The Venice Conspiracy

by Jon Trace

‘I’ll be generous and not count that,’ chides Pesna.

  He swallows. Calms himself. Turns one hundred and eighty degrees. He stretches out his other hand and steps to his side. If he’s correct, the long table should now be on his right.

  Nothing.

  He takes an extra step.

  Nothing.

  One more.

  He hears stifled laughter and imagines Pesna pressing both hands to his mouth to contain his amusement.

  Teucer’s right hip bumps into something.

  Something solid.

  The table.

  Excitement crackles through him.

  He puts his hand down and feels its edge. Holds on. Slides his fingers back until he finds the right-angled end.

  Pesna grows quiet. He wonders if there is some purpose to the seer’s blunderings.

  Teucer shuffles, crablike, his hand in constant contact with the table.

  He reaches the far end and stops the instant he feels his fingers fall away.

  Twenty paces in length. A fine table.

  He walks it back again.

  Ten paces.

  Stops.

  The middle.

  Teucer tentatively stretches out both hands.

  He knocks a vase on his left.

  ‘That counts as one,’ says Pesna.

  His right hand bumps into something that feels wooden.

  ‘Two!’

  Teucer swallows again. If he’s right, then the tablets are now immediately below his fingers.

  He lowers his palms.

  Nothing.

  Pesna moves closer to him. Hovers behind him. Teucer can feel his heat.

  Backwards or forwards? Up or down? Which way should he guess?

  Teucer moves his hands towards the front of the table.

  Jewellery.

  ‘Three!’

  He glides his fingers back again.

  Bowls!

  ‘Four! I hear Larth rattling those hooks.’

  Teucer freezes. He’s not thought it out as well as he’d imagined.

  Where would Pesna put his most precious goods? Certainly in the middle of the table. But not at the front where they could fall. At the back would be safest. Maybe even elevated on some wooden plinth, so they would be better displayed for his greedy eyes.

  Teucer plays his hunch. Reaches out.

  His elbow knocks a vase and he hears it tumble.

  Pesna steps forward and stops it rolling off the table. ‘Five! You have but one life left.’

  Teucer stretches, his spine cracks, the table presses hard against the front of his legs.

  His hands come down.

  Something cold against his palms.

  Silver. He’s sure it is.

  Applause.

  Heavy clapping from Pesna. ‘Bravissimo! Well done! I am amazed.’

  He pats Teucer’s back.

  But Teucer doesn’t feel it.

  His body has gone numb.

  An awful ache runs through his head. A stab of pain like the one that brought him to his knees in the curte.

  For a second he thinks he hears voices. Echoing voices from a black place beyond the world. And now the visions come again. Visions of the demon god and of his own demise.

  And something worse.

  Something indistinct and blurred.

  The child.

  Teucer crashes to the ground, his hands still holding the three Tablets of Atmanta. His mind still holding a terrifying image of his unborn child, the rapist’s child. Growing. Changing. Becoming every bit as terrifying as the demon god he’d seen. Becoming the font of all evil.

  CHAPTER 30

  Present Day

  Fondamente Nuove, Venice

  Vito Carvalho bums a cigarette from a soldier guarding the crime scene, and reminds himself of the information he’d been given on the phone just before midnight: The corpse has been dismembered. Body parts tied in heavy-duty plastic trash bags - stuffed in large cloth sacks - weighted down with old bricks. Everything dumped in the north side of the lagoon, away from the regular water taxi and vaporetto routes.

  Vito blows out smoke and looks across the black water. Had it not been for the diving teams searching the thick muddy belly of the canal for vital parts of Antonio Pavarotti’s motor boat, the dismembered body would never have been found.

  Arc lights spill their horror-film whiteness on to the quayside. He walks past recovery teams and CSIs poring over mounds of stinking silt and slimy weed.

  Through the glare he sees Nuncio di Alberto with a face paler than the moon listening to one of the scuba team. The diver has rolled his wetsuit down to his waist; as he talks, his body is steaming surreally in the cool night air.

