer’s heartbeat doubles again. They set about tidying skins and cushions on a large high-backed wooden seat where the magistrate intends sitting.

Pesna enters.

He is tall and handsome, clad in a long robe made from a shimmering fabric that Teucer doesn’t recognise. It is held on his shoulder by a silver clasp that looks like the gripping knuckles of a woman’s hand. His feet are cosseted in finest leather sandals, buckled in silver.