The Venice Conspiracy (4 page)

CHAPTER 10

Present Day
Carabinieri HQ, Venice

Valentina listens to everything Tom has to say, interrupting only a couple of times to ask questions, then leaves him alone in the interview room.

The story is an incredible one.

Global time differences mean it will take a while to check it all out and see if Shaman really is who he says he is, and if he really did what he said he did.

Valentina uses Google as a shortcut. ‘You’re never going to believe this!’ Pulling the printouts from the tray, she crosses the Incident Room to where her boss is. ‘Our witness - the man in Room 3 - he’s an ex-priest who killed two people.’

‘A killer priest?’

‘No, not like that. A hero.’

Vito Carvalho laughs loudly. ‘
Hero
-
killer
-
priest
. I don’t think I’ve ever heard those three words together before.’

‘Well, you’re hearing them now. Look—’ She hands over the wad of papers. ‘Seems he stepped into some street incident. Three against one. Couldn’t save the girl being attacked, but killed two of the bad guys. He told me most of it but I wanted to cross-check before I said anything.’

Vito takes the pages. ‘It’s some strange kind of Padre who can handle himself like that in a street fight. What’s he like?’

She raises her eyes, tries to stay factual. ‘Maybe 1.9 metres tall. I guess ninety kilos, perhaps a bit more - he’s a big guy. Lean, you know, muscular. Somewhere in his early thirties.’

Vito peers over the top of the printouts. ‘Hey, remember he’s a priest, and a witness. Not
dating
material.’

‘Ex-priest.’

‘Still a witness.’ He gives her a paternal stare. ‘And still
not
dating material. By the way, the internet’s notoriously unreliable. Make sure all these details and whatever he said to you are checked properly. Get Maria Santanni to do it, she’s thorough.’

‘
Si.
’ Valentina picks up a phone.

‘Do it later. First, let’s go and talk with your hero killer priest.’

‘Ex-priest!’ stresses Valentina again, as she lapdogs after him.

Vito Carvalho doesn’t pause at the interview-room door like Valentina did. He bursts straight in. Maximum noise. Maximum surprise. Looking to see how jumpy the guy waiting on the other side is.

Tom Shaman is slouched low on the hard-backed chair, chin comfortably resting on interlocked fingers. He looks up at the grand entrance and his eyes track Carvalho into the room. He only sits up when he sees Valentina. A sign of respect, nothing more. Her face gives away that she’s run checks on him. That’s no surprise. It’s what he’d expect a cop to do. Hopefully, they’ll let him go now.

‘Hello again,’ he says to Valentina.

‘This is my boss, Major Carvalho.’ She gestures to him as they slide into seats across the grey table. ‘He’s leading the enquiry into Monica’s death.’

‘Monica?’

The major fills in the blanks: ‘Monica Vidic. Her father has identified her. She’s fifteen and came from Croatia.’

‘Poor guy. I imagine he’s in pieces.’ Tom momentarily recalls the horror of dragging the girl from the canal.

Carvalho is watching every gesture, every crease on his face, every movement of his lips. ‘Why didn’t you tell us straight away that you were a priest? That you left the Church such a short time ago?’

Tom shifts in his seat. ‘Why should I? What difference does it make to you whether I used to be a priest or a rocket scientist?’

Carvalho drums his fingers. ‘It probably doesn’t make
any
difference. But a priest who left after the experience you went through - well, maybe that’s something worth us talking about, right?’

‘I didn’t think it was worth mentioning. Not then - and not now.’

Carvalho tries coming at him from another angle. ‘When I became a policeman I stopped believing in coincidences. Phrases like, “I just happened to be there when I came across this body,” stopped ringing true. And I have real trouble believing that you left two corpses behind in LA, flew all this way and just happened to be on hand to find another one here in Venice. Do you see what I mean?’

Tom smiles. ‘I do. I absolutely do see what you mean. But, at the risk of annoying you, I
did
just happen to be there. Ask the old man, he was the one who found the young girl - Monica.’

‘He
found
her,’ interjects Valentina. ‘But maybe you put her there. Killers like to be around for the find.’