  Professore Montesano’s voice spills from a white plastic tent. Vito knows who he’s talking to long before he pulls back the flap and walks the deck boards forensics have laid to lessen the risk of cross-scene contamination.

  ‘Ciao,’ he says with gentle sarcasm. ‘No disrespect, but I’d hoped not to see either of you for a while.’

  Montesano raises a latex-gloved hand as a hello.

  Valentina Morassi can’t manage a smile. ‘Ciao, Major.’ The strain of the day is etched around her raw-looking eyes.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here. We’ll talk later,’ he says pointedly. Valentina guesses he’s worked out that she finally picked up Nuncio’s calls and then bullied him into telling her what was going on.

  Carvalho pulls translucent gloves from a box. ‘What have we got, Professore?’

  Montesano lifts his shoulders and takes the kind of long, slow breath that means good news is not about to cross his lips. ‘We have mush.’

  ‘Mush? What type of mush?’

  ‘Male mush. The putrefying mush of a mature male. That’s about all I can say for now. We’ve opened several sacks and there’s a wide assortment of body parts. For obvious reasons I don’t want to unpack everything here and risk losing evidence.’

  Valentina points at the collection of bags squashed together, seeping water. ‘I talked with the head of the underwater team just before he went home. There are more sacks, but he can’t have them brought to the surface until around ten in the morning.’

  ‘Ten? What’s he running - a campus coffee shop? How about they start again at first light? Maybe put some urgency into things.’

  Valentina can see he’s tensing up. ‘They don’t need the light, Major. They’ve been working in the dark down there all day. Apparently it’s zero viz in most places - like working blindfold in a water-filled skip. Anything they’ve recovered has solely been from hand-touch.’

  ‘I know that!’ he snaps, then wishes he hadn’t.

  Valentina whips back, ‘They can’t start any earlier because they’ve got too few men and too much work.’

  Carvalho feels as though he’s going to explode. ‘Budget restrictions! Cutbacks! Don’t politicians understand that criminals don’t slacken off simply because people aren’t quite as rich these days. Cazzo!’ He turns again to the ME. ‘Scusi. Please forgive my outburst, Sylvio. I know you resent these things too. Can you tell me approximately how long this body has been in the water? A rough guess at how old he is? Something - anything - that I can get an investigation rolling on?’

  Montesano knows better than to speak too soon: speculation could throw the whole enquiry off course. But he also knows his friend wouldn’t ask if he wasn’t under pressure. ‘Most of the skin—’ he corrects himself: ‘most of the skin I have seen so far, has separated from the underlying fat and soft tissue. We’re talking advanced decomposition.’ He turns towards the stack of sacks. ‘Without working out water temperatures and weather conditions over the last few weeks, I can’t be more accurate.’

  Carvalho sees his opening: ‘Days, weeks or months?’

  ‘Months. Not years.’

  ‘Age of victim?’

  ‘No, Vito! I am sorry. Until I have processed everything that’s been recovered, that’s all you’re getting.’

  The
major surrenders. ‘Va bene. Molte grazie. Valentina, walk with me outside. Let’s leave our good friend to his work. His most unpleasant work.’

  Valentina is wrapped in a red quilted jacket over a grey jumper with jeans and short boots, but she is shivering as she joins him outside.

  ‘It’s not that cold,’ says Carvalho. ‘You’re exhausted and shouldn’t even be here. But I suppose you know that.’

  She does her best not to look like a scolded daughter. ‘I want to work. When Nuncio told me there was another body near where Antonio’s accident had taken place, I had to come. You understand, don’t you?’

  Carvalho understands. He feels the same way. Even his turning out at this god-awful hour has achieved nothing that couldn’t have waited until later in the morning. ‘You want to grab some coffee before you go home? One of my friends has a restaurant nearby and he never finishes up until at least three.’