Tom shakes his head. ‘You don’t believe that. Not for a minute. I know you’ve got to do your job and go through all this. But you don’t really believe that.’

‘Okay, let’s talk about belief for a moment.’ The major leans forward and rests on his arms. ‘What kind of man do you believe could have killed a young woman like that?’

‘A very disturbed one,’ says Tom. ‘He was either mentally ill - or worse. Perhaps overcome or possessed by the powers of evil.’

‘The powers of evil?’ says Carvalho mockingly.

Something in the major’s tone gets to Tom. ‘I’ve seen a lot of murdered people. Probably more than you’ll ever see. I’ve heard the confessions of many serial killers, child abusers and rapists. And I tell you, you’re dealing with the devil’s work. It was his hand that guided that blade, as surely as if he’d stood there in all his cloven-hoofed glory and killed her himself.’

Tom looks across the table and sees their scepticism deepen. ‘Okay, the bit about cloven hooves is probably over the top. But the rest of it I mean. I
really
mean.’

CHAPTER 11

It’s early afternoon when they finally let Tom go. By now, he’s way beyond hungry and thinks he’ll fall over if he doesn’t get something quick.

Venice is very different to eating cheap at his church vestry in LA and he’s discovering his lunchtime allocation of fifteen euros won’t buy much. The search is on for cheap pizza and, by the looks of it, he won’t get it at the Grand Canal restaurant on Calle Vallaresso.

He stands on its elegant terrace by the waterside, watching waiters glide between tables in an exquisite culinary ballet. A menu behind glass makes his mouth water. If he had the money he’d start with salmon and swordfish tartare with lemon and basil. Maybe a glass of a local Barolo with a main course of rack of lamb and fresh garden vegetables.

‘Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt ate here.’ A woman’s voice. One he recognises.

He turns to see Tina, the travel writer he’d met in Florin’s. ‘It’s famous for its seafood,’ she adds as she lifts a pair of fashionably oversized shades. ‘And its prices.’ Her blue eyes twinkle.

‘You’re right there.’ Tom taps the menu glass. ‘I can just afford the coffee.’

‘You haven’t eaten yet?’

‘No. Not since last night. Can you recommend somewhere that suits a more modest - actually, a
much
more modest budget?’

She takes a long look at him, then smiles. ‘I tell you what - let’s get a table here. You buy the coffee - you said you could stretch to that - and I’ll buy lunch.’

Tom is horrified. ‘I can’t let you do that—’

But Tina already has the eye of a waltzing waiter and doesn’t feel like taking no for an answer. ‘
Lei ha una tavola per due, per favore?’

A white-jacketed ballet star in his late fifties grins at her.
‘Sì, signorina, certo.’

Tom feels embarrassed as he follows them to a table in the far corner. Even before the seat’s been pulled out for him and the starched white napkin laid on his lap, he can tell that the view is magnificent and the meal is certain to be memorable. ‘This is enormously generous of you. Really, I’m horribly ashamed. If I’d known how expensive Venice is, I probably wouldn’t have come.’

‘That really would have been shameful.’ She studies his face and sees he’s tense and awkward. ‘Listen, I was going to eat here anyway. Every travel writer is compelled to eat somewhere cheap and somewhere as ridiculously expensive as the Grand Canal, so I’m simply putting you down as research.’

‘“Research”? I don’t think I’ve ever been called that before.’

His charm earns him a long sparkle of her flawless teeth. ‘In return, you have to tell me your story. Who you are, why you’re here, what you like and don’t like about Venice - that’s the kind of stuff I have to find out when I research fellow travellers.’

‘Okay,’ says Tom, ‘you have a deal.’ The waiter appears juggling two menus, a wine list, olives and a silver basket of bread. ‘But,’ adds Tom, ‘it won’t be the kind of story you’re going to want to write.’

CHAPTER 12

A blue-and-white police boat speeds Vito and Valentina to the mortuary at the Ospedale San Lazzaro. The sun is baking hot and the canal smells of burned cabbage. Behind them, a white wake froths on chocolate-brown water as twin outboards growl down the canals. It reminds Valentina of the iced cappuccino she promised herself an hour ago.