  She forces a smile. ‘Grazie. I’d like that.’

  They have gone only a few paces when a shout from Montesano stops them in their tracks. The ME stands in the entrance of the tent and calls: ‘Vito, there are two - two bodies, not one. I have found another skull.’

  PART THREE

  TWO DAYS LATER

  CHAPTER 31

  Present Day

  The Morgue, Ospedale San Lazzaro, Venice

  In a large, heavily guarded room off the main morgue extra refrigeration and air purifiers have been plugged in and the area cleared of all unnecessary equipment.

  Body parts are now unwrapped. Meticulous records drawn up of which part came from which sack and which sack came from which section of the lagoon. Details are computerised but also plotted on maps pinned to the walls.

  Sylvio Montesano and his team are diligently ensuring that body-fluid samples are taken from each separate sack. Similarly, any traces of plankton or other debris are collected, tagged and rushed to the Carabinieri labs for analysis. Internal tissue, especially the scrappy remains of lungs and stomach, will be processed separately. Fingernails - assuming they ever find any - will be scraped for debris. What remains of the victims’ clothing has been hung, dried and matched to the bodies before being sent off for analysis. None of Montesano’s team is unclear about what his or her tasks are, or how precisely they’re expected to perform them. If the professore had a middle name, it would be Precision.

  The dual post-mortem examination is a gruelling job. Herculean efforts are needed to identify the two victims, and then find trace evidence that might link them to the locations where they were killed and the person - or persons - who killed them.

  For anyone other than an ME it would be an unimaginable horror, but for the sixty-two-year-old it’s one of the most exciting and challenging moments of his career.

  Two separate bodies, both dumped in the same place, both bagged in the same way. He has no doubts about what he’s involved in.

  Something he’s never experienced before.

  Not once in his long and distinguished career as a forensic pathologist has the professore pitted his wits against the deadliest creature known to man and mortuary.

  A serial killer.

  His three assistants work slavishly on preparing and laying out all the severed limbs. Alongside them is Isabella Lombardelli, an investigator from RaCIS - the Raggruppamento Carabinieri Investigazioni Scientifiche, the specialist scientific unit - acting as a liaison officer between the labs, the mortuary and the murder incident room.

  Montesano stands back and takes satisfaction in seeing everything in full swing. A well-oiled scientific machine. One that will miss nothing.

  Soon it will get interesting.

  Soon he will clean all the bones with good old domestic washing powder and look closely at how they were cut and brutalised, what was used to sever limb from limb. But even now, the corpses are telling him stories.

  Both victims are male - one somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. The other is at least double that age, most likely in his late sixties, early seventies.

  The older body is in a greater state of decomposition, many months more advanced than the other.

  And there are clear commonalities between the murders. Bones on both bodies have been sawn. Not carelessly chopped or bluntly bludgeoned. In his experience, it’s unusual for a body to be dismembered. Most murderers he’s come across simply dump and run, wisely choosing not to spend much time with their prey after death for fear it will increase their chances of getting caught. When dismemberment does occur, there’s generally a pattern to it. Cuts are almost always made in the same places - the neck, armpits and tops of the legs. Five classic chop points.

  Gang killings see the hands being severed too. Very often there are also more cuts at the back of the knees and elbows to reduce the victim’s limbs to a size that can be easily wrapped, shifted and disposed of without attracting too much attention. Eleven cuts, in all. Sometimes thirteen or fifteen, if they go for the mid-arms and thighs, but that’s much more unusual.

  Here, however, with these bodies from the lagoon, there’s something else going on.

  Something strange.

  In the first victim - the older man - all his fingers and toes have been separately severed: twenty cuts.

  Then the torso has been sliced between many of the ribs, making at least another six.

  In addition to this there is the gangland-style dismemberment of hands and feet. Another eleven cuts.

  Montesano hasn’t yet counted all the individual incisions, but he’s guessing that in total there are dozens.

  More than fifty separate dismemberments.