They disembark at the city hospital, alongside a fleet of water ambulances knocking gently against ancient wooden posts. Paramedics in sunglasses sit on stone steps near the quay, Day-glo orange uniforms rolled down to their waists, smoking and chatting lazily. The calm before the storm.

‘Hey!’ The shout comes from Valentina’s cousin, Antonio Pavarotti, arriving on foot from the opposite direction. ‘Wait!’

He’s breathless as he catches up. Only after they’ve slipped into the shady labyrinth of the Ospedale does he find his normal voice. ‘The divers have found nothing. Short of dredging the canal, there’s no more we can do.’

‘Nothing?’ queries Vito, who has spent much of his career lecturing officers on the subject ‘there is no such thing as nothing - if there ever
was
nothing, then it really
would
mean something’.

Antonio - who’s heard the lecture several times - corrects himself: ‘Only a pair of fake Gucci shades, probably from one of the stalls near the Rialto, a sodden mound of litter dropped by damned tourists, and a broken Swatch watch that looks like it belonged to a child.’

Vito shakes his head. The boy will never learn. ‘They’re all
something,
not nothing. Check them. Show them to the market traders, jewellers, see if we strike lucky.’

The major leads them towards the block at the back of the hospital marked Anatomia Patalogica, Laboratorio Alalisi, Mortuarie. ‘Forensics get anything?’

‘There are paint marks against the wall where Monica was tied. They look new. Could be from the craft that he carried her on. They’re black, though, the colour of every damned gondola in Venice.’

‘Samples already gone to the labs?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well done, Antonio. We’ll be sorry to lose you. When do you start your new job?’

‘Tomorrow, Major.’ He looks worried for a second. ‘Do you wish me to ask the unit commander to find someone else?’

Touched by his loyalty, Vito says, ‘No, no. I know how much you enjoy undercover. We’ll cope without you, won’t we, Valentina?’

She smiles. ‘Somehow. I don’t know how, but we’ll struggle through.’

‘They’re posting you out to that hippy commune, aren’t they?’ asks Carvalho rhetorically. ‘Months of sex. Drugs. Rock’n’roll and a mad millionaire who thinks he’s creating a revolution.’

Antonio grins. ‘It’s tough work, but someone has to do it.’

Valentina delivers him a playful punch in the arm, but as they turn into the morgue the air goes cold and so does their mood.

Vito walks them towards an old man with a bald, white head that’s wise enough to stay out of Venice’s blistering sun. ‘Officers, this is Professore Sylvio Montesano. Professore, these are lieutenants Valentina Morassi and Antonio Pavarotti, this is their first time in the mortuary.’

‘Then I’m honoured, and very pleased to meet you both.’ Montesano bows, wire bifocals sliding to the tip of his nose. ‘Come with me to the Cooler.’

The fifteen-year-old victim is laid out on a steel gurney, her body bleached white by the overhead lighting, her wounds the colour of putrid veal. Antonio is unfazed but Valentina is already holding a perfumed handkerchief to her mouth.

‘The body is actually in remarkably good condition,’ says Montesano. ‘Oddly enough, submersion in water slows decomposition. We got her in here very quickly, so decay isn’t as advanced as it might have been.’

At a nod from Vito, the medical examiner launches into his report, pitching it so the two lieutenants can easily follow.

‘After the corpse was recovered from the scene we had her CT-scanned in the hospital’s radiological-imaging department. We made examinations every 0.5 millimetres, scouting for two- and three-dimensional reconstructions, so we have very precise data on all the wounds.’ Montesano moves closer to the body. ‘There are two startlingly unusual features to this case. The first is the fatal wound across the throat. Deep into the brachiocephalic artery - that’s our largest artery.’ He points to a spot on the right side of Monica’s neck. ‘It branches off into the carotid and subclavian arteries, pumping blood into this side of the upper chest, arm, neck and head.’

Antonio waves a hand over the mass of other wounds. ‘So, all those other stabbings and injuries - there was no
need
for them?’