  The second victim - the younger one - isn’t as bad. It still has gangland overtones.

  Eleven cuts - hands as well as torso.

  But then the ribcage has been opened - sawn down the centre of the sternum. And it has unusual incisions across the mid-arms and thighs. The killer seems to have been more controlled, less frenzied. More evolved.

  Or something else.

  Montesano wonders if the murderer was trying to do something with the first victim and couldn’t manage it. Perhaps his fantasy didn’t play out in the flesh.

  Or something else.

  What?

  The professore takes off his wire-framed glasses, peels back his blue latex gloves and steps outside the chilled room. He needs daylight. Fresh air. Time and space to process the worrying thought that’s just jolted his brain.

  He sits on a stone wall in the sun-dappled hospital courtyard and feels the warmth of the day strengthen his fridge-chilled bones and clear his mind.

  Gradually the answer comes to him.

  The killer was trying to cut his victim into hundreds of pieces.

  Six hundred and sixty-six, to be precise.

  But he couldn’t.

  Only a surgeon, a butcher - or perhaps himself - could have managed such a thing.

  And then Montesano thinks of something that sends a shiver through him as surely as if he’d walked back into the cooler.

  Something’s missing.

  Something he’s sure the dive teams and his lab assistants won’t find a trace of. Something decomposition may have masked, but not removed completely.

  The victims’ livers.

  He knows they’re not there. Blood pounds in his temples.

  Why?

  Why would anyone do such a thing?

  CAPITOLO XXVI

  666 BC

  The Temple, Atmanta

  They have travelled from all down the Tyrrhenian coast, from either side of the Po River, from Spina, Mantua, Felsina and Atria. The only place they have not come from is Rome.

  The richest and most powerful men in Etruria file into Atmanta’s vast new temple, but no one from Rome is among them.

  Pesna and Kavie walk away from the gathering crowd, away from the preening dignitaries and ceremonial musicians playing double pipes and multi-stringed zithers.

  ‘Damnation!’ Pesna is so angry he can’t stand still. ‘These cursed Romans are
trouble personified. Their absence is more disruptive than their presence could ever have been. Their silence more insulting than their high and vestal opinions. I wish now I’d had the foresight not to have invited them.’

  Kavie gestures to the temple. ‘We should go inside. Have you told anyone the Romans were invited and that they refused to come?’

  Pesna catches his drift. ‘No. The only people who know of the invitations are you and the messenger.’

  ‘The boy will say nothing. I’ll see to that.’

  In the curte, behind the temple, Larcia makes final adjustments to the twisted black conical hat she has sewn for her son. He already wears new robes: a beautifully rounded black mantle with a fringed hem over a longer black tunic. He is barefoot, and has paced out and memorised every step he will take during the ceremony.

  His mother is excited. ‘Teucer, I hear the flutes and the pipes.’ She kisses him and, her voice breaking with sadness because he cannot see the pride in her eyes, she tells him, ‘I love you, my son. I’m so proud of you.’

  Larcia’s kiss is still wet on his cheek as Tetia hugs him and wishes him well. ‘Here, here it is.’ She guides his right hand to a wooden post driven into the thick turf. It is his starting point. From here on, he will be on his own. One slip, one slight mistake, one degree of miscalculation and the service will be reduced to a farce.

  Venthi’s voice reaches him from the edge of the temple. He sounds nervous. An anxious father who’d rather his son wasn’t about to endure this ordeal. ‘They are ready. They are waiting for you.’

  Music plays. Melancholy strings. Long flute notes.

  Four hooded acolytes take up their positions - two in front and two behind their netsvis. They will help sacrifice sheep on new libation altars outside the temple, built so blood pours straight into the soil and is drunk by the deities of the earth.

  Teucer feels the beat of the music. Uses it to set his own rhythm. Stride and pace will be crucial.

  Ten steps forward. He turns right.

  Fifty steps along the side of the temple. Right again to the foot of the vast steps.