‘In the sense of taking the girl’s life? No need at all. The neck wound was sufficient to have killed her.’ The ME is about to move on, but can’t resist sharing some of his medical knowledge: ‘This is a highly unusual injury. The brachiocephalic artery is a very difficult one to strike. Usually it’s protected by the sternal bone and the clavicles. Generally, when someone’s attacked with a knife to the throat, you expect to see a cut to the left or right common carotid artery.’

Vito is intrigued. ‘But the result is still the same? The victim just bleeds to death?’

‘No, probably not.’ Montesano pushes his glasses back up his nose. ‘Victims of such wounds generally die from air embolus.’ He checks Valentina, anxious to educate rather than traumatise. ‘If the victim’s head and neck are above the level of the heart, then air is drawn into the body - into the veins, mind you, not the arteries. It goes into the right chambers of the heart and forms a frothy mass, stopping the heart from functioning.’

‘But it’s quick and merciful?’ adds Vito, trying to mitigate the effects of this graphic detail on his young female lieutenant.

‘Afraid not,’ says Montesano flatly. ‘It’s far from instantaneous. It can take several minutes.’

Valentina is now sheet-white, but still she manages a question of her own. ‘Did the killer do this with a
normal
knife?’

Montesano returns his fingers to the girl’s throat. ‘Depends what you mean by normal. The murder weapon had a strong, short blade like a carpet fitter’s tool or artist’s knife. The skin shows that the fatal incision ran from right to left in such a way that the attacker was stood in front and above the victim.’

Vito mimes the knife action above Monica’s head. ‘So, he probably had her restrained on the ground below him, and if the cut ran from the right side of her, we can safely presume the offender is left-handed?’

Montesano looks amused. ‘Major, you are old enough to know that you
shouldn’t
presume anything.’

‘Okay, I stand corrected.’ Vito smiles and turns to his lieutenants. ‘
Without
presuming anything, let’s proactively consider it and also keep in mind that 87 per cent of the population of the world is right-handed. Anyone
left
-handed comes on to our radar, we should give them a very close look.’

Montesano picks up the point: ‘Please also remember that left-handedness is more common in males - particularly identical and fraternal twins - and in those with neurological disorders.’

‘Like what?’ asks Antonio.

‘Epilepsy, Down’s Syndrome, autism, mental retardation and even dyslexia.’

‘Duly noted,’ says Vito. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re most welcome.’

Keen to shift focus to an area he more readily understands, Vito asks, ‘Professore, do you have anything that tells us where she was and when she died?’

‘I do. The stomach contents show that her last meal was a seafood pizza, heavy on tomato paste and low on seafood. It will be a cheap tourist trattoria. I would say the meal was consumed about two hours before she died.’

‘Check it.’ Vito says to Valentina.

She raises an eyebrow. Her list of things to check will soon be longer than the Canal Grande.

Antonio cups his hand and whispers into her right ear, ‘I can do it for you. I don’t report until tomorrow lunchtime.’ He glances towards the ME. ‘Can you tell us the time of death?’

Montesano looks irritated. ‘Young man, you’ve been watching too many movies and reading too many second-rate thrillers. Pathologists cannot discern a time of death by simply looking at a body like a gypsy looks at tea-leaves. In cases like this it is enormously difficult to establish time of death with accuracy.’

Vito saves Antonio further pain by turning again to Valentina. ‘What time did that old fishmonger find her?’

‘Somewhere around five-thirty a.m.’

‘That’s the base to start building your timeline back from, Antonio. Find the place where she ate the pizza, check the father’s testimony again on when they split up, and you’ll have pinpointed the window of death.’ He looks to the Professore again. ‘You said there were two startlingly unusual features about the case. What’s the other?’

Montesano scratches an itch under his glasses. ‘The girl’s liver is missing.’

‘What?’

The ME enunciates the words. ‘Her -
liver
- is -
missing
.’

‘You’re sure?’

Montesano glares at him. ‘Major, of course I am
sure
.’ He couldn’t look more offended. ‘I know what a liver looks like, and I promise you, there is no mistake, it is missing. It has been cut from her body.’